Dietz Søren - Communities in transition : the circum-Aegean area in the 5th and 4th millennia BC

Published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by

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Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-720-9

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Front cover: Ships carved into a rock from the site of Strophilas on Andros (photograph from the personal archive of C. Televantou); drawing of a rock carving from the main bastion on the wall at the site of Strophilas on Andros representing a procession of ships (drawing by C. Televantou).

Contents

Colin Renfrew

Kostas Kotsakis

William A. Parkinson, William P. Ridge and Attila Gyucha

Ioannis Aslanis

John E. Coleman and Yorgos Facorellis

Maria Mina

Aleksandar Kapuran, Aleksandar Bulatovi and Dragan Milanovi

Inga Merkyte

Petya Georgieva

Petya Georgieva, Margarita Popova and Veselin Danov

Kamen Boyadzhiev and Yavor Boyadzhiev

Velichka Matsanova and Tatyana Mishina

Stoilka Terzijska-Ignatova

Mariusz Kufel and ukasz Pospieszny

Agathe Reingruber

Ivan Gatsov and Petranka Nedelcheva

Ccile Oberweiler, Gilles Touchais and Petrika Lera

Zo Tsirtsoni, Pascal Darcque, Haido Koukouli-Chryssanthaki, Dimitra Malamidou and Ren Treuil

Maria Pappa

Eva Alram-Stern

Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika

Stella Katsarou

Stratos Nanoglou

John Bintliff and Kalliope Sarri

Adamantios Sampson and Vagia Mastrogiannopoulou

Lilian Karali, Fanis Mavridis and Dimitris Lambropoulos

Alexandra Mari

Margarita Nazou

Sren Dietz and Pernille Bangsgaard

Georgia Stratouli and Odysseas Metaxas

Daniel J. Pullen

Walter Gauss

Catherine Perls

Jrg Rambach

Danielle J. Riebe

Stratis Papadopoulos, Ourania Palli, Sophia Vakirtzi and Eleni Psathi

Burin Erdou

arko Tankosi

Fanis Mavridis

Christina A. Televantou

Mercourios Georgiadis

Krzysztof Nowicki

Tristan Carter

Serena Di Tonto

Simona Todaro

Katerina Kopaka and Efthimis Theou

Edgar Peltenburg

Ioannis Voskos

Turan Takaolu and Abdulkadir zdemir

Turan Takaolu and Onur Bamyac

Zafer Derin and Tayfun Caymaz

zlem evik

Rza Tuncel and Vasf aholu

Barbara Horejs and Christoph Schwall

Sevin Gnel

Taner Korkut, Gl In and Turan Takaolu

Ali Umut Turkcan

Preface

The volume before you represents a collective effort that brings together scholars from different countries and backgrounds united by a common interest in the transition between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the lands around the Aegean. We chose a title containing the word communities because we think that the changes that occurred in the 5th and 4th millennia in south-eastern Europe and western Anatolia changed the way people were organised, how they understood their place in society, and how they interacted with other social entities on a day-to-day basis. The Neolithic community was transformed, at some places incrementally and at others rapidly, into one that was, by the end of this period, more similar to what we would commonly associate with the Bronze Age.

Terminology used to describe this period presented a special topic for consideration. Many different names (e.g. Final Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Eneolithic, Late Neolithic [I]II, Copper Age) are used by colleagues with different scholarly backgrounds. To some extent, they reflect diverse archaeological evidence from varied geographical regions. During this long heterogenous period spanning two millennia, developments occurred that led to significant changes in material culture, use of space, adoption of metallurgical practices, establishment of far-reaching interaction and exchange networks, and increased social complexity. The 5th and 4th millennia BC transition, notwithstanding the variability inherent in a section of prehistory this long, is one of inclusions, entanglements, connectivity, and exchange of ideas, raw materials, finished products and, quite possibly, worldviews and belief systems.

Largely, we kept the nomenclature used for regional archaeological cultures to show the variety and differences related to the period. However, after some deliberation, we settled on using the general term Later Neolithic Stages (not to be confused with the Late Neolithic phase) to describe the chronological focus of the conference itself. By using this somewhat neutral term, we wished to both advertise the focus on the fourth and later part of the 5th millennium as crucial for understanding the entire period and the intention to not include the earlier phases of the Late Neolithic or the developed phases of the Early Bronze Age, unless particularly pertinent to the discussion. The title of the volume, we felt, should be even more neutral and inclusive, which is the reason why we settled on the definition of the period in purely chronological terms. Inclusiveness was also high on the list of our priorities when organising the conference; we selected participants based purely on the criterion of scientific contribution.

Most of the papers presented here are multifaceted and complex in that they do not deal with only one topic or narrowly focus on only a single line of reasoning or group of data. Hence, it was difficult to section them off into meaningful chapters based exclusively on their thematic content. After much consideration, we settled on geography as the overarching principle by which to structure this book, as being the least contentious and controversial. Hence, the papers are arranged in a roughly northsouth direction (i.e., the Balkans, northern Greece and Thessaly, west, central, and southern Greece, the Aegean Islands, Crete and Cyprus and west Anatolia), preceded by introductory and synthetic contributions that either transcend regional divisions, span more than one region or address general topics related to this period. We, however, provide an overview of the papers according to their topical and thematic character in the introduction to this volume.