435-444

Bronze Age tell sites in the Lower Struma Valley and preliminary report on the excavation at Toumba Sfelinou, district of Serres

• Τόλια-Χριστάκου, Μαρία

A group of four small tell sites of the Bronze Age, Toumba Sfelinou, Toumba Mandiliou, Megali Toumba Skopias, Mikri Toumba Skopias, in located east of the modern village of Nca Zihni in the district of Serres. The tells were founded on Hat elevations formed between deeply cut streams running parallel to each other in the submountainous area between the Struma Valley, the Angitis Valley and the plain of Drama. They rise from 219 to 680 meters above sea level and constitute naturally protected sites allowing territorial surveillance and direct visual eye contact with the landscape. The locations and small sizes of the four mounds resemble those o f the Bronze Age tells north of the Kresna Gorge, in the province of Blagoevgrad in southwestern Bulgaria. Ecavations at Kamenska Cuka and Krsto Pokrovnik showed that each settlement consisted of a single building with strong walls constructed in rubble massonry and containing large numbers of storage vessels. In the district of Serres, salvage excavations were carried out at Toumba Sfelinou in August 2006, after extensive illicit diggings, exposed, under fallen construction material, walls built with mudbricks or alternating layers of mudbricks and rubble stone. At the foot of the mound, portions of a clay floor and a surface paved with small-sized stones well bedded in the earth were uncovered. The deposits excavated yielded small quantities of Late Bronze Age pottery, mainly fragments of large storage vessels. Larger quantities of pottery were found in the debris of the illicit digs. Characteristic ware includes amphoras with pointed base and other pithoid vessels with plastic decoration; vessels with impressed or incised decoration; kantharos forms as well as an almost complete wishbone- handled bowl, possibly with conical base. The continuation of the excavations at Toumba Sfelinou may provide information about the pattern of occupation of the site, the types and function of the constructions and the specific date of the pottery. It may also shed light on the relations between the tells of the regionand their possible function in a regional settlement or trade network.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

Σέρρες

Το άρθρο περιέχει εικόνες., Θερμές ευχαριστίες οφείλονται στους αρχαιολόγους Γ. Καζαντζή και Ν. Ξυδέα, που πήραν μέρος στην ανασκαφή, στη συντηρήτρια Μ. Κυρανούδη, στη συνάδελφο αρχαιολόγο Ν. Πυλαρινού, για κάθε είδους βοήθεια και διευκόλυνση, στον Ν. Λασκαράκη και στον αρχαιοφύλακα του Μουσείου Σερρών I. Λιούμττα, για την πολύτιμη συνδρομή τους κατά τις περιοδείες στις παραπάνω θέσεις, στην προϊστάμενη της KH’ ΕΠΚΑ Κ. Περιστέρη, καθώς και σε όλους τους εργάτες της ανασκαφής.