This paper presents the findings of the inaugural season of the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey project (BEARS). The project aims to clarify the history of human activity around the bay of Porto Rafti in eastern Attica. Surface finds from Raftis Island demonstrate that it was the location of a major Late Helladic IIIC site probably linked to the cemetery at Perati, as well as of limited Late Roman occupation. The Pounta peninsula yielded a large quantity of obsidian lithics, indicating significant activity during the Final Neolithic/Early Bronze Age, with lesser quantities of material dated to the Late Helladic IIIC and Roman/Byzantine periods. At Koroni, surface finds of Late Helladic IIIC and Archaic/Classical date indicate that activity at the site predates the third-century Ptolemaic military camp excavated by American archaeologists in 1960. Overall, these survey data provide a range of new evidence and insight into the history of the Porto Rafti area and its connections to other regions of the Aegean. Methodologically, the project’s work also demonstrates the value of conducting archaeological surface survey even in areas with extensive modern development.

We present the results of a diachronic survey of the Katsaronio plain in the Karystia, southern Euboea, Greece. The project was organised under the aegis of the Norwegian Institute at Athens with a permit from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture under the official name of the Norwegian Archaeological Survey in the Karystia. Five years of fieldwork (2012–16) covered an area of 20km2 in a large agricultural plain located about 5km north-west of the town of Karystos. The survey identified 99 new findspots with a range of dates spanning from the Final Neolithic to Early Modern times. Here we present the collected prehistoric through Roman data, which represent the bulk of the acquired evidence. One of the notable features of the assemblage is the vast quantity of lithics that were recovered, numbering over 9000 and consisting mainly of obsidian. Certain periods were absent from the evidence, such as post-Early Bronze Age prehistoric and Geometric, while others were represented with varying intensity. We offer an initial interpretation of the patterns observable in the evidence in an attempt to reconstruct the past use and habitation of this part of Euboea.

The Norwegian Institute at Athens received a permit from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports in 2018 to conduct a five-year excavation project at the site of Gourimadi in southern Euboea. The first field season, conducted in June 2018, lasted for four weeks during which two trenches were opened at the site and partially excavated by a Norwegian-Greek team of researchers and students. The aim of the project is to understand the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in this part of the Aegean in the light of emerging regional maritime interaction networks and lasting settlement of the Cycladic islands. In addition, data collected from both the surface and excavation indicate that Gourimadi can contribute potentially crucial information needed for examining the Aegean prehistoric obsidian exchange and the introduction of metallurgy in the same region. Finally, the project is the first systematic (i.e. non-rescue) excavation of a prehistoric site in southern Euboea. The 2018 excavation confirmed our expectations about the importance of the site and has added to our understanding of prehistoric Euboea and the Aegean. The paper contains a brief preliminary but comprehensive report of the 2018 Gourimadi Archaeological Project results.