Many of the most famous and spectacular archaeological discoveries have involved palaces, the grand buildings and complexes constructed for the rulers and other wealthy and powerful persons in past eras. They are surpassed only, in terms of their scale, grandeur and the level of public interest, by the great monuments of religious or ritual significance, such as the temples and tombs of ancient Egypt, or those that reflect the power and reach of great empires, such as the monuments of ancient Rome.

One of the most famous palace excavations – and, indeed, one of the most important pioneering archaeological digs – was conducted at Knossos, on the island of Crete, by Arthur Evans. Evans commenced his excavations on 23 March 1900 and continued until 1931, uncovering the most important royal centre of the Minoan civilisation, which had been previously lost to the world for around 3,500 years.

As the seat of King Minos, and the site of the legendary labyrinth and Minotaur, the site's excavation captured the public imagination, as well as that of Arthur Evans. Indeed, modern critics complain that Evans let his imagination run away with him because he not only excavated the palace, but reconstructed parts of it as he imagined (wrongly, it is now thought, in some respects) it would have looked.

Evans's reconstructions are now held up as an example of what archaeologists shouldn't do. And there are many archaeologists who argue that we probably learn a lot less from excavations of sites of this nature than many other more mundane and modest sites. Palaces, after all, are more likely to have been kept clear, when in occupation, of the sort of discarded items and detritus that provide our best insights to the past when in occupation, and to have been stripped bare when no longer in use.

Nonetheless, palace sites often also provide immense detail about the societies in which they existed, as well as offering spectacular structural remains. Excavations at the royal palace at Ebla (Tell Mardikh in modern Syria) in the 1970s, for example, uncovered more than 15,000 clay tablets forming part of the state archive and recording 140 years of Ebla's history. The tablets revealed a previously unknown language and civilisation dating from the third millennium BC.