FROM STONE TO HISTORICAL AGE

NEOLITHIC AGE (6.800 – 3.200 BC)

People started making clay and metal pottery to store grain, food, etc.

They started leading a community life, living in larger groups.

They domesticated goats, sheep, donkeys, and similar animals for their benefit.

They invented the wheel and they used it to fetch water from wells, to make pottery, etc.

They created some family tombs. They started making earrings, necklaces,

ring idol figurine - pendants of silver and gold.

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE 1899-1906: the first

archaeological investigations of the Neolithic Period in Greece, by Chr. Tsountas in Thessaly

Most important archaeological points:

o Sesklo & Dimini (Thessaly)

o Paradimi (Thrace)o Sitagroi & Dispilio

(Macedonia)o Knosos (Crete)

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE Stabilization of climatic

conditions

Permanent group settlements

Economy based on systematic farming, stock-rearing, exchange of raw materials and products and pottery production

Transition from the hunting, food-gathering and fishing stage to the productive stage

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Characteristics:o Usually open

settlements in coastal or inland areas, lowlands or hills, close to water sources (lakes, rivers, etc.)

o "magoula“ or "toumba“ (< "tymvos”): a form of artificial low hill (2-4 m. high, with a diameter of 100-200 m.), created by successive habitation layers on the same spot

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE Characteristics:o Pile-dwellings (Dispilio) or

huts with walls made of posts and later houses with stone foundations and walls of mud-bricks

o One-room houses or with an additional open or closed porch ("megaron-type").

o Settlements often surrounded by ditches or stone enclosures, for defense or to mark the limits of the settlement

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Characteristics:o Communities of 50-100 individuals at the

beginning, which later increased to 100-300, organized on the basic unit of clan or extended family

o No economic differentiation among the members of the community or social stratification (at least until the very late Neolithic Age)

o Signs of community and equality: ditches & stone enclosures – shared production - hearths and ovens in open spaces for common use – no private property

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE Characteristics:o Primitive form of authority, exercised by the

oldest or ablest members (needed) o Exchange networks of products with many

communities-partners o Some kind of social prestige in the late Neolithic

Age, based on finds of distinctive objects, owned only by a few members of the community (leaf-shaped arrow heads of Melian obsidian, jewels of gold, silver or even sea-shell and copper tools)

o Defined roles of both sexes, ALTHOUGH the role of the woman in Neolithic society seems to have been stressed, at least at a symbolical level (numerous female figurines)

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Characteristics:

o Hunting and fishing in a secondary roleo Domestication of specific plants - Cultivation

of cereals, pulses and flax (+ wool = the basic raw materials for weaving)

o Domestication and rearing of animals (sheep, goats, cattle, pigs and dogs)

o Leather working, weaving, basketry and pottery (as a part of the household)

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Characteristics:o Tools of stone and

boneo Figurines of stone or

marble (forerunners of the Cycladic figurines) with a wide ideological content, expressing different aspects of life, or used in symbolic acts (e.g. as offerings for a house-foundation).

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Pottery for the preparation, consumption and storage of food, also produced by its users (at first) in a surprising variety of colors and decorative styles and themes

Seals, probably used for the adornment of the body (tattoo)

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE Characteristics:o Import of obsidian from

Melos, used in making sharp tools & arrows

o Practice of metallurgy in the Aegean, to manufacture gold and silver jewels

o Development of exchange networks in the Aegean & the Balkans

o Specialization of production Workshops specialized on pottery & jewels of metal or sea-shell

GREECE IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

Jewels & seals Human need for decoration & social promotion

Belief in life after death (burial gifts)

An early form of written speech (probably) Wooden tablet with engraved linear symbols, from the lakeside settlement of Dispilio (5260 BC)