Erika Weiberg & Martin Finné American Journal of Archaeology 117.1 (January 2013): 1-31.
The centuries surrounding 2200 B.C.E. (the year commonly used to mark the transition between the second and third phases of the Early Bronze Age) were transformative times in the Aegean. At some locations, development continued and accelerated; in many places, however, several societal characteristics and supraregional traits seem to have been abandoned.
The archaeological record supports the general proposition that the simplest form of architecture, the round building type, variously persisted throughout the Aegean prehistory.
The Neolithisation process is one of the major issues under debate in Aegean archaeology, since the description of the basal layers of Thessalian tell-settlements some fifty years ago. The pottery, figurines or stamps seemed to be of Anatolian origin, and were presumably brought to the region by colonists.
This paper evaluates the evidence for horseback riding in Mycenaean Greece. This paper argues that horseback riding, which is widely held to be an Iron Age development (of especially the 9th and 8th centuries BC), was practised by members of the aristocracies throughout the eastern Mediterranean as early as the 13th century BC, and that the first cavalry can be identified around the same time in Mycenaean Greece and other regions in the eastern Mediterranean.
Black on red painted pottery is one of the most characteristic ceramic groups in northern Greece dated to an advanced stage of the Late Neolithic period, roughly between 4800/4700-3900/3800 BC. It belongs to a wider trend which characterizes the late Neolithic in all of southeastern Europe on the basis of the extensive production of decorated ceramics.
Gavdos, a small island off SW Crete, happened to share in the past the name Gozo with its well-known Maltese counterpart, as we know from texts and maps of the Venetian period. Both islands, moreover, complete in epic identity, by laying a claim – together with many other isles – to having been Calypso’s legendary/Homeric universe.
H θέση Κοντοπήγαδο τοποθετείται στο βορειοανατολικό άκρο του δήμου Αλίμου Αττικής, εκτεινόμενη κατά μήκος της λεωφόρου Βουλιαγμένης από το ύψος περίπου της οδού Δωδεκανήσου έως την οδό Αρχαίου Θεάτρου.
Οι σχέσεις της Κρήτης με τις Κυκλάδες απασχόλησαν πολύ πρώιμα τους ερευνητές. Πολύ νωρίς μάλιστα, η αφετηρία των σχέσεων αυτών τοποθετήθηκε στα πρώτα στάδια εξέλιξης των δύο πολιτισμών, μετά την ανακάλυψη οψιανού στα Νεολιθικά στρώματα της Κνωσού.
Maxime Brami & Heyd VolkerPraehistorische Zeitschrift 86:2 (October 2011): 165-206.
Recent discoveries in Western Anatolia have shed new light on the origins of Europe's first farmers. Fifty years ago, James Mellaart suggested that Early Neolithic communities in Greece and the Balkans shared a common ancestry in Western Anatolia at the site of Hacılar.
Laura Dietrich & Oliver DietrichPraehistorische Zeitschrift 86:1 (May 2011): 67-84.
The fine wares of the Wietenberg Culture in Transylvania during the Middle Bronze Age are characterised by compositions of uniform, repetitive 'spiraloid' or 'meandroid' motifs. These patterns – referred to collectively as 'spiral ornamentation' – were often associated with the Mycenaean region.
Matthieu Ghilardi, David Psomiadis, Stéphane Cordier, Doriane Delanghe-Sabatier, François Demory, Fatiha Hamidi, Theodoros Paraschou, Elissavet Dotsika & Eric FouacheQuaternary International 266 (July 2012): 47-61.
The site of Nea Nikomideia is one of the oldest and most important Neolithic settlements in Northern Greece and the wider Balkan Peninsula, having been first occupied by early farmers at around 6500 cal. BC. Important archaeological excavations conducted in the 1960s suggested that the settlement was located close to an ancient coastline during the Neolithic.
Flouda, G., Vavouranakis, G., Katsaros, Th., Ganetsos, Th. & Tsikouras, B.στο Radvan, R., Akyuz, S., Simileanu, M. & Dragomir, V. (eds), Proceedings of The Third Balkan Symposium on Archaeometry: The Unknown Face of the Artwork (Bucharest 2012): 45-51.
This paper examines stone vessels from two prehistoric funerary assemblages at Apesokari, a site situated in the region of Mesara, south central Crete, Greece.
Uroš Matićστο Ing-Marie Back Danielsson, Fredrik Fahlander & Ylva Sjöstrand (eds), Encountering Imagery. Materialities, Perceptions, Relations (Stockholm 2012): 235-253.
‘Minoans’ have been recognised as pre-Hellenic race or closed ethnic group in Egyptian representations of Aegean figures from Eighteenth Dynasty Theban tombs. Modern construct of ‘Minoans’ thus merged with an ancient Egyptian construct of Aegean foreigners.
M.W. Dee, J.M. Rowland, T.F.G. Higham, A.J. Shortland, F. Brock, S.A. Harris & C. Bronk RamseyAntiquity 86:333 (2012): 868-883.
Egypt has some of the oldest written records and extended lists of named rulers. But radiocarbon dates have only fulfilled expectations 66 per cent of the time. So why haven't the two types of dating made a better match? The authors provide a dozen excellent reasons, which will sound the alarm among researchers well beyond Dynastic Egypt.
Lindy Crewe & Ian HillLevant 44:2 (November 2012): 205-237.
Whilst use of alcoholic beverages is considered an important feature of most societies, identifying alcohol production and consumption in the archaeological record is notoriously difficult. Presented here is a recently excavated oven-like installation, unique in the Cypriot Bronze Age, from the south-western settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia.
