The Kiapha Thiti Excavation Project, co-directed by Dietmar K. Hagel (Queen’s University) and Hans Lauter (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) ran from 1986-1988 and excavated Kiapha Thiti, a site located southeast of Athens at the northern end of the Vari valley. Excavations displayed multiple interrupted phases of occupation from the Chalcolithic period to late Antiquity. First settled in the 4th millennium BCE, the site was then abandoned in the 3rd millennium for more than a thousand years before a Mcenaean settlement was built c.1500 BCE, which was abandoned between 1350 and 1200 BCE. A cult dedicated to Nymphs was established pre-700 BCE, and continued until the 5th century BCE. From the beginning of the 3rd century BCE, the hill was deserted for 800 years until the Christian church was built near the summit. Upon the church’s destruction 300 years later, the hill became completely desolate until the modern age. The site’s most visible remains are of a Christian chapel, built in the late 5th or early 6th century CE. Other deposits yielded things like female figurines ranging in date from Geometric to late Archaic times and pottery sherds from the early 7th century BCE, testifying to the spread of early writing. Excavations from 1986-1988 focuses on the fortified Mycenaean settlement of ca. 1500 BCE. The walls were carefully reinforced, and are useful for the understanding of fortifications in Greece at this time.
More on the project can be found here: https://portal.cig-icg.gr/node/986
