Ancient Greece 1
Unit 1 -- Stone age: The first 600,000 years, more
or less
Readings for Unit 1
Wikipedia entries on Ancient
Greece appear to be fairly devoid of modern political
biases (or at least the biases are ones with which we
can agree). There is, however, the problem of ancient
biases:most
if not all ancient Greek sources – i.e., the historians
and philosophers) are either Athenian or pro-Athenian –
the others simply do not appear to have been as
interested as the Athenians in writing down their
histories.. Some
ancient sources also have difficulty separating
mythology from history.Finally, we always have to remember that the
history that comes down to us is almost entirely written
by victors and that victors often suppress histories of
their defeated enemies.Some sources, although ancient, are not
contemporary with the events they describe.What comes
from ancient sources should, therefore, be taken cum
grano salis.
Archeological evidence can
also be chancey.We
never know for sure that what is found is representative
of a culture or if it is aberrational.All we know
for sure is that we always wish we could find enough to
make definitive analyses.
Note: Blue print indicates links to
much more information at Wikipedia
1. Short intro to Ancient Greek
History (Neolithic
to Roman)
The Neolithic
Revolution
reached Europe by way of Greece and the Balkans,
beginning in the 7th millennium BC.Some Neolithic
communities in southeastern Europe, such as Sesklo in Greece,
were living in heavily fortified settlements of
3,000–4,000 people. The Greek Neolithic era ended with
the arrival of the Bronze Age from
Anatolia and the Near East, by the end of the 28th
century BC (early Helladic
period).
In about 2100 B.C, the Proto-Indo-Europeans overran the
Greek peninsula from the north and east.[3] These
Indo-Europeans, known as Mycenaeans, introduced
the Greek language to present-day Greece.[4]
One of the earliest civilizations to
appear around Greece was the Minoan civilization in Crete, which
lasted from about 2700 (Early Minoan) BC to 1450 BC, and the Early
Helladic period on
the Greek mainland from ca. 2800 BC to 2100 BC.
Little specific information is known
about the Minoans (even the name is a modern
appellation, from Minos, the
legendary king of Crete).[4]
They have been characterized as a pre-Indo-European people,
apparently the linguistic ancestors of the Eteo-Cretan speakers of
Classical
Antiquity,
their language being encoded in the undeciphered Linear A script.
They were primarily a mercantile people engaged in
overseas trade, taking advantage of their land's rich
natural resources. Timber was then an
abundant natural resource that was commercially
exploited and exported to nearby lands such as Cyprus, Syria, Egypt and the Aegean
Islands.[4] During the
Early
Bronze Age (3300 BC
through 2100 BC), the Minoan Civilization on the island
of Crete held great promise for the future.[5]
The Mycenaean Greeks invaded Crete and
adopted much of the Minoan culture they found on Crete.[6] The Minoan
civilization which preceded the Mycenaean civilization
on Crete was revealed to the modern world by Sir Arthur
Evans in 1900,
when he purchased and then began excavating a site at Knossus.[5]
The Proto-Greeks are assumed to have arrived in the Greek
peninsula during the
late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BC.[7]
The migration of the Ionians and Aeolians resulted in
Mycenaean
Greece by the 16th
century BC.[8][9]
The transition from pre-Greek to Greek culture appears
to have been rather gradual. Some archaeologists have
pointed to evidence that there was a significant amount
of continuity of prehistoric economic, architectural,
and social structures, suggesting that the transition
between the Neolithic, Helladic and early Greek cultures
may have continued without major rifts in social
texture.[10]
On Crete, however, the Mycenean invasion
of around 1400 BC spelled the end of the Minoan
civilization.
Mycenaean
Greece is the Late
Helladic Bronze Age
civilization of Ancient
Greece. It lasted
from the arrival of the Greeks in the Aegean around 1600
BC to the collapse of their Bronze Age civilization
around 1100 BC. It is the historical setting of the epics of Homer and of most
Greek
mythology. The
Mycenaean period takes its name from the archaeological
site Mycenae in the
northeastern Argolid, in the Peloponnesos of southern
Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also
important Mycenaean sites.
Mycenaean civilization was dominated by a
warrior aristocracy. Around
1400 BC the Mycenaeans extended their control to Crete, center of
the Minoan
civilization,
and adopted a form of the Minoan script called Linear A to write
their early form of Greek. The Mycenaean era script is
called Linear B.
The Mycenaeans buried their nobles in beehive
tombs (tholoi),
large
circular burial chambers with a high vaulted roof and
straight entry passage lined with stone. They often
buried daggers or some other form of military equipment
with the deceased. The nobility were often buried with
gold masks, tiaras, armor and jeweled weapons.
Mycenaeans were buried in a sitting position, and some
of the nobility underwent mummification.
Around 1100 BC the Mycenaean civilization
collapsed. Numerous cities were sacked and the region
entered what historians see as a dark age. During
this period Greece experienced a decline in population and literacy. The Greeks
themselves have traditionally blamed this decline on an
invasion by another
wave of Greek people, the Dorians, although there is scant
archaeological evidence for this view.
The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1100
BC–800 BC) refers to the period of Greek history from
the presumed Dorian
invasion and end of
the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th
century BC to the rise of the first Greekcity-states in the 9th
century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in alphabeticGreek in the 8th
century BC.
The collapse of the Mycenaean coincided
with the fall of several other large empires in the near
east, most notably the Hittite and the Egyptian. The cause
may be attributed to an invasion of the sea people wielding
iron weapons. When the Dorians came down into Greece
they also were equipped with superior iron weapons,
easily dispersing the already weakened Mycenaeans. The
period that follows these events is collectively known
as the Greek Dark Ages.
Kings ruled throughout this period until
eventually they were replaced with an aristocracy, then
still later, in some areas, an aristocracy within an
aristocracy—an elite of the elite.
Warfare shifted from a focus on cavalry
to a great emphasis on infantry. Due to its cheapness of
production and local availability, iron replaced bronze
as the metal of choice in the manufacturing of tools and
weapons. Slowly equality grew among the different sects
of people, leading to the dethronement of the various
Kings and the rise of the family.
At the end of this period of stagnation,
the Greek civilization was engulfed in a renaissance
that spread the Greek world as far as the Black Sea and Spain. Writing
was relearned from the Phoenicians, eventually
spreading north into Italy and the Gauls.
Ancient Greece was an ancientcivilization belonging
to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic
period of the 8th
to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (ca. 600
AD).In
common usage it refers to all Greek history before the Roman
Empire, but
historians use the term more precisely. Some writers
include the periods of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, while others argue
that these civilizations were so different from later
Greek cultures that they should be classed separately.
Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to
begin with the date of the first Olympic
Games in 776 BC,
but most historians now extend the term back to about
1000 BC.
The traditional date for the end of the
Classical Ancient Greek period is the death of Alexander
the Great
in 323 BC. The period that follows is classed as Hellenistic. Not everyone treats the Classical
Ancient and Hellenic periods as distinct, however, and
some writers treat the Ancient Greek civilization as a
continuum running until the advent of Christianity in the 3rd
century AD.
Ancient Greece is considered by most
historians to be the foundational culture of Western
Civilization.
Greek culture was a powerful influence in the Roman
Empire, which
carried a version of it to many parts of Europe. Ancient
Greek civilization has been immensely influential on the
language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, art
and architecture of the modern world, particularly
during the Renaissance in Western
Europe and again during various neo-Classical revivals in
18th- and 19th-century Europe and the Americas.
In the 8th century BC, Greece began to
emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the
Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted
the Phoenician
alphabet,
modifying it to create the Greek
alphabet. From about
the 9th century BC, written records begin to appear.[11] Greece was
divided into many small self-governing communities, a
pattern largely dictated by Greek geography, where every
island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbours
by the sea or mountain ranges.[12]
The Archaic period can be understood as
the Orientalizing
period,
when Greece was at the fringe, but not under the sway,
of the budding Neo-Assyrian Empire. Greece
adopted significant amounts of cultural elements from
the Orient, in art as well as in religion and mythology.
Archaeologically, Archaic Greece is marked by Geometric
pottery.
The basic unit of politics in Ancient
Greece was the polis, sometimes
translated as city-state. "Politics" literally means "the
things of the polis". Each city was independent, at
least in theory. Some cities might be subordinate to
others (a colony traditionally deferred to its mother
city), some might have had governments wholly dependent
upon others (the Thirty
Tyrants in Athens was imposed
by Sparta following
the Peloponnesian
War), but the
titularly supreme power in each city was located within
that city. This meant that when Greece went to war
(e.g., against the Persian
Empire), it took
the form of an alliance going to war. It also gave ample
opportunity for wars within Greece between different
cities.
Two major wars shaped the Classical Greek
world. The Persian
Wars (500–448
BC) are recounted in Herodotus's Histories. By the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid
Persian Empire
ruler over all Greek city states and had made
territorial gains in the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper as well.
The Ionian Greek
cities revolted from the Persian
Empire, through a
chain of events, and were supported by some of the
mainland cities, eventually led by Athens. To punish mainland Greece for its
support of the Ionian cities (which uprising by that
time had already been quelled) Darius I launched
the First Persian invasion of
Greece, which
lasted from 492 BC till 490 BC. The Persian general Megabyzus
re-subjugated Thrace and
conquered Macedon in the early stages of the war,[13] but the war
eventually ended up with a Greek victory. Darius'
successor Xerxes I launched
the Second Persian invasion of
Greece. Even
though at a crucial point in the war almost all of
mainland Greece was briefly overrun (all territories
north of the Isthmus of Corinth)[14] the Greek
city states managed to turn this war into a victory too.
The notable battles of the Greco-Persian Wars include Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea.)
To prosecute the war and then to defend
Greece from further Persian attack, Athens founded the Delian
League in 477 BC.
Initially, each city in the League would contribute
ships and soldiers to a common army, but in time Athens
allowed (and then compelled) the smaller cities to
contribute funds so that it could supply their quota of
ships. Secession from the League could be punished.
Following military reversals against the Persians, the
treasury was moved from Delos to Athens,
further strengthening the latter's control over the
League. The Delian League was eventually referred to
pejoratively as the Athenian Empire.
In 458 BC, while the Persian Wars were
still ongoing, war broke out between the Delian League
and the Peloponnesian
League,
comprising Sparta and its
allies. After some inconclusive fighting, the two sides
signed a peace in 447 BC. That peace, it was stipulated,
was to last thirty years: instead it held only until 431
BC, with the onset of the Peloponnesian
War. Our main
sources concerning this war are Thucydides's History of the
Peloponnesian War and Xenophon's Hellenica.
The war began over a dispute between Corcyra and Epidamnus. Corinth intervened
on the Epidamnian side. Fearful lest Corinth capture the
Corcyran navy (second only to the Athenian in size),
Athens intervened. It prevented Corinth from landing on
Corcyra at the Battle of
Sybota, laid siege
to Potidaea, and
forbade all commerce with Corinth's closely situated
ally, Megara (the Megarian
decree).
There was disagreement among the Greeks
as to which party violated the treaty between the Delian
and Peloponnesian Leagues, as Athens was technically
defending a new ally. The Corinthians turned to Sparta
for aid. Fearing the growing might of Athens, and
witnessing Athens' willingness to use it against the
Megarians (the embargo would have ruined them), Sparta
declared the treaty to have been violated and the
Peloponnesian War began in earnest.
The first stage of the war (known as the
Archidamian War for the Spartan king, Archidamus II) lasted until 421 BC with the
signing of the Peace of
Nicias. The
Athenian general Pericles recommended that his city fight a
defensive war, avoiding battle against the superior land
forces led by Sparta, and importing everything needful
by maintaining its powerful navy. Athens would simply
outlast Sparta, whose citizens feared to be out of their
city for long lest the helots revolt.
This strategy required that Athens endure
regular sieges, and in 430
BC it was visited with an awful plague
that killed about a quarter of its people, including Pericles. With Pericles
gone, less conservative elements gained power in the
city and Athens went on the offensive. It captured
300–400 Spartan hoplites at the Battle of
Pylos. This
represented a significant fraction of the Spartan
fighting force which the latter decided it could not
afford to lose. Meanwhile, Athens had suffered
humiliating defeats at Delium and Amphipolis. The Peace
of Nicias concluded with Sparta recovering its hostages
and Athens recovering the city of Amphipolis.
Those who signed the Peace of Nicias in
421 BC swore to uphold it for fifty years. The second
stage of the Peloponnesian War began in 415 BC when
Athens embarked on the Sicilian
Expedition
to support an ally (Segesta) attacked
by Syracuse and to
conquer Sicily. Initially,
Sparta was reluctant, but Alcibiades, the Athenian general who had
argued for the Sicilian Expedition, defected to the
Spartan cause upon being accused of grossly impious acts
and convinced them that they could not allow Athens to
subjugate Syracuse. The campaign ended in disaster for
the Athenians.
Athens' Ionian possessions rebelled with
the support of Sparta, as advised by Alcibiades. In 411
BC, an oligarchical revolt in Athens held out the chance
for peace, but the Athenian navy, which remained
committed to the democracy, refused to accept the change
and continued fighting in Athens' name. The navy
recalled Alcibiades (who had been forced to abandon the
Spartan cause after reputedly seducing the wife of Agis II, a Spartan
king) and made him its head. The oligarchy in Athens
collapsed and Alcibiades reconquered what had been lost.
In 407 BC, Alcibiades was replaced
following a minor naval defeat at the Battle of
Notium. The
Spartan general Lysander, having fortified his city's naval
power, won victory after victory. Following the Battle of
Arginusae,
which Athens won but was prevented by bad weather from
rescuing some of its sailors, Athens executed or exiled
eight of its top naval commanders. Lysander followed
with a crushing blow at the Battle of
Aegospotami
in 405 BC which almost destroyed the Athenian fleet.
Athens surrendered one year later, ending the
Peloponnesian War.
In 346 BC, unable to prevail in its
ten-year war with Phocis, Thebes
called upon Philip II of Macedon for aid. Macedon quickly
forced the city states into being united by the League of
Corinth which led
to the conquering of the Persian Empire and the
Hellenistic Age had begun.
The Hellenistic period of Greek history
begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC
and ends with the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands
by Rome in 146 BC.
Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break
the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which
remained essentially unchanged until the advent of Christianity, it did mark the end of Greek
political independence.
