509-522

The excavation of the prehistoric settlement of Kryoneri, near Nea Kerkdyllia

• Μαλαμίδου, Δήμητρα

The first investigations took the form of rescue excavations in 1996 and 1997.The prehistoric village occupied the south slope of a smooth hill (Drawing 2) now about 20 m above sea level at the foot of Mount Kerdyllio, in the belt of fertile land west of the Strymon. The site is no more than 5 km from the sea today, and the large quantities of fishbones and seashells in the fills attest the inhabitants' close relationship with the sea. However, the dominant feature of the landscape around the settlement is the River Strymon, a natural communication route between the Aegean and the Balkan hinterland. The excavation of the prehistoric settlement of Kryoneri offers an opportunity to investigate a number of issues relating to Neolithic research on the Serres plain, particularly in conjunction with the excavation at Promahon/Topolnica in the middle reaches of the river (No. 4 in Dr. 1) and the recent publication of the excavation at Dimitra (No. 3 in Dr. 1).The settlement cannot have covered more than 0.3 ha. The maximum depth of the fill is between 3 m and 3.5 m. Most of the fill, with a maximum depth of 3 m, belongs to the Late Neolithic. A few Early Bronze Age habitation phases have been located at the top of the hill, covering a smaller area and with a maximum fill depth of half a metre.The initial findings as regards the form of the settlement and the organisation of he space may be summarised as follows. The boundary of the settlement, in the Neolithic phases at least, seems to be marked by heaps of stones retaining dense red clay (Fig. 1). Inside the settlement, such activities as food preparation, the processing of ochre, stone-cutting, and domestic storage were carried out, and the space seems to have been quite densely built. Refuse pits and a simple type of pottery kiln were found outside the settlement (Fig. 5).From the archaeological data, our initial impression regarding the nature of the Kryoneri settlement is that this was a farming and stockbreeding community similar to those in the nearby settlements on the Strymon plain and the Drama plain. However, the palaeozoological remains (see Appendix) suggest that the prehistoric inhabitants of the Kryoneri settlement engaged in hunting and fishing to a greater extent than their neighbours, probably owing to the settlement's proximity to the sea and the river.The pottery found on the site includes the well-known black burnished ware with grooved and black-topped decoration, together with painted pottery of the brown-on-cream type without the Akropotamos-style motifs and pottery with graphite decoration. The predominant type of pottery has black-on-red painted decoration, which accounts for aproximately 60 per cent of the decorated pottery and is represented by a wide variety of types of vessels. One is impressed by the efforts to depict figures of animals and birds (Fig. 8).The products of stone-cutting, the clay, bone, and bronze tools (Fig. 11), the jewellery (Fig. 12), and the figurines (Fig. 13) complete the picture of an extremely interesting Neolithic settlement.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

προϊστορία, συνέδρια

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