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During the archaeological survey research project ‘Island Cultures in a Diachronic Perspective: the case of Therasia’, large amounts of pottery were recorded throughout the island of Therasia, ranging in date from the Bronze Age to modern times. Focusing on the prehistoric period, pottery of the Early Cycladic and late Middle Cycladic periods was recovered at Panaghia Koimisis, which is situated on the southern part of the island. This paper presents the petrographic data and results of the analysis carried out on pottery samples which are representative of variable surface treatments and different macro-fabrics of these two prehistoric periods. Tackling issues of provenance and technology, the current scientific analysis attests the coexistence of Theran and off-Theran pottery fabrics already at Panaghia Koimisis in the Early Cycladic period. The majority of the pottery fabrics at Panaghia Koimisis were identified as Theran and the analysis demonstrates intensive contacts between the southern parts of Thera and Therasia throughout the Early and late Middle Cycladic phases. Moreover, adding support to previous studies, this research indicates a wide Cycladic pottery network, in which the site participated as a consumer. During the late Middle Cycladic period major changes in the Theran production are documented, including the disappearance of the earlier pottery recipe, which had been prevalent at Panaghia Koimisis.

The study of the history of the first excavations on prehistoric Therasia in the nineteenth century, which were carried out in the context of contemporary scientific interest in the volcanic eruptions of Santorini, has led to the systematic archaeological investigation of the island from 2007 onwards. The intensive archaeological surface survey, the geological survey of the geological structure and palaeotopography of Therasia, and geophysical investigations, undertaken in conjunction with the ongoing excavation of the prehistoric settlement at the site of Panaghia Koimisis at the southern end of modern Therasia, have created the conditions for a more comprehensive approach to the archaeological landscape of the island. Based on the results from the excavation trenches in the south and south-east terraces of the Koimisis hill, which have been excavated down to the virgin soil, we present findings on the organisation, architecture and habitation phases of the Koimisis settlement. The site emerges as an important settlement located on the imposing hilltop rising on the west side of the pre-eruption Santorini caldera in the Early Bronze Age, with a long period of habitation to the end of the Middle Cycladic period, when it was definitively abandoned. The excavation of the settlement provides new information on its architecture and spatial organisation during the Early and Middle Bronze Age, completing the picture from Akrotiri, whose early phases are preserved in a piecemeal fashion under the buildings of the Late Cycladic town.

Current hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L. Bintliff et al., 2002), together with a recent reanalysis of survey results from the Thespiae district (J. L. Bintliff et al., 1999), have led to a radical rethinking of how and where early farmers exploited the Greek landscape between earliest Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times. This new work is described, and its significance for the wider debates about the Greek landscape in this period is further discussed, to demonstrate that alongside widely spaced villages in earlier Neolithic times there were also small, short-lived farms; both were associated with wetland hand cultivation. In later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times, these locations remained, but vestigial traces discovered by hyperintensive survey methods have identified an explosion of small, short-lived, and horizontally migrating farms across the newly cleared interfluve zones. A largely lost alluvial terrace provides a major resource for the earlier, wetland farming foci.