(p. 46a) Rapidly the standard subdivisions were recognized: Palaeolithic and Mesolithic (early and later hunter-gatherers), Neolithic (first farmer and herder societies), Bronze Age (mature farmer-herder societies with copper then bronze metallurgy), and Early and Later Iron Age (most recent prehistoric then protohistoric societies, iron-using, on the edge of and then in the first period of historical records)
In fact the periodization of European prehistory was essentially created from excavations and museum studies in Northwestern Europe, and to meet the pressing need there for a detailed human past before local historical sources were available (in the countries of Scandinavia this was as late as AD 1000).
(p. 46b) Absolute age of the Greek Neolithic
Before absolute (i. e., physics-based) chronologies were available, or widely agreed to, that is up till the 1970s in Greece, the early farming phase was given a short life preceding the Bronze Age, but now we see that the Greek Neolithic is longer than the entire Bronze and Iron Ages, almost 4000 years in fact.
(p. 47a) The early excavators were already interested in tracing social and economic developments across the Neolithic
This concern increased after World War II, when scientific dating lengthened the developmental period very considerably.
(p. 47b) Only in the outer margins of Europe was there evidence for indigenous hunter-gatherers moving gradually toward the Neolithic way of life
For example, in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and the Black Sea coast.
(p. 49a) There is no total match for the Early Greek Neolithic with any particular Near Eastern region, leading to the inference that there were multiple founder groups from different parts of the Near East. Plausible overland connections are claimed between Northern Greece and Northern Anatolia (Asian Turkey), and by sea between Crete, Cyprus, and the Levant, and most recently across the Aegean from Anatolia
Incidentally this would meet one rather critical objection, the fact that by the Late Bronze Age, Southern Mainland Greece speaks proto-Greek (Mycenaean), an Indo-European language, while Crete (Minoan) has a very different and perhaps non-Indo-European language. Differences between the oldest Neolithic finds on Crete and those on the Mainland include contrasts in crops in use. The distinct Early and even Middle Neolithic ceramics in Greek Thrace, in comparison to those found in Turkish Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south, leads Ammerman et al. (2008) to point to a distinct cultural origin through maritime colonization from Anatolia to this province.
(p. 49b) We have extensive knowledge of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) boats
An additional paper by Marangou (2001) usefully brings together the archaeological and ethnoarchaeological evidence for pre-sail boats in the prehistoric Aegean. She suggests that hide, reed, and dugout types all probably existed as the basis for Palaeo-Meso and Neolithic marine and lake boats before more elaborate craft developed in the EBA. The successful crossing from Central Greece to the island of Melos organized by the Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition used a replica boat in which lake reeds were attached to a wooden frame and vegetal ropes, and was designed to demonstrate that such a craft might have been used to obtain obsidian in Mesolithic times. Its ethnographic parallel was a similar boat used till recently off Corfu. For a very up-to-date of the development of maritime craft in the Bronze Age Aegean see now Guttandin et al. (2011).
(p. 50) There were multiple [Neolithic] founder groups from different parts of the Near East
Perles (2009b, 2010) has recently elaborated on her views of divergent origins for the Greek Neolithic. Based on a thorough study of the assemblages across Greece and into the North Balkans, she argues that Greece south of Macedonia is most closely related to the Neolithic of the Southern Levant, while the North Balkan Early Neolithic better suits the traditional entry route through continental Anatolia and via Thrace. Macedonia forms a mixed region, combining influences from both colonization routes. However, intermediate locations on the maritime southern colonization path have so far not been identified, although maritime mobility is becoming ever more obvious in the East Mediterranean stretching back into Mesolithic and even Palaeolithic times. Cyprus does give helpful evidence for multiple colonizations from different mainland origin points, however. Incidentally, divergent origins might help the anomaly that Mainland Greece and Crete appear to possess totally different language groups by the Middle Bronze Age, if we accept Renfrew's thesis that Greek language groups owe their origin to the spread of farmers. See note to page 49 for yet a third route being proposed for Thrace, maritime across the Aegean. Perles also offers in her 2009b paper a summary of the latest evidence from plant, animal, and human genetics for genuine human colonization from the Near East, without denying a local hunter-gatherer process of acculturation and absorption.
(p. 51) The latest research offers a more complex chronology for the "2PR." Sherratt's dating utilized pictures and texts from the oldest urban societies in Mesopotamia, together with rare but controversial use of artifacts from the rest of the Near East and Europe (animal models, "cheese-strainer" pots, etc.), and changes in the age-structure of domestic animals
In fact, so-called cheese-strainer vessels of Late Neolithic date from Northern Greece seem to have been used rather for honey or wax separation, while other, animal-shaped pots were deployed for aromatic or medicinal containers rather than milk products (C. Marangou, pers. comm.)
(p. 53a) The increasing elevation of tells, usually set against flat plains, over time, emphasized the people-place continuity
However Halstead (1999) challenges the "teleological" concept (arguing from a later outcome to an initial condition) where the tell mound is always an accumulating landmark marking its deep physical and ancestral roots. Excavations show that tells began as flat sites, on which generations of mudbrick structures were required before a visible mound would have punctuated the skyline.
