-Thessaly in Central Greece is famous for settlement mounds (magoules) that were already partly formed in the Early

Thessaly in Central Greece is famous for settlement mounds (magoules) that were already partly formed in the Early Neolithic period. Some of these long-lived sites grew to many metres in height during the subsequent Middle, Late and Final Neolithic periods, and were also in­habited in the Bronze Age. Such magoules served as the backbone for defining relative chronolo­gical schemes. However, their absolute dating is still a topic of debate: due to a lack of well-defined se­quences, different chronological schemes have been proposed. New radiocarbon dates obtained in the last few years allow a better understanding of the duration not only of the main Neolithic pe­riods, but also of the different phases and sub-phases.

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Intensive and systematic surveys in the area south of Mount Olympos and west of Mount Ossa revealed not only tell settlements, but also several flat sites from different prehistoric periods. For one of the settlements, namely Elateia 1, a detailed relative chronological assessment was made with the help of statistical evaluations of pottery assemblages. In addition, short-lived bone samples confirmed and more precisely defined the exact chronological position of this 10-hectare site within the Middle Neolithic period. The present study underlines the importance of statistical evaluations of complete pottery assemblages, even those obtained through survey investigations, and their significance for a better understanding of chronological, chorological and post-depositional processes.

This article attempts to draw attention to the social choices of the earliest farming societies, evaluating new and old settlement data from the Early Neolithic of Thessaly in Greece. We examine the inhabitation of landscapes, the organisation of the inhabited spaces and the human–landscape interaction as a framework for the creation of a socialised environment. Taking into account aspects such as settlement location, duration, architecture and intra- and intersite arrangements, this study shows that the observed diversity in space and time reflects alternative modes of settlement and land use, variations in notions of permanence and continuity and different modalities of the adoption and meaning of new socioeconomic practices. This evidence challenges traditional interpretations of simplicity, homogeneity and change as being induced from outside and calls for a new reading of the Early Neolithic. We argue that the model of a single and uniform development, deriving from concepts of diffusionism and evolutionism, does not hold in Neolithic Thessaly (or in Greece). Instead, Neolithisation was a contextual process that involved human awareness and different choices, and that the social landscape created by the pioneering farming societies set the stage for all kinds of different developments that occurred in later phases.