Conclusions

Increasing information points to the fact that the Late Bronze Age in central Macedonia was a period of intensive social and cultural activity on the regional, the community and the household level. This activity was related to the rearrangement of human relations inside communities and to the restructuring of human presence in the landscape. The settlement mound was one of the central factors that defined the configuration of human relations during the period. Another one was the social strategy of LBA households to increase in size, in order to combat risks to self-sufficiency and survival from the disruptive effects of the fluctuations in labour power common among farming communities. With the intensification of labour, production could be increased and satisfactory surpluses could be produced, given the variety, the quality, and the quantity of the resources in close proximity to the Macedonian settlements. It is possible that this new regime required also a readjustment of the traditional small-scale intensive system of farming and the evidence for a faster rate of deforestation in Central, compared to Eastern and Western, Macedonia may be an indication of a more extensive system of cultivation (cf. Halstead 1994: 200-202; Bottema 1882).

Mounds rose in the area during the Late Neolithic as an ideological mechanism to emphasise the importance of the independent household, which was developing at the time in competition to other households. This was a new form of social relations arising in opposition to the relations of reciprocal communality that characterized the flat extended Neolithic sites present in the area. The new form of social relations was connected to a reorganization of production towards a more efficient and versatile system, amenable to intensification through a new emphasis on the diversification of farming (Kotsakis 1999: 72-74). The scarcity of information about the details of habifation during the intervening period between the Late Neolithic and the beginning of the Late

Bronze Age does not permit a detailed understanding of the circumstances under which central Macedonian households started implementing the social strategies that facilitated their growth in size and labour power. It should be pointed out that the new strategies were embedded in the traditional values and the cultural practices related to the ideology and symbolism of the tell and the emphasis to the ties with the ancestors. A new symbolic emphasis however, was directed to the community which, as a group, by seniority and perhaps other forms of power, could claim particular resources from other communities. The size and diversification of these resources were crucial for the successful investment of the growing labour power of the households. Thus, the erection of walls around the settlement was not intended simply as a means of demarcating the community; it was now turned also into a field of expression for antagonism and the display of power. Impressive works like the ones excavated in Thessaloniki and Assiros were the result of this process.

In the course of the Late Bronze Age, relationships inside and between communities were readjusted. Several situations of inequality between members became more pronounced than before, but many remained unresolved, hidden behind traditional values and attitudes, creating several sources of tension.

Inequalities were expressed in a more visible form on the regional level than inside communities, where the ritual expression of the bonds with the ancestors restrained their articulation. Competition for good land was probably an important source of tension between communities. The comparison between Kastanas and the other two sites and the frequency of disrupting events in the former, probably demonstrate the advantages in terms of stability and variety in the resource base of the old sites and also the ability of their household heads to mobilize enough labour. Presumably, there were many occasions for the development of regional alliances which would bind strong with weaker sites; marital exchanges were necessary and probably frequent events, moving people and labour up and foodstuffs down and also entailing long-term ties, hospitality and mutual dependence. Regular participation of needy regional neighbours in feasts taking place in the old sites, where some of the surplus was being redistributed could have been a regular practice, which strengthened bonds, created dependencies and secured services. It is conceivable, although hard to support archaeologically, that loose regional hierarchical networks could have developed on this basis, particularly among neighbouring communities (Wardle 1988; 462; Andreou and Kotsakis in press; Andreou, Fotiadis and Kotsakis 1996: 585).

Inside communities there would have been many sources of tension among more and less successful groups. Competition for ancestral space, which was crucial for the social reproduction and the further growth of groups, was strong as the crowded tops of Assiros and the Toumba of Thessaloniki show. There is some evidence that prestige goods circulating in inter-regional exchange networks were being employed by some household or descent group heads in the intracommunal antagonisms and it is plausible, that something similar was happening with Mycenaean type pottery, although there is no clear supporting evidence yet. Finally, it is possible that during this antagonistic process some weaker and spatially marginal descent groups would decide to fission and move to the surrounding hills. The gradual shrinkage of mound tops (Wardle 1980: 231) in the course of the LB A, may in fact indicate a slight decrease of population.

Tensions would emerge also inside the households or descent groups. The switch from multi-room buildings with common storerooms in phases nine and eight to dispersed storage in phases seven and six at Assiros, without any other major changes in the plan of the buildings, could be a sign of direct challenge to the power of the descent group heads (Wardle 1989: 462).

None of these tensions, antagonisms and inequalities, however, was resolved during the Late Bronze Age, in a way that would allow one group of the community to gain excessive power over the rest. Instead, it appears that efforts were taken, in some cases through the formalization of settlement and individual building plans, to stress the values which were related to the independence of individual households.

From the Late Neolithic until the end of the Bronze Age the mounds remained the primary, and in the Late Bronze Age the only, foci of social activity in the central Macedonian landscape. They were the places where identities were created, relationships were negotiated and various forms of power were employed. During the Neolithic, the tells were the symbolic manifestations of the independent and competing households and they remained as such through the Late Bronze Age despite important changes in the relationships between household members and between households. In the meantime, a more elaborate way of life had developed. Important changes in the symbolic content of mounds and a rearrangement of the organizational principles of mound habitation became possible during the Early Iron Age when cemeteries emerged as the loci where new social identities could be created, and human relations renegotiated.