The location
The current coastline of Herakleion has been significantly altered, not only due to the construction of the modern port and road works, but also due to geological changes, river accretions and alterations in sea level. An idea of its shape before modern interventions is provided by the Venetian maps. The geomorphology of the area was favourable to the development of human settlements. Between the mouths of two major rivers, the ancient Kairatos, which springs from Archanes and crosses the valley of Knossos, and the river Giophyros, which springs from the eastern foothills of the Psiloritis mountain range, the landscape is hilly, relatively smooth, and develops downstream from the fertile valley of Knossos towards the sea. Two small natural bays are formed at the coast, the bay of Dermatas, facing north, and the bay of Herakleion, protected from the north by a rocky promontory. Immediately to the east, a wide and large sandy beach, that of Katsambas, is formed at the mouth of the river Kairatos.

The Neolithic Installation at Poros-Katsambas.
Since the early 1950s, the research of the archaeologist Stylianos Alexiou, on the western bank of the ancient river Kairatos in the area of Katsambas, brought to light settlement and burial remains of the Bronze Age and important findings of the Neolithic period. In the 1950s St. Alexiou excavated the ”Vrachoskepi” and the ”House”, on the top of the hill now called Mesa Katsambas, as well as two Neolithic buildings on a plateau between the riverbed and the hill of Mesa Katsambas. The survey yielded an abundance of pottery from vessels of various types and fabrication techniques, stone tools, animal and human bones. These three sites and their findings provide evidence that St. Alexiou has aptly interpreted as the “Neolithic Settlement by the river Kairatos”.
Fifty years later, the archaeological site became the subject of an interdisciplinary study project, according to which the site was first used in the 6th millennium BC (Middle Neolithic Age). This early settlement exploited the natural resources of the area, which provided arable land and water. It is not clear whether the settlement was permanent or seasonal. The inhabitants had developed ritual activity associated with the burial of the dead on the hilltop. The Neolithic settlement was eventually abandoned, but the hilltop remained in use throughout Minoan times.