During the Hellenistic period the
importance of "Greece proper" (that is, the territory of
modern Greece) within the Greek-speaking world declined
sharply. The great centres of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals
of Ptolemaic
Egypt and Seleucid
Syria. (See Hellenistic civilization for the
history of Greek culture outside Greece in this period.)
Athens and her allies revolted against Macedon upon
hearing that Alexander had died, but were defeated
within a year in the Lamian War. Meanwhile,
a struggle for power broke out among Alexander's
generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire
and the establishment of a number of new kingdoms (see
the Wars of the Diadochi). Ptolemy was left
with Egypt, Seleucus with the Levant, Mesopotamia, and points
east. Control of Greece, Thrace, and Anatolia was
contested, but by 298 BC the Antigonid
dynasty had
supplanted the Antipatrid.
Macedonian control of the city-states was
intermittent, with a number of revolts. Athens, Rhodes, Pergamum and other
Greek states retained substantial independence, and
joined the Aetolian
League as a means
of defending it and restoring democracy in their states,
where as they saw Macedon as a tyrannical kingdom
because of the fact they had not adopted democracy. The
Achaean League, while nominally subject to the Ptolemies was in
effect independent, and controlled most of southern
Greece. Sparta also
remained independent, but generally refused to join any
league.
In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded
the Greek cities to revolt against Macedon, in what
became the Chremonidean
War, after the
Athenian leader Chremonides. The cities were defeated and
Athens lost her independence and her democratic
institutions. This marked the end of Athens as a
political actor, although it remained the largest,
wealthiest and most cultivated city in Greece. In 225 BC
Macedon defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought
the Aegean islands,
except Rhodes, under its rule as well.
Sparta remained hostile to the Achaeans,
and in 227 BC invaded Achaea and seized
control of the League. The remaining Acheans preferred
distant Macedon to nearby Sparta, and allied with the
former. In 222 BC the Macedonian army defeated the
Spartans and annexed their city—the first time Sparta
had ever been occupied by a different state.
Philip V of Macedon was the
last Greek ruler with both the talent and the
opportunity to unite Greece and preserve its
independence against the ever-increasing power of Rome. Under his
auspices, the Peace of Naupactus (217 BC) brought conflict between
Macedon and the Greek leagues to an end, and at this
time he controlled all of Greece except Athens, Rhodes
and Pergamum.
In 215 BC, however, Philip formed an
alliance with Rome's enemy Carthage. Rome
promptly lured the Achaean cities away from their
nominal loyalty to Philip, and formed alliances with
Rhodes and Pergamum, now the strongest power in Asia Minor. The First
Macedonian War
broke out in 212 BC, and ended inconclusively in 205 BC,
but Macedon was now marked as an enemy of Rome.
In 202 BC, Rome defeated Carthage, and
was free to turn her attention eastwards. In 198 BC, the
Second
Macedonian War
broke out because Rome saw Macedon as a potential ally
of the Seleucid
Empire, the
greatest power in the east. Philip's allies in Greece
deserted him and in 197 BC he was decisively defeated at
the Battle of Cynoscephalae by the
Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus.
Luckily for the Greeks, Flamininus was a
moderate man and an admirer of Greek culture. Philip had
to surrender his fleet and become a Roman ally, but was
otherwise spared. At the Isthmian
Games in 196 BC,
Flamininus declared all the Greek cities free, although
Roman garrisons were placed at Corinth and Chalcis. But the freedom promised by Rome
was an illusion. All the cities except Rhodes were
enrolled in a new League which Rome ultimately
controlled, and aristocratic constitutions were favoured
and actively promoted.
Militarily, Greece itself declined to the
point that the Romans conquered
the land (168 BC onwards), though Greek culture would in
turn conquer Roman life. Although the period of Roman
rule in Greece is conventionally dated as starting from
the sacking of Corinth by the Roman Lucius
Mummius in 146 BC,
Macedonia had already come under Roman control with the
defeat of its king, Perseus, by the
Roman Aemilius
Paullus at Pydna in 168 BC.
The Romans divided the region into four
smaller republics, and in 146 BC Macedonia officially
became a province, with its capital at Thessalonica. The rest
of the Greek city-states gradually and eventually paid
homage to Rome ending their de jure autonomy as
well. The Romans left local administration to the Greeks without
making any attempt to abolish traditional political
patterns. The agora in Athens continued
to be the centre of civic and political life.
Caracalla's decree in AD 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana, extended
citizenship outside Italy to all free adult men in the
entire Roman
Empire,
effectively raising provincial populations to equal
status with the city of Rome itself. The
importance of this decree is historical, not political.
It set the basis for integration where the economic and
judicial mechanisms of the state could be applied
throughout the Mediterranean as was once done from
Latium into all Italy. In practice of course,
integration did not take place uniformly. Societies
already integrated with Rome, such as Greece, were
favored by this decree, in comparison with those far
away, too poor or just too alien such as Britain,
Palestine or Egypt.
Caracalla's decree did not set in motion
the processes that led to the transfer of power from
Italy and the West to Greece and the East, but rather
accelerated them, setting the foundations for the
millennium-long rise of Greece, in the form of the Eastern
Roman Empire,
as a major power in Europe and the Mediterranean in the Middle
Ages.
2. Greece
Timeline
8000 BCE
Mesolithic
Period
(8300-7000)
Earliest
evidence of burials found in Franchthi Cave in the
Argolid, Greece
7250 BCE
Evidence of
food producing economy, simple hut construction, and
seafaring in mainland Greece and the Aegean
7000 BCE
Neolithic
Period
(7000-3000
BCE)
First "Megaron
House" at Sesclo, in central Greece
5700 BCE
Evidence of
earliest fortifications at Dimini, Greece
The
cave was accidentally discovered in 1959 by Fillipos
Chatzaridis, a local shepherd looking for a spring. Early
estimates at the time placed the age of the hominid
remains to around 70,000 years old.[1]
A skull now known as the Petralona skull was estimated to
be about 700,000 years old by Aris Poulianos[2]
a date backed by geological analysis [3]
During
the 1980s, the age of the Petralona hominid estimated by
Poulianos was challenged by an article in Nature.
The scientists involved used electron
spin
resonance
measurements and dated the age of the skull to between
160,000 and 240,000 years old. [4]
However, Poulianos states that his excavations in the cave
since 1968 provide evidence of human occupation from the Pleistocene era.[1]
The Petralona hominid, specifically, was located in a
stratigraphic layer containing the most amount of tools
and traces of habitation. Poulianos states that the age of
the overall layer is approximately 670,000 years old,
based on electron spin resonance measurements.[1]
Further excavations at Petralona revealed two human
skeletons that were dated to be 800,000 years old.[5]
Today,
most academics who have analyzed the Petralona remains
classify the hominid as Homo erectus.[2]
However, the Archanthropus of Petralona has also
been classified as a Neanderthal (Homo
sapiens
neanderthalensis)
and as an early generic class of Homo sapiens. Some authors, on the
other hand, believe that the Petralona cranium is derived
from a unique class of hominids different from Homo
erectus. Runnels and van Andel summarise the situation as
such : "The only known hominid fossil in Greece that
may be relevant is the Petralona hominid, found by chance
in 1960 in a deep cavern in the Chalkidiki.
Controversy
surrounds
the interpretation of this cranium, and it has been
variously classified as Homo erectus, as a classic
Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), and as
an early representative of Homo sapiens in a
generalized sense (Day 1986: 91-95). The consensus among
paleoanthropologists today is that the cranium belongs to
an archaic hominid distinguished from Homo erectus,
and from both the classic Neanderthals and anatomically
modern humans (Day 1986: 95; Stringer, Howell, and
Melenitis 1979). Whatever the final classification may be,
the cranium has been provisionally dated to ca. 200-400
kyr (Day 1986: 94 Hennig et al. 1981, 1982; Wintle and
Jacobs 1982), and it is thus possible that the Petralona
hominid represents the lineage responsible for the
Thessalian Lower Paleolithic sites."[6]
Further
research
in the cave has yielded 4 isolated teeth,[7]
then two pre-human skeletons dated about 800,000 years,[8]
a great number of fossils of various species and what is
considered as the oldest traces of fire known to this day.[9]
The
fossils have been at the Geology School of the
Thessaloniki Aristotle University since 1960.[10]
Fossil
fauna
Fossils
from numerous species have been found in the cave:[11]
1Aris N. Poulianos. Pre-Sapiens
Man in Greece. In Current Anthropology, Vol.
22, No. 3, pp. 287-288. June 1981.
2Francis Spencer. History
of Physical Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. Taylor
& Francis, p. 454. 1997. ISBN
0-8153-0490-0.
3THE PETRALONA
HOMINID SITE: URANIUM-SERIES RE-ANALYSIS OF ‘LAYER
10’CALCITE AND ASSOCIATED PALAEOMAGNETIC ANALYSES,
A. G. LATHAM1 andH. P. SCHWARCZ2, Article first published
online: 23 AUG 2007.
4
G. J. Hennig, W. Herr, E. Webert and N. I. Xirotiris. ESR-dating
of the fossil hominid cranium from Petralona Cave,
Greece, in Nature, No 292, pp. 533-536. 06
August 1981. doi:10.1038/292533a0.
5
H.W. Catling. Archaeology in Greece, 1981-82. In Archaeological
Reports No. 28, pp. 3-62. 1981 - 1982.
6
Curtis Runnels and Tjeerd H. van Andel. The Lower and
Middle Paleolithic of Thessaly, Greece. In Journal
of Field Archaeology, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 299-317
(p. 315). Autumn 1993.
•The
Petralona Cave and Anthropological Museum, site de l'Association
Anthropological of Greece, presided by Aris Nickos
Poulianos, then by his son, and which has held the
concession for the exploration of the cave since the
beginning of the 1960s.
The cave was occupied from the Upper
Paleolithiccirca
38,000 BCE (and possibly earlier)[1]
through the Mesolithic and Neolithic
periods, with occasional short episodes of apparent
abandonment.[2] Last occupied around
3,000 BCE (Final Neolithic), it is one of the very
few settlements in the world that shows nearly continuous
human occupation for such an extended period of time, and
is one of the most thoroughly studied sites from the stone
age in southeastern Europe.[3]
Excavation History
Professor T.W. Jacobsen, Professor of Classical
Archaeology and Classical Studies at Indiana University,
began excavations at Franchthi Cave in 1967. The dig was
only intended to temporarily occupy Jacobsen, and his
fellow researcher, M.H. Jameson, for one short season,
while they waited for land use issues to be resolved at a
nearby site. But it soon became clear that Franchthi cave
was more important than they had anticipated.[4]
The excavation, overseen by Jacobsen, would continue for
nearly a decade, ending in 1976. Since then numerous
scholars have examined the extensive finds.[5]
Paleolithic
During much of its history Franchthi was
significantly further from the coastline than it is today,
due to lower sea levels that have since risen around
400 ft.[6] Thus, its inhabitants looked
out on a coastal plain that was slowly submerged over the
course of their occupation.[7]
During the Upper
Paleolithic
Franchthi Cave was seasonally occupied by a small group
(or groups), probably in the range of 25 - 30 people, who
mainly hunted wild ass and red deer,
carrying a stone tool kit of flintbladelets and scrapers.[8] Its use
as a campsite increased considerably after the Last
Glacial Maximum
(LGM), with occasional hiatus in the sequence of
occupation.[9]Obsidian from the island of Melos
appears at Franchthi as early as 15,000 years ago (13,000
BCE), offering the earliest evidence of seafaring and
navigational skills by anatomically modern humans in Greece.[10]
(There is evidence that suggests ancient mariners - such
as Homo
Erectus or Homo
Heidelbergensis
- may have reached Crete at
least 130,000 years ago.)[11][12]
Mesolithic
An apparent break in the occupation of Franchthi
cave occurred during the Younger Dryasclimate
cooling event,[13][14] after which a Mesolithic culture appeared as the world
settled into the warm Holoceneclimate that
continues today. The Mesolithic is
represented by only a few sites in Greece,
and, like Franchthi, nearly all of them are close to the
coast.[15] They did not rely as heavily on big
game as their predecessors, probably due to the changing climate
and environment;
instead they broadened their resource base to include a
variety of small
game, wild
plants, fish and mollusks.[16]
The evidence of increased fish bones and increased use of
obsidian from
Melos at
Franchthi during this period shows they were accomplished
seafarers.[17] There is a notable stretch
spanning several hundred years (circa 7,900 – 7,500 BCE)
when tuna
became a major part of the diet at Franchthi cave,[18]
implying deep sea fishing. It has also been suggested that
the tuna could have been caught by placing nets near the
shore.[19][20] A few graves have been found
buried in the cave during the Mesolithic that suggest care for the dead.[21]
Neolithic
The cave also contains some of the earliest
evidence for agriculture in Greece.
Around 7,000 BCE[22] the remains of
domesticated plants and animals are found among the usual
wild plant and animal species hunted and gathered during
the Mesolithic,
suggesting that either the inhabitants of Franchthi had
begun to practice agriculture or
were trading for seeds and meat with the Neolithic people who had recently arrived
from the Near East.[23]
There has been some debate about whether agriculture
developed locally in Greece, or
was introduced by colonists. It is now generally believed
that emigrants from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultures of the Near East
arrived by boat at the beginning of the seventh millennium
BCE to settle Greece(c.6,900
BCE), introducing agriculture.[24]
For some time the evidence from Franchthi was used as an
example in support of locally developed agriculture, but more detailed study of the
remains has demonstrated that the evidence supports the
foreign introduction of domesticated plants and animals.[25]
The Mesolithic
hunter gatherers of Greece
rapidly adopted the methods introduced to them by Neolithic
colonists, including at Franchthi Cave.[26]
During the Neolithic main
occupancy of the cave shifted to an area outside the
entrance, called the Paralia (the seaside),[27]
where terracing walls for growing crops were built.[28]
It is believed the inhabitants also occupied a village
below the Paralia, which is now submerged beneath the sea.
Several anthropomorphic and zoomorphicfigurines have
been recovered at Franchthi from the Neolithic era,[29] and it has been
suggested that the site may have served as a workshop for
making cockle-shell beads to trade with inland communities
during the Early Neolithic.[30] The cave and
the Paralia were abandoned around 3,000 BCE.
2Mary
C. Stiner, Natalie D. Munro (2011) "On the evolution of
diet and landscape during the Upper Paleolithic through
Mesolithic at Franchthi Cave (Peloponnese, Greece)",
Journal of Human Evolution p.619
3K.
