Radiocarbon Dating of Aghios Antonios, Potos, and Intersite Chronological Variability in South Thasos, Greece

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates obtained for the coastal hilltop settlement of Aghios Antonios Potos in south Thasos are statistically treated to define the absolute chronology for the start and the end of the various habitation and cultural phases at the site. The location was first occupied during the Final Neolithic (FN) between 3800 and 3600 BC, extending this much contested phase to the lowest up to now record for Thasos and the northern Greece. The site is continuously inhabited from Early Bronze Age I until the early Late Bronze Age (LBA; 1363 BC) when it was abandoned. Comparison with other sites in Thasos and particularly with the inland site of Kastri Theologos showed that the first occupation at Aghios Antonios came soon after the abandonment of Kastri in the beginning of the 4th millennium. In fact, after the decline and abandonment of Aghios Antonios in the LBA, the site of Kastri was reinhabited, leading to the hypothesis that part of the coastal population moved inland. The presumed chronological sequence of alternate habitation between the two settlements may evoke explanations for sociocultural and/or environmental dynamics behind population movements in prehistoric Thasos. A major conclusion of the project is that the 4th millennium occupation gap attested in many sites of Greece, especially in the north, is probably bridged in south Thasos, when the data from all sites are taken together. The mobility of people in Final Neolithic south Thasos may explain the general phenomenon of limited occupational sequences in the FN of north Greece.

Tracing the Absolute Time-Frame of the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean

“…The mean start of the EBA for Mandalo has a large error due the wide spread of dates, which may belong to different subphases as discussed earlier, so it cannot be really compared with the rest at this stage. Around 3000 BC or slightly thereafter, the EBA II phase seems to start at different sites with the earliest one Aghios Antonios, again in Thasos, although with a large error due to a small number of dates (Maniatis et al 2015), and Sidirokastro with a more precise age at 2934±58 BC. It is interesting to note that the start of the EBA II ranges in the different sites from close to 3000 BC at Aghios Antonios and Sidirokastro to about 2600 BC; the latest site to enter this phase being Skala Sotiros in Thasos.…”

“…This phase also contains 14 dates from Skala Sotiros IIa which is associated with EBA II (Koukouli-Chrysanthaki and Papadopoulos 2016; Koukouli-Chryssanthaki et al forthcoming). We also included two dates from Aghios Antonios III belonging to EBA II (Maniatis et al 2015). Since all dates conformed well to this phase of the model, no outliers were designated for this phase.…”

Radiocarbon Dating of the Major Settlement at Skarkos (Ios Island, Cyclades) and Inferences for the Early Cycladic Chronology

“…Aghios Antonios Potos in Thasos offers only two dates in the EB II period which give mean modelled dates of 2750 BC and 2600 BC (Maniatis et al 2015) falling in the early part of EC II period, preceding the Skarkos dates.…”

Investigating the archaeointensity determination success of prehistoric ceramics through a multidisciplinary approach: new and re-evaluated data from Greek collections

“…For instance, the scarcity of archaeomagnetic data from the fourth millennium BC is due to several occupation gaps attested in many sites of Greece, especially Northern Greece, as well as in Bulgaria (Maniatis 2014 and references therein;Tsirtsoni 2016). This gap is partly bridged in Southern Thasos Island where settlements covering the second half of the fourth millennium BC have been excavated and dated (Maniatis et al 2015). Two other major features may be observed for the prehistoric period in the Balkans: the uneven temporal distribution of the data during the entire Bronze age (third and second millennium BC) and the systematically lower Greek archaeointensities, in comparison with the Bulgarian ones, for the Late sixth to the Late third millennium BC (Tema & Kondopoulou 2011).…”