The police announced that officers from the Cultural Heritage and Antiquities Department recovered thirty seven ancient artifacts from an illegal excavation, which were then hidden in a cave in the Vatses area on Astypalea.
According to the report, an archeologist for the Ephorate Paleoanthropology and Speleology estimated that the artifacts – mostly pottery fragments – dated back to the Final Neolithic Period (about 4,000 BC), the Classical and Hellenistic Period as well Late Antiquity.
The authorities are now searching for the illegal excavators.