Douka, C. Perles, H. Valladas, M. Vanhaeren, R.E.M.
Hedges, (2011) p.1133
4Colin
Renfrew (1994)"Review of Excavations at Franchthi Cave,
Greece by T.W. Jacobsen" Journal of Field Archaeology Vol
21, No. 3, pp. 378-379
5William
R. Farrand, (2003) "Depositional environments and site
formation during the Mesolithic occupations of Franchthi
Cave, Peloponnesos, Greece" The Greek Mesolithic: Problems
and Perspectives, The British School at Athens p.69
10N.
Laskaris, A. Sampson, F. Mavridis, I. Liritzis, (September
2011) "Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene seafaring in the
Aegean: new obsidian hydration dates with the SIMS-SS
method" Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 38,
Issue 9, pp.2475–2479
14Catherine
Perles, (2003) "The Mesolithic at Franchthi: an overview
of the data and problems" The Greek Mesolithic: Problems
and Perspectives, The British School at Athens p.80
15Cathrine
Perles, (2001) "The Early Neolithic In Greece" Cambridge
University Press p.22
25J.M.
Hansen (1992) "Franchthi cave and the beginnings of
agriculture in Greece and the Aegean." Prehistoire de
l'agriculture. Nouvelles approches experimentales et
ethnographiques, CNRS, Paris pp.231-47
26C.
Perles (2001) p.56
27C.
Perles (2001) pp.48-49
28C.
Perles (2001) p.292
29L.E.
Talalay (1993) "Deities, Dolls, and Devices. Neolithic
Figurines from Franchthi Cave, Greece" Excavations at
Franchthi Cave, Greece, fasc. 9, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington and Indianapolis
30C.
Perles (2001) pp.224-226
Bibliography
•Farrand,
William R. 1999. Depositional History of Franchthi
Cave, Fascicle 12: "Sediments, stratigraphy, and
chronology". Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press.
•Galanidou,
Nena and Perles, Catherine (editors). 2003. "The Greek
Mesolithic: Problems and Perspectives" London: The British
School at Athens
•Perles,
Catherine. 2001. "The Early Neolithic In Greece".
Cambridge University Press.
Franchthi
Cave
is a very large cave, overlooking what is now a small
inlet off the Aegean Sea in the southeastern Argolid
region of Greece, near the modern town of Koiladha. The
cave is the epitome of every archaeologist's dream--a site
constantly occupied for thousands of years, with wonderful
preservation of bones and seeds throughout. First occupied
during the early Upper Paleolithic sometime between 37,000
and 30,000 years ago, Franchthi Cave was the site of human
occupation, pretty much consistently up until about the
final Neolithic Period about 3000 BC.
Franchthi
Cave and the Early Upper Paleolithic
Franchthi's
deposits
measured over 11 meters (36 feet) in thickness. The oldest
layers (Stratum P-R in two trenches) belong to the Upper Paleolithic. A recent reanalysis and
new dates on the oldest three levels was reported in the
journal Antiquity in late 2011.
Stratum R (40-150 cm
thick), lower part is Aurignacian, upper part Gravettian,
28,000-37,000 cal BP
Stratum Q (5-9 cm),
volcanic tephra representing ash from the Campanian
Ignimbrite, Aurignacian lithic materials, rabbit and cat
bones, 33,400-40,300 cal BP-
Stratum P (1.5-2 meters
thick), undistinguished lithic industry, poorly-preserved
mammal bone, 34,000-41,000 cal BP
The
Campanian Ignimbrite (CI Event) is a volcanic tephra
thought to have occurred from an eruption in the
Phlegraean Fields of Italy which occurred ~39,000-40,000
years before the present (cal BP). Noted in many
Aurignacian sites across Europe, notably at Kostenki.
Shells
of Dentalium spp, Cyclope neritea and Homolopoma
sanguineum were were recovered from all three UP
levels; some appear to be perforated.
Calibrated
dates
on the shell (with consideration for the marine effect)
are in roughly the correct chronostratigraphic sequence
but vary between ca 28,440-43,700 years before the present
(cal BP).
Significance
of Franchthi Cave
There
are many reasons why Franchthi Cave is an important site;
three of them are the length and period of occupation, the
quality of preservation of the seed and bone assemblages,
and the fact that it was excavated in modern times.
Length
and period of occupation.
The site was occupied, more or less continuously, for
about 25,000 years, during which time came the invention
of agriculture and pastoralism. What that means is that
changes that were wrought by these phenomenal leaps in
human understanding can be traced at one place, by
examining differences between different layers.
Quality
of preservation.
In
most of the layers excavated at Franchthi cave, remnants
of animals and plants in the form of bone, shell, seed,
and pollen were preserved. These kinds of artifacts have
provided researchers with a wealth of information
concerning diet and the course of domestication.
Modern
excavation techniques.
Franchthi
cave
was excavated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by the
Universities of Indiana and Pennsylvania and the American
School in Classical Studies at Athens. These researchers
paid attention to stratigraphic layers, and kept much of
the faunal and floral materials that would have been
ignored or thrown away in earlier times.
Franchthi
Cave
was excavated under the direction of T.W. Jacobsen of
Indiana University, between 1967 and 1979. Investigations
since then have concentrated on the millions of artifacts
recovered during the excavations.
·Deith MR, and Shackleton
JC. 1988. The contribution of shells to site
interpretation: Approaches to shell material from
Franchthi Cave. In: Bintlinff JL, Davidson DA, and Grant
EG, editors. Conceptual Issues in Environmental
Archaeology. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh
University Press. p 49-58.
·Jacobsen T. 1981.
Franchthi Cave and the beginnings of settled village life
in Greece. Hesperia 50:1-16.
·Shackleton JC. 1988.
Marine molluscan remains from Franchthi Cave. Excavations
at Franchthi Cave, Greece. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
·Shackleton JC, and van
Andel TH. 1986. Prehistoric shore environments, shellfish
availability, and shellfish gathering at Franchthi,
Greece. Geoarchaeology 1(2):127-143.
Sesklo (Greek: Σέσκλο is a village near the city of Volos, in Thessaly
(central Greece), in
the regional unit of Magnesia. It is part of the municipal unit Aisonia.
Nearby, a Neolithic
settlement was discovered at the end of the 19th century
and the first excavations were made by Greek archaeologist, Christos
Tsountas.
The Neolithic settlement was covering an area of
about 200,000 m2 in its peak period around 5000 BC and
comprised about 500 - 800 houses with a population of
perhaps up to 5,000 people.[2][3]
Sesklo
culture
This settlement gives its name to the first Neolithic
culture of Europe,
which inhabited Thessaly and
parts of Macedonia
(Greece).
The oldest fragments researched at Sesklo place the
civilization's development as far back as 6850 BC with a
+/- 660 year margin of error. The first settlements, which
predate the 6th millennium BCE, are known as proto-Sesklo
(main group) and pre-Sesklo
(secondary groups with differentiated characteristics) and
they show an advanced agriculture and a very early use of
pottery that rivals in age those of the Near East.
The peoples of Sesklo built their villages on
hillsides near fertile valleys, where they grew wheat and
barley, also keeping herds of mainly sheep and goats,
though they also had cows, pigs and dogs.
Their houses were small, with one or two rooms, built of wood or mudbrick in
the early period. Later the construction technique becomes more homogeneous
and all homes are built of adobe with stone
foundations. In the 6th millennium BCE, the first houses
with two levels are found and there is also a clear
intentional urbanism.
The lower levels of proto-Sesklo lack pottery, but
the Sesklo people soon developed very fine glazed
earthenware (cups and bowls) that they decorated with
geometric paintings in red or brown colours. In the Sesklo
period new types of ware are incorporated. At the end of
the period the decoration evolves to flame motifs.
Pottery of this 'classic' Sesklo style was also used in Western
Macedonia
as at Servia.
When investigating whether these settlers could be
migrants from Asia Minor, there are many similarities
between the rare Asia Minor pottery and Greek Early
Neolithic pottery, but these similarities seem to exist
between all early pottery from Near Eastern regions. The
repertoire of shapes is not very different, but the Asia
Minor vessels seem to be deeper than their Thessalian
counterparts. Shallow, slightly open bowls are
characteristic of the Sesklo culture and absent in
Anatolian settlements. The ring base was almost unknown in
Anatolia, whereas flat and plano-convex bases were common
there. Altogether, the appearance of the vessels is
different. The earliest figurines' appearance is also
completely different.
The very rare pottery from levels XII and XI at Çatal Hüyük closely resembles in shape the very
coarse ware of Early Neolithic I from Sesklo, but the
paste is quite different, having a partly vegetable
temper. This pottery is contemporaneous with the better
made ware and not a predecessor of the Thessalian
material. On the whole, the artifactual data argues in
favour of a largely independent indigenous development of
the Greek Neolithic settlements.
Available data also indicates that the
domestication of cattle occurred at Argissa
as early as 6300 BC during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.[4]
The non-pottery bearing levels at Sesklo contained bone
fragments of domesticated cattle too. The earliest
occurrence reported in the Near East is at Çatal Hüyük, in stratum VI, dating around 5750
BC, though it may have been present in stratum XII too -
somewhere around 6100 BC. This indicates that the
domestication of cattle was indigenous on the Greek
mainland.
One significant characteristic of this culture is
the abundance of statuettes of women, often pregnant,
probably connected to the widely hypothesized prehistoric
fertility cult. Whatever the case, these abundant
sculptures are present in all the Balkanic and most of the
Danubian Neolithic complex form many millennia, though
they cannot be considered exclusive to this area. Marija
Gimbutas even mentions a gorgon mask from the Sesklo
culture.[5]
The Sesklo culture is crucial in the expansion of
the Neolithic into Europe. Dating and research points to
this Sesklo's influence on other Balkanic (Karanovo I-II and Starčevo-Körös) cultures which seem to originate
here, and who in turn gave rise to the important Danubian
Neolithic current. Also, it is though that the separate
pre-Sesklo settlements can be, at least partly,
responsible for the origin of the Mediterranean Neolithic
(Cardium
pottery). So
it can be said that, with some geographically isolated
exceptions, the European Neolithic seems to originate in
and around Sesklo.
The "invasion theory" states that the Sesklo
culture lasted more than one full millennium up until 5000
BC when it was violently conquered by people of the Dimini
culture. The Dimini culture in this theory is considered
different from that found at Sesklo. However, Professor Ioannis Lyritzis provides a different story
pertaining to the final fate of the "Seskloans". He, along
with R. Galloway, compared ceramic materials from both
Sesklo and Dimini utilizing thermoluminescence dating
methods. He discovered that the inhabitants of the
settlement in Dimini appeared around 4800 BC, four
centuries before the fall of the Sesklo civilization (ca.
4400 BC). Lyritzis concluded that the "Seskloans" and
"Diminians" coexisted for a period of time.
•Liritzis.I
(1981)
Dating by thermoluminescence: Application to Neolithic
settlement of Dimini. Anthropologika, 2, 37-48.(in Greek
with English summary)
•Liritzis,
Y
and Galloway, R.B (1982) Thermoluminescence dating of
Neolithic Sesklo and Dimini, Thessaly, Greece. P.A.C.T
Journal, 6, 450-459.
•Liritzis,
Y
and Dixon, J (1984) Cultural contacts between Neolithic
settlements of Sesklo and Dimini, Thessaly.
Anthropologika, 5, 51-62 (in Greek, with complete English
version sent on request)
The
aim of this paper is to introduce the human
factor, in the shape of our Palaeolithic past,
into the
study
of Balkan biodiversity and to identify those
parts of the story of Pleistocene hominids in
the
Balkans
that are most relevant to this study.The
paper’s temporal perspective will thus be a long
one,
since
this period encompassed many thousands of years,
witnessing the alternation of cold and warm
stages
and the geographic restriction and expansion of
various plant and animal populations. Against
this
periodically changing Ice Age background there
took place the arrival of ancient hominids in
the
Balkans,
the extinction of certain species and the
arrival and subsequent expansion of our species,
Homo
sapiens , through even the most remote of upland
regions, formerly inaccessible. The Balkan
Peninsula,
the south-eastern entrance to Europe, is a
region of critical concern in the process of
reconstructing
ancient European history. As one of the many
pieces in the European hominid mosaic,
the
Balkan record will be discussed here in
conjunction with the major issues of early
European
prehistory.
The
story of ancient hominids in this part of the
world is woven from many different threads:
emergence
and extinction, arrival and colonisation, social
life, subsistence patterns, settlement patterns,
demography
and more. All of these threads have to do with
the past, yet they are woven together by
means
of techniques and motivations shaped by the
present: the methodological tools developed by
the
archaeological
and biological disciplines and the questions
that are currently regarded as of particular
interest.
I have chosen to follow the thread of the
history of hominid presence in this area, a
theme that
will
be dealt with within three subheadings:
speciation, variation and adaptation.
SPECIATION
Many
of you must be familiar with scenarios of human
evolution such as the one represented in Figure
1.
This is a typical example of what was until very
recently considered to be a scientifically
correct
visual
reconstruction of the sequence of major human
evolutionary events. Such images are
representative
of the main paradigms that have informed
research into early humans. This approach
does
not ignore biodiversity altogether, but reduces
it to a neat linear sequence consisting of a
limited
number
of species. The image overlooks the possibility
that more than one hominid species may have
existed
at the same time and assigns the business of
evolution exclusively to our white male
ancestors,
female
or non-white hominids generally being
conspicuous by their absence. The scheme of
Figure 1,
the
product of a western, male-dominated tradition
of palaeoanthropological research, conveniently
obscures
the considerable difficulties faced by
taxonomists of human fossils, who must
distinguish
morphological
variation within a single species from variation
between different species and assign
fragmentary
elements of ancient skeletons to discrete
species according to hard-tissue characteristics
alone
(Tattersall, 1986). All the skeletal and cranial
remains found on the Balkan Peninsula have been
identified
as belonging to one of three hominid taxa: Homo
heidelbergensis , H. neanderthalensisand
H.
sapiens .
In
phylogenetic terms the earliest human species
present in the Balkans was Homo heidelbergensis,
represented
by the Petralona skull (Figure 2). This specimen
was discovered accidentally by a villager
in
the homonymous cave in northern Greece in 1960.
