Spatial (dis-)continuities and the rise of the City-State in the Anapodaris catchment (south-central Crete)

The end of the palatial organization in Crete implies a major rupture in the spatial organization of the island. Out of the ruins of large Bronze Age territorial states, multiple small-scale territories rose in Early Iron Age. This paper aims to study the evolution until the Hellenistic period of these newly constituted territorial units in the Anapodaris catchment, south-central Crete, which remains an under-researched area despite its location close to the major sites from the Mesara plain and north-central Crete. A two-step methodology is developed to model territorial units from legacy data and to perceive the evolutions in the spatial organization during the development of city-states. First, evolutionary trajectories of settlements are described and State Sequence Analysis, a social science methodology, is employed to quantify the variability of evolutionary trajectories and to build a typology of settlements depending on their entire history. It enables to extract from the settlements dataset the stable Central Places, which structured durably the landscape. Around them, territorial units are then modeled employing Least Cost Site Catchment analysis in a Geographical Information Systems environment. This suggests the existence of 6 durable territorial units that organized the Anapodaris catchment around Kasteriotes – Melidochori, Kephala – Rotasi, Kephala – Ligortynos, Kastellos – Ano Kastelliana, Kephala – Ini and Profitis Ilias – Afrati. The evolution of the settlement patterns in the two last territories suggests they were closely related, probably in the same polity, namely Arkades, which city-center was relocated from Afrati to Ini in the Archaic period. Other territories were controlled each by independent proto-poleis, and 3 of them (Arkades, Priansos at Kastellos – Ano Kastelliana, and possibly Kasteriotes - Melidochori) reached the state of poleis in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The modeling of territorial units also indicates the existence of border sites, such as the Classical-Hellenistic settlement of Vakiotes – Sokaras, which role can thus be questioned. Altogether, from the examination of the spatial organization proposed in this study, proto-poleis were already organized since the 9th century BC. Their territories and boundaries already define those of later poleis. Hence, the spatial reorganization that occurs after the end of the Bronze Age had a strong and durable influence on the Anapodaris catchment landscape during the whole development of city-states