The Early Neolithic in Greece

by Catherine Perlès , Illustrated by Gerard Monthel

• ISBN13: 9780521000277
• ISBN10: 0521000270
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Farmers made a sudden and dramatic appearance in Greece around 7000 BC, bringing with them new ceramics and crafts, and establishing settled villages. They were Europe's first farmers, and their settlements provide the link between the first agricultural communities in the Near East and the subsequent spread of the new technologies to the Balkans and on to Western Europe. Catherine Perlés argues that the stimulus for the spread of agriculture to Europe was a colonisation movement involving small groups of maritime peoples. Drawing evidence from a wide range of archaeological sources, including often neglected 'small finds', and introducing daring new perspectives on funerary rituals and the distribution of figurines, she constructs a complex and subtle picture of early Neolithic societies, overturning the traditional view that these societies were simple and self-sufficient.

Table of Contents

List of figures	ix
List of tables	xii
Acknowledgements	xiii
Introduction	1	(8)
The land and its resources: the geographic context	9	(11)
The Mesolithic background	20	(18)
The introduction of farming: Local Processes, diffusion or colonization?	38	(14)
Foreign colonists: Where from?	52	(12)
The earliest Neolithic deposits: `aceramic', pre-pottery' or 'ceramic'?	64	(34)
The spread of the Early Neolithic in Greece: chronological and geographical aspects	98	(23)
A case study in Early Neolithic settlement patterns: eastern Thessaly	121	(31)
Early Neolithic subsistence economy: The domestic and the wild	152	(21)
The Early Neolithic village	173	(27)
Craft specialization: The contrasting cases of chipped-stone tools, pottery and ornaments	200	(27)
A variety of daily crafts	227	(28)
Ritual interaction? The miniature worlds of 'dolls or deities'	255	(18)
Interacting With the dead: from the disposal of the body to funerary rituals	273	(10)
Interactions among the living	283	(15)
Conclusion	298	(8)
Bibliography	306	(38)
Index	344