The skull was well protected by the stalagmitic
material
that had accumulated on its surface, and is as a
result one of the best preserved European
Middle
Pleistocene crania we have. Despite claims to
the contrary, no postcranial remains that can
safely
be attributed to the same hominid have been
recovered from the cave. The Petralona site is
an
impressive
karstic formation, 300 m a.s.l., at the foot of
Mount Katsika in Chalkidiki. Excavations
carried
out in various parts of the cave long after the
discovery of the skull revealed a long
stratified
sequence
rich in macro-faunal and micro-faunal remains,
with some lithic and bone artefacts. The
thoroughness
with which the cave’s fauna have been documented
(Kretzoi & Poulianos, 1981; Kurtén
&
Poulianos, 1977, 1981) is in marked contrast to
the treatment of the artefacts, concerning which
we
have
as yet no detailed publication, although
photographs and illustrations have appeared
sporadically
(Poulianos,
1971, 1978, 1982).
For
many years the species, the context and the
period to which the skull should be assigned
were
some
of the most bitterly debated questions in Balkan
prehistory. This controversy, which divided the
scientific
community, students and the general public,
damaged careers and aroused bitter resentment,
was
not confined to the boundaries of scientific
meetings and journals, but frequently overflowed
into
the
magistrates’ courts. Today it has been
established beyond all doubt that the Petralona
specimen
should
be classified as Homo heidelbergensis , a
species whose fossils have been found in both
Africa
and
Europe (previously referred to in some
literature as ‘European Homo heidelbergensis ’,
‘African
archaic
Homo sapiens ’ or ‘archaic Homo sapiens ’). The
European sample consists of cranial and
skeletal
remains from Arago, Atapuerca, Boxgrove,
Bilzingsleben, Mauer, Petralona, Steinheim and
Swanscombe.
The cranial remains suggest an average cranial
capacity of 1100cc, but the fragmentary
nature
of the postcranial finds does not permit
detailed reconstruction of H. heidelbergensis ’
anatomy.
Deriving
its name from the specimen (a lower jaw) found
in a sand quarry at Mauer, near
Heidelberg,
in 1907 (Schoetensack, 1908), Homo
heidelbergensisis widely considered to have evolved
from
H. erectusabout 500 ka. Homo erectuswas as
far as we know the first species to leave
Africa, at
some
time not longer than 1.7 Ma, and spread as far
afield as China and Java. It is not clear,
however,
whether
erectusmade
it as far as Europe and there formed an early
population that later evolved into
heidelbergensis(a
question that applies equally to the Balkans) or
whether heidelbergensisitself
evolved
in Africa, then became the first hominid to
populate Europe (Gowlett, 1999). A. Templeton’s
recent
analysis of genetic data identifies two other
major hominid expansions outwards from Africa
after
the original spread of H. erectus(Templeton,
2002). This new model of human evolution, which
places
the second expansion between 840 and 420 ka, is
compatible with the significant changes that
appear
in both the archaeological and the fossil record
during this period (Gowlett, 1999): the first
emergence
of Acheulean technology in Eurasia and an
increase in average cranial capacity.
We
know that both Africa and Europe had
heidelbergensispopulations about 400 ka, but do not
know
how long ago the Petralona hominid lived.
Various Lower and Middle Pleistocene dates,
estimated
on the basis of either the faunal evidence or
the speleothems (Ikeya, 1980; Poulianos, 1982;
Shen
& Yokoyama, 1986), have been proposed for
strata excavated in various areas of the cave
some
time
after the removal of the skull. Useful though
these dates may be, they cannot be taken as
reliable
measures
of the age of the hominid remains, since the
skull was recovered in a manner that left the
original
context of its deposition and discovery
extremely uncertain and thus impeded any
subsequent
attempt
to date it. The most reliable dates that have
been obtained for the Petralona hominid are
based
on
calculations of the age of the calcitic crust on
the skull’s surface. This approach places the
Petralona
hominid
in the later Middle Pleistocene (Grün, 1996;
Hennig et al. , 1982; Latham & Schwarcz,
1992).
The proper
dating of the Petralona hominid is linked to the
question of early hominid arrival in
Europe.
This issue has given rise to two hypotheses,
popularly termed the ‘long’ and the ‘short
chronology’
(Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten, 1994). The
former claims that there is sufficient evidence,
both
archaeological and palaeontological, to prove
that hominids were present in Europe prior to
the
Brunhes/Matuyama
boundary (777 ka) and in some places from before
1.5 Ma. The latter raises three
separate
objections to the theory of a long chronology,
querying the real ages of certain allegedly
early
sites,
the authenticity of the artefacts found at some
sites and the actual species of the various
remains
claimed
to be those of hominids. This theory asserts
that the first unequivocal evidence of hominid
presence
only appears in the record from ca . 500 ka
onwards. Although its criticisms are valid for
most
areas
of Europe, the short chronology model fails to
account for the Iberian Peninsula, where
uncontested
evidence has been found (at Gran Dolina,
Atapuerca and possibly Fuente Nueva 3) for
hominid
presence dating from around 800 k yr. BP. The
data we have suggest that hominids did indeed
reach
the SW gateway to Europe early on. The question
of whether or not something similar may have
happened
at the other end, the SE gateway, must for the
moment remain open. It is nonetheless worth
mentioning
the argument, unsupported by any hard evidence,
that the earliest hominids to reach Iberia
could
have done so by crossing the straits of
Gibraltar. This would of course mean that early
dates in
Iberia
did not necessarily imply early dates elsewhere
in Europe.
Amongst
the Balkan fossils sharing a number of
anthropometric and morphological characteristics
with
the Petralona specimen is one of the two skulls
found in Apidima Cave A, one of the many karstic
formations
on the steep coast near Areopolis in southern
Greece. The skulls, ΛΑΟ 1/Σ 1 and ΛΑΟ 1/Σ 2,
were
embedded in a single block of hard breccia that
filled a recess in the inner cave. This block
was
extracted
from the site in one piece so that the skulls
might be worked free of it under laboratory
conditions.
The heavy overlying sediments have damaged and
distorted the skulls. Of the two,
ΛΑΟ
1/Σ 2 is the better preserved, lending itself to
comparison with other pre-sapienscranial
fossils. It
exhibits
a number of affinities with the Petralona skull,
but also several differences in the cranial
vault
and
facial skeleton (Pitsios & Liebhaber, 1995).
In view of these differences, pending the
complete
extraction
of the second skull from the surrounding
breccia, the excavator has proposed that ΛΑΟ 1/Σ
2
should
be classified as belonging to an archaic group
with traits transitional between those of Homo
erectusand H.
sapiens(Pitsios,
2000) that he has provisionally named H.
(sapiens) taenarius . On the
basis
of the geological context and the morphology of
the better-preserved fossil, he has suggested a
date
of between 300 and 100 ka BP (Pitsios &
Liebhaber, 1995). Radiometric techniques will be
required
to evaluate the age of these hominids more
precisely. Clarification of their species will
have to
wait
until the second specimen has been worked clear
of the breccia, and must of course take into
account
the latest archaeological and genetic evidence,
which does not support the multiregional
hypothesis
of modern human evolution (see below for a more
detailed discussion).
In
phylogenetic terms the second earliest hominid
species found in the Balkans is Homo
neanderthalensis
, represented by the fossil collections from the
caves of Krapina and Vindija, both in
the
Hrvatsko Zagorje, NW Croatia. This hominid,
whose remains are restricted to Europe and
western
Asia,
and possibly North Africa (e.g.Haua
Fteah), is known for its distinctive anatomy
(fairly short
stature
and robust build). Neanderthals lived in Europe
between about 130 ka and 30 ka. They are
generally
considered to have evolved through regional
differentiation. According to this view the
Sahara
desert acted as a natural barrier promoting
hominid isolation and speciation,
heidelbergensis
populations
north of the Sahara giving rise to the
Neanderthals, and those south of the Sahara
evolving
into
modern humans (Beaumont et al. , 1978; Stringer
& MacKie, 1996). According to Gamble the
traits
of the fossil human crania found at Sima de los
Huesos, Atapuerca, in Spain support the view
that
the
Neanderthals in Europe evolved locally from
heidelbergensisgroups (Gamble, 1999). The
hominids
found at La Sima have an anatomy that combines
African erectusfeatures with others that
show
some degree of adaptation to the colder European
climate. This combination of elements is
suggestive
of a species that is developing into the
Neanderthal.
Recent
genetic research has lent further support to
this theory by extracting and analysing mtDNA
sequences
from three Neanderthal samples: the original
specimen found in the Feldhofer cave in
Germany
(Krings et al. , 1997), a child found in the
Mezmaiskaya cave in the Caucasus (Ovchinnikov
et
al. , 2000) and a specimen from the Vindija cave
(Krings et al. , 2000). These three have given
us
some
idea of the Neanderthals’ genetic makeup. Like
modern humans, they seem to have exhibited
very
little genetic variation, suggesting that the
original population from which they developed
was
small
(Krings et al. , 1997, 2000). The same studies
have shown the Neanderthal genome to have
differed
considerably from that of modern humans.
Although modern humans and Neanderthals share a
common
ancestry, the Neanderthals are thought to have
become separated from the ancestors of
modern
humans about 600 to 700 ka, although this date
is based on the DNA clock and should
therefore
be treated with caution.The
largest collection of Neanderthal remains ever
found at a single European site was discovered
over a century ago in the Krapina rockshelter,
at the foot of Hušnjak, a sandstone cliff 120m
above sea level in northern Croatia. Excavations
began in the last year of the 19thcentury
and were completed in 1905 by D. Gorjanović –
Kramberger (1902, 1906). His field technique,
which aimed to expose the horizontal
distribution of the finds following the
rockshelter’s natural stratigraphy, was
accompanied by detailed recording of the
position and depth of each fossil find
(Karavanić , 2000). 5000 archaeological finds
were recovered.
Between
the early Gorjanović -Kramberger publications
and the 1990s these finds received little
archaeological
attention (but see Miracle in press; Simek,
1991; Simek & Smith, 1997). Krapina,
nonetheless,
immediately became well known for its
palaeoanthropological remains. A recent study
has
shown
that these are part of the cranium of an adult
female and about 800 fragments belonging to
between
12 and 28 individuals aged from infancy to
adulthood (Radovč ić et al. , 1988; Smith,
1982).
Krapina
is unique amongst sites containing human fossils
in having yielded the remains of what was
almost
certainly a biological population of
Neanderthals. Mousterian artefacts and faunal
remains were
also
found in the hominid zone. ESR and U-series
dates obtained using tooth enamel from the
Krapina
hominids
suggest that this population lived over a period
of up to fifty thousand years, with a mean
date
of ca . 130 ka (Rink et al. , 1995).
The
state of preservation of the Krapina sample has
raised many questions about the conditions and
context
of its deposition. The fossils are highly
fragmented and disarticulated; some have been
exposed
to
fire and others bear on their surfaces what
appear to be scratch or cut marks. It is,
moreover,
impossible
to associate any of the postcranial bones with
cranial or dental remains (Kricun et al ., 1999)
or
indeed to assign any two anatomical parts to the
same individual. Although finds from all over
the
Neanderthal
distribution area have made it clear that some
Neanderthal groups buried their dead in
caves,
there is no indication that the Krapina hominids
were buried intentionally. The questions of how
so
many bones came to be incorporated into the
Krapina cave sediments and why they are so
fragmented
thus demand an answer. Gorjanović -Kramberger
responded to these questions by
hypothesising
that the Krapina Neanderthals practised
cannibalism, a suggestion that has received both
support
and severe criticism. Alternative hypotheses
attribute the condition of the bones either to
taphonomic
factors (Trinkaus, 1985) or to postmortem
treatment of the corpses in preparation for a
secondary
burial ritual (Russell, 1986a, b). This issue
remains a murky one, but the Krapina finds have
shed
light on several other aspects of Neanderthal
economic and social life. Miracle’s study of
subsistence
practices at Krapina finds that the Merck’s
rhino bones found in the cave, some with signs
of
surface modification or burning, demonstrate an
age distribution that suggests systematic
selection
of
young-juvenile animals, which would have had to
be separated from their mothers by means of some
well
planned strategy. His study thus argues for
advanced ways of procuring meat that would have
required
considerable co-ordination and collective effort
by the Neanderthal groups (Miracle, in press).
The
second major Balkan sample of Neanderthal
fossils is from Vindija, a limestone cave in the
Hrvatsko
Zagorje, 50 km from Krapina. This site contained
sediments that were rich in archaeological
material
and human fossils. Of the Vindija hominid
sample, 40 specimens from layer G3 and 4
specimens
from layer G1, all of which are postcranial or
cranial fragments or teeth, have been
identified
as belonging to Homo neanderthalensis(Malez
et al. , 1980). Despite their fragmentary
condition,
these fossils have told us much about the life
and dietary habits of the Vindija Neanderthals
and
about the time at which they lived. This
population was more lightly built (gracile) than
the
Neanderthals
in other parts of Europe (Smith, 1982) and most
of the protein in its diet was of animal
origin;
in other words, these groups subsisted largely
on meat (Richards et al ., 2000).
The
lowermost Vindija sequence (level K) overlaps in
time with some of the Krapina Mousterian,
but
the G complex in which the Neanderthal remains
were found has produced dates that seem rather
recent.
The most reliable dates obtained are those for
the upper level, G1: 33,000+400 yr. BP, obtained
from
a bear bone, and 29,080+400 yr. BP and
28,020+360 yr. BP, obtained directly from
Neanderthal
bones
(Karavanić , 1995; Smith et al. , 1999). The
Vindija population would seem from this to have
been
amongst the last surviving Neanderthal groups,
along with the late Neanderthals of the
Zafarraya
cave
in southern Spain (Tattersall, 1999) and those
of the Mezmaiskaya cave in the northern Caucasus
(Golovanova
et al. , 1999). It is interesting to note that
Wolpoff’s reaction to the results of ancient DNA
analysis
was to question on morphological grounds whether
the Mezmaiskaya infant was really a
Neanderthal,
or a modern human (Hawks & Wolpoff, 2001).
Observing the conjunction of these
apparently
late dates with this population’s overall
morphology and lack of robustness compared to
other
western European Neanderthals, some researchers
suggested that the Vindija fossils belonged to a
group
in a state intermediate between that of the
majority of central European Neanderthals and
that of
early
Upper Palaeolithic humans (Smith, 1982). In
other words, the hypothesis was advanced that
the
type
represented by the Vindjia population was a
transitional stage between Neanderthal and
modern
humans
(Malez et al. , 1980). This hypothesis was
tenable within the context of the multiregional
theory
of
modern human evolution, founded partly upon
empirical data concerning the Vindija
Neanderthals.
