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Modern Description: Following the shore beyond Vourkári, you come in a further 500m to the prehistoric city at Aghia Irini on a low promontory in the bay. Because of its commercially strategic position between the Attic mainland and the Cyclades, and its privileged location on such a sheltered site, this became one of the most important centres of Cycladic culture. In order to appreciate the extraordinary and unique finds which came from these excavations, it is important to combine a visit to the site with the museum in Chora. The site, brutally fenced and usually padlocked, was open Friday - Sunday in summer 2021, with a knowledgeable English-speaking guard. Settlement was established here between 3000 and 2700 BC on the western side of the area, just north of the present church of Aghia Irini. After a period of abandonment at the end of the 3rd millennium, the structures visible today were built over the ruins of the Early Cycladic settlement from c.1900 BC on. The ‘temple' building was first laid out in this period. The visible fortification circuit, with towers and a gate in the northeast corner, was erected around 1700 BC.
The chief-dwelling of the community—Building ‘A', in the area immediately northeast of the church—and most of the buildings and streets that we see today were erected between 1600 and 1450 BC. Towards the end of this period, the remarkable cult figures of females were created for the ‘temple'. This period of expansion and prosperity seems to have been ended by an earthquake c.1450 BC. Some of the ruins were then cleared, and the buildings and temple adapted and reused in the 12th and 11th centuries BC. The site continued into Archaic and Classical times as a place of the cult of Dionysos. Excavations were first undertaken by John L. Caskey of the University of Cincinnati between 1960 and 1976.
The first impression is of the fine construction and preservation of the urban texture: clear, narrow streets with drainage channels beneath a paved floor; carefully planned and executed walls in a variety of masonry; finely-constructed stone door frames for accommodating wooden doors and articulations; an overall urban organisation between buildings, as well as an organisation of domestic spaces within buildings. Three structures are particularly conspicuous: from the road the rectangular corner bastion and fortification wall are clearly visible in the northeast corner of the area, dating from c. 1700 BC. South from here, between the shore and the east end of the church, are the two most important buildings. Immediately east of the church is the largest single structure uncovered so far, Building ‘A', seat of the local ruler and of the community's administration. The building had three levels: a basement divided into storage areas and workshops clearly visible today, a main floor with the main reception rooms, and an upper level, fragments of whose painted decoration have been found. The lower level appears to have included spaces for metal-working and stone-working, as well as stores of imported Minoan, Mycenaean and Island pottery. Along the northeast side of this complex was the main cult-centre of the community, the temple-building, recognisable by its long rectangular form divided into chambers. The building's origins go back to the second century of the 2nd millennium BC, but its present form and structure date from about 1600 BC. It is preceded (at the seaward end) by what was an enclosed court with stone benches to either side, with a later rectangular hearth in the centre; a doorway with stone jambs leads into a middle chamber with ancillary spaces to one side, which in turn leads into an inner sanctum at the western end. In the interior, the shattered pieces of the terracotta female figures were found: they were probably damaged, together with the building in an earthquake around 1450 BC. Fragments of them were found and venerated afterwards by later inhabitants. Cemeteries of rock-cut tombs, containing burial jars and funerary offerings, have been found both to the west and the east, outside the fortification wall.
Wikidata ID: Q393550
DARE: 36593

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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