Current hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L. Bintliff et al., 2002), together with a recent reanalysis of survey results from the Thespiae dis- trict (J. L. Bintliff et al., 1999), have...
moreCurrent hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L. Bintliff et al., 2002), together with a recent reanalysis of survey results from the Thespiae dis- trict (J. L. Bintliff et al., 1999), have led to a radical rethinking of how and where early farm- ers exploited the Greek landscape between earliest Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times.
This new work is described, and its significance for the wider debates about the Greek land- scape in this period is further discussed, to demonstrate that alongside widely spaced villages in earlier Neolithic times there were also small, short-lived farms; both were associated with wetland hand cultivation.
In later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times, these locations remained, but vestigial traces discovered by hyperintensive survey methods have identified an explosion of small, short-lived, and horizontally migrating farms across the newly cleared interfluve zones. A largely lost alluvial terrace provides a major resource for the earlier, wet- land farming foci.
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