Azoria and Archaic Urbanization

We began digging at Azoria in 2002, with the goal of studying the development of an Early Iron Age (EIA) and Archaic settlement on Crete. We shaped our research design to fit the language of culture-history narratives of urbanization, polis formation, and Archaic political economies, along the way, engaging questions of the early Greek household, the development of political architecture, and the relationship between sociopolitical organization and resource mobilization (Haggis et alii 2011a; 2011b). This paper reflects on the results of the past decade of fieldwork while integrating results of recent excavation at the site

The Archaeology of Urbanization: Research Design and the Excavation of an Archaic Greek City on Crete

The paper examines culture change on Crete, ca. 600 B.C., in an urban context. The purpose is to reassess the current methodological discourse, and the application of site-specific recovery methods and research paradigms in addressing traditional problems of polis formation and urbanization in the Greek Aegean. One aspect of urbanization in the Aegean at the end of the Early Iron Age is nucleation of population, the settlement aggregation and the restructuring of social, political and economic landscapes, giving rise to Archaic Greek cities and city-states. This paper presents a case study of an excavation of one such early emergent center, the site of Azoria in eastern Crete (700?500 B.C.). Within contexts of agropastoral production and consumption in domestic and communal spaces, the material patterns suggest public activities that actively formed civic institutions, mediating social and political interaction and forming mechanisms of community organization and integration