According
to this theory, modern human populations were
descended from local populations of Homo
erectusor H.
ergasterthat
spread out of Africa into Eurasia at least 1 Ma
and evolved locally and
independently
into the various archaic H. sapiensof the
Old World (Thorne & Wolpoff, 1992). Modern
European
populations thus evolved from Neanderthal ones.
More recent research using genetic (e.g.
Cann et
al. , 1987) and archaeological (e.g . Yellen et
al ., 1995) evidence indicated, however, that it
was
more
probable that modern humanity was of African
origin. This suggested that Stringer and Gamble
(1993)
might be right in seeing the Vindija
population’s lack of robustness as the result
either of intraspecies variation (in other
words, this particular group of Neanderthals was
simply physically smaller
on
average than most other groups) or of
interbreeding with contemporaneous modern
humans. The
latter
hypothesis was made more tenable by the fact
that level G1, in which some hominid specimens
were
found, also contained an industry that was
distinctively Early Upper Palaeolithic
(Aurignacian)
and a
few bone artefacts. This created a case for a
possible association of Neanderthal groups with
material
culture created by modern humans (Karavanić ,
1995; Karavanić& Smith, 1998). Too many
unresolved
issues surrounded Vindija’s stratigraphy to
allow this matter to be decided on an
archaeological
or anthropological basis.
The
question of the Vindija hominids’ species was
clarified by analysing the mtDNA sequence
extracted
from a bone found in level G3. This sequence
differed in only nine respects from that
extracted
from the Feldhofer cave specimen, but showed 35
differences from sequences extracted from
modern
humans, leaving us in no doubt that the Vindija
hominids were definitely Neanderthals (Krings
et
al. , 1997, 2000). The morphological variation
observed in the Vindija fossils is therefore
probably
best
explained not as the outcome of a speciation
process, but as an instance of just such
intra-species
variation
as is clearly visible in modern human
populations (compare, for example, the anatomy
of an
Inuit
Eskimo with that of a Masai).
Genetic
investigation has likewise contributed to a
better understanding of the ancestry of modern
humanity.
Molecular research on nuclear and mtDNA shows
that of modern African populations to
have
the greatest variability, suggesting that the
modern human genome first evolved in this area
of the
world
(Cann et al. , 1987; Goldstein et al. , 1995;
Harpending et al. , 1993; Rogers & Jorde,
1995).
Although
the process by which our species evolved has yet
to be worked out in greater detail by means
of
fossil, archaeological and molecular analysis
(see Brooks, 1996 for discussion), current
thinking is
therefore
basically that Homo sapiensevolved
from a small founder population in sub-Saharan
Africa
and
from this region spread outwards to the rest of
the world. Templeton’s model assumes that
interbreeding,
rather than replacement, should be regarded as
the key to the human evolutionary
process,
gene flow and territorial expansion leading to
genetic interchange between human populations
(Templeton,
2002). His analysis places the third hominid
expansion out of Africa between 150 and 80
ka.
It is
not clear when modern humans first arrived in
the Balkans, partly because so few fossil
hominid
remains have been found there (Table 1, Figure
3) and partly because the correct dating of this
region’s
early modern human record is problematic. The
ages calculated for Bacho Kiro layer 11 are
too
imprecise to be of much use in this connection;
we have no radiometric dates for other sites
such as
Apidima
cave Γ , while in the case of other sites such
as Temnata layer 4 the dates obtained using
different
techniques (TL and 14 C) are inconsistent
(Kozlowski, 1996). Amongst the earliest human
remains
found to exhibit distinctively modern traits are
a fragment of a mandible with molar, found in
Bacho
Kiro layer 11 (Bulgaria), that dates from
between 37 and >43 k yr. BP (Table 1). The
ages of
the
stratum in which modern human remains have been
found and of those containing the remains of
the
Vindija Neanderthals do, however, make it clear
that Neanderthal and modern human populations
co-existed
in the Balkans for some part of the period
between approximately 40 and 28 k yr. BP.
The
Balkan Homo sapienssample
dating from the Pleistocene is smaller than the
Neanderthal
sample
and tells us little about past pathology,
demography or diet (Table 1); incidentally, the
number
of
modern human remains increases exponentially in
sites that date from the early Holocene, when
formal
disposal of the dead in caves, in settlements or
on the peripheries of settlements became a more
regular
and widespread practice. Despite the limitations
of these fossil remains, however, our picture of
the
modern human groups that lived in the Balkans
during the Pleistocene is complemented by the
richer
archaeological record of the period between 40
and 10 k yr. BP. This brings us to the next
issue
under
discussion: variation in cultural remains.
VARIATION
The
picture of human evolution that we see in Figure
1 demonstrates another implicit assumption that
has
informed Palaeolithic research almost from its
inception. This assumption was based upon the
premise
that the morphological variation seen in the
lithic industries recovered was directly related
to
hominid
variation. A lithic industry is the set of stone
tools, together with cores and other waste
products
of the knapping process, recovered from a site.
Certain human species were associated with
particular
lithic industries and the archaeological record
of each of the three major subdivisions of the
Palaeolithic
was in effect assigned to a different hominid,
the Aurignacian and Epigravettian industries
of
the Upper Palaeolithic being bestowed upon Homo
sapiens , the Mousterian industries of the
Middle
Palaeolithic
upon H. neanderthalensisand
the Oldowan and Acheleuan industries of the
Lower
Palaeolithic
upon H. habilisand H. erectus . In recent years,
however, developments in genetic
research,
refinements in archaeological recovery and
dating techniques and the discovery of a large
number
of human fossils in Africa and the Near East
have changed the picture radically. It has
become
clear
that many more hominid species evolved during
the Pleistocene than had previously been
thought,
that some of these co-existed in time and space
and that some of them shared the same
technology
and material culture.
Biological
events of speciation and extinction do not by
any means fall neatly within the traditional
Palaeolithic
subdivisions (i.e . Lower, Middle, Upper),
instead frequently crossing their boundaries.
For
instance,
Vindija shows us that Neanderthal groups
survived in what is today Croatia until after 30
k yr.
BP,
well into the Upper Palaeolithic. By this time
modern humans had been established elsewhere in
the
Balkans (in the caves of Bacho Kiro and Temnata,
in what is today Bulgaria, and in Kleisoura cave
1, in
Greece, for example) for many millennia
(Kozlowski 1996; Koumouzelis et al. , 2001).
Likewise,
if
the late dates obtained for the Petralona
hominid are valid (Grün, 1996), these together
with the early
dates
calculated for the Krapina fossils (Rink et al.
, 1995) permit the hypothesis that during the
last part
of
the Middle Pleistocene H. heidelbergensisand H.
neanderthalensismay have lived side by side on
different
parts of the peninsula.
The
deconstruction of the idea that biological
variation equates to variation in material
culture has
rendered
the Lower–Middle–Upper Palaeolithic scheme
inadequate to the task of signifying industrial
diversity.
This scheme, developed within the intellectual
milieu of the late 19thcentury,
today fails to
account
for the temporal and regional peculiarities of
ancient hominid manifestations. Dispensing with
the
old scheme is, of course, easier than replacing
it: a daunting task, since the generic and
global
character
of the old scheme made it both flexible and
widely applicable. At present a more effective
and
refined, though not purely archaeological,
framework for discussing the archaeology of the
Palaeolithic
in the northern hemisphere is the Marine Oxygen
Isotope Record, which acts as the global
standard
for reconstructing Quaternary chronology and
climate. This record replaces the old geological
scheme
of Glacials and Interglacials rather than the
scheme linking industries with hominid types.
The
Isotope
Record is only as effective or as ineffective as
our ability to correlate with it isolated
fragments
of
the terrestrial record, or cultural and hominid
remains.
The
demise of the old scheme has also challenged the
ways in which we conceptualise and analyse
lithic
industries. These, the most abundant and
enduring remains of ancient hominids, are a
dynamic
expression
of cognitive abilities, of technical traditions
and of the social context within which they
were
produced. In recent years Palaeolithic
archaeology has opened up its agenda, moving on
from its
previous
purely descriptive typological approach to
examine operational sequences as a means to the
better
understanding of the conceptual, technical and
economic issues involved in the production and
use
of stone tools (Perlès, 1992). Along with these
developments has come the recognition that
either
the
lithic record or our approach to it is
insufficiently refined for any answer to the
question of which
hominid
was responsible for which part of the record to
be possible. This is true both of the European
and
Near Eastern industries previously described as
‘Lower’ or ‘Middle’ Palaeolithic and of the
Balkan
industries.
The
African record offers a basis for discussion of
the earlier part of the Palaeolithic. Broadly
speaking,
two main technocomplexes can be identified here.
The earlier Oldowan technocomplex
consists
of core and flake tools of types that began to
be manufactured about 2.5 Ma and remained in
production
for at least a million years. The more recent
Acheulean technocomplex, which appeared
about
1.5 Ma, consists of core tools of another kind:
bifaces, in the form of hand axes or cleavers.
Both
of
these technological traditions are found in the
Balkans. Choppers and flakes have been found on
the
banks
of the river Peneios in Thessaly, Greece
(Runnels & van Andel, 1999), in the
Yarimburgaz cave
near
Istanbul, which dates from the middle of the
Middle Pleistocene (Arsebük & Özbaş aran,
1999), in
the
Gajtan cave in northern Albania and on the
fluvial terrace of Baran in the same region
(Fistani,
1993).
The occasional chopper or chopping tool has been
reported at the Korrission lagoon, on the
island
of Corfu in the Ionian sea
(Kourtessi-Philippakis, 1999), at the Sandalja
cave, near Pula in
Croatia
(Malez, 1974), and in the fluviolacustrine
deposits of the river Oltet (a tributary of the
Olt) in
south
Romania (Valoch, 1995). Elsewhere in Europe,
Oldowan-like industries have been found at
(early)
Orce in Spain and (later) Isernia in Italy, at
Bilzingsleben in Germany and at Vértesszöllös in
Hungary.
So
far two Balkan sites have produced hand axes
that fall within the Acheulean tradition:
Palaiokastro,
in western Macedonia, and Kokkinopilos, an old
polje that is now an impressive terrarosa
formation
on the left bank of the Louros river in NW
Greece. Two hand axes have been reported
at
this site (Runnels & van Andel, 1993;
Ammerman et al., 1999). A few more, smaller
bifaces,
possibly
deriving from Middle Palaeolithic contexts, have
also been found: one at Krovili, in the
Rhodope
province of Aegean Thraki (Ammerman et al .,
1999), some small ovate tools at Tripotamia
and
Kastro, in the Peloponnisos (Reisch, 1982), and
others at Punikve in Croatia (Malez, 1979).
Judging
by archaeological finds in other parts of Europe
such as Germany and Britain, H.
heidelbergensisused
tools made of wood, antler and stone. The stone
industries associated with this
hominid
generally fall within the Acheulean tradition,
whereas choppers and chopping tools are
traditionally
considered the hallmarks of hominids that
preceded Homo heidelbergensisin
phylogenetic
terms.
Few choppers and chopping tools have been found
in the Balkans and more often than not those
we do
have lack properly dated stratigraphic
provenience. Certainly they cannot be considered
a
reliable
data set permitting the hypothesis that H.
heidelbergensiswas not the earliest hominid to
inhabit
the peninsula. The questions that naturally
arise are whether such tools were used by other
hominid
species that are not represented in the fossil
record, whether the tools represent the survival
of
old
technological traditions into a later period or
whether tools of this sort were later developed
anew
and
used by other species in response to the nature
of the lithic raw materials available to them.
None
of
these possibilities can be excluded, since the
Balkan data, like those from the rest of Europe,
are
sparse
and inconclusive. The matter is further
complicated by the existence of lithic
assemblages that
contain
elements of more than one technological
tradition. Many Mousterian assemblages, for
example,
contain
large numbers of bifaces and chopping tools
(Panagopoulou, 1999). In the light of recent
discussion
of biological and cultural variation, it is now
widely accepted that neither the biface nor the
chopper
can be used as a type fossil (in other words, a
tool characteristic of a single species, culture
or
date).
The Acheulean industries in this part of the
world cannot, moreover, be presumed to have been
preceded
by those consisting of simple flakes, choppers
and cores, since early dates have been assigned
to
some bifaces found in this area, while certain
choppers are of later date (Gowlett, 1999).
Similar
conclusions
have been reached in other parts of Europe. In
Britain, for example, Clactonian industries
have
recently been shown both to pre-date and to
post-date Acheulean biface industries (Roberts
et al. ,
1995).
It is thus not improbable that Acheulean and
chopper-flake industries should have existed
side
by
side in time and space in the Balkans, and the
question of whether or not they were
manufactured
and
used by H. heidelbergensisalone
remains open. What we are perhaps seeing in this
early record is
what
Gowlett has called ‘dancing of industries’
(Gowlett, 1999: 48). Many more modern
excavations
of
clearly stratified sites are needed to clarify
the picture.
From
at least 130 k yr. BP onwards the Balkans were
inhabited by human groups that used
Mousterian
artefacts, as is shown by the early Krapina
dates that we have already discussed and by the
sequence
from Asprochaliko, in NW Greece, whose deepest
strata have been TL dated to 102+14 k yr.
BP
(Huxtable et al. , 1992). It is not clear which
type of hominid produced these industries at
some
sites.
Recent evidence from the Near East suggests that
for some thousands of years Neanderthals
coexisted
with
anatomically modern humans. We do not know
whether or not the two interacted, but they
certainly
shared the same industrial technocomplex. Sites
such as Krapina and Vindija, where
Mousterian
artefacts have been found in contexts containing
Neanderthal bones, give us good reason to
hypothesise
that Neanderthals created the material culture
recovered there. The Mousterian lithic
assemblages
recovered from some other sites cannot be
assigned to either species. Mousterian
signatures
have been found in numerous cave sites in Greece
(Asprochaliko, Kalamakia and
Theopetra),
in Croatia (Krapina, Mujina peć ina and
Vindija), in northern Bosnia, in Slovenia, in
Bulgaria,
in Turkey and in Romania (Bordul Mare and
Curata) that have not necessarily yielded
hominid
remains.
