The Hidden Landscape of Prehistoric Greece- Bintliff- Howard & Snodgrass

Introduction

When we first embarked, in 1979, on intensivesurvey in Boeotia, Central Greece (Figure 1),we were joining a tradition with a decided pre-historic bias. Of the pioneer archaeologicalsurface surveys of Greek lands in modern timesthat were our models, Messenia (McDonaldand Rapp 1972) was designed primarily toreveal, in unprecedented detail, the later pre-historic landscapes in its chosen region, whileMelos (Cherry 1982; Wagstaff and Cherry1982) ran concurrently with the excavation ofthe Late Bronze Age site at Phylakopi on thesame island. Boeotia, however, belonged to ayounger generation of field surveys—Keos,Nemea, Methana, Laconia—each of theminaugurated between 1979 and 1984. Thesewere influenced by the trend in the UnitedStates, the leading source of survey theory,towards ever more intensive fieldwalking andrecording of all traces of human activity,regardless of period. Newer surveys were thusunavoidably confronted by a dense mass of

sites and ‘offsite’ finds, in which the artefacts ofhistoric eras were dominant. The Argolid sur-vey, begun ‘unofficially’ by Michael Jamesonwith a more traditional, topographic approachduring the 1950s, but transformed into a field-by-field, intensive survey by the early 1970s(Jameson et al. 1994) had in fact already inau-gurated an approach to the Greek landscapethat did not privilege any one phase, butfocused instead on the patterns of ‘sequentoccupance’, right down to the present day. Thesame can be said of the Ayiofarango Survey inCrete, from the mid-1970s (Blackman andBranigan 1977).

Both in the Argolid and in the youngergeneration of surveys that followed, certainrecurrent features became strikingly apparentin the relationship between the later prehis-toric (Neolithic, Bronze Age and Early IronAge) and the historical (Graeco-Roman,Mediaeval and Post-Mediaeval) occupancy ofwhat was essentially the southern, lowlandGreek landscape. Prehistoric settlement ‘sites’

The Hidden Landscape of Prehistoric Greece

John Bintliff1, Phil Howard2 and Anthony Snodgrass3

1 Faculteit der Archeologie, Universiteit Leiden, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands2 Archaeology Department, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom3 Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, United Kingdom

Abstract

For all-period intensive surveys in Greece, even those of very recent years, an abiding problem has beenthe difficulty of detecting prehistoric remains, whether at the level of nucleated sites or in the form ofscatters across the landscape. The authors suggest explanations for the problems encountered in thisregard, over the past 20 years, by the Boeotia Survey. They offer some first steps towards the solutionof these problems, based on a reassessment of the actual results achieved, here and elsewhere, by inten-sive survey methods.

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12.2 (1999) 139-168

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were notably less numerous by comparisonwith those of Graeco-Roman date, and forprehistory overall surface artefact densitieswere, for the most part, low. Demographically,it was difficult to believe that populations inthese phases had ever been comparable withthose that could be inferred from the infinitelymore numerous remains of historic times.This aspect had been brought home veryclearly in a revealing analysis of prehistoricsites from the Melos Survey by John Cherry(1979; 1982). Here the numerous small sitesscattered across the island, taken togetherwith the likely occupation-span of each siteand the millennia over which the total pre-historic site-complement had to be spread,made it unlikely that many of the small sitesmapped were ever contemporary: the popula-tion at any one time, at least until the devel-opment of the first large nucleated village atPhylakopi by the Middle Bronze Age, waslikely to have been tiny.

On the Boeotia survey, prehistoric ‘sites’(that is, to take the generally cited definition,foci of surface artefacts that were dense bycomparison with the local background level,and were assumed to mark former settlements,cemeteries or other areas of heightenedhuman activity) were distributed widely—ifthinly—across the entire surveyed area (by1991, some 55 sq km covered by close-orderpedestrian survey at normally 15 m field-walker intervals) (for the methodology, seeBintliff and Snodgrass 1985). But their num-bers appeared to be so small and their distrib-ution so patchy (only some 35 prehistoricsites identified across the entire surveyed area:Oliver Dickinson, pers. com.) that the infer-ences we had hoped to draw about populationdynamics, variable uses of landscape, settle-ment networks and hierarchies were rapidlyproved unattainable, especially as many of these sites were occupied in more than one prehistoric period. By contrast, such

approaches were infinitely easier for the his-torical era, and it was a compensation for thetwo directors to exploit the seemingly inex-haustible database available from the surfacefinds of later periods, with the additionalopportunities for linking them to archival andformal historical sources (Bintliff 1991; 1996;1997a; 1997b; Bintliff and Snodgrass 1988b;Snodgrass 1987).

The Paradox: Intensive Survey and the Pre-historic Settlement Pattern

This was not what we had anticipated. Oneaspiration of the younger generation of ‘inten-sive survey’ project-leaders was to reveal thetrue density and complexity of the prehistoricGreek landscape. There was an explicit con-trast with the picture (then widely consideredto be misleading) given by the results fromthe ‘extensive’ approach exemplified by theMinnesota Messenia survey (McDonald andRapp 1972), which had generated somethingof a cause célèbre within the circle of Mediter-ranean topographers and field survey practi-tioners. The University of Minnesota teamhad managed to survey a relatively vast region(some 3800 sq km) through the selective vis-iting of ‘promising’ topographic features,believed from previous site discoveries to typ-ify settlement locations during the LateBronze Age (Mycenaean) era. Prior inspec-tion of aerial photographs, together with localinformants’ knowledge of places where antiq-uities were prominent, had speeded up thetask of identifying places to visit. Although tosome extent the Minnesota field survey brokeout of this mode of restricted visits to pre-determined locations, the team’s analysis ofknown sites, together with the results of all itsnew fieldwork, seemed to reinforce the view that later prehistoric communities inMessenia lived in small-to-medium nucleatedsettlements, largely in the same places,

The Hidden Landscape of Prehistoric Greece 141


throughout the Bronze Age. Moreover, afavourable comparison of the catalogue ofLate Bronze Age sites with the list of place-names in the Mycenaean palace archives atthe regional centre of Pylos led to the sugges-tion that the majority of such settlements hadindeed been identified, before and during thesurvey. The sum total of prehistoric sites—some 300 for the region studied—was how-ever recognized to have been reduced by siteburial in alluvial valleys and related processes,and was therefore tentatively adjusted to afigure closer to 400 (McDonald and Rapp1972: 141).

