The Sissi Archaeological Project was awarded the Andante Travels Archaeology Award 2015

From the site:

In the Shadow of the Minotaur – Sissi Archaeological Project: Andante Award Winners 2015

Each year, Andante Travels are proud to offer the Andante Award, a prize of £2000 to a well-deserving archaeological project. This year we were inundated with worthy applications from exciting projects from all around the world.

Yet there can only be one winner and after much deliberation amongst our experts, the successful project was finally chosen: The Sissi Archaeological Project, Crete.

About the project:

The Kefali hill at Sissi lies just east from the town of Malia, one of the largest Middle and Late Bronze Age urban centres on Crete (2000-1200 BC) and their proximity to each other strongly suggests that Sissi formed part of the territory of Malia. Since 2007 the hill has been investigated by the Belgian School at Athens and a team at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). Excitingly, the main archaeological features that have so far been revealed by the project are a cemetery consisting of house shaped tombs, a settlement of Minoan houses, and a Postpalatial complex of 30 rooms placed around what is thought to be a shrine. The Andante Award will be funding the ground-penetrating radar survey of the hill. This will detect the extent of the settlement in order to aid further planned excavations in 2016.

“I am very proud to accept this award for the Sissi Archaeological Project. Awards like this one form an essential part of our continuing outreach program to expand the site’s visibility among the larger public, including the many visitors that flock every year to the beautiful island of Crete, mythical home of the minotaur.”

– Jan Driessen, director of the Belgian School at Athens, and director of the Sissi Project.

This exciting project provides a unique opportunity for archaeologists to study and characterize a settlement located in the hinterland of a palatial site and to explore in particular the developing nature of its interaction with the main urban centre. We look forward to following the team’s progress.

If you would like to see excavations at Sissi for yourself, why not join one of our tours to Crete and Santorini.

link: In the Shadow of the Minotaur – Sissi Archaeological Project: Andante Award Winners 2015