(p. 53b) Excavated tell houses, generally rectangular, rarely show differences from house to house or complex internal spaces
If earlier Neolithic tell houses are usually one - to two-roomed rectangular structures, the growing evidence from contemporary flat or extended sites suggests that there circular house plans are more typical (Nanoglou 2008). In later historical societies, rectilinear shapes are often related to more built-up settlements and the need to fit structures and spaces better together, while circular houses are easier to construct and roof.
(p. 53c) Halstead (1999) stresses that the tell is focused on the individual household, usually discretely placed from its neighbors, with a general (but not complete) absence of community spaces
Paul Halstead (1999) emphasizes how much the individual family house is central to tell planning. Houses are isolated from each other and do not share party-walls. Although space was limited, we frequently find that the immediate space around the house was appropriated for the household's work. Fenced-off areas or prepared floors marked by pottery, ovens, and activity debris reflect the unremarkable fact that in Greece's lowland climate, rural communities carried out most of their work in the open air. The insides of these houses are characterized by built features for storage and sleeping: shelves, benches and platforms, hearths, and storage bins. These designs also convey a Near Eastern cultural imprint, and the high frequency of ovens and complex hearths there and in Greece but not normally in other early farming cultures of Neolithic Europe, causes Perles to suggest that this is because food was generally grilled, roasted, and baked, and not boiled in pots as in temperate Europe.
However, Efstratiou's (2007) ethnoarchaeological study of a village in upland Thrace, linked to his project at the Middle Neolithic (MN) site of Makri, offers valid warnings concerning potentially anachronistic Western assumptions regarding how housing structures can be read as homes for nuclear or extended families. More elaborate forms of co-residence might exist and yet show the same settlement structure when excavated.
I have not yet had the opportunity to read Stella Souvatzi's important new volume A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece (2010).
(p. 53d) In stark contrast to Chapman's communal model of the tell, Halstead prefers a small-scale society composed of competing households
If one were to seek a more clearly evidenced cooperative social group, agglomerative settlement plans would be more convincing, where groups of houses are bunched tightly together, such as at the contemporary tell of Chatal Huyuk in Anatolia. Here recent research by Bleda During (During and Marciniak 2006) suggests that a series of discrete architectural blocks or "neighborhoods" each with around 30 or so households, formed a social unit within the tell, which as a whole was actually so large that the term "town" is more appropriate.
(p. 53e) Halstead's viewpoint has the distinct advantage in offering a potential origin for the postulated development in mature to later Neolithic times of higher-status individuals or families
Indeed even in During's analysis of Chatal Huyuk (During and Marciniak 2006), the existence of a small number of richly decorated houses with numerous underfloor burials within each neighborhood social unit, is taken by the author as implying that some families or lineages had more status than the rest. We should also note that even the agglomerative Chatal house plan, with alleys running around the neighborhoods rather than within them (so that one had to walk over the roofs of other houses in a neighborhood to get from house to house), still managed to keep each house as discrete because houses lacked any party-walls.
(p. 53f) And yet Chapman's emphasis on these communities as consciously nucleated societies cannot be neglected
In a pioneering paper, Karkanas and Efstratiou (in press) have studied the rhythm of physical renewal in a Late Neolithic tell in Thrace. The layout of houses and a central area with clay-lined pits and fixed plaster vessels remain fixed through this phase of the village, but against this long-term stability, each house has a regular series of housefloor renewals. These fall into two clear groups. A series of poorly prepared floor coatings occurs randomly in time from house to house and, it is argued, represent the independent actions of families, while well-prepared floor renewals, probably around every one to two generations, seem to be done at the same time by the whole community, perhaps marking some ritual or other concept for the village. The authors see these insights as bringing concrete evidence for the operation of the different layers of parallel time-processes argued for by the French Annales historians.
(p. 54a) If larger nucleated communities succeed in arising, three alternative mechanisms seem to account for almost all examples. The simplest, potentially operating even in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times, would limit such large gatherings of people to seasonal camps, where many smaller bands agglomerated (gathered together) at times of peak animal or plant availability, to collaborate in great animal drives and exchange marriage partners, exotic raw materials, or symbolic ornaments
However, it is actually not clear if there are sufficient examples of archaeological sites so far discovered which could represent many hundreds of contemporary occupants in hunter-gatherer Europe. Some of those claimed as potential examples of large gathering sites might rather have been camps used numerous times by smaller groups, whose area of encampment shifted gradually around the site, to give the impression of a much larger community.
(p. 54b) The third mechanism is that of a vertical rather than horizontal division of the village: management devolves on a social elite. This elite might be one or more powerful households, or merely a council of the senior male heads of households or lineages
It is important to note that such lineages can be a group of genuinely genetically related households, but may also be formed from semi-fictionally kin-related households.
