Landscape Archaeology in Thessaly (LAiT)

• Applicant: Dr. Agathe Reingruber
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532768457

One of the great challenges of our generation of researchers is the localisation of endangered but still unrecognised archaeological sites and their preservation. Not only as a result of modern agriculture, but also due to climate change, the destruction of monuments has increased greatly nowadays. Temporary prehistoric settlements that leave only thin deposits, so-called flat settlements, are particularly at risk. These have not yet been systematically investigated in Thessaly, as it is rather the meter-high settlement mounds (magoules) spanning several periods, that attract international research interest. To fill this gap in knowledge, interdisciplinary studies are foreseen, involving an international team consisting of prehistoric archaeologists and natural scientists. In our approach we will use non- or low-invasive methods in order to study a well-defined area in north-eastern Thessaly diachronically (ca. 6500 to 3200 BC). All acquired data will be merged in a Geographic Information System (GIS). In a first step, the already known settlements will be recorded three-dimensionally and in a second step they will be investigated in an interdisciplinary approach together with the sites discovered by systematic intensive surveys. With the help of geophysical prospections, we will generate settlement images at six selected sites from different prehistoric periods. We also want to establish the relationship of prehistoric settlements to water bodies (which have dried up today). The Thessalian Plain is drained by the Pinios river system: A stretch of this river runs in a S-N direction through a shallow depression that was filled by Lake Nessonis in ancient times. Using tomographies and boreholes, we will test our working hypothesis that a lake extended here in prehistoric times as well, and that settlements were founded near its shores. By means of extensive surveys, we turn our attention to a group of objects on the mountain slopes that has not been scientifically studied so far: the cupmarked stones. These cannot be dated with certainty, and their function and relationship to the prehistoric settlements is also unknown. In addition, we want to use raw material analyses to find out how intensively the communities from the different areas of Eastern Thessaly were in exchange and whether or how networks changed in a diachronic perspective. These evaluations will be carried out in the context of a relative and absolute chronological framework that has already been partly worked out on the basis of ceramic analyses and radiocarbon dates, but which still needs to be further refined. Supplemented with results of earlier research, it will be possible to better grasp both settlement behavior in prehistoric times and how prehistoric communities reacted to natural changes in the environment (and ultimately climate) and adapted or changed as a society. This would provide a new perspective on prehistoric settlement in north-eastern Thessaly.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Greece
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Giorgos Toufexis