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Modern Description: By taking the north branch 500m beyond Aghia Paraskevi, you climb over a ridge and after passing a wind farm drop down into the Bay of Lákka. At the northern end of the bay, in the lee of the headland, was found the Mycenaean cemetery of Archontikí (50 minutes), first excavated in 1962. A perimeter fence at Archontikí, constructed with European Union funds, now excludes the visitor and there is no official news of the site being open. It is from here that the remarkably rich finds exhibited on the upper floor in the Archaeological Museum of Chios were rescued. The curving sweep of the bay, the off-shore islets, the protecting headland to north, and the small area of what must once have been cultivable land, explain the reasons for settlement here, combined with the fact that this bay represents one of the first landfalls for boats making the hazardous crossing from west to east across the open waters of the central Aegean on the early trade routes to Asia Minor and the Black Sea.
More than 50 Mycenaean graves (14th-12th centuries BC), cut relatively deeply and built with split slabs of stone, have now been investigated. They are visible from the shore-side perimeter fence at the northern end of the area. Many of the graves were rescued from erosion by the sea. The funerary offerings found in the graves give a vivid sense of the importance and wealth of the Bronze Age settlement here, suggesting that this was a vibrant trading emporion. The finds include a wide variety of decorated ceramic objects (of both male and female appurtenance), bronze swords and daggers, seal-stones, and several kinds of metal and glass-paste jewellery of fine workmanship and attractively delicate colour. As excavations progress the same richness of objects continues to be found. The settlement itself, which reveals commensurately spacious houses with storage areas and pithoi still in situ, has so far been only partially explored. The Archontikí area continued to be inhabited into early historic times, during which there is evidence from ceramic offering-cups of the cult of an (as yet) unidentified hero. [JBK: an ancient breakwater, now submerged, stretches to Daskalio islet, forming a protected harbor.]

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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