The ‘New Wave’ of exponents of intensivesurvey in Greece now criticized, with all the vehemence of Young Turks, the failings ofthe Messenia model of ‘extensive survey’.Sites not found in previously hypothesized‘favoured locations’ would escape notice;small sites requiring close-order field-by-fieldwalking would generally be ignored; and apredictable consequence of such traditionalmethods would be to locate only the largersettlements, occupied over a longer period,especially those where defensible positions onisolated hilltops allowed rapid, ‘targeted’ vis-its as the main approach to fieldwork (Bintliff1977a; 1977b; Bintliff and Snodgrass 1985;Cherry 1983; 1984). Indeed, despite a spiriteddefence of the Minnesota approach on thepart of its practitioners (Carothers andMcDonald 1979; Hope-Simpson 1984; 1985;McDonald 1984), the post-Messenia ‘inten-sive surveys’ appeared to prove their pointconvincingly by discovering a vastly higherdensity of sites everywhere else in lowlandSouthern Greece than the ‘extensive’approach had ever imagined—especially thesmall sites interpreted as farms (ClassicalGreek) and villas (Roman) (cf. Bintliff andSnodgrass 1985: table 4). For later prehistory,the multiplication of previously known sitesthrough the field-by-field, close-order field-

walking characteristic of these surveys(Argolid, Ayiofarango, Boeotia, Keos, Meth-ana, Laconia) achieved a similar goal, with asite density many times greater than that pro-vided by the Messenian statistics. To take theexample already cited (above) of the BoeotiaProject: 35 prehistoric ‘sites’ identified insome 55 sq km gives one site for every 1.6 sqkm, whereas the Messenian density is 1 sitefor every 13 sq km (McDonald and Rapp1972: 15). Here, intensive survey producedan eight-fold increase in prehistoric site den-sity. Overall, the discrepancy is much greater:the Messenia total site density is 1 site inevery 12 sq km, while a typical intensiveGreek survey finds some 4 sites in every 1 sqkm—a differential of about 50 (Cherry 1983:fig. 1; Bintliff and Snodgrass 1985: 136).

But (and it is a big ‘but’) the pattern of pre-historic sites revealed was not so strikinglydifferent from that claimed by the Messeniasurvey: in comparison with the Graeco-Roman settlement density, there was a rela-tively thin scatter of genuinely small (farm?)sites, a small number of larger hamlet-villagesites and, of course, the occasional semi-urban‘central place’, the latter two often occupiedthrough most periods of later prehistory andthe historical eras. Any hopes of picking upfluctuations in settlement systems, with suchcontinuity of the core nucleated sites, provedillusory: the very possibility of demonstrating,for example, population pressure, with such apoverty of prehistoric settlement size andnumbers, disappeared. For certain parts oflowland Greece, it could be claimed that newmodels such as that of the Argolid team(Pope and van Andel 1984)—according towhich widespread erosion was precipitated byEarly Bronze Age settlement—depended onthe detailed map for that phase achievedthrough intensive survey. But the geomor-phology and its chronology could have stimu-lated the same interpretation, from the



knowledge of Early Bronze Age settlementalready obtained through prior study. Again,one might claim that the Melos survey couldonly have postulated its ‘implosion’ model(Cherry 1979; Wagstaff and Cherry 1982) forthe decline of small rural sites across theBronze Age and the rise of a single nucleated‘town’ at Phylakopi, after the intensive surveyof 20% of the island. But the excavations atPhylakopi, with a traditional study and revisitof the many prehistoric rural sites known priorto the intensive survey and their finds (cf.Bintliff 1977a: Part 2, Ch. 6), would havebeen adequate enough to generate the modelproposed.

Very similar conclusions could be drawnfrom the reports of one of the latest intensivesurveys from mainland Greece, the PylosRegional Archaeological Project (Davis et al.1997; Zangger et al. 1997; Davis 1998; cf.Shelmerdine 1997), which is appropriatelyset in the homeland of the original extensiveMessenia survey of 30 years ago. Here, too,detailed survey has failed to provide evidenceof a hitherto undiscovered multitude of smallsites (whether for prehistory, or indeed evenfor the Classical age); on the contrary, thepattern of nucleated and long-lived sites,claimed by the Minnesota project for thisregion, appears to be confirmed. It is true thatthe overall site density, on the evidence of thepreliminary reports on the Web (http://clas-sics.lsa.umich.edu/PRAP.html) and in print(Davis et al. 1997; Davis 1998), has beenincreased by a factor of 2 to 2.5: but theincrease is largely in sites of historical date,and most of the few new prehistoric sites alsohave historical occupation, underlining thethesis of persistence of locations. Genuinelysmall sites, of around 0.1 ha or less, remain ararity for any period.

Perplexing as these findings may seem forthe exponents of intensive survey, there arespecial factors that apply to the Messenian

region in general, and the immediate vicinityof the Mycenaean palace at Pylos in particu-lar. The latter had been, for obvious reasons,a scene of intensive research from the 1930sonwards: previous extensive surveys hadachieved a prehistoric site density of 1 site per3.3 sq km—four times the density of theregion as a whole—and the new Pylos Projecthas raised this figure to around 1 site per 2 sqkm. This density is not so far from thoserecorded by intensive survey for prehistoricsites elsewhere—one site per 1.6 sq km inBoeotia, for example (the Pylos and Boeotiaprehistoric site databases are still provisional,but in Shelmerdine’s useful review [1997:551] she lists for Early [EBA], Middle [MBA]and Late Bronze Age [LBA] sites, respec-tively, the figures of 6, 11 and 14 for the PylosSurvey, and 19, 16 and 16 for Boeotia, overnot dissimilar areas).

