Katerina Papayianni

The American School of Classical Studies at Athens · The Malcolm H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science

This chapter analyses the 41 bone and tooth rodent remains together with the only cat bone found in Klimonas. Gnowing marks studies and contextual analyses clearly show that mice were living in the village as commensals. Their remains were especially concentrated in the packed earth floor of the three main successive Communal buildings, suggesting...

The interdisciplinary approach and analytical tools applied in the last 30 years in the Amathous region (Cyprus), especially at the sites of Shillourokambos and Klimonas, generated a huge quantity of archaeological, geo- archaeological and bioarchaeological data. They significantly contributed to document the interactions between the early Neolithi...

The Cretan ecosystem in its current form is more or less the result of human activity. The human intervention in the Cretan landscape, either deliberate or unintentional, forms a popular research topic in several sectors of Archaeological Science, including micromammal studies. This paper presents the evolution of Cretan micromammals from the Pleis...

During recent excavations of the French Archaeological Mission at Kition-Bamboula, in modern day Larnaka, Cyprus, an infant jar burial was discovered. It was found under a floor layer in a domestic context, and is dated to the beginning of the Late Cypriot IIIB period (end of the 12th– early 11th century BC). This jar burial is part of a series whi...

In this paper we aim to summarise and synthesise the results of the archaeological work conducted at Neolithic Avgi to date. We discuss the chronology of the site, in the light of new radiocarbon evidence, and review the excavation data within the scope of the chronostratigraphic scheme that was developed by the contextual correlations and radiocar...

Spiny mice of the Acomys cahirinus group display a complex geographical structure in the Eastern Mediterranean area, as shown by previous genetic and chromosomal studies. To better elucidate the evolutionary relationships between insular populations from Crete and Cyprus and continental populations from North Africa and Cilicia in Turkey, genetic a...

The house mouse (Mus musculus) represents the extreme of globalization of invasive mammals. However, the timing and basis of its origin and early phases of dispersal remain poorly documented. to track its synanthropisation and subsequent invasive spread during the develoment of complex human societies, we analyzed 829 Mus specimens from 43 archaeol...

An excavation conducted by the Ephorate for Palaeoanthropology and Speleology in 2011 at the Kataphygadi Cave on the Myrminkaris ridge in western Kythera has identifi ed evidence of human activity in two separate periods – Late Minoan IB/Late Helladic IIA and Late Helladic IIIB – early Late Helladic IIIC – and documented the stratigraphy, and assoc...

An excavation conducted by the Ephorate for Palaeoanthropology and Speleology in 2011 at the Kataphygadi Cave on the Myrminkaris ridge in western Kythera has identified evidence of human activity in two separate periods – Late Minoan IB/Late Helladic IIA and Late Helladic IIIB–early Late Helladic IIIC – and documented the stratigraphy, and associat...

The lacustrine deposits exposed at the Lower Palaeolithic site Marathousa 1 (Megalopolis, S. Greece) and intercalated between lignite Seam II and III yielded a collection of small vertebrate remains. The assemblage includes fish and small mammals; the mammal assemblage encompasses a variety of species, dominated by voles (arvicolids) of the genera...

Small mammals represent an important source of biostratigraphic and ecological information at Plio/Pleistocene localities. In this paper, we provide an overview of small mammals from Pliocene and Pleistocene sites in Greece, present fossil rodent and insectivore faunal assemblages and their chronology for select loci, and discuss the applicability...

The present paper deals with small mammal cranial and postcranial remains from two Bronze Age archaeological sites on Crete, Greece: Mochlos on Eastern Crete and Khania on Western Crete. The endemic Pleistocene species Mus minotaurus and Crocidura zimmermanni were identified in skeletal material from archaeological excavations under the modern city...