(p. 55a) A "Big Man" system, where an elite family or lineage might dominate a community on the basis of acquired status, wealth, or social power (being effective warleaders or ritual specialists, having large economic surpluses, or controlling extensive social networks)
It is often suggested that Big Men might have been the earliest elites to arise, whose political power was temporary and fluctuated according to their ability to sustain those accomplishments which had first given them preeminence. Subsequently, consolidation of an elite group's right to rule might reach the stage where kinship descent became a significant if not total basis for a family staying in control of a community (a chiefdom).
(p. 55b) Robin Dunbar (1996) took monkeys, apes, different early hominid types and modern humans, and compared for each group that part of the brain associated with socialization, in relation to their characteristic group size
The resultant graph suggested a correlation between the increasing size of social communities and brain development, from monkeys to apes, to early hominids, then Homo sapiens. The most significant expansion occurred precisely with the rise of Neanderthal man around half a million years ago, a time when a remarkable transformation in human abilities has been indicated from many different lines of evidence (as we saw in Chapter 2).
(p. 55c) Dunbar calculated a group size of around 150 people as the upper capacity of advanced humans to socialize effectively with
Dunbar had some difficulty in finding ethnographic examples of hunter-gatherer group size at this scale, probably because most known examples, and perhaps also most of those in the past, remained at low enough densities so as to function at non-maximal group size. Perhaps the existence of a capacity for face-to-face socialization within larger groups, in advanced hominids as well as modern humans, does signify that the integration even of seasonal multi-band gatherings was important enough to promote evolutionary selection for appropriately more complex brains.
The argument by Roebroeks (2003), that the same increase both in brain size and in the brain functions associated with socialization allowed the development of human language, fits neatly into this picture, since intensive intergroup communication of up to 150 individuals or more may be intimately tied to formal language use. Recently, computer simulation of complex language emergence has suggested that an increase in the size of the intercommunicating group is critical to pass beyond a one-sound-per-object stage.
(p. 58a) Hourmouziadis' re-excavations at Dhimini made clear that the concentric walls were never lofty, strategic barriers (probably 1 m high), representing rather a combination of terraces on the hill to form construction and working zones, and internal divisions of the site to demarcate social or economic sectors
Hourmouziadis and other recent scholars have varying views on the wall-lines and deposits found in these defined zones (see Figure 3.5), with differing opinions as to which are "houses" and which "activity areas."
(p. 58b) Strikingly, at Sesklo the Late Neolithic reoccupation seems to go a step further, with just an area of 0.4 ha on the Acropolis in use, taken up by the large megaron building and some associated buildings, and fortified
This interpretation is reinforced by the Late Neolithic plan of Dhimini, where an elite central enclosure including a megaron is surrounded by many small walled spaces in which less impressive houses and ancillary buildings were placed, with possibly an extensive lower town beyond. The solidity of these plans seems to point to a chieftain rather than unstable Big Man model for social power, unless the resident dominant family group in the megara rotated over generations as lineage fortunes rose and fell (a rather improbable scenario, perhaps). Halstead (1999) uses his earlier reading of tell villages as composed of competing households to suggest that the supposed dominance of one lineage occupying the Late Neolithic acropolis and megaron at Sesklo, or the Late Neolithic megaron at Dhimini, could have arisen from the sustained success of one particular family.
(p. 58c) At Middle Neolithic Sesklo the Acropolis has a delimiting wall to the Lower Town, also perhaps a social rather than military boundary
Kotsakis (2006) states firmly that in Middle Neolithic the Sesklo tell was invested with labor-intensive retaining walls, in his view seen wrongly as fortifications to an Acropolis by Theochares. The concentric walls of Late Neolithic Dhimini have also proved difficult to interpret. Although the ground plan gives an impression of a small but heavily fortified citadel, the reality is that the six or seven concentric walls are constructed of rough stone and their original external height was closer to 1 than the earlier claim of 3 m. Significantly however, the occupation at Late Neolithic Sesklo is reduced to the Acropolis which now is equipped with walls of a more plausibly defensive nature.