A historical line of explanation might besought for the fact that the density of sites of allperiods in the Pylos district, even after inten-sive survey, stands at little more than 1 site persq km, as compared with the density of about 4sites per sq km commonly found in intensivesurveys elsewhere in Southern Greece. Thiscan largely be accounted for by the absence ofthat explosion of small farm-sites in Archaicand Classical Greek times so prominent else-where—although that phenomenon is clearlydetectable for the Messenian countryside at alater time, in the later Hellenistic and Romanperiods. Already, in the Minnesota Project’svolume of 1972, this pattern was seen as a pre-dictable consequence of the prolonged Spartanoccupation, which held back economic devel-opment in the region; and this reading wasrecently incorporated into a multiregionalcomparison (Bintliff 1997c) of Graeco-Romandemographic trends in the Aegean area.

There is also an important environmentalcontrast to be established between the Pylosarea and certain other sectors of the Greek



landscape, including (emphatically) centraland western Boeotia. In the former district,the geomorphology showed unmistakablesigns of serious erosion of the local marls(Zangger et al. 1997), which must have sub-stantially affected the recovery of prehistoricsites and material. Boeotia, however, exem-plifies a landscape that, though partly com-posed of similar marls, has remained (forGreece) unusually stable—a fact for which wehave once again the authority of EberhardZangger (pers. comm.). As, however, two of uspointed out in a much earlier paper (Bintliffand Snodgrass 1988a), the effect of prehis-toric and ancient erosion—excepting the rarecases of sites exposed on very steep slopes—israther to concentrate surface artefact finds as‘lagged deposits’ while preferentially remov-ing the soil fines around them. Unless otherfactors were active (see below), one mightexpect that Messenian surface artefacts wouldbe better exposed to view than those emanat-ing from the more conserved palaeosols ofBoeotia.

More positively, two highly significant fea-tures stand out from the admirably detailedpreliminary publications and Internet Editionof the Pylos project: their importance willshortly become apparent. First, small numbersof prehistoric sherds frequently occur withincollections from historical-period sites, thelatter being clearly recognised by fieldwalkersas sites (or ‘POSIs’ to use their term) from thefar more abundant historical surface occupa-tion traces. Purely prehistoric sites are veryrare, compared to historic sites where a minorprehistoric find component has also been recognized. In the (still incomplete) sitegazetteer available on the Internet, definiteprehistoric site occupation is approximatelymatched by findspots where the prehistoricpot or lithic component is so low as to beclassified as probably non-site for each or atleast one recognized prehistoric period. Sec-

ondly, the Pylos team also found small num-bers of prehistoric sherds at irregular pointswithin normal transecting, not associatedwith clusters of any period. The maps so faravailable of prehistoric ‘off-site’ finds restmerely on a limited part of the potential pre-historic transect finds, those firmly dated(Sebastian Heath, pers. com.), so that thefinal distribution will be denser, but in ourview the phenomenon of up to 20 suchfindspots per prehistoric phase merits closeattention. With 17 and 20 ‘off-site’ transectlocations for the MBA and LBA, but only twofor EBA, a strong contrast is suggested; butthe decision not to collect undecoratedcoarseware body-sherds during fieldwalking(Davis et al. 1997: 401) in our view may wellaccount for the contrast in identified find-spots to the detriment of the Early BronzeAge, where surface ceramics are typicallycharacterized by such sherds.

If the latest data from the Pylos RegionalArchaeological Project can thus be argued tofall broadly into line with the site statisticsfrom other intensive survey projects in south-ern Greece, it remains true that all such sur-veys have yielded a rather low representationof prehistoric sites. Quite apart from the gen-eral poverty of Neolithic settlements as onemoves southwards from the tell landscapes ofThessaly, sites of Early, Middle and LateBronze Age times are rarely single period; andthey are neither sufficiently dense nor largeenough to support any thesis of populationeven approaching local resource ceilings.Here we include the major centres, whichbear no comparison with even a middle-rank-ing city-state of Classical Greek times(Bintliff 1997b). This remains true even ifone assumes that known sites within a longprehistoric period were continuously occu-pied—which, as John Cherry cogently argued(1979), is unlikely to have been the case forthe kind of hamlet, and rarely farm, settle-



ments that almost all these sites represent.The purpose of this article is to suggest,

from the basis of our experience in Boeotia,that the history of research hitherto out-lined—up to and including the latest resultsfrom the Pylos Project—rests upon anentirely false picture of the prehistoric land-scape of southern lowland Greece. The shapeof that landscape is of a totally different char-acter from any map of prehistoric sites so farproduced, or deployed in favour of competingdemographic and settlement pattern models.Throughout this long debate over surveymethods it has kept its secret—it has been alandscape hidden from our knowledge.

Towards a Solution of the Problem

The 20-year life of the Boeotia Survey hasincluded a number of curious experiences.Three incidents remain firmly fixed in thememory, because they raised a spectre thatseemed impossible to lay to rest. First, one ofus (J.L.B) was leading half a dozen studentfield-walkers along the plateau rim above theancient city of Thespiae (immediately southof the modern village of that name in thecentre of Figure 1). We stopped transectingfor a water-and-biscuits break, sitting athwartour transect route on lumps of conglomeratebedrock that had pierced the Tertiary marls inthis locality. As the minutes passed, webecame dully aware of some curious andpoorly-defined anomalous shapes in theploughsoil of the field immediately before us.They were like-coloured to the soil, andlacked the sharp, clear edges of normalceramic sherds. We went to investigate. Aswe pulled the fragments out of their soilmatrix, their texture was moist, soft and very fragile—‘wet biscuit’ is an appropriatedescription. Later, however, they hardened inthe dry summer heat and began to recover theshape and appearance of prehistoric coarse-ware. Careful gridded collection around the

point of first discovery, which led to asignificant enhancement of our prehistoricassemblage, later enabled us to demonstratethe existence of a ‘site’, with EBA and MBAphases, at this spot (PP19/20). It wouldalmost certainly have eluded recognition ifwe had passed smoothly across it, observingonly the typically high densities of historical-period ceramics that form a regular carpetaround the large Graeco-Roman city of Thes-piae. Perhaps a single piece of coarsewarewould have caught the eye of one fieldwalker;but, measured against the several hundred toseveral thousand sherds that are the statisticalaverage for a 60 × 50 m transect in this areaof our survey (between 74% and 85% of themClassical-Hellenistic in date), no significancewould have been given to that observation.

