Krzysztof nowicki final neolithic crete and the southeast aegean
Abstract
This book presents an archaeological study of Crete in transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (c. 4000 to 3000 BC) within the broader South Aegean context. The study, based on the author’s own fieldwork, contains a gazetteer ofover 170sites. The material from these sites will prompt archaeologists in Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East to reconsider their understanding of the foundation of Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean.
... Recent investigations highlight numerous other archaeological sites over time and space, although they are generally less well documented than those of the Bronze Age (e.g. Nowicki, 2014;Rackham and Moody, 1996). Our current understanding of past vegetation and environmental changes during the Holocene is based on only a few sedimentary archives and pollen analyses. ...
... Research on this site has revealed a well-preserved stratigraphy of a pre-Minoan occupation with an initial phase dated between 9000 and 8550 cal BP (~7050-6550 BCE, Facorellis and Maniatis, 2013;Douka et al., 2017). This Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) phase most likely resulted from visits by Neolithic people from Anatolia, who brought with them a "package" of wild and cultivated plants and feral and domesticated animals (Efstratiou, 2013;Horwitz, 2013;Nowicki, 2014). ...
... Pollen and fungal indicators are not sufficient on their own to attest to the presence of agro-pastoral activities as early as 9600 cal BP (~7650 BCE), which is five centuries before the oldest settlement at Knossos. However, considering that the Kournas basin at that time might have been an attractive zone for humans and animals because freshwater was one of the main concerns of the first settlers (Nowicki, 2014), and knowing from archaeology that the first waves of farmers spread to Cyprus at least one millennium before (10,600 years ago, Vigne et al., 2012), the hypothesis of a human presence around Kournas in the mid-eighth millennium BCE is worth considering. ...
The reconstruction of millennial-scale interactions between ecosystems and societies can provide unique and valuable references for understanding the creation of cultural landscapes and help elucidate their value, weaknesses and legacies. Among the most emblematic forms of Mediterranean land use, olive groves and pastoralism have occupied a prominent place. Therefore, it is vital to know when, how, and with what ecological consequences these practices were established and developed. Located in the southern part of the Aegean Sea, Crete is the largest island of Greece. The island is characterised by a long human history of land use, but our understanding of past environmental changes for the entire Holocene is fragmentary. This paper presents a new investigation of Lake Kournas in Crete, where recent coring provided a 15-m sequence covering ten millennia of land cover and land-use history. The study of this new core involves the analysis of the sediment dynamics, flood deposits, pollen, diatoms, fungal and algal remains, and microcharcoals. Results show that ecosystem development near Lake Kournas was not a linear process. They reveal linkages and feedbacks between vegetation, biodiversity, fire, human impact, erosion, and climate change. A possible human occupation and agro-pastoral activities around the lake may have been detected as early as 9500 cal BP, perhaps in a transitional phase between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. At 8500 cal BP, climatic conditions may have promoted the expansion of the evergreen oak woodland. However, human impact was probably the most important driver of ecosystem change with the establishment of an agro-system after 8000 years ago. Thereafter, the trajectory of Kournas’ lake and catchment ecosystems from the Mid to Late Holocene follow the rhythm of land-use change. Among the traditional Mediterranean land uses, olive cultivation locally played a major role in the socio-ecosystem interactions, providing economic benefits but also destabilising soils. During the last six millennia, three main phases of olive cultivation occurred during the Final Neolithic-Minoan period, the Hellenistic-Roman-Byzantine (HRB) period and Modern times. Along with the changing land use under the successive political and economic influences rules, the resilience capacities of vegetation permitted it to shift back to higher biodiversity again after decreasing phases. Forest vegetation was always able to recover until the onset of the Venetian period (13th century), when woodlands were dramatically reduced. Only during the past century has forest vegetation slightly recovered, while the flood regime had already been altered during previous centuries. During the past 100 years, biodiversity markedly declined, probably in response to the industrialization of agriculture.
... The Late Neolithic (LN)-Final Neolithic (FN) phase (aka Chalcolithic) in Greece spans a couple of millennia and suffers from many alternative chronological schemes (with regional variations, e.g. Nowicki, 2014;Tsirtsoni, 2016b), and the overall SPD suggests two or three distinct peak episodes within these later Neolithic phases and a decline during FN (see further below). An inferred boom in population sometime ~4750 BP makes archaeological sense in terms of observed moves in certain regions towards more complex cultural behaviour (e.g. ...
This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Greek landscape through time. We demonstrate that SPDs offer a useful approach to outline differences between regions and a useful complement to archaeological site surveys, evaluated here especially for the onset of the Neolithic and for the Final Neolithic (FN)/Early Bronze Age (EBA) transition. Pollen analysis highlight differences in vegetation between the two sub-regions, but also several parallel changes. The comparison of land cover dynamics between two sub-regions of Greece further demonstrates the significance of the bioclimatic conditions of core locations and that apparent oppositions between regions may in fact be two sides of the same coin in terms of socio-ecological trajectories. We also assess the balance between anthropogenic and climate-related impacts on vegetation and suggest that climatic variability was as an important factor for vegetation regrowth. Finally, our evidence suggests that the impact of humans on land cover is amplified from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) onwards as more extensive herding and agricultural practices are introduced.