(p. 58d) Middle Neolithic Sesklo: the Upper Town has a typical tell plan, with distinct houses rebuilt on the same location, creating a deep stratigraphy, while in the Lower Town, houses shift around the site over time and there is little continuity at any point, and even empty sectors
As we shall see shortly, the Lower Town in fact closely matches another type of Neolithic settlement which is increasingly coming to light - extensive flat sites with horizontal rather than vertical trajectories of occupational use. However, Kotsakis' more recent evaluation (2006) of Sesklo, part of his ongoing preparation for a major republication of the site, raises complexities which stretch the interpretations offered so far for the site. First, the "Acropolis" houses are not close-packed as in most tells, and there is more space between them, while they may form clusters of linked structures. The same clusters are now identified in the Lower Town, where they may succeed each other as their occupants shift around the Lower Town in a horizontal displacement of residence. Clusters in both parts of the site perhaps combine houses with smaller structures (storerooms?) and a more elaborate pillared structure (ritual, social role?). Although differential use of elaborate tableware and the continuity of house plots in the "Acropolis" still allow Kotsakis to suggest that "social power" resides in this focal tell group of the community, the growing convergence of architectural and arguably social unit evidence between the two parts of the site seem to undermine a straightforward elite/commoner division. Thus he writes: "the site was functioning predominantly as a single, unified settlement. Whatever the differences and complexities emerging between the two segments of the settlement, they were still not compelling enough to break the cohesion of the community into competing or conflicting parts" (p. 213). Moreover, Sesklo A and B both have typical rectangular tell-type houses. Also curiously, a simpler significance to stable and migratory residence at Sesklo, proposed by Kotsakis himself for tell versus flat sites in the Langadhas Basin (Andreou and Kotsakis 1994), is neglected here. In the latter case, intensive fixed farming radial to a fixed-residence tell was contrasted with more short-lived use of land by flat site houses, which shift fields with farmsteads. This complex and as yet unresolved debate on the nature of society at Sesklo and Dhimini may seem obscure and difficult to disentangle, but it is very significant since here the debate focuses on the origins of major social inequalities in the Aegean.
(p. 58e) Late Neolithic Dhimini also appears in some respects to resemble the supposed elite sector at Middle Neolithic Sesklo
On the other hand, as Halstead points out (1999), there are groups of less impressive structures within the narrow spaces left between the multiple circuits of Dhimini, seen as houses, courtyards, and ancillary buildings, complicating a simple lower/upper division between acropolis and lower town here.
(p. 58f) Villages rising above the figure of around 150 people resolve social tensions through either horizontal subdivisions (for example, neighborhood semi-autonomy)
In the case of Chatal Huyuk, that remarkable town of thousands of occupants in Early Neolithic Anatolia, During's analysis (During and Marciniak 2006) highlights neighborhood house clusters of some 30 households (strikingly close to a potential 150 persons if we take 4-5 people as a typical household), but also a smaller group of houses within such quarters of the tell which may represent higher-status families. Both horizontal and perhaps incipient vertical social divisions would seem to be operating to assist this precociously giant community to hold together.
(p. 59a) an increase in the fortification of settlements in general during the later Greek Neolithic
Runnels (2009) has suggested that warfare was much more endemic in the Thessalian Neolithic, although he also finds the best evidence in the walls at Middle Neolithic-Late Neolithic Sesklo and Dhimini. He bases his thesis primarily on cross-cultural studies, as the Greek evidence, despite his best attempt to collect it, is far too thin to support the argument being made. Gaps in the distribution of tells in Thessaly might be buffer zones between warring villages, but he admits they might also have an ecological base, and local research has yet to investigate this. I find Perles' view much more convincing, since the known tells form linked networks at astonishingly close distances, and represent an extraordinary long life at high densities. Taken with the likely model of social fission, whereby neighbors were relatives, social harmony seems more plausible.
(p. 59b) If most early farming villages remained in the comfortable margins of 150+/-100 people, then a typical tell village needed regular marriage exchanges with several neighboring settlements. With tells in the great Northern plains of Greece a half hour apart, this posed no difficulty
Indeed it is highly probable that those neighbors included daughter settlements of the oldest tells (the result of landscape infilling through social fission), so that marriage partners were distant relatives rather than total strangers. As we have seen, tells commonly lack the space for festivals and large-scale ritual events (a cross-cultural arena for social contacts between agricultural villages in the ethnographic and historical record), so the need mentioned earlier to find locations for communal activities for the entire tell is reinforced by the requirement to include members of adjacent villages. In our present knowledge we must suppose these meeting places were extramural, perhaps leaving traces which might be found through extensive test-pits around tell boundaries, although it is also conceivable that there were special (sacred?) locations in the countryside where one or more villages met for communal activities.
(p. 60a) Even in the Early Neolithic the density of tell villages is surprising, with some 120 sites recorded for the whole of Thessaly, while roughly as many are known in the succeeding Middle Neolithic
Indeed there is a high level of stability of occupation, with up to 75 percent of Early Neolithic villages also in use in Middle Neolithic.
(p. 60b) If the midpoints between villages are near likely territory borders, making contiguous cells from these (Thiessen polygons) is informative
When we do not know precise boundaries between territory belonging to a particular human settlement or political center, the simple approach of making Thiessen polygons is a reasonable approximation to their location, and has been tested against real-world historical examples where the boundaries are known. The method involves finding the midpoint between two adjacent settlements, and then constructing there a border line, at right angles to a straight line linking the two nodes. When this is carried out toward all contiguous neighbors and overlaps removed, we find a cellular structure of polygons focused around each settlement. These cells are then based on the assumption that boundaries are most likely to lie intermediate between communities.
(p. 60c) The Thessaly Neolithic villages are dispersed rather regularly across the landscape, with an average of 2.5 km distance between them
The resultant map highlights a full packing of such village modules in the north and central East Plain and in the central hills; in other districts there are chains of sites and then some isolates.
