South by Southeast: The History and Archaeology of Southeast Crete from Myrtos to Kato Zakros

Contributions investigate the settlement patterns, maritime connectivity, and material culture of the southeast of Crete in a diachronic fashion, in an attempt to define it as a region and trace its history. Papers focus primarily on the archaeology of the sites along the coastal strip spanning between the Myrtos Valley and Kato Zakros.

South by Southeast: The History and Archaeology of Southeast Crete from Myrtos to Kato Zakros publishes the proceedings of the conference of the same name held in Pacheia Ammos (Crete) in July 2017. Its aim is to investigate the settlement patterns, maritime connectivity, and material culture of the southeast of Crete in a diachronic fashion, in an attempt to define it as a region and trace its history. The title South by Southeast, an ironic take on Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, North by Northwest, encapsulates the uncertainty of what exactly the Southeast means and our need to clarify its geographical limits and cultural span. The papers presented focus primarily on the archaeology of the sites along the coastal strip spanning between the Myrtos Valley and Kato Zakros, an area that has time and again produced evidence of interconnection. Indeed one of the most important aspects surfacing from the volume is the evidence for the diachronic existence of the Southeast as a distinct cultural entity. The elements that tied the sites together shifted at times, forcing us to evaluate the concept of region as a flexible one that reflects different ways of defining a community.