The teritory of Itanos was occupied first during the Late Neolithic period onwards during BA i.e. the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. The very close relationships of Itanos area and harbour and urban settlement of Palaikastro-Roussolakos are clearly visible. Itanos seems to be abandoned at around the end of LM IIIB ca 1100 BC. The first historical evidence of Itanos is in Herodotus. For seven years after this there was no rain in Thera; all the trees in the island except one withered. The Theraeans inquired at Delphi again, and the priestess mentioned the colony they should send to Libya. [2] So, since there was no remedy for their ills, they sent messengers to Crete to find any Cretan or traveller there who had travelled to Libya. In their travels about the island, these came to the town of Itanus, where they met a murex fisherman named Corobius, who told them that he had once been driven off course by winds to Libya, to an island there called Platea1. During Roman times the town earned a special status and it minted its own coins. According to Stephanus of Byzantium Itanos was a colony of the Phoenicians, who were involved in Murex shells fishing and glass making. The city istelf was named after the Itanos Phenician2.
Sources:
- Krzysztof Nowicki, Final Neolithic Crete and the Southeast Walter de Gruyter 2014
- http://www.insitia.gr/english/itanos-lde-6.html
- http://www.destinationcrete.gr/en/archaeological-sites/lasithi-archaeological-sites/archaia-itanos
- Apostolos Sarris, Ancient Itanos (Erimoupolis, Lasithi): an archaeological site as a remote sensing laboratory - https://www.academia.edu/c
- Didier Vivier, Athéna Tsingarida: Facing the Sea : Cretan Identity in a Harbour-city Contexte. Some Remarks on the Early Development of Itanos in: Cretan Cities:Formation and Transformation, Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2014, pp. 165-182 - https://www.academia.edu/9098821
- Antonis Vafidis, et al. Mapping the ancient port at the archaeological site of Itanos (Greece) using shallow seismic methods in: Archaeological Prospection, vol. 10(3) 2003, pp:163 - 173
References
- ↑Hdt. 4.151 - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu//text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0004:entry=itanus&highlight=itanos
- ↑Sthephanos Byzantinos, sv. Itanos