(p. 62) Colonizing villages would rapidly have settled into face-to-face levels, ideally of some 150 inhabitants or less
Paul Halstead had earlier (1981) calculated that tells were on average less than 1 ha in extent, however Perles prefers a higher figure in the range 1-3 ha, so that with a hypothesis of around 100 residents per hectare, villages would have between 100 and 300 inhabitants. Following our earlier discussion, and indeed Perles' acceptance of the social fission model for the origins of this village network, we might feel that Halstead's lower figure would be more plausible if fission tends to occur when the population pushes beyond 150.
(p. 63a) In the Langhadas Basin of Greek Macedonia, survey and excavation demonstrate that flat sites follow patches of highly fertile soil, and are made up of an accumulation of shifting houses and fields (probably fertilized from deliberate spreading of household rubbish onto the cultivation zone)
Andreou and Kotsakis (1994) suggested earlier that the inhabitants of flat sites had a different approach to crop and animal husbandry, but more substantial excavations also in Macedonia, at the site of Makriyalos, show the same type of bone and plant remains as in tell sites (Halstead 1999).
This picture can now in turn be revised from even more recent work. Valamoti (2007) uses animal dung with plant remains embedded, from both tell and flat sites in Northern Greece (including Makriyalos), to suggest that whereas domestic herds were kept all year round at tell sites, grazing on stubble fields and nearby natural vegetation areas, stock at flat sites were taken off in the summer months elsewhere, since crop weeds and traces of crops are absent in the corresponding dung. One possible explanation, since the local environment for the sites tested does not indicate ecological constraints affecting permanent grazing, is that the concept of flat sites as practicing unusually intensive garden agriculture may have led to a desire to exclude stock from the field zones.
(p. 63b) Elsewhere in Boeotia, nucleated sites of a tell or semi-tell character are known beside river bottomlands (Thespiae, Chaeronea)
At Thespiae, associated dispersed farms have yet to be attested accompanying the nucleated earlier Neolithic tell village at the later city site, until Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age times when the plough revolution creates a dispersed farmstead pattern (Bintliff et al. 1999). The clear difference from the Tanagra landscape is that the small rural sites in that district are correlated with strips of river soils, workable by hoe farmers while around Thespiae the dispersal of settlement occurs into dry-farmed heavier soils of surrounding hill-land, opened up when the ox-drawn plough became available.
(pp. 63-64a) Kouphovouno is a large (4 ha) Middle Neolithic flat settlement near Sparta in the Peloponnese (Cavanagh 2004), and if completely occupied, conceivably housed 500 or so inhabitants, the minimum number for a largely self-sufficient community
On the other hand, caution is required. We have no local survey to check if other contemporary sites were close or remote, and it is also possible that the large site was built up by shifting houses in the fashion now shown for the large flat sites of Northern Greece.
(p. 64b) As the scope for dispersed, shifting Neolithic households increases, to set against the exotic settled tell village, we can note that in Europe as a whole, broad-spectrum foragers of the Holocene created series of sites along favored niches such as river valleys, visited repeatedly over hundreds or even a thousand years. The similarities to the use of Neolithic flat sites and small site networks is striking, even if the economic base had changed decisively
Intriguingly, the first cases of flat sites have now been recorded in the Plains of Thessaly, but their frequency and relationship in time and location to the tells remain to be investigated. The most remarkable example is in fact the long famous site of Sesklo in Middle Neolithic times. Although Theochares considered this unusually large site to be a town, Kotsakis (1999) has reinterpreted the excavation data to show that the small acropolis or Upper Town was a typical tell in its repeated overbuilding, whereas the Lower Town had all the signs of a large flat site - suggesting horizontal displacement of dispersed houses or house groups over time, with much empty space. The possibility now arising, that there may been tell or semi-tell and flat sites in close proximity and even contemporaneously in some cases, in various regions of Greece, should allow new insights into the meaning of the two settlement modes.
(p. 64c) Possibly the main stores were communal and, lying peripheral to villages, may have so far escaped observation
Recent excavations at a sixth-millennium BC Neolithic tell village in Thrace, Makri, have identified what is believed to be a central storage structure, based on architecture, storage vessels, and plant remains, surrounded by houses characterized by different assemblages of a family household type (Tsartsidou et al. 2009).
(p. 65a) Did the effect of ploughs, textile and dairy product innovations destabilize the cooperative agricultural economics of the Neolithic village, providing the means for households to erect more autonomous food production and consumption practices?
Here we can also nuance Halstead's scenario - often the new barriers between living, eating, and working zones define several, not just one, home, suggesting that groups of related families or clans are central to the privatization of the village economy. Since individual farming families are always at risk from illness and fluctuating food yields, the formation of support networks of close kin would seem a necessary step if village-wide cooperation was becoming limited. Further reasons to avoid over-generalizing about directional change comes from recent work at the flat settlement of Makriyalos (Kotsakis 2007). A first stage of occupation, in Late Neolithic 1, still has cooking and working areas placed outside individual houses, but without fencing for privacy. In the second phase, Late Neolithic 2, several communal areas for such activities are claimed. This picture is quite different from the Halstead model, hinting at increased communality, but Kotsakis rightly warns us that Greece may show far more local variability in prehistory than simple all-inclusive models allow for. A more serious critique comes from Nanoglou (2008), who argues that the data from earlier Neolithic settlements do not fit well with "outdoor" hearth predominance; indeed most excavations show hearths inside houses. In the later Neolithic he also finds difficulties with Halstead's argument, for, while storage does indeed seem to increase within homes, craft production gives a more communal appearance.