To
this sample we may add a large number of
unstratified or poorly stratified open-air
Mousterian
sites
where dating and preservation of organic remains
are problematic. Elements of earlier
technological
traditions (such as bifaces) or of later ones
(such as backed bladelets) are often unearthed
at
these sites (at Kokkinopilos, in NW Greece, for
example [Dakaris et al. , 1964]). Our picture of
these
open
sites suffers from interference. The fundamental
question that remains unanswered is whether
they
are merely palimpsests of temporally separate
events of use by various hominids or whether
they
are
evidence of different technical traditions
coexisting in a single lithic industry.
ADAPTATION
It is
widely agreed that the Balkans and Gibraltar
must have been the gateways to Europe used by
early
human
migrants. The Balkan Peninsula is an area of
extremely diverse landscapes, with climatic
conditions
varying from the maritime climate of the
Mediterranean coast to the continental
conditions
of
the north and east. Within this general trend
may be found numerous microclimates whose
temperatures
and rainfall differ markedly despite their
physical proximity to one another (Bailey &
Gamble,
1990). The mountain ranges in the Balkans, which
reach heights of about 3000 m a.s.l., may
have
delayed the expansion of early humans to the
west and north, but they certainly did not
prevent it;
the
mosaic habitats encountered in this area offered
conditions that would probably have been
favourable
to the survival and continuity of the various
hominid species.
An
important marker of how well a species has
adapted to a habitat is population density. Out
of all
the
periods of human prehistory, however, the
Palaeolithic is the one over whose population
densities
there
hangs the largest question mark. Although at one
time or another various formulae and numbers
have
been proposed (e.g.Sturdy
& Webley, 1988), these have been based on
generic models of
environmental
sustainability borrowed from the biological
sciences. This approach neglects humanity’s
most
vital weapon: social organisation. Social
organisation cannot be quantified; forming any
estimate
whatsoever
of the population densities represented by the
early record thus remains an inherent
difficulty.
We
know very little about how well Homo
heidelbergensisadapted to the Balkans. This is because
many
uncertainties still surround the material
culture associated with this species. Forty
years after the
cave
of Petralona was discovered, deficiencies in the
publication of its archaeological finds have
left it
merely
a palaeontological site, rather than an
archaeological one. The number of Mousterian
sites
found
and the diversity of their locations lead us to
suspect that the Neanderthals and early modern
humans
may have been better adapted to the Balkan
landscape than was H. heidelbergensis . The
anatomically
modern human populations of the Pleistocene
probably were too. It should be
remembered,
however, that neither here nor elsewhere did
adaptation develop linearly, with numbers of
settlements
and population density increasing steadily over
the course of time. The climatic changes of
the
last 100,000 years and the loss of former
habitats such as the productive Adriatic plain
that today
lies
submerged under the Adriatic sea, to which human
groups had become accustomed and adapted
over
the course of many millennia, must have had a
significant impact upon human population
densities
and survival strategies.
As we
have already said, the Balkan landscape is of
considerable variety, essential to biodiversity.
Its
mosaic of heterogeneous biotopes, some naturally
isolated and thus protected, may explain how
different
hominid species could have managed to coexist
(initially Homo heidelbergensiswith
H.
neanderthalensis
, if the late Middle Pleistocene dates derived
for the Krapina and Petralona hominids
are
valid, and later H. neanderthalensiswith
H. sapiens , as we observed in the previous
section).
It
must also have favoured the adaptation of
individual hominid species. This is best seen in
the
record
left by anatomically modern humans, who survived
challenges such as periods of climatic
change
by making use of the many alternative habitats
offered by this landscape. During the process of
de-glaciation,
for example, when the resources exploited by
modern human groups before the Last
Glacial
Maximum changed significantly, modern humans
were able to expand into previously
unexplored
mountainous areas. During this period new camps
associated with specialised ibex and
chamois
hunting sprang up in previously inaccessible
upland locations. Klithi and Megalakkos, two
sites
in the Voidomatis river valley in NW Greece, are
a good example of this sort of adaptation
(Bailey,
1997).
CONCLUSIONS
The
discussion of ancient hominid biodiversity has
two closely related parts: the reconstruction of
ancient
hominid morphology and the reconstruction of
social, economic and symbolic behaviour.
Bringing
together these two different lines of study
demands a continuous interaction between
archaeologists,
palaeontologists, geneticists, and
palaeoecologists. Here Palaeolithic archaeology
meets
biology.
Unlike biologists, who work directly with living
or extinct species, archaeologists research by
proxy.
We come to grips with past human societies by
excavating and studying the material culture
they
have left behind: their artefacts, their
settlement structures and their food residues,
along with the
occasional
skeletal remain.
For
most of the 20thcentury the two components of ancient
hominid biodiversity were researched
more
or less independently of one another, biologists
exploring pure phylogeny and pure morphology
while
archaeologists studied the various hominid
species’ behavioural hallmarks. Since the 1990s,
however,
discoveries and developments in
palaeoanthropological research have raised many
questions
about
the fundamental nature of the differences and
similarities between species (Trinkaus &
Shipman,
1994).
An interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
approach in which archaeologists,
palaeontologists,
geneticists
and palaeoecologists all cooperate is vital if
the two parts of the human biodiversity puzzle
are
to be put together. Our aim must be to build a
global view out of detailed local records. In
line with
this
aim, the present contribution has pieced
together the main lines of evidence for the
presence of
ancestral
hominid populations in the Balkans and
highlighted the questions that have arisen from
these.
For
many years biologists and archaeologists, and
through them the world at large, assumed that
the
various
hominid species developed linearly through
processes of progressive change, extinction and
replacement.
It has now been recognised that in most
instances the linear view is not correct. The
continual
discovery of new finds and of new methodological
refinements makes palaeoanthropology
one
of the fastest changing areas in science. The
palaeoanthropology of the Balkans is no
exception.
Our
uncertainties about this area’s record are part
of a far wider uncertainty as to how events of
this
sort
took place throughout the world.
I
began this section by pointing out the main
difference between Palaeolithic archaeologists
and
other
researchers in biodiversity. I shall end it with
the features that they share.
Firstly,
present-day national borders are irrelevant to
our research. More often than not, indeed, they
are
an obstacle to a thorough understanding of the
regional patterns of the human past. The
populations
we
study, the human groups of the Pleistocene, were
highly mobile throughout the vast expanses of
southeast
Europe. It was only during the last part of the
Stone Age, the Neolithic, that human groups
settled
down and ethnic traits began to show up in the
archaeological record. Although collaboration
and
the transmission of information across borders
are absolutely essential to our research, we are
hampered
by our different archaeological traditions and
schools of thought, by socio-political factors
to
do
with modern Balkan history and of course by
language barriers.
The
second similarity has to do with our objects and
angles of research. Like other animal
populations,
the human groups of the Palaeolithic spent many
thousands of years foraging. They
remained
highly dependent on the ecosystem in which they
lived and must have developed various
strategies
to manage the resources they lived off. The
process of actively modifying natural resources
by
clearing vegetation for large-scale agriculture
and by domesticating and systematically
exploiting
what
were originally wild plants and animals appeared
later on in Balkan prehistory, as the Holocene
advanced.
Biologists and archaeologists alike are thus
centrally concerned with adaptation in
populations
highly dependent on environmental conditions and
change. We share, moreover, an interest
in
the relations between human and animal, between
human and plant and between predator and prey.
Just
what impact, for instance, did human strategies
have upon the natural environment of the
Pleistocene?
Although the traditional view in both
archaeology and theoretical biology would hold
that
Pleistocene
humans imposed no undue pressure on natural
communities, recent computer modelling of
human
ecodynamics during the Palaeolithic does not
support this view (Winder, 1997). It appears
that
there
is open ground for an interchange of ideas,
hypotheses and methods between the two
disciplines.
Finally,
just as most biologists in this area are
actively concerned with conserving the local
fauna
and
flora and with the future of the Balkans’
natural heritage, archaeologists here are
concerned with
conserving
a cultural heritage. The fact that certain
threatened natural resources have been saved
because
they are close to significant archaeological
sites and vice versais a
potent symbol. The
Palaeolithic
record affords us a long perspective on human
history. Learning from the past,
archaeologists
are able to appreciate the fragility of the
ecosystem in which we live. Let us not forget
that
the Pleistocene witnessed the rise and
extinction of many different hominid, animal and
plant
species.
Communication between prehistorians and those
whose interest is biodiversity can only have
positive
results.
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A trove of Neanderthal fossils including bones of
children and adults,
discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have
been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers
say. The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and
humans may have at least had the opportunity to interact,
or cross paths, there, the researchers added.
Neanderthals are the closest extinct relatives of
modern humans, apparently even occasionally interbreeding
with
our ancestors.
Neanderthals entered Europe before modern humans did, and
may have lasted there until about 35,000 years ago,
although recent findings have called
this
date into question.
To learn more about the history of ancient humans,
scientists have recently focused on Greece."Greece lies
directly on the most likely route of dispersals of early
modern humans and earlier hominins into Europe from Africa
via the Near East," paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati
at the Universityof Tübingen in Germany told LiveScience.
"It also lies at the heart of one of the three
Mediterranean peninsulae of Europe, which acted as refugia
for plant and animal species, including human populations,
during glacial times — that is, areas where species and
populations were able to survive during the worst climatic
deteriorations."
"Until recently, very little was known about deep
prehistory in Greece, chiefly because the archaeological
research focus in the country has been on classical and
other more recent periods," Harvati added.
Harvati and colleagues from Greece and France
analyzed remains from a site known as Kalamakia, a cave
stretching about 65 feet (20 meters) deep into limestone
cliffs on the western coast of the Mani Peninsula on the
mainland of Greece. They excavated the cave over the
course of 13 years.
The archaeological deposits of the cave date back
to between about 39,000 and 100,000 years ago to the
Middle Paleolithic period. During the height of the ice
age, the area still possessed a mild climate and supported
a wide range of wildlife, including deer, wild boar,
rabbits, elephants, weasels, foxes, wolves, leopards,
bears, falcons, toads, vipers and tortoises.
In the cave, the researchers found tools such as
scrapers made of flint, quartz and seashells. The stone
tools were all shaped, or knapped, in a way typical of Neanderthal
artifacts.
Now, the scientists reveal they discovered 14
specimens of child and adult human remains in the cave,
including teeth, a small fragment of skull, a vertebra,
and leg and foot bones with bite and gnaw marks on them.
The teeth strongly appear to be Neanderthal, and judging
by marks on the teeth, the ancient people apparently had a
diet of meat and diverse plants.
"Kalamakia, together with the single human tooth
from the nearby cave site of Lakonis, are the first
Neanderthal remains to be identified from Greece," Harvati
said. The discoveries are "confirmation of a thriving and
long-standing Neanderthal population in the region."
These findings suggest "the fossil record from
Greece potentially holds answers about the earliest
dispersal
of modern humans and earlier hominins into Europe,
about possible late survival of Neanderthals and about one
of the first instances where the two might have had the
opportunity to interact," Harvati said.
In the future, Harvati and her colleagues will
conduct new fieldwork in other areas in Greece to address
mysteries such as potential coexistence and interactions
between Neanderthals and modern humans, the spread of
modern and extinct humans into Europe and possible
seafaring capabilities of ancient humans.
"We look forward to exciting discoveries in the
coming years," Harvati said.
The scientists detailed their findings online March
13 in the Journal of Human Evolution.
9.
Ethnic Groups of Archaic Greece (1,000 - 500 BC)
The
ancient Greeks divided themselves into four main
ethnic groups based on language family: the Achaeans, the
Aeolians, the
Dorians, and
the Ionians. The
exact origin of each of these groups is not known,
but according to Herodotus, the
Dorians were the last to arrive in Greece and came
from the north. They first came into contact with
Aeolians in Thessaly, then they swept down into
the Pelleponese were they came into contact with
the Achaeans and Ionians. Whilst the
archaeological record remains thin on the exact
movement of the Dorians and to what extent their
migrations were accompanied by conflict, what
is known is that, by 950 BC much of the
Peloponnese was now speaking Dorian languages,
where they had been speaking Achaean before, and
that at about this same time, each of the other
three groups were leaving mainland Greece and
colonizing the East, the Aeolians and Ionians went
to the eastern
shores of the Aegean, and
the Achaeans
went to Cyprus. So a
certain amount of displacement had definitely
occurred.
10.
On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient
Mariners
HARDWARE
-- Stone tools found on Crete are evidence of
early sea voyages.
Early
humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear
to have been going to sea much longer than anyone
had ever suspected.
That
is the startling implication of discoveries made
the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete.
Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are
at least 130,000 years old, which is considered
strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring
in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the
maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.
Crete
has been an island for more than five million
years, meaning that the toolmakers must have
arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history
of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000
years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say.
Previous artifact discoveries had shown people
reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and
possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000
years ago.
The
oldest established early marine travel anywhere
was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically
modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about
60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive
trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and
artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of
more ancient hominids making their way by water to
new habitats.
Even
more intriguing, the archaeologists who found the
tools on Crete noted that the style of the hand
axes suggested that they could be up to 700,000
years old. That may be a stretch, they conceded,
but the tools resemble artifacts from the stone
technology known as Acheulean, which originated
with prehuman populations in Africa.
More
than 2,000 stone artifacts, including the hand
axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of
Crete, near the town of Plakias, by a team led by
Thomas F. Strasser and Eleni Panagopoulou. She is
with the Greek Ministry of Culture and he is an
associate professor of art history at Providence
College in Rhode Island. They were assisted by
Greek and American geologists and archaeologists,
including Curtis Runnels of Boston University.Dr.
Strasser described the discovery last month at a
meeting of the Archaeological
Institute of America. A formal report has been
accepted for publication in Hesparia, the journal
of the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens, a supporter of the fieldwork.
The
Plakias survey team went in looking for material
remains of more recent artisans, nothing older
than 11,000 years. Such artifacts would have been
blades, spear points and arrowheads typical of
Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.
“We
found those, then we found the hand axes,” Dr.
Strasser said last week in an interview, and that
sent the team into deeper time.
“We
were flummoxed,” Dr. Runnels said in an interview.
“These things were just not supposed to be there.”
Word
of the find is circulating among the ranks of
Stone Age scholars. The few who have seen the data
and some pictures — most of the tools reside in
Athens — said they were excited and cautiously
impressed. The research, if confirmed by further
study, scrambles timetables of technological
development and textbook accounts of human and
prehuman mobility.
