After the initial phase of colonization in the Final Neolithic period, settlement expanded across much of the hinterland of Laconia. There is an Early Helladic component on 33 of the sites identified by the Laconia Survey (Figure 1.7 and Table 1.3) and 26 more have some EH pottery (Cavanagh 1996; 6). The densest concentration is around Chrysapha, quite a distance away from the Eurotas. Two of these sites were surveyed in the course of
Figure 1.6 Laconia Survey: Neolithic sites
The Laconia Rural Sites Project - LP7 = R3012 and LP8 = R287. On the basis of the artefact distribution, geophysical data and soil analyses, our impression is that they were small settlements, a cluster of houses. Some of the other sites may have been farmsteads occupied by just one family. Cavanagh and Crouwel (in press) believe that there may have been a two-tier settlement hierarchy in EHII. The largest of the sites, P284, covers c. 1 ha.
Down in the Eurotas Valley there are several major EHII settlements (Figure 1.5) - Kouphovouno, Palaiopyrgi (C4/93), Skoura - Vouno Panagias (Banou 1999: 65-66) and Ayios Vasileios (C7 /101 - Banou 1999: 65-67) but no network of subsidiary sites, or at least not on the east side of the river which has been intensively surveyed. So we appear to have two different settlement patterns: nucleated in the lowland and dispersed in the hinterland. This is not a temporal phenomenon—of dispersal and then nucleation—as Wiencke (1989: 498-99) has suggested for the Argolid (Cavanagh and Crouwel in press) but may be a reflection of two different agricultural regimes. The situation in Late Neolithic Thessaly is quite similar. Halstead (1995: 15) observes that 'villages are clearly concentrated in the areas of early agricultural settlement and hamlets in the areas colonized later. Villages and hamlets thus represent alternative settlement strategies in agriculturally core and marginal areas rather than the centres and satellites of local site hierarchies'. Although it would appear that there was less of an emphasis on pastoralism in Early Helladic Laconia, the type of economic pluralism which Cavanagh (1999: 56-58) has proposed for the Late and Final Neolithic periods may still have been in operation.
How did the sites in central Laconia interact? Were they dependent or interdependent? Should we envisage a settlement hierarchy with Kouphovouno, for example, at the apex? Or was the relationship more symbiotic? If Kouphovouno did have an administrative role, this should become apparent when the site is excavated and it may then be possible to speak of a proto-urban centre. At the moment the evidence is inconclusive.
Elsewhere in Laconia a number of clay sealings have recently been discovered in an EHII context at Geraki (C12/103) next to a pithos which contained carbonized grain (Weingarten et al. 1999). Crouwel (1999: 150) believes that the sealings must be administrative documents. In the Helos Plain there is a cluster of EHII sites (C15/145, C16/125, C18/139, C19/ 136, C20/137, C22/132, C23/133, C24/142, C26/142, C27/146, C29/216) around Ayios Stephanos (Cl 7/141), which may well have been the dominant settlement in southern Laconia. The top of the hill covers approximately 4.5 ha and Early Helladic occupation was apparently widespread (Taylour 1972). It is a pity that Lord William Taylour did not discover a corridor house. Dickinson (1992: 109-10) draws attention to the size of the underwater site at Pavlopetri (C39/250) but wonders how much of this is Early Helladic.
The stark contrast between the Neolithic and Early Helladic settlement pattern in Laconia is not unexpected, particularly if we take into account the enormous time span. However, I had not anticipated that there would be so much variation in EHII. The situation in central and southern Laconia seems quite different. It is consequently difficult to discern a regional trajectory, although we can clearly see advances in organizational complexity which parallel developments elsewhere.
Early Helladic Peloponnese
Particularly in the Argolid there is a comparable increase in the number of sites, although not in Arcadia or Messenia (Table 2). A two or
Figure 1.7 Laconia Survey: Early Helladic sites
Three-tier settlement hierarchy of hamlets, villages and towns has been proposed for the southern Argolid (Jameson et al. 1994: 358-62) and a four-tier hierarchy in the Argive Plain (Kilian 1986: 69-70). Monumental architecture, in the form of corridor houses, is attesfed at Akovitika, Lerna and possibly Zygouries (Wiencke 1989: 496-97 and 503-505; Renard 1995: 177-79 and 182-89). The Rundbau at Tiryns may have been a massive communal granary (Kilian 1986). Clay sealings at Akovitika, Asine, Corinth and Lerna indicate administrative activity (Pullen 1994: 48-50; Renard 1995: 288-95). Pullen (1986: 79) concludes that EHII society was 'hierarchically organized into small, centralized socio-political units'. Proto-urban seems an appropriate term for this level of complexity (Konsola 1990: 463) but the Argolid may have been the exception rather than the rule.
World History
