The latest archaeological excavations carried out on the island of Crete have revealed that the ancient Minoan city of Knossos was at least three times larger than previously believed.
Knossos flourished during the Bronze Age, between 3500 and 1100 BC, and its decline was precipitated by the social and political collapse of around 1200 BC. However, a large number of artifacts discovered during the last decade in the excavations carried out by the Knossos Urban Landscape Project (the archaeological initiative that investigates the ruins of the city), date from the Iron Age. This would indicate that it recovered from the collapse and grew and prospered again.
According to Antonis Kotsonas, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, who is involved in the research, these Iron Age artifacts were found in a much larger radius than expected from the ruins of Knossos, indicating that the city would have been spread over a much larger area than previously thought.
In a press release published by the Kotsonas University, he emphasizes that both the number of Iron Age artifacts and their quality indicate that Knossos would have been an important epicenter of trade in the Mediterranean and the Aegean at that time. In fact, there is no other place dating from the same period in which such a wide range of imported materials appears, including bronze ornaments and other metallic jewelery elements. Examples of pottery from relatively distant regions such as Cyprus, Italy or Sardinia were also found among the ruins.
Most of the objects were found in cemeteries and dwellings, offering archaeologists clues as to the relative wealth of the individuals buried with them.
Regarding the extension of the city itself, Kotsonas believes that the urban nucleus reached at least from the Kairatos River to the eastern slope of the Acropolis.