The second story has a similarly disconcert-ing flavour. We had observed that two ancient(Graeco-Roman) farmsites lay less than 50-60 m apart, in an area of olive groves a kilo-metre west of the ancient city. Were theymerely a single large rural site with surfacevisibility problems in the intervening space?We resolved to revisit the spot: walkingextremely slowly and carefully back and forthbetween the two previously recognized siteareas, we were soon able to confirm that therewas indeed a clear interval, lacking eitherhigher densities of ancient ceramic or freshlybroken material. At the same time, however,we again became aware of a new and hithertounrecorded presence in this locality—pre-cisely in the ‘off-site’ interval we began to seethe ‘wet-biscuit’ shapes of prehistoric coarse-ware. Here we had walked and found histori-cal sites, but had recorded nothing of thisother-worldly scatter. Once more, the piecesconcerned were very low in number and allbut indistinguishable from the surroundingsoil in colour, hardness and shape; once more,they were numerically swamped by the abun-dant ancient potsherds that surrounded them,but a prehistoric site (PP25) was in evidence



nonetheless—as later intensive collectionwas to prove (with all three Bronze Agephases present).

The third story again arose from the discov-ery of an ancient, Graeco-Roman farmsite(MPA6), isolated, but rich in surface remains;this time it was perched in a small uplandplateau above the Theban Plain near On-chestos (in the north of the Thespiae SurveyArea of Figure 1). When the ceramics werecatalogued and dated by our ceramic experts, atiny collection—two or three pieces out of sev-eral hundred ancient sherds brought back as asample—of MBA and LBA fineware wasidentified. Such is the relative scarcity of pre-historic sites in most intensive surveys that thediscovery of a new exemplar is greeted withsome excitement. As it happened, that yearour prehistoric pot consultant, Chris Mee, wasa Mycenaean specialist. Seized with enthusi-asm, he set out for the site, only to spend fruit-less hours on and around it in search of a singleadditional fragment. But if there was no site‘beneath’ the ancient farm, or lurking close by,how could one account for the arrival of thesepieces within the surface debris?

At this point, it should be observed that wein Boeotia had formed a conventional impres-sion of what a prehistoric site ought to looklike. Indeed, every season we had trained newfield-walkers by taking them to our ‘modelbehaviour’ minor prehistoric site—Onchestos/Kazarma on the low watershed where theThebes–Livadheia road passes from the The-ban Plain to the basin of the former LakeCopais. Here, although the diameter of the‘site’ was modest (some 80 m—so not exactlysmall), we were always sure of collecting bag-fuls of potsherds from all Bronze Age phases—and very little else. Of course Onchestos, withits ease of access, its striking topography, andthat very quality of inexhaustible prehistoricsurface material, had been spotted long beforeour survey began. In normal fieldwalking,

absolute density changes were the primarymeans of identifying sites, but with our train-ing of students to distinguish the less commonwares, in lesser concentrations, which mightsignal a genuinely small prehistoric site or ahistoric burial location, we had still expected tocorrect an understandable discovery biastowards the more obvious kind of rich, focusedprehistoric and historic sites.

What emerges from the stories just related?Most of the prehistoric pottery in our regionwas coarseware; it seemed to survive poorlyand was hard to distinguish in the soil. Themuch more conspicuous wheel-made finewares—Matt-painted, Minyan, Mycenaean—are easy to spot in excavated material, yet thehard fact is that we found them even less fre-quently than the hand-made ‘wet biscuit’wares. Why was this? On the one hand, theirnumerical assemblage representation is farinferior to that of the coarser plainwares, andsecondly, we have very frequently observedthat once such fine wares erode out of subsur-face deposits into recurrently turned plough-soil, they soon lose much of their surface anddistinctive contours—making them hard toseparate at fieldwalker height from undiagnos-tic body-sherds. Further, since our region ofGreece received very little obsidian, and thelocal chert looked similar to the regular stonecontent of the soils, we lacked another obviousmeans to compensate for the poor apparentshowing of prehistoric ceramic clusters acrossthe Boeotian land surface. To judge by theaccidental discovery of such sites, after stan-dard intensive fieldwalking had been unable todistinguish them, we had to face the fact thatour survey was simply failing to detect theirsurface debris unless it formed quite dense con-centrations. But could ‘two or three sherdsgathered together’ constitute a case for theexistence of a vestigial prehistoric site?

The explanation based on the increasinginvisibility of prehistoric surface sites with age,



even to intensive survey approaches, was ahypothesis that we had put forward tentativelyin preliminary publications on the Boeotia sur-vey (Bintliff and Snodgrass 1985: 137-38;Bintliff 1985: 214-15). We emphasize surfaceceramic scatters, because it is precisely in theeffect of surface exposure to mechanical andchemical breakdown, through cultivation andthe weather, that ploughsoil assemblages standto diminish rapidly in comparison to thoserevealed in excavated levels. This concept drewsupport from suspicions voiced by another pre-historic Aegean ceramicist (Rutter 1983), con-cerning the poor ‘visibility properties’ of certainprehistoric periods, leading as a consequence toan inadequate record of sites from those peri-ods. At the same time, we became aware of aclose parallel between observations made fromsurface survey in Italy, and one of the charac-teristic phenomena of our site collections. InBoeotia we not infrequently found that a well-defined ancient or mediaeval site, like thatmentioned in the third story above, revealed,after gridding and sampling, a small number ofprehistoric potsherds in among its plentiful his-toric assemblage. How was one to interpret thisphenomenon? Di Gennaro and Stoddart(1982) reported the same from their re-exami-nation of the vast find-collection from the areaof the South Etruria Survey, north of Rome. Asin Boeotia, targeted revisiting and re-study ofthe collections of a number of historic sites,each with a seemingly insignificant additionalcomponent of putative prehistoric material,had revealed a number of unsuspected prehis-toric sites; closer inspection of the finds and thesites elevated the small prehistoric componentstill further, although total recognized numberswere far inferior to those of the historical mate-rial. Back in Greece, in a sophisticated treat-ment of the Keos Survey surface assemblages,Cherry et al. (1991: 222-23, fig. 9.7) have alsoillustrated statistically the way in which prehis-toric surface finds suffer adverse discrimination,

in a landscape dominated by far denser clustersand off-site spreads of historical ceramics.

