The Stone Age in the Aegean

Weinberg, Saul S.

doi:10.1017/chol9780521070515.014

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 354 publications

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“…Disregarding again the problem of an Aceramic Neolithic horizon (Nandris, 1970), we can observe the foundation of scores of new sites in the early sixth millennium (Theocharis, 1973;Weinberg, 1970). Disregarding again the problem of an Aceramic Neolithic horizon (Nandris, 1970), we can observe the foundation of scores of new sites in the early sixth millennium (Theocharis, 1973;Weinberg, 1970).…”

Section: and Perhaps The Upper Levels At Asprochaliko Cave In The Lmentioning

confidence: 92%

Franchthi Cave and the Beginning of Settled Village Life in Greece

Jacobsen¹

1981

Hesperia

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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...

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Section: and Perhaps The Upper Levels At Asprochaliko Cave In The Lmentioning

confidence: 92%

Franchthi Cave and the Beginning of Settled Village Life in Greece

Jacobsen¹

1981

Hesperia

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“…In 14 C years the boundary between Middle Neolithic and this earliest transitional phase lies between 5578 and 5303 bc . Phelps (2004, 44 and 65) comments that Black Ware and possibly Black-on-Red Ware were in use before the end of the Middle Neolithic period but, like Weinberg (1970, 597–8 and 601–3), he takes the view that the Late Neolithic period began with the appearance of Matt Painted pottery. The stratigraphy in Area G suggests that Black Ware is present first, though there were a few Grey Ware and Matt Painted sherds in G2009.…”

Section: The Middle–late Neolithic Transitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Middle–late Neolithic Transition at Kouphovouno

Mee

Cavanagh

Renard

2014

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

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The site of Kouphovouno, just south of Sparta, is one of the main Neolithic sites in Laconia. It was first settled in the Middle Neolithic period and developed into a large village with remains occupying some - hectares. A joint team from the British School at Athens and the Ecole française d'Athènes carried out excavations at the site in -. There is evidence for occupation during the Bronze Age, and for an extensive Late Roman villa, but this article concentrates on the chronology of the site during the Middle and Late Neolithic phases. The evidence from stratigraphic sequences, pottery typology, seriation and Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon dates is brought together to present a detailed chronological sequence covering the period c.- BC. In particular the analysis relies on the results from two deep soundings, one excavated in Area C carried down to the natural sediments underlying the site and exposing the earliest period of occupation, and the second in Area G covering the later Middle Neolithic and much of the Late Neolithic phase. The findings from Kouphovouno are placed more generally in the context of finds from other sites in the Peloponnese and in particular in relation to the important sequence from Franchthi Cave. On the basis of the evidence it is argued that the transition from Middle Neolithic to Late Neolithic in southern Greece was not abrupt, as had previously been thought, but showed a gradual evolution. This finding has implications for our understanding of the process of transformation that southern Greece underwent in the course of the later sixth millennium BC.

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“…Some proponents of the habitation hypothesis have tried to claim that this material represents the remains of inhabitants trapped in caves by rockfalls (e.g. Tsoungiza: Weinberg 1970, 579; Gerani: Godart and Tzedakis 1992, 77–8; Alepotrypa: Papathanassopoulos 1996c, 82), even though it is frequently disarticulated and associated with different stratigraphic units. Others assume that it was typical domestic practice to intermingle living areas with mortuary space (e.g.…”

Section: De‐constructing Domesticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tomkins¹

2009

Oxford Journal of Archaeology

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Neolithic caves in the Aegean are conventionally understood in domestic terms, principally as temporary homes for farmers or pastoralists. This paper challenges the theoretical and empirical foundations of this orthodoxy and develops an alternative model grounded in an understanding of Neolithic ritual and how through ritualization the everyday is referenced and transformed. This model is explored with reference to the corpus of wellpublished cave-sites. Although further testing remains a priority, facilitated by the development of new ways of studying cave assemblages, ritual explanations are considered to provide a more credible explanation for Neolithic cave-use in all its aspects, from the selection of caves as locales for activity to the complexity and diversity of their material records. In this way the Aegean may be seen to fit within a broader pattern of ritual cave-use in the Mediterranean during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.Caves exercise a power of attraction over people, suggesting themselves as places for activity, demanding explanation. For archaeologists in search of the Aegean prehistoric past, caves were a primary target of investigation (e.g. Perlès 2001, 116) to the extent that in some areas they have become an over-represented site type for certain phases of human existence. After more than a century of exploration a large number of Neolithic cave-sites are known, the majority from surface collections or small trials, some from larger excavations, of which a small number have been fully published (Figs. 1 and 2; Table 1). What attracted the people of the Neolithic to these caves has long been considered uncontroversial. The popular perception that Stone Age people were cave-dwellers by preference has been reinforced by traditions of cave usage from the recent Greek past. Neolithic caves must have been domestic sites, perhaps temporary homes for farmers or transhumant pastoralists, refuges for threatened communities, places for banishing the wicked, quarantining the sick or storing perishable goods (e.g. Hood ). In time the domestic model has come to be viewed as self-evident, the default interpretation of Neolithic cave-use. Data from caves have generally been used to illustrate rather than evaluate the efficacy of the domestic model and the onus of proof has been placed upon those seeking alternative explanations.

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The Stone Age in the Aegean

Cited by 17 publications

References 354 publications

Franchthi Cave and the Beginning of Settled Village Life in Greece

Franchthi Cave and the Beginning of Settled Village Life in Greece

The Middle–late Neolithic Transition at Kouphovouno

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

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