Agricultural production and the palatial redistribution of staples have played a key role in the debate concerning the emergence of social complexity in Minoan Crete. However, much of the focus has fallen on major settlements where such products were consumed, rather than on the landscape where agricultural surplus was produced. While there is no shortage of landscape surveys on Crete, their emphasis has typically been on the distribution of rural settlements instead of on identifying landscape structures and
arrangements—such as terraces, enclosures, and field systems—that might provide data about a territory’s economic focus. A key aim of the new survey at Palaikastro has been to address this bias. By combining extensive archaeological survey with differential GPS (DGPS) measurements, high-resolution aerial photography, and microrelief generation and analysis, the project has identified hundreds of structures, forming an almost continuous fossilized landscape and providing important clues on landscape management practices. The results highlight the importance of pastoral practices, to which a large part of the landscape was dedicated. Agricultural arrangements were also documented in the form of terraced areas adapted for dryland agriculture and reflecting concerns for soil retention. We argue that a highly structured landscape, indicative of pressures in land use, was established during the Middle and Late Minoan periods across Palaikastro’s territory.
Changes in firing practice have been suggested as representing a revolution in ceramic technology at the beginning of the Bronze Age in Crete. The introduction of kiln structures has been held responsible for such a change, perhaps by newcomers to the island, along with other innovative technologies. However, these hypotheses were often based on limited analytical data and mostly on macroscopic examination. This paper re-examines the suggestion of a transformation in firing technology at the beginning of the Bronze Age by presenting analyses of the rich ceramic assemblage from the site of Phaistos in South-Central Crete, which offers a rare, good stratigraphic sequence from the end of the Final Neolithic into the Early Bronze Age. Here, firing technology is reconstructed by macroscopic examination of colour across vessel breaks, by SEM examination and FT-IR analysis. This allows the reconstruction of temperature ranges and firing rates over the phases considered and a re-assessment of changes in firing technology, revealing a more multi-faceted pattern of change. Finally, changes in firing procedure are contextualised in the overall ceramic operational sequence, revealing a complex, stepped picture of change in ceramic production over the transition from the Final Neolithic.
This paper details the results of a survey of the obsidian sources on the island of Giali in the Dodecanese, Greece, together with a review of these raw materials’ use from the Mesolithic to the Late Bronze Age (ninth to second millennium Cal bc). Elemental characterization of 76 geological samples from 11 sampling locations demonstrates the existence of two geochemically distinct sources, termed ‘Giali A’, and ‘Giali B’. The latter material, available in small cobble form on the island’s southwestern half, seems to have only been exploited by local residents during the Final Neolithic (fourth millennium Cal bc). In contrast, Giali A obsidian comprises a distinctive white-spotted raw material, available in large boulders on the northeastern half of Giali, whose use changed significantly over time. During the Mesolithic to later Neolithic it was mainly used for flake-based tool-production by local Dodecanesian populations. Further away, handfuls of Giali A obsidian are documented from Early Neolithic to Early Bronze Age sites in Crete, the Cyclades, and western Anatolia. The distribution of this material is likely indicative of population movement, and regional socio-economic interaction more generally, rather than a significant desire for, and trade of, the material itself. This changed in the Middle Bronze Age (second millennium Cal bc), when Giali A obsidian was reconceptualized as a valued raw material, and used by Cretan palace-based lapidaries to make prestige goods. This radical shift in traditions of consumption resulted from Cretan factions appropriating Anatolian and Egyptian elite value regimes and craft practices as a means of creating new means of social distinction within a larger Eastern Mediterranean political arena.
https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JMA/article/view/31011
This entry in the Catalogue comes immediately after the Rhodian contingent under Tlepolemos, and immediately before Achilles' Myrmidons. None of the three leaders appears elsewhere, nor are any of their relatives mentioned elsewhere, with the exception, of course, of Herakles, grandfather of Pheidippos and Antiphos. Of the islands over which they rule, only Kos is mentioned again.
There can be no reason to doubt the identification of Syme, Nisyros, Krapathos, and Kasos, with the islands which still bear those names, apart from a slight and normal change in the case of Krapathos—Karpathos. By Κῶς Εὐρυπύλοιο πόλις is presumably meant a city on the site of the present Kos-town, called elsewhere Μερόπις. Thus the Delian Hymn to Apollo refers to Kos as πόλις Μερόπων ἀνθρώπων. This is borne out by the other references to Kos in the Iliad, for there it is given the epithet εὖ ναιομένην, which elsewhere seems to be applied to cities.