A good example of this type of site is our ‘Val-ley of the Muses 2’ location (this district lies inthe western part of the Thespiae Survey Areaon Figure 1, directly west of Palaeopanagia vil-lage). Figure 2 (upper) shows the density of sur-face ceramics recorded on the site grid aftervisibility correction (i.e. multiplying up the rawnumber of sherds seen and counted by the esti-mated percentage of bare soil visible), as well as(lower left) the complete dominance of closely-datable sherds from the Archaic–Early Hel-lenistic period in the small sample (138) ofceramics taken from the site. The clearlyfocused distribution for the latter phase pointsto the likely position of a farmhouse structureon the east side of the grid. In scale and surfaceceramic density, this is characteristic of theubiquitous type of Classical rural site argued torepresent a ‘family farm’. Also in Figure 2(lower right), however, we see that, associatedwith the dominant occupation phase, there is asmall cluster of LBA pottery, only recognizedduring the laboratory study of the sample col-lection. Beyond doubt, this was also a localfocus of Mycenaean activity; the scant finds inthe sample collected (10 Mycenaean sherdsagainst a total of 53 for the main historicalperiod) probably reflect the impoverished frac-tion remaining in the ploughsoil from a farm-house of similar scale and population to thelater historic ‘family-scale’ farm site. Had wenot identifed an ancient farm in the same loca-tion, it is statistically very likely that the earliercluster would have entirely escaped noticewhen the fieldwalkers passed over the locality.

If an interpretation along these lines isaccepted, then our site maps of prehistoricGreece may well be so far from past reality asto undermine the many models based onthem—in particular, those concerned withthe distribution and scale of population.Merely to recognize the possible existence of




the ‘hidden landscape’ of our title, however,may reveal a failing on the part of recentintensive surveys in Greece for the prehistoricera (our own included), without providing away forward in dealing with the problem.

The case of the large Graeco-Roman and

Mediaeval village of Askra in the Valley of theMuses is especially illuminating as a contrast tosuch almost invisible prehistoric sites asPP19/20, PP25, MPA6 and VM2, though it isthe latter which may nevertheless representthe normal pattern in southern Greece. At

Figure 2. Boeotia Survey, Valley of the Muses site 2. (Above) total surface pottery density (visibility-corrected countacross the site grid). (Below) distribution of finds from a small sample collection made for dating (n = 138):lower left, Archaic–Hellenistic (a-ehl) finds, the dominant phase; lower right, LBA (lh) finds.


Askra, in the Classical period and then againin Late Roman times, datable ceramics indi-cate a maximal expansion of the site, which atsome 11 ha could have contained over 1000people (Bintliff 1997b). Yet the distribution ofEBA ceramics is also quite extensive, as ouron-going analysis has shown. Apart from smallquantities found over the whole site (under 3%of the total site sample collected for all peri-ods), the northwest sector has a nucleus ofsome 2-3 ha, where prehistoric sherds compriseover 40% of the sample collected in that area.There was no risk whatever of such a concen-tration being missed. Here then is a traditional‘prehistoric settlement’, whose size and artefac-tual density divert attention from the far morewidespread, minimal-density prehistoric sitesthat may lie all around it in the Valley of theMuses, almost all of which we now believe tohave eluded our intensive field-by-field surveyof the district—unless, like VM2, they happento lie beneath the more visible scatters of his-torical sites.

Windows on the Hidden Prehistoric Land-scape of Southern Greece

Three main propositions emerge from theargument so far, based on our experience ofsurvey in Boeotia:

1. Generally, only the larger, multi-phaseprehistoric sites achieve immediate recog-nition, through both extensive and inten-sive survey, and hence constitute thepresent ‘prehistoric site database’ and themodel for what such a site should look likein the field.

2. Secondly, by unintentional and indirectmeans, one may come to suspect thepresence of a hidden multitude ofsmaller, less continuously occupiedsites—either through the kind ofserendipitous discovery related above, orfrom the repeated experience of finding

small numbers of prehistoric sherdsamong the pottery samples from highlyvisible historic sites.

3. Among the causes for this situation arethe poorer survival potential, in plough-soils as continuously cultivated as thoseof Boeotia, of prehistoric ceramic—mostof it coarseware; the much longer periodover which taphonomic processes haveoperated to destroy the greater part of it,and reduce the remainder to poorly rec-ognizable, low density patches across theplough-soil surface; finally, and perhapsespecially in Boeotia, the swamping ofthe landscape by very high densities ofhistorical sherds, making it almostimpossible to detect or note as poten-tially diagnostic these small elementsthrough standard fieldwalking, especiallywhen they have been reduced to barelyvisible or invisible body-sherds.

The chance revelation in the field of whatare probably the more typical, but vestigial,sites, is too rare an event to constitute aviable means of evaluating the scale of ‘hid-den’ prehistoric settlement. An initial steptowards producing a more realistic prehistoricmap can be achieved through a retrospectiveupgrading of the seemingly insignificant col-lections of prehistoric sherds from later,higher-density sites. Rather than taking thesetiny scatters at face value—which is what ledJacobsen (1984: 33), for example, to suggestthat the small clusters of Neolithic activitytraces at the ancient sanctuary of the ArgiveHeraeum testified to seasonal pastoralismrather than permanent settlement—we wouldwish to argue that such vestigial surface tracesare all that we would expect from a typicalsmall prehistoric settlement, particularly oneprone to heavy weathering and massive laterreoccupation. But here again, this is merely todetect a symptom of a potentially far largerphenomenon, biased by the coincidence of



prehistoric settlements or other activity fociwith historic settlement sites. We wish to sug-gest a more powerful means, one less depen-dent on sheer chance or the association withlater occupation-sites, of recapturing the geo-graphic scale and frequency of prehistoricoccupation in lowland Greece.