(p. 65b) The impact of Sherratt's Secondary Products Revolution ("2PR") and the diffusion of plough traction, which seem to have risen to prominence by the Late to Final Neolithic, would have boosted the Greek Neolithic economy to a very significant extent. Cattle statistics at Late Neolithic Makriyalos suggest their breeding for secondary products and faunal analysis from Late Neolithic Knossos may evidence plough traction and textile production
It has to be admitted, however, that so far it has proved difficult to document these changes widely in the Greek domestic animal bone record or in botanical remains from settlements, although such evidence has been found at diverse places in the rest of Europe. Greece in general has only recently seen the common collection of such "ecofacts" as a routine procedure on excavations.
(p. 65c) Perhaps the clearest evidence (for Sherratt's thesis ) is the expansion of settlement out of the favored regions and districts of the earlier Neolithic into more upland areas and onto the dry islands of the Aegean, that marks the Greek later Neolithic
This is in line with similar phenomena throughout Europe during later Neolithic and Copper Age times.
(p. 65d) The added value of stock in the Secondary Products economy, and the greater ease of cultivating dry soils with the animal-drawn scratch-plough (ard) allowed population to colonize areas previously neglected. Particularly the Southern Greek Mainland and the Aegean islands, under the previous regime of wetland hand-cultivation, were less ideal for dense agropastoral settlement, but now opened up for permanent settlement
As we shall see, it has been suggested that the shift in the distribution of Greek Neolithic population from a focus in the higher rainfall plains of Northern Greece, to a more balanced spread across the entire country, may have initiated wider changes in trade systems and even in socio-political developments, although these were to be brought to fulfillment only in the succeeding Early Bronze Age (Perles 2001). On the question of island colonization in the Aegean, although the smaller and drier islands are essentially settled in the Late to Final Neolithic, larger islands such as Crete and Thasos (Ammerman et al. 2008) are occupied by famers from the Early Neolithic and Middle Neolithic respectively. The significance of this for maritime capabilities is, however, more complex than it seems. First, Thasos lies within a shallow continental shelf off Thrace and it is not clear when that filled with open water as a consequence of sea-level rise in Early Holocene times (C. Marangou, pers. comm.). As for Crete, which was certainly always across a significant ocean distance to the Mainland and the Cycladic islands even in glacial eras of lowered sea level, the discovery in 2008 of Mesolithic and even late Lower Palaeolithic occupation (see Chapter 2) suggests that richer islands were targeted by hunter-gatherers, despite not inconsiderable sea voyages.
On factors influencing the colonization of the Aegean islands, following a much discussed study by Ryan and Pitman in 1996 which claimed that the Black Sea was reconnected with the Aegean and wider Mediterranean seas around 7600 years BP, i. e., in the time of the later Greek Neolithic, more recent geological research has cast doubt on the speed and chronology of this event. The original thesis led to suggestions that the breakthrough of Aegean water into the Black Sea would have significantly altered surface currents in the Aegean Sea around Late Neolithic times, making navigation to and between Aegean islands much easier. Subsequent research has redated the interpenetration of Black and Aegean sea waters to around 8900 BP or at the start of the Greek Neolithic, perhaps still a significant time in terms of possible maritime colonization into Greece from the East (Hecht 2003).
(p. 66a) Worth emphasizing from the Thessalian Neolithic is the great occupational duration of most tells and their close packing. This shows undeniably that their economy was extremely successful, further supported by the ability of their occupants to obtain large amounts of external lithic imports, for which agricultural and pastoral surpluses were the most likely product for reciprocal exchange
The Thessalian settlement and environment record is our most nuanced for the Neolithic. The Late and Final Neolithic does show an overall rise in site numbers, yet much relocation away from Early Neolithic-Middle Neolithic tell locations is observed. There are also subphases of settlement number retractions within this long late era, and Perles (2001) wonders if such fluctuations reflect a social crisis. In contrast, van Andel et al. (1990) suggest that an erosional phase in the Final Neolithic stems from the increased use of hill-land soils due to the economic changes in husbandry.
(p. 66b) High levels of cave use in the Greek Late Neolithic could support a rise in pastoralism, although they are also taken into use now for burial and ritual
Perles (2009a) considers that the high reliance on exotic lithic sources in Neolithic Greece, especially in the Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic era, indicates a special importance to such pieces beyond functionality. Their occurrence in caves of this era, sometimes in very fine condition, alongside burials, reinforces cultural signaling that some caves may have had a primarily ritual significance, a view that Vitelli has supported in arguing that Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic Franchthi Cave was used for ceremonial activity. Moreover some of these caves are so small or remote that their use in everyday life seems doubtful.
