Priniatikos Pyrgos is a limestone headland jutting out into the southwest corner of the Gulf of Mirabello in East Crete. The research so far has revealed evidence of prehistoric industrial activity (e.g. two pottery kilns) and settlement, part of the Classical and Hellenistic city plan of Istron and a previously undiscovered Byzantine ecclesiastical site of regional importance. The diachronic strategy provides stratigraphic evidence for the long-term exploitation of this coastal area, providing a rare excavation insight into long-term trajectories of economic and environmental strategies of landscape exploitation.

The project is the first ever excavation of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens and the multinational team includes scholars from University College Dublin, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Trinity College Dublin, and University of California at Santa Barbara. This phase of excavation will run until 2011.