Figure 3 displays one of two districts withinthe area surveyed by the Boeotia Project, wherefrom 1989 onwards the field teams not only car-ried out our standard procedure of recordingsurface sherd density for every transect walked,

together with surface visibility, but also col-lected a sample of the datable surface materialfrom ‘off-site’ areas. The field-walkers, survey-ing a 2 m wide strip at 15 m intervals betweenwalkers, and recording a count of every visibleartefact, were also instructed to collect a smallsample of such sherds as appeared especiallydiagnostic for dating (feature sherds, varied fab-ric and decoration types). The district shown,the Leondari-Southeast and Thespiae-Southtransect block, comprises some 5.2 sq kmimmediately abutting the walls of the ancient


Figure 3. Fieldwalking transects in the LSE/THS sectors, adjacent to the ancient city of Thespiae, an area of 5.2sq km. The location of the 18 rural sites identified during total fieldwalking of these sectors is indicated,with the area of the survey grid over the city in grey.


city of Thespiae (the city lies north of the tran-sects and its southern perimeter is enclosed bythem on three sides, and is itself just south ofthe modern village of Thespiae marked on Fig-ure 1). Displayed on the transect map are thelocation of the 18 small rural sites identifiedduring the fieldwalking of this district. Fromsubsequent analysis, one of these, at firstbelieved to be a potential historic site, was later

dismissed as a ‘non-site’; all the rest are Graeco-Roman, one having Mediaeval settlement evi-dence too; but none had more than a smallscatter of prehistoric lithics or ceramics, and wethus have no official ‘prehistoric sites’ in thisarea.

Figure 4 maps 46 prehistoric lithic finds fromthe sample of surface artefacts brought back byfieldwalkers from the transects of this district


Figure 4. Fieldwalking transects in the LSE/THS sectors, adjacent to the ancient city of Thespiae, with transectscontaining 1-2 lithics from the dated sample collection of offsite finds shaded. Complementary finds ofprehistoric lithics from the on-site sample collections at historical sites are shown as numbers of findsattached to each site location dot.


(the relevant transects have shading keyed forfinds density), together with another 46 lithicfinds recovered during gridded collection onthe 18 historical sites (shown as numbers offinds in boxes attached to site-location dots).No clear clustering is visible within the off-sitelithic finds, apart from a slightly denser group

by the Kanavaris stream in the northeast.Eleven out of the 18 putative historical sites,however, also yielded prehistoric lithics. Asnoted earlier, obsidian is rarely utilized in ourregion, in contrast to local chert, while the lat-ter is almost impossible to observe when similarunworked stone litters the surface; fieldwalkers,


Figure 5. Fieldwalking transects in the LSE/THS sectors, adjacent to the ancient city of Thespiae. Reconstructedtotal density of surface finds, visibility-corrected (total 1.37 million potsherds and lithics). Key: densityof surface finds per ha; identified rural sites shown as white circles. The sampling grid for the adjacentancient city of Thespiae to the north is indicated by cross-hatching.


too, are in general habituated to focusing onceramics, to the exclusion of soil and its stonecontent. But in the two seasons in question(1989 and 1991), the vast majority of thelithics were found by one single fieldwalker,who had a trained eye for prehistoric lithics, butwho could only cover one-fifth of the areawalked. It is thus a safe inference that the num-ber actually picked up was only a fraction ofwhat might have been collected; and therecorded distribution is in turn probably a muchsmaller fraction, as well as an arbitrary one, ofall the worked prehistoric lithics that can beassumed to lie on the surface. Since the entireartefact sample of ceramics and lithics, of allperiods, collected according to our new proce-dure from all the off-site transects in this dis-trict, amounts to only a few thousand artefacts,when many an individual transect can boast afigure of the same order in its ceramic densitycount, the likely density of any type of artefactin this area will be immeasurably higher thanthe quantities shown. The larger numbers ofprehistoric lithics recovered on the surface ofthe historical sites result from the greater inten-sity of surface inspection applied by field teamsto the small grid units set up for sample collec-tion across sites. Yet calculations of theincreased intensity of on-site as against off-siterecording, in respect of the same transects, indi-cate that a multiplier of no more than 2-3should be applied. This suggests that muchhigher lithic counts across the entire surveyeddistrict are likely in reality.

The following numerical considerations willnow be applied. First, the walkers conductingthe off-site survey directly observed only13.3% of the surface in their numerical count-ing of surface artefacts. Secondly, adjustmentneeds to be made for variations in visibility,based on vegetation cover, in each transect (cf.also Whitelaw 1991, for Keos). This meansraising observed counts by a larger multiplierfor each decrease in visibility level. When this

is done, the total recorded density count of95,895 artefacts rises by extrapolation to atotal of between 1 and 1.5 million off-site sur-face pieces within this transect bloc as a whole,omitting the gridded site-collections (Figure5). So, the small sample of some 3714 artefactsthat the field-teams actually collected at thesame time as recording the density can be usedto estimate a plausible scale of total distribu-tion by finds-category: the multiplier should beof the order of 270-400. Of the 3714 ceramicand lithic pieces collected ‘off-site’, 46 wereprehistoric lithics. On the basis of proportionalrecovery (lithics comprising a little over 1% ofsurface artefacts), we could postulate thatwithin this 5.2 sq km district there ought to besomething between 12,500 and 18,500 lithicpieces that might have been brought back tobase, had all the ‘off-site’ surface artefacts thatwere counted been collected: that is, between24 and 35 pieces per ha. This density is com-parable to prehistoric lithic densities of laterprehistoric age from surveys in Southern Eng-land (Schofield [1987] cites lithic densities of8-20 per ha, and locally higher). But in realitythe visibility of lithics is low in a ceramic-focused survey, and we should envisage anadditional multiplier for the suspected realdensity of surface lithics: even if fieldwalkershad collected all the artefacts that theycounted, the recovery of lithic pieces wouldstill be lower than the surface reality.

In the district around ancient Hyettos city,the other area where we similarly experimented(from 1989 onwards) with an off-site samplecollection strategy for dating purposes, as wellas recording total artefact density, standardintensive fieldwalking produced a similar den-sity of lithic pieces collected. Here, however,we additionally deployed a lithic specialist towalk a 2 m strip behind the fieldwalking teamin a sample sector, ignoring all ceramics, andfound a density that would be extrapolated to50 artefacts per ha, giving us a multiplier of 1.5


01 Bintliff et al. 16/11/01 3:19 pm 3

between standard fieldwalking and expertsearch for lithics, at the same speed. This wouldimply a figure of between 19,000 and 27,000lithic pieces for our 5.2 sq km block, to allow forthe enhancement observed at Hyettos. Asnoted earlier, the arbitrary ‘windows’ of closersurface study, opened up through intensive col-lection across the historical sites of this district,provide further confirmation of a near-ubiqui-tous lithic carpet, as well as demonstrating howlithic recovery improves through increasedattentiveness.