Ofer
Bar-Yosef, an authority on Stone Age archaeology
at Harvard, said the significance of the find
would depend on the dating of the site. “Once the
investigators provide the dates,” he said in an
e-mail message, “we will have a better
understanding of the importance of the discovery.”
Dr.
Bar-Yosef said he had seen only a few photographs
of the Cretan tools. The forms can only indicate a
possible age, he said, but “handling the artifacts
may provide a different impression.” And dating,
he said, would tell the tale.
Dr.
Runnels, who has 30 years’ experience in Stone Age
research, said that an analysis by him and three
geologists “left not much doubt of the age of the
site, and the tools must be even older.”
The
cliffs and caves above the shore, the researchers
said, have been uplifted by tectonic forces where
the African plate goes under and pushes up the
European plate. The exposed uplifted layers
represent the sequence of geologic periods that
have been well studied and dated, in some cases
correlated to established dates of glacial and
interglacial periods of the most recent ice age.
In addition, the team analyzed the layer bearing
the tools and determined that the soil had been on
the surface 130,000 to 190,000 years ago.
Dr.
Runnels said he considered this a minimum age for
the tools themselves. They include not only quartz
hand axes, but also cleavers and scrapers, all of
which are in the Acheulean style. The tools could
have been made millenniums before they became, as
it were, frozen in time in the Cretan cliffs, the
archaeologists said.
Dr.
Runnels suggested that the tools could be at least
twice as old as the geologic layers. Dr. Strasser
said they could be as much as 700,000 years old.
Further explorations are planned this summer.
The
130,000-year date would put the discovery in a
time when Homo sapiens had already evolved in
Africa, sometime after 200,000 years ago. Their
presence in Europe did not become apparent until
about 50,000 years ago.
Archaeologists
can only speculate about who the toolmakers were.
One hundred and thirty thousand years ago, modern
humans shared the world with other hominids, like
Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis. The
Acheulean culture is thought to have started with
Homo erectus.
The
standard hypothesis had been that Acheulean
toolmakers reached Europe and Asia via the Middle
East, passing mainly through what is now Turkey
into the Balkans. The new finds suggest that their
dispersals were not confined to land routes. They
may lend credibility to proposals of migrations
from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar to
Spain. Crete’s southern shore where the tools were
found is 200 miles from North Africa.
“We
can’t say the toolmakers came 200 miles from
Libya,” Dr. Strasser said. “If you’re on a raft,
that’s a long voyage, but they might have come
from the European mainland by way of shorter
crossings through Greek islands.”
But
archaeologists and experts on early nautical
history said the discovery appeared to show that
these surprisingly ancient mariners had craft
sturdier and more reliable than rafts. They also
must have had the cognitive ability to conceive
and carry out repeated water crossing over great
distances in order to establish sustainable
populations producing an abundance of stone
artifacts.
11.
Embracing Stone Age Couple Found in Greek Cave
Rare
double
burials discovered at one of the largest Neolithic
burial sites in Europe.
Strange
and surprising findings have been reported from ongoing
excavations at Alepotrypa
Cave, a
site in the Peloponnesus that one archaeologist called
"a Neolithic Pompeii," the Greek Ministry of Culture,
Education, and Religious Affairs announced.
The
most striking discovery was a burial from roughly 5,800
years ago containing two well-preserved adult human
skeletons, one male and one female, with arms and legs
interlocked in an embrace.
Archaeologists
also found bones from two other Neolithic double
burials, as well as a roughly 3,300-year-old Mycenaean
ossuary holding bone fragments from dozens of
individuals and numerous expensive grave goods,
including a bronze dagger, agate beads, and ivory likely
sourced from Lebanon.
"Like
most things in Greece, it's complicated," said Bill
Parkinson,
associate curator of Eurasian anthropology at Chicago's
Field Museum and one of the archaeologists working at
the site.
The
Alepotrypa—or "foxhole"—Cave represents one of the
largest Neolithic burial sites known in all of Europe.
Its enormous interior chambers reach more than half a
kilometer into a mountain above Diros Bay, and burials
in the cave span the entire Neolithic period in Greece,
from 6000 to 3200 B.C. There are bones from at least 170
individuals inside the cave.
Around
3000 B.C., an earthquake collapsed the cave entrance,
sealing and preserving its interior. The site was
rediscovered in 1958, and excavations began in the
1970s.
The
most recent finds lie at the top of a terraced slope
just outside the cave. Radiocarbon dates for the three
double burials range from 4200 to 3800 B.C. One burial
holds the remains of a child and a newborn. A second
burial contains the bones of a young man and a young
woman facing each other in curled poses, their knees
tucked beneath their chins, and the final burial
contains the embracing couple.
"They're
totally spooning," Parkinson said of the last pair. "The
boy is the big spoon, and the girl is the little spoon:
Their arms are draped over each other, their legs are
intertwined. It's unmistakable."
Anastasia Papathanasiou, a Greek archaeologist who has
worked at the site since the late 1980s, said the couple
probably died in the embracing pose or were placed in
this pose shortly after death. "It's a very natural hug;
it doesn't look like they were arranged in this posture
at a much later date."
Some
media reports have claimed the couple was stoned to
death, but Parkinson and Papathanasiou cautioned that
there is no evidence for this. The cause of death is a
mystery.
Short,
Violent
Lives
A
contemporaneous late Neolithic ossuary inside the cave
suggests the couple lived during a violent period. Some
31 percent of the skeletons showed evidence of blunt
cranial trauma, probably inflicted by rocks, stones, or
clubs. The wounds were nonlethal and had healed, but
this is the highest frequency of head trauma at one site
in all of Neolithic Greece. Papathanasiou attributed the
extreme violence to competition for land, water, or
other vital resources.
Many
individuals in the tomb exhibited metopism, a rare
condition in which adults retain an unclosed cranial
suture, suggesting they were genetically related. The
mean adult lifespan was 29 years, and anemia was the
most prevalent medical condition afflicting those
buried. Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis verified
that their diets consisted mostly of cereals such as
wheat and barley; low consumption of animal protein
probably caused the high prevalence of anemia.
The
cave was a site of burial, ritual, and intermittent
habitation for the 3,000 years between 6000 and 3000
B.C. Deep piles of burned sheep dung near the entrance
of one cavern as spacious as a cathedral might have
provided flickering illumination for funerary rites.
Bones
Moved
to Sacred Burial Site
The
later Mycenaean ossuary from around 1300 B.C. poses an
additional mystery. "Horribly weathered bones from
dozens of individuals were reinterred at this site,"
Parkinson said. The team's working hypothesis is that
the bodies were exposed or buried elsewhere for a
considerable time before they were moved to Alepotrypa.
Reburial
was a common practice in the Mycenaean period, but the
nearest known Mycenaean site is dozens of miles away
from Alepotrypa. This suggests that undiscovered
Mycenaean sites lie closer to the cave or that bones
were carried long distances and buried at a site that
was already ancient and ritually important by the late
Bronze Age.
Giorgos Papathanassopoulos,
lead excavator at the site, has speculated that a single
ritual tradition might connect Neolithic prehistory with
later Greek practices from the Classical period. Legends
from antiquity placed an entrance to Hades at Cape
Tainaron, a
site near the Alepotrypa Cave that was also home to a
death oracle and a temple of Poseidon.
Though
it's currently impossible to prove, the burial tradition
at Alepotrypa may have survived in cultural memory,
eventually becoming associated with Tainaron by the
Classical period. The Mycenaean ossuary is a suggestive
link that could indicate a tradition persisting from
Neolithic to Classical Greece. "There's no direct
evidence, but we can't rule out that possibility,"
Papathanasiou said.
Helladic is a modern
archaeological term meant to identify a sequence of
periods characterizing the culture of mainland ancient Greece during the Bronze Age. The term is commonly
used in archaeology and art history. It was intended to
complement two parallel terms, "Cycladic", identifying
approximately the same sequence with reference to the Aegean Bronze Age, and "Minoan", with reference to the
civilization of Crete.
The
scheme applies primarily to pottery and is a relative
dating system. The pottery at any given site typically can
be ordered into "Early", "Middle" and "Late" on the basis
of style and technique. The total time window allowed for
the site is then divided into these periods
proportionately. As it turns out, there is a
correspondence between "Early" over all Greece, etc. Also,
some "absolute dates", or dates obtained by
non-comparative methods, can be used to date the periods
and are preferable whenever they can be obtained. However,
the relative structure was devised before the age of
carbon-dating (most of the excavations were performed then
as well). Typically, only relative dates are obtainable
and form a structure for the characterization of Greek
prehistory. Objects are generally dated by the pottery of
the site found in associative contexts. Other objects can
be arranged into early, middle and late as well, but
pottery is used as a marker.
Helladic
society
and culture have antecedents in the Neolithic period in
Greece with many innovations being developed and
manifesting during the second and third phases of the
Early Helladic period (2650–2050/2000 BC) such as bronze
metallurgy, monumental architecture and fortifications, a
hierarchical social organization, and
vigorous contacts with other areas of the Aegean. These
innovations would undergo further changes during the
Middle Helladic period (2000/1900–1550 BC), marked by the
spread of Minyan ware, and the Late Helladic period
(1550–1050 BC), which was the time when Mycenaean
Greece
flourished.
Etymology
The three terms "Helladic", "Cycladic",
and "Minoan"
refer to location of origin. Thus "Middle Minoan" objects
might be found in the Cyclades, but they are not on that
account Middle Cycladic. The scheme tends to be less
applicable in areas on the periphery of the Aegean, such
as the Levant. Pottery there might imitate Helladic or
Minoan cultural models and yet be locally manufactured.
Periodization
The
"Early", "Middle" and "Late" scheme can be applied at
different levels. Rather than use such cumbersome terms as
"Early Early", archaeologists by convention use I, II, III
for the second level, A, B, C for the third level, 1, 2, 3
for the fourth level and A, B, C for the fifth. Not all
levels are present at every site. If additional levels are
required, another "Early", "Middle" or "Late" can be
appended. The Helladic period is subdivided as:
Period
Approximate Date
Early
Helladic I
3200/3100–2650
BC[1]
Early
Helladic II
2650–2200/2150
BC[2]
Early
Helladic III
2200/2150–2050/2000
BC[3]
Middle
Helladic
2000/1900–1550
BC[3][4]
Late
Helladic I
1550–1500
BC
Late
Helladic II
1500–1400
BC
Late
Helladic III
1400–1050
BC
Settlements of the Helladic period
These
are the estimated populations of hamlets, villages, and towns
of the Helladic period over time. Note that there are
several problems with estimating the sizes of individual
settlements, and the highest estimates for a given
settlements, in a given period, may be several times the
lowest.
The Early Helladic
period (or EH) of Bronze Age
Greece is generally
characterized by the Neolithic agricultural population
importing bronze and copper, as well as using rudimentary
bronze-working techniques first developed in Anatolia with
which they had cultural contacts.[7] The EH period
corresponds in time to the Old Kingdom in Egypt.
Important EH sites are clustered on the Aegean shores of
the mainland in Boeotia and Argolid (Manika, Lerna,
Pefkakia, Thebes, Tiryns) or coastal islands such
as Aegina (Kolonna) and Euboea (Lefkandi) and are marked by
pottery showing influences from western Anatolia and the
introduction of the fast-spinning version of the potter's wheel. The large "longhouse"
called a megaron is introduced in EH II.
The infiltration of Anatolian cultural models (i.e.
"Lefkandi I") was not accompanied by widespread site
destruction.
Early
Helladic I (EHI)
The Early Helladic I
period (or EHI), also known as the "Eutresis culture", is
characterized by the presence of unslipped and burnished
or red slipped and burnished pottery at Korakou and other
sites (metal objects, however, were extremely rare during
this period).[8]
In terms of ceramics and settlement patterns, there is
considerable continuity between the EHI period and the
preceding Final Neolithic period (or FN); changes in
settlement location during the EHI period are attributed
to alterations in economic practices.[8]
Early
Helladic II (EHII)
The
transition from Early Helladic I to the Early Helladic II
period (or EHII) occurred rapidly and without disruption
where multiple socio-cultural innovations were developed
such as metallurgy (i.e. bronze-working), a hierarchical
social organization, and monumental architecture and
fortifications.[9] Changes in settlement
during the EHII period were accompanied with alterations
in agricultural practices (i.e. oxen-driven plow).[10]
Early
Helladic III (EHIII)
The
Early Helladic II period came to an end at Lerna with the
destruction of the "House of
Tiles", a corridor house.[11]
The nature of the destruction of EHII sites was at first
attributed to an invasion of Greeks and/or Indo-Europeans
during the Early
Helladic III period (or EHIII);[12]
however, this is no longer maintained given the lack of
uniformity in the destruction of EHII sites and the
presence of EHII–EHIII/MH continuity in settlements such
as Lithares, Phlius, Manika, etc.[13]
Furthermore, the presence of "new/intrusive" cultural
elements such as apsidal houses, terracotta anchors,
shaft-hole hammer-axes, ritual tumuli, and intramural
burials precede the EHIII period in Greece and are in
actuality attributed to indigenous developments (i.e.
terracotta anchors from Boeotia; ritual tumuli from Ayia
Sophia in Neolithic Thessaly), as well as continuous
contacts during the EHII–MH period between mainland Greece
and various areas such as western Asia Minor, the
Cyclades, Albania, and Dalmatia.[14]
Changes in climate also appear to have contributed to the
significant cultural transformations that occurred in
Greece between the EHII period and the EHIII period (ca.
2200 BCE).[15]
Middle Helladic (MH)
In
Greece, the Middle
Helladic period (or MH) was a period of cultural
retrogression, which first manifested in the preceding
EHIII period.[3][4] The MH period is
characterized by the wide-scale emergence of Minyan ware, which may be directly
related to the people whom ancient Greek historians called
Minyans; a group of monochrome
burnished pottery from Middle Helladic sites was
conventionally dubbed "Minyan" ware by Troy's discoverer Heinrich
Schliemann.
Gray
Minyan ware was first identified as the pottery introduced
by a Middle
Bronze
Age migration;[16]
the theory, however, is outdated as excavations at Lerna
in the 1950s revealed the development of pottery styles to
have been continuous (i.e. the fine gray burnished pottery
of the EHIII Tiryns culture was the direct progenitor of
Minyan ware).[17] In general, painted
pottery decors are rectilinear and abstract until Middle
Helladic III, when Cycladic and Minoan influences inspired a
variety of curvilinear and even representational motifs.
