Monte Iato is located in the middle of the mountainous inland of western Sicily and was inhabited from the 8th/7th century BC to the 13th century AD. Since 2010, the University of Innsbruck has been conducting regular excavations in the area of the central cult site – between the so‐called Aphrodite Temple and the Late Archaic House, a huge residential house with banqueting rooms in the upper storey. The paper presents the preliminary results of the eighth field campaign (2019) focusing on the proto‐history of the cult site and the dwellings of first settlers (7th to 6th century BC) as well on the dimensions and nature of the monumentalisation of the cult site (c. 500/480 BC) and its ritual abandonment (c. 460/50 BC). The report further includes a discussion of the findings of the Hellenistic‐Roman period that were found directly over the archaic strata.