A density of this order of lithic pieces neednot represent an unusually high level of discard.The (almost) indestructable nature of lithicswould encourage very high cumulative totals,even for tools discarded on to the original land-surface. One cannot, in deference to earlierresearch (Runnels 1982), exclude the possibil-ity of continued use of stone tools into histori-cal times. But it does seem likely that thisparticular spread of lithics, invariably in theform of blades and small scrapers characteristicof the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, and usuallyof Melian obsidian, was mainly generated dur-ing prehistoric times by a small, initiallyhunter-gatherer and then predominantlymixed-farming population in this area, betweensay 8000 and 1500 BC. This would amount toup to four lithic artefacts a year; and even ifonly one family normally occupied this district,that would represent one lithic piece discardedper person per year. But there is a further factorto be incorporated. It has been calculated(Reynolds 1982) that in long-cultivated agri-cultural soils, especially those with a relativelystable geomorphology like Boeotia, somethingon the order of 16% of the ploughsoil assem-blage is likely to be present on the surface atany one time, implying a likely multiplier, forthe ploughsoil population to a depth of 20 cm,of around six. For comparable investigations ofthe relationship between surface and sub-sur-face densities of artefacts, we have to move

away from the Mediterranean area. Thus,research in Bohemia suggests a lower ratio of,typically, 5-15% surface finds to ploughsoil total(Kuna et al. 1993: 118; Kuna, in press). Thetotal ceramic content of the ploughsoil to thisdepth in our selected district would therefore,on the first calculation, rise to some 6-9 millionpotsherds, and the lithic content—using thefigure based on dedicated lithic fieldwalkerrecovery—to some 112,000 to 160,000 arte-facts (or an average of 20-25 discards per year,six per person for a single nuclear family culti-vating the area during farming prehistory).These figures, which would be even higher ifthe alternative estimates for the ratio of surfaceto subsurface were preferred, are not implausi-ble activity-rates for an area of prime fertility(excellent soils, perennial water supplies, easycommunications), such as the sector understudy.

All of this underlines the surprising signi-ficance of the 50 or so lithic artefacts picked upby standard fieldwalking, implying a sustainedand intense level of prehistoric activity in thisdistrict. The extrapolated surface density wouldbe very much like that predicted from targetedsurface lithic surveys in, for example, prehistoriclowland Britain, which has been described byJohn Schofield as virtually a continuous lithiccarpet (Clark and Schofield 1991: 104). Indeed,where intensive lithic survey has been appliedto a district of very focused prehistoric activity,as for example around Stonehenge (Richards1990: 11), even the recorded lithic density mayrise to well over 1000 pieces per ha. In Greece,too, maps generated by intensive survey (e.g.Cherry et al. 1991: 40-45, fig. 3.4) have shown asimilar quality of continuity of spread, if natu-rally not (for the reasons just outlined) suchhigh densities.

What would such a vastly denser lithic distri-bution represent in terms of prehistoric activity?Two things are well established in lithic studies:first, in contrast to prehistoric ceramics, lithics,



while not wholly indestructible, are good sur-vivors in the ploughsoil. Secondly, prehistoricfarmers, herders and hunters made and depositedlithics in a wide variety of situations—on per-manent and temporary/seasonal domestic sitesand other activity foci, in burials, and duringextramural work. In a fertile landscape subjectto some six-and-a-half millennia of activity byhunter-gatherer and mixed-farming communi-ties, such as lowland Boeotia, we would expectto find an almost continuous carpet of discardedlithic artefacts. Parallel research from intensivesurvey in Central Europe by the Institute ofArchaeology in Prague (Kuna 1991; in press;Kuna et al. 1993; Salac 1995) has led to theinsight that such widespread lithic scatters willemanate from two classes of taphonomic envi-ronments—pits, middens and burial structuresor subsurface features currently being ‘tapped’ byploughing; and palaeosols where artefacts weredropped or left on or near the surface of the soiland are now incorporated into the contempo-rary ploughsoil. What we are seeing, therefore,in Figure 4, is a minuscule fragment of a land-scape of lithic deposition, combining finds fromboth prehistoric domestic and burial sites, and‘offsite’ economic activities.

In contrast, the data shown in Figure 6 indi-cate the distribution of the 52 prehistoricceramic finds collected within the off-site tran-sect sample of 3714 surface artefacts (the rele-vant transects shaded by keyed numbers offinds), and the 25 prehistoric sherds collectedduring study of the historical sites (numbers offinds in boxes attached to site location dots).Here a different line of explanation has to befollowed. According to the models of ourCzech colleagues, importantly linking surfacestudy to subsurface excavations at the samelocations, these ceramics should emanate froma much narrower taphonomic context (Kuna1991; 1998; in press; Kuna et al. 1993;Neustupny 1998; Salac 1995). Herein, indeed,lies the possibility of opening up a much greater

number of windows of information onto our‘hidden prehistoric landscape’ than are pro-vided by those chance discoveries, and retro-spective revaluations of historical sites,presented earlier. In the Czech Republic, as inBoeotia and in fact much of Europe, prehistoricceramic assemblages are dominated by coarse-wares, with a very low survival and recognitionrate in the ploughsoil. For comparable distribu-tions of prehistoric pottery produced by inten-sive survey to that shown here, the Prague teamargue that only one of the two classes of tapho-nomic environment is likely to be responsiblefor virtually all the current surface ceramicfinds. Prehistoric pottery deposited on theancient surface or in the ploughsoil (e.g. bynon-residential land-use discard, or throughmanuring with domestic refuse) would by now,almost without exception, have been destroyedthrough cultivation and natural weathering onthe surface. What survives in today’s ploughsoilhas to be almost entirely derived, and that rela-tively recently, from a subsurface feature, areservoir where it has avoided the moreextreme destructive forces through long burialwithin an archaeological deposit—such as a pit,a ditch, a buried midden or a tomb. (For aclosely comparable view, see the evidence fromthe Stonehenge Environs survey [Richards1990: 25-30, 228-29, 280], and that from theA41 Project, also in England [McDonald 1993],and several other survey and excavation pro-jects in England such as Maxey, Shiptonthorpeand Baldock [Jeremy Taylor, pers.com.] InGreece, Whitelaw [1991], in his analysis of theprehistoric surface material from Kephala andPaoura on Keos, has likewise argued for system-atic degradation of prehistoric surface ceramicsas opposed to lithics, suggesting that surfacepotsherds are therefore a more reliable indica-tor of underlying prehistoric deposits, as theywould not survive significant displacement.Essentially, therefore, the distribution of Figure6 should be that of prehistoric sub-surface struc-



tures or sites. This quite revolutionary idea is atfirst sight counter-intuitive, as it has to be setagainst the extremely low numbers of piecesrecorded and their almost unpatterned distribu-tion across the landscape.

