This talk focus on how ancient Greek communities on the island of Crete thought about their island’s past. I discuss several case studies of engagement with older landscape features and ways of life, including the construction of megalithic buildings in the countryside, the use and display of non-Greek inscriptions, and open-air ritual practice at significant locations. Material interactions with real or imagined pasts were key strategies for consolidating power during a period of demographic growth, competition for resources, and emerging forms of social inequality in the seventh through the fifth centuries BCE.