(p. 66c) Early marine travel, especially coastal moves and island-hopping, may have been perfected by fishermen traveling from one point to another where regular or seasonal catches of fish (both inshore and open-water) could be encountered. This theory has received extensive criticism as well as support
It should also be noted that the rise of fishing in coastal sites is a Mediterranean-wide phenomenon in later Mesolithic-Early Neolithic times (Galili 1993, Galili et al. 2002). On the coast of Israel villages with a broad spectrum economy combining dry land and marine resources developed from around 8000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Galili underlines the point that marine food is always just a part-economy to be complemented by other animal and plant resources, but is nonetheless a highly advantageous dietary supplement buffering food shortages. Both inshore and offshore techniques with nets and spears seem probable.
(p. 67a) Greek Early and Middle Neolithic pottery is peculiar in its limited role within everyday activity
For the Franchthi Cave community as a whole maybe a dozen pots were being made per year, for Thessaly tells half a dozen (Perles 2001). Perles has recently carried her study of Neolithic ceramic use further (2009b) and added information on scientific tests on EN-MN ceramics, confirming that they were not used for cooking. As with other features of the Greek Early Neolithic assemblage she notes the divergence with North Balkan practices, but adds that Macedonia exceptionally may reflect cultural links to its north (see also Perles 2010).
(p. 67b) Although Early to Late Neolithic tableware was probably made by a village specialist over a limited period each year, using a basic technology, it is very well made and survives surprisingly well, far better than the coarser wares which dominate the Final Neolithic assemblage
Indeed in our own recent field survey around ancient Tanagra, where surface potsherds are staggeringly plentiful from Classical Greek and Roman times, the rare scatters of Neolithic tablewares were assumed by fieldwalkers to be domestic wares of the latter, historic periods. They were sizeable, well-made pieces, and had lost any distinctive paint or suffered weathering of a slip or burnish, thus seemed much later in date, until our prehistoric pottery specialist picked them out when they had been washed back at base. In contrast, the coarsewares of the Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age found in the ploughed fields today are generally so small and worn that they often escape detection compared to almost all other ceramics in the landscape (Bintliff et al. 1999, 2002). In Early Neolithic societies elsewhere in the North Balkans, a wider range of functions appears, except for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where the Early Neolithic has a comparable specialist role (Naumov 2007). Incidentally, Neolithic ceramics in Britain are also claimed to have been rare and used for social and ritual occasions involving commensality (Morris and Woodward 2005).
(p. 68) In the Final Neolithic however, distinct regional products decline and once again broad similarities link much of Greece's ceramics, suggesting wide sharing of styles but a return to the dominance of localized production and consumption. The precise meaning of this long cycle remains to be fully explained
In the same way, the Early Neolithic pottery of Greece shows wider similarities across regions in the role and styles of pottery, despite its narrow circle of actual use, and a strong contrast to the more "natural" assemblages of table, domestic and cookwares found in most of the contemporary early farming villages of the North Balkans. From Middle Neolithic times onward the table wares do show increasing regionalization, so that whatever mode of communication had allowed Early Neolithic Greece to stay in stylistic contact in this respect was breaking down as the Neolithic progressed. On the other hand, the widening of pot functions is a shared tendency for Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic, as is greater stylistic uniformity.
(p. 69) As for the Early Neolithic and Middle Neolithic, careful study leads Perles to the conclusion that communities throughout Greece were almost entirely reliant on circulating traders
Perles, and before her Torrence, achieved their interpretations by focusing on the chain of operations from quarry to discarded tool, but also by analyzing the dispersal trends over distance. "Down-the-line" trade, for example, should exhibit a logarithmic or exponential rather than linear, straight-line fall-off with radial distance from the source: this is because while the supply would run out progressively in linear distance, at the same time the surface area being provisioned increases geometrically. Obsidian remains astonishingly high in its share of the stone tool assemblage at great distances from Melos, suggesting either direct procurement on a massive scale, or, more likely, circulating obsidian specialists bringing cores and fashioning the yearly needs of each community in their circuit. The numerically small size of assemblages also suits import rather than direct access. In Final Neolithic times far more general seafaring seems indicated, and assemblages often decline in the quality of tools, supporting the idea that more people were collecting their own supplies of obsidian and producing their own tools as well. Perles has brought different insights recently to her analysis (2009a). In the EN, although amounts of the dominant obsidian lithic (with an important import of white flint probably from Albania) used for tools are small, there is little evidence of recycling of worn pieces, whereas from the MN this becomes common. In contrast the share of obsidian rises over the Neolithic to almost exclusive use for tools by LN-FN times. Considering these facts to go beyond functional logic, she suggests a social filter where either the prestige of exotic pieces or social relationships involving exchange works against the natural logic of using locally available raw material to a higher level. She also points out, interestingly, that the use of Melian obsidian is very low in the Mesolithic but rises considerably in Neolithic times: she attributes this to the lifestyle limitations of hunter-gatherers in their use of time, but one might consider her earlier model that most imports were transported around Greece by specialists in exchange for local food surpluses - a scenario difficult to envisage for foragers but easy enough for farmers with stored grain and domestic animals to trade.
