Minoan engineered and invented this too?
A Sophisticated Engineering Solution to Contain Landslides Found in the Minoan Palace of Archanes in Crete
by Guillermo Carvajal | December 4, 2025
View of the excavations at Archanes, with the discovered wall on the right. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
The 2025 archaeological campaign at the Minoan palace of Archanes, directed by Dr. Efi Sapouna-Sakellaraki, has unearthed a sophisticated architectural solution designed to protect the complex from natural disasters, specifically from ground instability, resolving a question that had persisted since the resumption of work in 2023. The central discovery is a double and oblique wall, uneven in construction but with an unmistakably functional purpose, which alters the perception of the building priorities of this civilization.
The initial goal of the research, focused on completing the picture of the three-story building that flourished around 1450 BC, shifted toward a meticulous examination of this atypical wall structure. This wall, which paradoxically closed off a large section of the palace courtyard, had a rough finish made with unworked stones—a striking contrast within the Minoan tradition, known for its meticulous craftsmanship. This apparent anomaly became the core of the investigation.
Systematic studies, with the key contribution of Dr. Charalambos Fasoulas, have demonstrated that the existence of this wall was essential for the integrity of the building. Its function was purely protective: to act as a buttress or retaining structure against the threat of landslides from the rock overhanging the palace’s elevation. This utilitarian purpose explains the crude nature of its southern side, a face that, due to its position, remained invisible to the occupants of the complex.
However, Minoan aesthetics and architectural pride could not allow the presence of a purely utilitarian and visually discordant solution at the heart of the courtyard. The response was the construction of a second wall, attached to the first, which provided a dignified façade toward the palace interior. This facing, carefully executed and of notable aesthetic quality, was built with beautiful worked blocks of porous stone, at the same technical and artistic level as the rest of the palace.
Above this set of walls, the excavation revealed the usual layers of later periods, with an abundance of kylikes and historical materials. The uninterrupted occupation of the site is attested by finds from the Hellenistic period, including a trilobate oinochoe with two heads in relief, dated to the 3rd century BC, and a clay head that was originally attached to some indeterminate object.
Work in the southeastern sector of the excavation has yielded equally substantial discoveries. In the so-called Space 28, an opening was identified that connected the Central Courtyard with the eastern end of the palace. This area was segmented into two parts by stone slabs, atop which a large trapezoidal block with mortises was later added.
These notches indicate the existence of a pedestal or base, which was destroyed by a wall built in the Mycenaean period. A unique find from this area is a natural stone with anthropomorphic features, which fell from an upper floor and is highly likely to be related to the presence of a fetish sanctuary, similar to the one documented at Knossos.
More broadly, the 2023 and 2024 campaigns had already provided important data about the functionality and splendor of the palace. In the northern end, the northernmost explored to date, an elite wing was uncovered, with two- and three-story rooms. These were luxurious chambers, interconnected by corridors and richly decorated with remains of plaster coatings, fresco fragments, plastered walls, and slate floors. In situ, as is common in nearly all rooms of the palace, the decorative-dividing mortar bands that outlined the pavement slabs were found.
The palace of Archanes, located within the core of the modern settlement in the area called Turkogeitonia, has a history marked by catastrophes. It was destroyed by an earthquake around 1700 BC, subsequently rebuilt, and reached its peak until its final destruction around 1450 BC. Excavations, however, demonstrate uninterrupted occupation of the site.
The relevance of the site dates back to the earliest mentions by Sir Arthur Evans, who cataloged important finds—now in the Ashmolean Museum—presumably from the Minoan necropolis on Fourni Hill. This cemetery was later excavated by Yannis and Efi Sakellarakis, revealing five tholoi, numerous funerary constructions, and cist graves from the Mycenaean period.
Evans himself had noted in the village the remains of large walls and excavated a circular aqueduct in an area now known to be part of the palace complex. It was Yannis Sakellarakis who, through surface survey and examination of the subsoil beneath modern houses, discovered that these dwellings rested atop powerful Minoan walls—something earlier researchers such as Spyridon Marinatos and Nikolaos Platon failed to identify in their search for the Evansian “summer palace,” following Victorian ideas, and whose investigations were directed, as it turned out, toward areas outside the palace core.
The meticulous mapping of all these remains by Yannis Sakellarakis led to the selection of the exact point where the location of the palace of Archanes was confirmed, a space that has yielded an enormous quantity of architectural remains and luxury objects. In an adjacent area, the palace archive and theater space were also located.
The 2025 campaign was conducted by the Archaeological Society, with a highly qualified scientific team composed of the archaeologists Dr. Polina Sapouna-Ellis, Dimitris Kokkinako (MA), and Persefone Xylouri, the illustrator Agapi Ladianou, the antiquities conservator Veta Kalyvianaki, and the photographer Kostas Maris.
In a broader context, the recent inscription of Zominthos—the high-altitude settlement discovered by Yannis Sakellarakis in Psiloritis and excavated by him and Efi Sapouna-Sakellaraki—on the UNESCO World Heritage List, along with five other Minoan palaces (Knossos, Phaistos, Zakros, Malia, and Kydonia), represents explicit recognition of the singularity of this monument and, more generally, of the value and identity of Minoan Crete.
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