Stellatou, AI; (2007) Final Neolithic and early Bronze Age settlement in the southern Aegean: A comparative spatial analysis of three regional surveys. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

Preview

Text Stellatou_thesis.Redacted.pdf Download (50MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis investigates changing regional demography and settlement patterns in the southern Aegean during the Final Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 4200-2000 BC, henceforth FN-EBA). It draws in detail on three survey datasets, from Kythera, Methana and the southern Argolid, and explores them within a GIS-led analytical environment. Over the course of the 4,h-3rd millennia BC, the southern Aegean experienced a gradual increase in settlement, that resulted in an FN-EBA landscape dotted with small communities (also extending into the more marginal areas) and a few larger settlements. Modem commentators have emphasised that population increase and its impact on settlement increase and expansion, as well as the deployment of new subsistence strategies and the development of complex socio-political frameworks, led to the formation of the later palatial societies in the Aegean. Hence, the EBA in particular has often attracted attention as the precursor of the palatial periods, even though the archaeology suggests that FN-EBA developments followed trajectories which were not always linear and which did not necessarily conform to the traditional regional divisions of the Aegean. The character and distribution of FN-EBA sites, on both localised and more regional scales, need to be re-examined, and this is now possible for the following reasons: the current availability of high quality intensive survey data has finally enabled an investigation of demography and its impact on settlement and socio-economic strategies, through the investigation of the spatial distributions of sites and the relationship between the human and natural landscapes the use of Geographical Information Systems has made possible a new comparative approach for the analysis of site distributions within a landscape and has allowed for a better understanding of the reasons behind settlement location, such as land quality, water resources, slope or coastal proximity, and of inter-settlement relationships. This research utilises these advances within a methodological framework that addresses issues of survey comparability and site characterization, in an aim to explore the factors influencing FN- EBA settlement and demography in the southern Aegean.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item