Kavousi, Crete: In ancient land, UNC-led teams unearth history

Rob Christensen, newsobserver.com, 26-07-2014

High on a hill overlooking the Mirabello Bay and what the poet Homer called the “wine dark sea,” work resumed last month uncovering an ancient city that had been lost for millennia. Archaeologists and students from North Carolina and across the U.S., as well as local Crete workers, were using shovels, picks, trowels and sieves in a quest to understand the mysteries of Azoria, a city destroyed by fire about 2,500 years ago. So far, no graveyards have been found, and depictions of language on pottery at the site are indecipherable. So clues must be gathered from the remnants of buildings, personal items, implements and food.

The project is the life’s work of Donald Haggis, an archaeology professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who is the project director. UNC is one of only three American universities with a license to dig in Greece, underscoring its long-held national reputation for top-drawer archaeological scholarship. Getting to the dig from the seaside village of Kavousi requires a drive on a rugged, unpaved mountain road 1,187 feet above sea level with breathtaking views of the Aegean Sea and Sitia Mountains, not to mention a 2,000-year-old olive tree. The last few hundred yards are managed on foot.

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