The problem of what Homer meant by νῆσοι Καλύδναι was already being discussed in Strabo's time. He says that the general opinion (φασί) was that νῆσοι Καλύδναι meant Kalymna and the islands near by, Kalymna perhaps being once called Καλύδνα, but that some said that Leros and Kalymna were meant, while Demetrios of Skepsis held that Καλύδναι was a plural similar to Ἀθῆναι or Θῆβαι. While there does not seem to be any good evidence that Kalymna (= Kalymnos) was alone ever called Καλύδνα or Καλύδναι, there is no doubt that the people of Kalymna and the adjacent islands—presumably Telendos and Pserimos, and possibly also Kalolimnos—were called Καλύδνιοι in the fifth century B.C.
The investigation of settlements as functional units is one of the cornerstones of the approach to prehistory that Grahame Clark has done so much to foster over the years. I hope therefore that the following account of the earliest phases in the development of one which played a role of major importance in the prehistory of Crete, and so of Europe, may be an appropriate contribution to the present collection of essays in his honour.
The beginnings and subsequent expansion of the Neolithic community of Knossos has become fully intelligible for the first time as a result of the two seasons of excavation carried out in 1969 and 1970. The early soundings of Evans and Mackenzie, though they indicated that the Neolithic deposit had covered a large area, threw little or no light on the growth of the settlement, and, apart from the Late Neolithic houses in the Central Court, which were cleared in 1923–4 (Evans, 1928, 1–21), none at all on its nature.
‘It is a singular fact regarding the eparkhia of Agios Vasiles, that throughout its whole extent not any ancient city has been discovered; and yet there can be no doubt that in one or two of the most populous of these valleys there must have been a town of more or less importance. To all my inquiries, however, in my two journeys through the greater part of the province, I could learn of no ruins or traditional site of any Hellenic city. … Notwithstanding this denial, I am induced to call the attention of any future traveller to this absence of any recognized ancient site in so large a district …’ So Captain Spratt at the end of the second volume of his Travels and Researches in Crete , published in 1865.
The first excavations at Palaikastro, undertaken in the years 1902–6 by Bosanquet, Dawkins, and others, coincided with the first great period of research and discovery in Minoan Crete. They ran concurrently with Evans's early seasons at Knossos and with Hogarth's work at Zakro, not far from Palaikastro, and were in a true sense pioneer work. The series of reports which appeared in the Annual from 1901/2–1905/6, together with the later supplementary volume of Unpublished Objects and two final articles prepared for publication by various hands, built up a systematic and clear picture of one of the largest and perhaps the best preserved Minoan settlement yet excavated in Crete.
The work was undertaken on a major scale, in the third season employing up to seventy workmen for nearly three months. It produced evidence for occupation in the area from the Neolithic to the end of the Late Minoan period, with a continuing cult of Dictaean Zeus from Geometric down to Hellenistic and Roman times. In addition some careful anthropological work was done, and the phases of occupation were tied in with those of the other Minoan sites known at the time.
When Pendlebury wrote his book The Archaeology of Crete (1939) so few sites of the earlier Minoan periods had been recognized in the parts of Crete west of Mt. Ida that he was led to suggest that this region, over a third of the island in area, was virtually unsettled before L.M. III times. Some years earlier Marinatos had commented upon the fact that, whereas there was evidence of occupation in the west of Crete both during Neolithic times and at the end of the Late Minoan period, hardly any relics assignable to the Middle Minoan period had been identified there. Since then many more caves with traces of Neolithic or Early Minoan occupation have been noted in western Crete, especially during the last few years owing to the researches of M. Paul Faure. At the same time a number of open settlements have been identified, with evidence of occupation during the flourishing period of the Minoan civilization between M.M. I and L.M. I.
Notable among these are a couple of sites in the extreme south-west corner of Crete (A. 1, 2), ‘literally at the back of beyond’, as Pendlebury described it. The first of these by the Monastery of Khrisoskalitissa (Virgin of the Golden Stairs) was noted by Pendlebury, who claimed to have found L.M. I sherds there. But much of the pottery recovered by us in 1963 from this and the site at ‘Thrimbokambos’ (A. 2) further south appears to be rather M.M., and some of it M.M. I or earlier (E.M. II) in character.
The excavations described here were undertaken for the purpose of obtaining a fuller knowledge of the nature of the Neolithic settlement site which lies below the Minoan palace of Knossos.
The presence of this settlement site was originally recognized by Sir Arthur Evans very soon after he began work at Knossos at the beginning of the century. His numerous soundings established that it was of considerable size, covering the whole of the hill of Kephala below the palace and the surrounding houses (an area of at least 11 acres), and that it must have endured for a long period, since the depth of deposit attained to nearly 10 metres in places. A pottery sequence was worked out by Mackenzie on the basis of the soundings carried out up to 1904, and this was subsequently adopted in essentials by Evans in the final publication. It has subsequently been refined and modified by Dr. A. Furness (Mrs. Ozanne), using Evans's material in the Stratigraphical Museum, in a paper which she published in this journal in 1953.