Hagia Photinì and the “urban” development of Phaistos: an up-to-date survey. a project by “Progetto Festos” and “INSTAP”

Hagia Photinì and the "urban" development of Phaestos: an up-to-date survey The site of Hagia Photinì is located in the northern slope of the hill of the Palace at Phaistos. The archaeological area was discovered during the construction of the modern road Moires-Matala in 1954 and excavated by the Italians archaeologists between 1954 and 1959. In the western part of the site a small nucleus of little houses was excavated and identified as a "Minoan Quarter" by the Excavator, Doro Levi. The excavation was soon published but it was very superficially documented. In the framework of the Italian-Greek synergasia, the "Phaistos Project", during the 2015 campaign a new effort has been conducted in order to clean the site and to prepare it for restoration. Stemming from the new data acquired during the cleaning and restoration campaigns of the site (2015-2016) and the data acquired from the seven-years survey on the site of Phaestos, the main aim of the first part of the communication (Alessandro Greco) represents an up-to-date and integrated analysis of the so-called "Quartiere" of H. Photinì during the two main periods of its Minoan flowering in the framework of the new knowledge of the urban territory of Phaestos. In the second part of the paper, Orazio Palio will present the first results of the study conducted on the LM IB pottery groups excavated by D. Levi. During this period, represented at Festòs by very few architectural structures, the small complex of rooms built on the ruins of the Protopalatial period holds particular importance, also considering its position along one of the main tracks of access to the hill of the Palace. The ceramic assemblages, connected with food preparation and consumption, perhaps in a ritual context, may be linked to host activities that precede the entrance to the palace.