Franchthi Cave and the Beginning of Settled Village Life in Greece

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. G 5 IVEN THE THEME of this symposium, it might be appropriate to focus attention, in summary fashion at least, upon the precursors (in evolutionary terms) of the ancient Greek towns and cities. This means, then, a consideration of the origins of the village in prehistoric Greece.1The fundamental role played by the village and village life throughout Greek history is well known. Even today, at the climax of an era of emigration from rural settlements to urban centers,2 the village remains one of the most characteristic features of Greek life. Whereas more than one third of the country's population is concentrated in the two major cities of Athens and Salonika, the remainder of the populace is dispersed over the countryside in thousands of smaller communities whose social and economic life is still largely rooted in the soil (Wagstaff, 1969).Although we at the American School, along with some of our Greek and foreign colleagues, have perhaps devoted a disproportionate amount of our archaeological resources and energies to the investigation of urban affairs in antiquity, there are indications that that research orientation has begun to change. There now seems to be an increasing interest in the rural dimension of Greek life, from Byzantine times back to the classical and prehistoric periods. In order to provide what I perceive to be necessary background for these important investigations, I wish to concentrate upon some of the earliest examples of human settlement in Greece, well before the first towns and cities, and to emphasize the formative stages of the Neolithic village.In view of the inconsistencies frequently observed in the terminology used to describe human settlements in the archaeological literature (e.g., Tringham, 1972a), it will be necessary at the outset to define one's terms. In this context, I shall use the term "settlement" to describe the archaeological manifestation of human domestic activity 'This paper is in part the result of a seminar which I gave during the past winter while Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies. I should like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the seminar for their helpful contributions to our discussions. I should also like to acknowledge Their reactions to it have been most helpful, but the author obviously takes full responsibility for the statements that follow.2The recently announced results of the 1981 census, however, have revealed a reversal of this trend and have shown that "for the first time sin...

Sea Surface Radiocarbon Reservoir Age Changes in the Aegean Sea from about 11,200 BP to Present

“…From the table, one can see that most of the marine mollusks belong to short-lived (<20 yr), edible species living from just offshore in shallow waters and deeper, on the sea floor at depths less than 100 m (Shackleton and van Andel 1980;Forster 1981;Sabelli et al 1990;Delamotte and Vardala-Theodorou 2001;Papathanassiou and Zenetos 2005;Papaconstantinou et al 2007;Peharda et al 2012). (Lawn 1971(Lawn , 1974(Lawn , 1975Fishman et al 1977;Jacobsen 1981;Jacobsen and Farrand 1987;Farrand 2000Farrand , 2003Perlès 2001Perlès , 2003Facorellis 2003Facorellis , 2011Facorellis , 2013; It is worth noting that the successive cultural phases in the Helladic area are roughly correlated to the Paleolithic, which ends at ~10,000 BC, the Mesolithic (10,000 to ~6500 BC), the Neolithic (~6500 to 3200/3000 BC), and the Bronze Age (3200/3000 to 1050/1025 BC). The Appendix (online supplemental file) presents all the dating results sorted by age.…”

The paleoanthropology of Greece

“…However, given the contamination problems of ancient DNA analysis in modern human remains, as well as problems with the stratigraphic placement and chronology of the specimen, this result must be treated with caution. Franchthi appears to have been only sparsely inhabited until the end of the Pleistocene (approximately 10-13 radiocarbon ka), 85 when an intensification of occupation occurred. This period at Franchthi exhibits Epigravettian lithic industries, characterized by backed bladelets, end scrapers, and geometric microliths, like triangles or trapezes.…”

Domesticity by Default. Ritual, Ritualization and Cave-Use in the Neolithic Aegean

“…It is generally thought that the Paralia area immediately outside the cave formed part of an EN–MN settlement now submerged beneath the Koilada Bay (e.g. Jacobsen 1981, 309; van Andel and Sutton 1987, 38–44; Wilkinson and Duhon 1991); however, its main features (i.e. terrace walls, hearths, pits, burials; Vitelli 1993, 43, 54‐5, 59, 64, 70–1, 81, plans 2–18), together with the presence of EN shell bead manufacturing debris, thought to reflect a form of ritualized communal production (Miller 1996, 10–12, 23; Perlès and Vitelli 1999, 104–5; Tomkins 2004, 46–7), suggest it served as a peripheral communal arena for the settlement 3 .…”