(p. 73) Archaeologists generally view the form and elaboration of mortuary rituals as highly insightful for shedding light on the social relations of the living
However, the optimism of the 1960s, where the treatment of the dead was seen as a standard reflection of the social organization of the burying community, has been nuanced to a more complex approach, in which it is also possible that burial rites deliberately obscure social reality in order to assert some other ideology. The contemporary practice, nonetheless, is to start with the "null hypothesis," that the properties of the burial record are likely to correspond to contemporary social relations, but to seek out possible disagreements from the domestic evidence to challenge the basic assumption of a parallel organization in the apparent status of the dead to that among the living community.
(p. 74a) Over the same Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic period, the wider use of caves includes many functioning as burial locations
As noted earlier, during the Late Neolithic-Final Neolithic period, the widespread use of caves not only serves for burial, but also as ritual foci, and these phenomena are perhaps even more clearly linked in many cases to the enhancement of pastoralism following the takeoff of the Secondary Products revolution.
(p. 74b) The Nea Nikomedeia large house: whether a temple, village elders' house or chieftain's residence remains debatable
Some of the structures which have been suggested as Neolithic shrines possess wall fixtures and decoration, which may be a future means to add to appreciating what went on inside them (C. Marangou, pers. comm.)
(p. 74c) Ethnohistory suggests that village communities, especially close-packed with much social interaction, develop recognizable dress and body ornamentation to mark village and even kin-group affiliation
In fact an important area for future research is the use of body art and clothes ornaments to signify social, gender, or other symbolic aspects of a Neolithic individual. Some work on figurines has shown promising early results (C. Marangou, pers. comm.). Skeates (2007) has usefully reviewed the widespread clay (rarely stone) stamp-seals found throughout the Early Neolithic of the Near East and the Balkans as well as Italy. They are rare per village, and can appear in burials but are usually found discarded in household rubbish. In some cases holes for suspension and their location on burials indicate they were hung from the neck or wrist of individuals, and rare cases of pigment on their decorated stamp face confirm their likely use to mark organic material (since impressions on inorganic surfaces have not been found). It thus seems likely that some persons in a community marked their body or belongings, for example textiles with a distinctive design, either as a personal sign of identity or belonging or maybe for a family or as a clan identifier. At Nea Nikomedeia an unusual number were recovered, 24, each of them different. Skeates, however, is not able to reach any deeper into the actual function and meaning of these mysterious but popular objects that were clearly an intrinsic feature of Neolithic society. However, while in the Near East already by 6000 BC such seals were used to mark communal stores as a kind of archive, anticipating palatial practices of the Bronze Age, a similar use in the Early Bronze Age of Greece is considered to be a reintroduction from the Near East for a far more complex purpose.
(p. 76a) Gimbutas' theory of the incursions out of the Eurasian steppe of patriarchal, warrior seminomads, bringing the Indo-European languages which dominate in Europe today
Most parts of modern Europe speak languages derived from a common Indo-European root: the Germanic-Scandinavian, the Romance (Latin-based), Greek and Slav. Minority isolates with a different origin are represented by Basque and Finno-Ugrian (Finnish-Hungarian) (Renfrew 1987).
(p. 76b) So far, a cult significance for Greek figurines still remains somewhat speculative
In comparison to some much clearer examples outside of the Aegean, such as in Copper Age Cyprus (Peltenburg 1989, Bolger 1992).
(p. 76c) Hearths, ovens, storage areas, and generally settlement domestic debris, seem typical contexts for Neolithic figurines, while their female dominance emphasizes a focal role for women and the home in their symbolism
Christina Marangou (pers. comm.) has pointed out that the association of a predominance of females in figurines where the sex is definable, with specific archaeological contexts, is a meaningful one, since these contexts generally represent places of female tasks or female spaces. Women may then have made, handled, and given specific meaning to them in terms of the fertility and safety of crops, animals, and humans. This, however, leaves unclear the significance of asexual or ambivalent gender figurines, which become more frequent during the later Neolithic phases. Marangou has dealt further with human figurine variants in a recent paper (2009), especially with the one-third to two-thirds of figurines which are "sexless." She suggests a possible trend in what is represented by the commonest types of figurines across the Greek Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, and in which the sexless type may often have represented children or sub-adults: for the EN communal groups - for LN households - for LN/FN female groups (birth rituals, etc.?) - then finally in FN-EBA the rise of more individuals. She wonders if this trend is a shift of emphasis from the communal/collective to the individual. Finally a yet more recent contribution (Marangou 2010) focuses on large figurine busts from the MN-LN of Northern Greece which she speculates might have been attached to buildings and created a theatrical atmosphere appropriate to exciting an emotional state or acts of communal memory.
World History
