Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The land and its resources: the geographic context
- 2 The Mesolithic background
- 3 The introduction of farming: local processes, diffusion or colonization?
- 4 Foreign colonists: where from?
- 5 The earliest Neolithic deposits: ‘aceramic’, ‘pre-pottery’ or ‘ceramic’?
- 6 The spread of the Early Neolithic in Greece: chronological and geographical aspects
- 7 A case study in Early Neolithic settlement patterns: eastern Thessaly
- 8 Early Neolithic subsistence economy: the domestic and the wild
- 9 The Early Neolithic village
- 10 Craft specialization: the contrasting cases of chipped-stone tools, pottery and ornaments
- 11 A variety of daily crafts
- 12 Ritual interaction? The miniature world of ‘dolls or deities’
- 13 Interacting with the dead: from the disposal of the body to funerary rituals
- 14 Interactions among the living
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The land and its resources: the geographic context
- 2 The Mesolithic background
- 3 The introduction of farming: local processes, diffusion or colonization?
- 4 Foreign colonists: where from?
- 5 The earliest Neolithic deposits: ‘aceramic’, ‘pre-pottery’ or ‘ceramic’?
- 6 The spread of the Early Neolithic in Greece: chronological and geographical aspects
- 7 A case study in Early Neolithic settlement patterns: eastern Thessaly
- 8 Early Neolithic subsistence economy: the domestic and the wild
- 9 The Early Neolithic village
- 10 Craft specialization: the contrasting cases of chipped-stone tools, pottery and ornaments
- 11 A variety of daily crafts
- 12 Ritual interaction? The miniature world of ‘dolls or deities’
- 13 Interacting with the dead: from the disposal of the body to funerary rituals
- 14 Interactions among the living
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Why a book on the Early Neolithic of Greece? The simplest answer is that a book on the subject does not exist. Yet, the Early Neolithic of Greece is the oldest in Europe, probably by several centuries. It is also frequently referred to as the source of all further development in Europe, either through the ‘maritime route’, along the Mediterranean coasts, or through the inland, Danubian route. Such broad statements reveal how poorly the Early Neolithic of Greece (or, for that matter, the Neolithic of Greece in general) is known outside of a small circle of specialists: the relations between the Greek Early Neolithic and that of the Adriatic coast, on the one hand, and of Bulgaria on the other, are in fact very problematic. Similarly, I have found that specialists of the Near Eastern Neolithic are sometimes incredulous when they discover, through lectures, some achievements of Greek Neolithic societies. In both cases the Neolithic in Greece has been superficially and rapidly considered as a distant yet familiar parallel to better known areas, without further investigation. Providing access to currently available data concerning this period and region, showing that the Greek Neolithic possesses its own originality can, by itself, justify this book.
Other motives can be found within the ‘small circle of specialists’ itself. Major issues such as the origins of the Neolithic in Greece or the existence of a preceramic phase are still vividly, and sometimes violently debated.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Early Neolithic in GreeceThe First Farming Communities in Europe, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001