This book presents an archaeological study of Crete in transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (c. 4000 to 3000 BC) within the broader South Aegean context. The study, based on the author's own fieldwork, contains a gazetteer of over 170 sites. The material from these sites will prompt archaeologists in Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East to reconsider their understanding of the foundation of Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean.

The natural terraces hanging high on the northern cliff of the Cha Gorge at the site of Monastiraki Katalimata in eastern Crete were discovered as an excellent refuge site for the first time about 5,500 years ago. At first sight, Katalimata looks like an extreme refuge place where one might expect small groups of people hiding for a brief time during the most serious period of threat. Excavation of the largest of the terraces, however, has shown that use of the place was often long-lasting and more complex. The most interesting result of the project was the identification at Katalimata of almost all the same phases known from elsewhere in Crete (and, in some cases, the broader Aegean region) as periods of disturbances, relocations, and destructions. The pottery, when compared with the material from Chalasmenos and neighbouring sites near Kavousi, allows the site to be placed in a well-established historical context in relation to the general breakdown of LM IIIB settlement pattern around 1200 B.C. This monograph provides a detailed discussion of the six occupational phases recorded on the largest of Monastiraki Katalimata's terraces (Final Neolithic, MM II, LM IB-IIIA1, LM IIIC, Early Byzantine, and Late Venetian to the 17th century A.D.) and offers a reconstruction of the site's role in the context of Cretan history.

A regional survey was undertaken in the central part of the Mirabello Bay area: along the northeastern coast of Crete in the Gournia Valley and the northern half of the Isthmus of Ierapetra, ending in the valley of Episkopi, to provide a regional context for the Bronze Age palace and settlement of Gournia. As this survey was the last and geographically most central compared to three other surveys (Vrokastro [Hayden 2004a], Pseira [Betancourt, Davaras, and Hope Simpson 2005], and Kavousi [Haggis 2005]) conducted in the Mirabello region, it ties together the data from all four surveys regarding the environment, population(s), and social organization of an entire region. Furthermore, this volume goes beyond the survey data to consider, at some length, the evidence from local excavations, so as to provide an in-depth and integrated picture of the regional socio-economic development. It is meant as a regional archaeological study of the Mirabello Bay area.

The period after the end of the Bronze Age, the so-called Dark Ages' has always been a highly debated subject in Aegean archaeology. In this study, Krzysztof Nowicki collates more than 15 years of research into defensible sites in Crete, and includes detailed descriptions of sites, sketches and plans, which make them easier to locate, as well as details on the surface finds. The sites are arranged chronologically and then in geographical areas, and the evidence discussed is used to present a historical summary of this turbulent period of population shifts, crisis, war and destruction. Much more than a catalogue of sites, this study places the evidence from Crete within the historical and archaeological context of the Aegean and other areas of the Mediterranean.