The
Middle Helladic period corresponds in time to the Middle
Kingdom
of Egypt.
Settlements draw more closely together and tend to be
sited on hilltops. Middle Helladic sites are located
throughout the Peloponnese and central Greece (including
sites in the interior of Aetolia such as Thermon) as far
north as the Spercheios
River valley. Malthi in Messenia and Lerna V are the only
Middle Helladic sites to have been thoroughly excavated.
The Late Helladic
period (or LH) is the time when Mycenaean
Greece
flourished, under new influences from Minoan Crete and the
Cyclades. Those who made LH pottery sometimes inscribed
their work with a syllabic script, Linear B, which has been
deciphered as Greek. LH is divided into LHI,
LHII, and LHIII; of which LHI and LHII overlap Late Minoan ware and LHIII overtakes
it. LHIII is further subdivided into LHIIIA, LHIIIB, and
LHIIIC. The table below provides the approximate dates of
the Late Helladic phases (LH) on the Greek
mainland.
Period
Approximate
Date
LHI
1550–1500 BC
LHIIA
1500–1450 BC
LHIIB
1450–1400 BC
LHIIIA1
1400–1350 BC
LHIIIA2
1350–1300 BC
LHIIIB1
1300–1230 BC
LHIIIB2
1230–1190 BC
LHIIIC (Early)
1190–1130 BC
LHIIIC (Middle)
1130–1090 BC
LHIIIC (Late)
1090–1060 BC
Sub-Mycenean
1060–1000 BC
Proto-Geometric
1000 BC
Late
Helladic I (LHI)
The LHI
pottery is known from the fill of the Shaft Graves of Lerna
and the settlements of Voroulia and Nichoria (Messenia), Ayios Stephanos, (Laconia) and Korakou. Furumark
divided the LH in phases A and B, but Furumark's LHIB has
been reassigned to LHIIA by Oliver Dickinson. Some recent
C-14 dates from the Tsoungiza site north of Mycenae
indicate LHI there was dated to between 1675/1650 and
1600/1550 BCE, which is earlier than the assigned pottery
dates by about 100 years. The Thera eruption also occurred during LHI
(and LCI and LMIA), variously dated within the 1650–1625
BCE span.
Not
found at Thera, but extant in late LHI from Messenia, and
therefore likely commencing after the eruption, is a
material culture known as "Peloponnesian LHI".[18] This is characterised by
"tall funnel-like Keftiu cups of Type III"; "small closed
shapes such as squat jugs decorated with hatched loops
('rackets') or simplified spirals"; "dark-on-light lustrous-painted
motifs", which "include small neat types of simple linked
spiral such as varieties of hook-spiral or wave-spiral
(with or without small dots in the field), forms of the
hatched loop and double-axe, and accessorial rows of small
dots and single or double wavy lines"; also, the "ripple
pattern" on "Keftiu" cups. These local innovations
continued into the LHIIA styles throughout the mainland.
Late
Helladic II (LHII)
The
description
of the LHIIA
is mainly based on the material from Kourakou East Alley.
Domestic and Palatial shapes are distinguished. There are
strong links between LHIIA and LMIB. LHIIB began
before the end of LMIB, and sees a lessening of Cretan
influences. Pure LHIIB assemblages are rare and originate
from Tiryns, Asine and Korakou. C-14 dates from Tsoungiza
indicate LHII was dated to between 1600/1550 and 1435/1405
BCE, the start of which is earlier than the assigned
pottery date by about 100 years, but the end of which
nearly corresponds to the pottery phase. In Egypt, both
periods of LHII correspond with the beginning of its
"Imperial" period, from Hatshepsut to Tuthmosis III (r. 1479–1425 BCE).
Late
Helladic III (LHIII)
LHIII
and LMIII are contemporary. Toward LMIIIB, non-Helladic
ware from the Aegean ceases to be homogeneous; insofar as
LMIIIB differs from Helladic, it should at most be
considered a "sub-Minoan" variant of LHIIIB.
The
uniform and widely spread LHIIIA:1
pottery was originally defined by the material from the
Ramp house at Mycenae, the palace at Thebes (now dated to LHIIIA:2
or LHIIIB by most researchers) and Triada at Rhodes. There is material from
Asine, Athens (wells), Sparta (Menelaion), Nichoria and the 'Atreus
Bothros', rubbish sealed under the Dromos of the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae as well. C-14 dates from
Tsoungiza indicate LHIIIA:1 should be more nearly
1435/1406 to 1390/1370 BCE, slightly earlier than the
pottery phase, but by less than 50 years. LHIIIA:1 ware
has also been found in Maşat
Höyük
in Hittite Anatolia.[19]
The LHIIIA:2
pottery marks a Mycenaean expansion covering most of the
Eastern Mediterranean. There are many new shapes. The
motifs of the painted pottery continue from LHIIIA:1 but
show a great deal of standardization. In Egypt, the Amarna site contains LHIIIA:1
ware during the reign of Amenhotep
III and
LHIIIA:2 ware during that of his son Akhenaten; it also has the barest
beginnings of LHIIIB. LHIIIA:2 ware is in the Uluburun
shipwreck, which sank in the 14th
century BCE. Again, Tsoungiza dates are earlier, 1390/1370
to 1360/1325 BCE; but LHIIIA:2 ware also exists in a burn
layer of Miletus which likely occurred
early in the reign of Mursili II and therefore some years
prior to Mursili's
eclipse in 1312 BCE. The
transition period between IIIA and IIIB begins after 1320
BCE, but not long after (Cemal Pulak thinks before 1295
BCE).
The
definition of the LHIIIB
by Furumark was mainly based on grave finds and the
settlement material from Zygouries. It has been divided
into two sub-phases by Elizabeth B.
French, based on the finds from
Mycenae and the West wall at Tiryns. LHIIIB:2
assemblages are sparse, as painted pottery is rare in
tombs and many settlements of this period ended by
destruction, leaving few complete pots behind.
LHIIIB
pottery is associated in the Greek mainland palaces with
the Linear B archives. (Linear B had been in use in Crete
since Late Minoan II.) Pulak's proposed
LHIIIA/B boundary would make LHIIIB contemporary in
Anatolia with the resurgent Hittites following Mursili's
eclipse; in Egypt with the 19th Dynasty, also known as the
Ramessides; and in northern Mesopotamia with Assyria's ascendancy over Mitanni. The end of LHIIIB is
associated with the destruction of Ugarit, whose ruins contain the
last of that pottery. The Tsoungiza date for the end of
LHIIIB is 1200/1190 BCE. The beginning of LHIIIC,
therefore, is now commonly set into the reign of Queen Twosret. The LHIIIC has been
divided into LHIIIC:1 and LHIIIC:2 by Furumark, based on
materials from tombs in Mycenae, Asine, Kephalonia, and Rhodes. In the
1960s, the excavations of the citadel at Mycenae and of Lefkandi in Euboea yielded stratified
material revealing significant regional variation in
LHIIIC, especially in the later phases. Late LHIIIC
pottery is found in Troy
VIIa and a few pieces in Tarsus. It was also made
locally in the Philistine settlements of Ashdod,
Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza.
Fortified
settlements
During
the Helladic period, a number of major advances were
developed including fortified urban settlements with
monumental buildings such as corridor houses, which may
prove the existence of complex societies organized by an elite
or at least achieving corporate, proto-city state form.[20][21] One of these
settlements was Manika, located in Euboea, dated to the Early
Helladic period II (2800–2200 BC). The settlement
covered an area of 70-80 hectares, was inhabited by
6,000–13,500 people, and was one of the largest
settlements of the Bronze Age in Greece.[20][5]
Another settlement was Lerna
in the Argolid region, which was perhaps
the most important and wealthiest of Early Helladic sites.[22]
The settlement has a monumental building known as the House of the
Tiles, a "corridor house",[23]
notable for several architectural features that were
advanced for its time, such as its roof being covered by
baked tiles,
which gave the building its name.[24]
The structure dates to the Early Helladic II period
(2500–2300 BC) and is sometimes interpreted as the dwelling
of an elite member of the community, a proto-palace, or an
administrative center. Alternatively, it has also been
considered to be a communal structure or the common property
of the townspeople.[25] The exact functions of the
building remain unknown due to a lack of small finds
indicating the specific uses of the building.[25] The house had a stairway
leading to a second story, and was protected by a tiled
roof.[26]
Debris found at the site contained thousands of terracotta
tiles having fallen from the roof.[27] Although such roofs were
also found in the Early Helladic site of Akovitika,[28]
and later in the Mycenaean towns of Gla and Midea,[29]
they only became common in Greek
architecture in the 7th century BC.[30]
The walls of the House of the Tiles were constructed
with sun-dried bricks on stone socles.[24
Other
fortified settlements include Tiryns, which covered an area
of 5.9 hectares sustaining 1,180–1,770 people,[5] and had an large tiled
two-storeyed "round house" (or Rundbau) with a
diameter of 28 m on the upper citadel. It may have served as a
palace or temple or perhaps it was a communalgranary.[31][32]
Other sites include Ayia Irini, which covered an area of 1
hectare and had a population of perhaps up to 1,250,[33]Eutresis covering 8 hectares with
an estimated population of 1,600–2,400, Thebes covering 20 hectares
with a population of 4,000–6,000,[5]Lefkandi (unknown in size and
population), and Kolonna (or Aegina), a densely populated
settlement with impressive fortifications, monumental
stone buildings and sophisticated town planning.
Already
before 2500–2400 BC, Kolonna experienced remarkable
economic growth and had its own administrative "Corridor House", the
so-called "Haus am Felsrand".[34] During the phase Aegina
III 2400–2300 BC, which corresponds to the transition
phase Lefkandi I-Kastri, the evidence of the economic
structure and administrative and social organization of
the community become more clear.[34] The "White House" (Weisses
Haus; 165 square metres) constitutes the monumental
community building that succeeds the "Haus am Felsrand",
which had the same function.[34]
Kolonna may constitute the Aegean's first state as it appears to be the
earliest ranked society in the area outside MinoanCrete
and perhaps a political center in the Middle Helladic
period where it achieved state-level after the Minoans but
before the Mycenaeans.[35]
Population
Multivariate
analyses
of craniometric data derived from Helladic skeletal
material indicate a strong morphological homogeneity in
the Bronze Age osteological record, disproving the influx
of foreign populations between the Early Helladic and
Middle Helladic periods; ultimately, the Bronze Age
inhabitants of mainland Greece (including the Mycenaeans)
represent a single and homogeneous population of
Mediterranean provenance.[36]
5.^
Jump up to: abcdefghijkMacSweeney
2004, Table 1.
Population estimates for Aegean sites in EB II, p. 57;
MacSweeney dates the Early Bronze II period (or EB II) to
circa 2800–2200 BC (see p. 53).
6.Sampson 1987, p. 19.
7.Pullen 2008, p. 20; van
Andels
& Runnels 1988,
"The transition to the Early Bronze Age", pp. 238–240; French 1973,
p. 53.
8.Pullen
2008, pp. 21–22.
9.Pullen 2008, pp. 24–26; Whittaker 2014,
p. 49: "The second half of the Early Helladic period is
characterized by monumental architecture and
fortifications, a hierarchical social organization,
widespread metallurgy and lively contacts with other parts
of the Aegean."
10.Pullen 2008, pp. 27–28.
11.Pullen 2008, pp. 36, 43
(Endnote #22): "A corridor house is a large, two-story
building consisting of two or more large rooms flanked by
narrow corridors on the sides. Some of those corridors
held staircases; others were used for storage."
12.Caskey 1960, pp. 285–303.
13.Pullen 2008, p. 36; Forsén
1992,
pp. 251–253.
14.Pullen 2008, p. 36; Forsén
1992,
pp. 253–257.
15.Pullen 2008, p. 36.
16.Mellaart
1958, pp. 9–33.
17.Pullen
2008, p. 40; French
1973, pp. 51–57;
Caskey 1960,
pp. 285–303.
18.Lolos 1990, pp. 51–56.
19.Kuniholm 1998, pp. 3–4.
20.Sampson
1987, p. 19.
21.Bintliff 2012, p. 107: "Taken
together, the Mainland Early Helladic Corridor Houses,
Anatolian Troy, the Northeast Aegean fortified villages,
and perhaps also Manika, may well evidence complex
societies, either organized by an elite, or at least
achieving corporate, proto-city state form."
22.Bryce 2006, p. 47: "Lerna in the
Argolid region was probably the most important and the
wealthiest of all Early Helladic II sites. Founded
originally in the Neolithic period (represented by Levels
I and II on the site), it was abandoned at the end of this
period and was subsequently reoccupied at the beginning of
Early Helldaic II (Level III)."
23.Shaw 1987, pp. 59–79.
24.Overbeck
1963, p. 5.
25.Overbeck
1963, p. 6.
26.Overbeck 1963, p. 5; Shaw
1987, p. 59.
27.Caskey 1968, p. 314.
28.Shaw 1987, p. 72.
29.Shear 2000, pp. 133–134.
30.Wikander 1990, p. 285.
31.Chapman 2005, p. 92; Hornblower,
Spawforth
& Eidinow 2012,
"Tiryns", p. 1486.
•French,
D.M. (1973). "Migrations and 'Minyan' pottery in western
Anatolia and the Aegean". In Crossland, R.A.; Birchall,
Ann. Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean. Park
Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press. pp. 51–57.
•Lolos,
Y.G. (1990). "On the Late Helladic I of Akrotiri, Thera".
In Hardy, D.A.; Renfrew, A.C. Thera and the Aegean
World III. Volume Three: Chronology – Proceedings of the
Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3–9
September 1989. London: Thera Foundation.
pp. 51–56.
•Musgrave,
Jonathan
H.; Evans, Suzanne P. (1981). "By Strangers Honor’d: A
Statistical Study of Ancient Crania from Crete, Mainland
Crete, Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt". Journal of
Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology1: 50–107.
•Shear,
Ione Mylonas (January 2000). "Excavations on the Acropolis
of Midea: Results of the Greek–Swedish Excavations under
the Direction of Katie Demakopoulou and Paul Åström". American
Journal
of Archaeology104 (1):
133–134.
Xirotiris,
Nicholas
I. (Spring–Summer 1980). "The Indo-Europeans in Greece: An
Anthropological Approach to the Population of Bronze Age
Greece". Journal of Indo-European Studies8 (1–2):
201–210.