As we have seen, the low numbers are infact entirely to be expected, first as a result ofthe low survival rate of prehistoric ceramicscompared to those of historical age in thesame ploughsoil assemblage, and secondly


Figure 6. Fieldwalking transects in the LSE/THS sectors, adjacent to the ancient city of Thespiae. The location ofall prehistoric ceramic finds identified within the sample collection from off-site fieldwalking is shown bytransect (shaded by counts per transect, see key). Complementary on-site finds of prehistoric ceramics fromthe sample collections at historical sites are shown as numbers of finds attached to site location dots.


because of the very low percentage of all sur-face ceramics collected for dating, comparedwith the absolute numbers to be found on thesurface. Even the subsurface reservoirs ofceramics of prehistoric age have undergonemassive destruction from weathering in pre-historic and later times, and we can suggestthat in long-cultivated landscapes these sub-surface features may be poor remnants ofmuch richer and deeper pits and occupationfeatures largely ploughed out long ago, oreven secondary, residual deposits in structuralartefact reservoirs of later periods (Kuna, inpress; Salac 1995). The same Czech researchshows that long-lived sites, or those withsignificant reoccupation, will serve as zonesfor the enhanced preservation of prehistoricpottery, through the physical sealing of earlierlayers, or the reincorporation of older mater-ial into later structural features. Short-lived,single-phase sites with a dominance of coarserceramics suffer far more severe degradation oftheir assemblages through prolonged cultiva-tion and weathering of the land-surface over-lying them, so widening the apparent contrastfor the field surveyor confronted by the intu-itively ‘site-like’ surface appearance of largerand/or multi-period settlement sites, in com-parison to the seemingly insignificant scatterof a handful of prehistoric sherds representinga vestigial, short-lived farm-site or similaractivity focus.

As was earlier demonstrated, justifiableextrapolation, even from the low numbers ofprehistoric finds brought back in the selectivesample collection throughout the LeondariSouth East and Thespiae South [LSE/THS]zone, allows us to infer a considerable low-density carpet across the entire survey sector.To what extent, however, is the low samplepercentage of prehistoric as opposed to his-toric finds affected by the attitude and skills ofthe fieldwalkers, and in particular those onthe Boeotia Project? The field teams were

trained in advance in the appearance of pre-historic, Graeco-Roman and Mediaeval toModern potsherds, and in how to collect on-site and in special off-site collections such asthis one, samples of feature pot (rims, bases,handles), as well as a range of decorated waresand fabric types for body-sherds. Each teamhad an experienced leader providing qualitycontrol and advice on surface finds as theyappeared. We will argue later in this paperthat the statistical properties exhibited byprehistoric sherds and lithics in survey con-texts other than ‘traditional’ denser findspotsrecognizably forming ‘prehistoric sites’, recuroutside the Boeotia Project wherever simi-larly detailed and intensive recording hastaken place, so that we feel justified inhypothesizing that the explanations for thesephenomena are not confined to Boeotia, butmay well be of much wider relevance in low-land Greece. Likewise, although prehistoriccoarseware may vary in other survey projectsfrom being comparable to the ploughsoilporous softness of Boeotia (‘wet-biscuit’) togritty toast (e.g. in Methana—Chris Mee,pers. com.), we would argue that the destruc-tive forces of the weather and millennia ofcultivation bring all such material into mini-mal surface quantities alike to each other,when it emanates from a short-lived farm orhamlet rather than from the much richer andfar better conserved subsoil reservoirs to beassociated with long-lived village settlements.

Once more, what would this distribution mapfor prehistoric finds—this time ceramic—looklike if we were to attempt an extrapolationprocess? Working on the basis of proportionalrepresentation, we can suggest that were theentire 5.2 sq km to have been walked at 2 mintervals, and all counted finds collected, allow-ing for a visibility correction, Figure 6 would bedisplaying for the offsite transects alone some-thing of the order of 19,000 prehistoric pot-sherds at a minimum (out of our extrapolated



total surface ceramic of 1 to 1.5 million pieces).For the full depth of the ploughsoil, again, amultiplier of six or more to this figure could bepostulated, to give a three-dimensional view tothis distribution. Since we have argued that sur-face prehistoric ceramics are often ‘invisible’ tofieldwalkers in areas of dense historical-age pot-tery, or at least reduced to worn body-sherds ofapparent undiagnosticity—unless (as at Askra)they too are found in dense concentrations—this again must be a minimum, which wouldrequire a further significant multiplier, to envis-age the actual density of the surviving surfaceprehistoric ceramics, were we able to see themduring survey (there is on average one sherd forevery four sq m of landsurface in this district,but 97% are recorded in sample collections asof historical age). For this reason, wheneverJohn Bintliff and Oliver Dickinson revisitedhistorical sites to enlarge the collection of avery sparse prehistoric component, the chiefmethod was to lie full-length on the groundand inspect small areas by eye along the planeof the soil surface, seeking for the tell-tale ‘wetbiscuit’ shapes and textures. A similar range ofestimates to those we have made for missedlithics would be applicable to ‘invisible’ prehis-toric coarseware.

It will be observed that no strong correla-tion yet appears between the admittedly tinysample of lithics and that of prehistoricceramics found and collected in offsite tran-sects (Figures 4 and 6). Whether this couldhave been predicted on theoretical grounds—in that the lithic scatter should reflect bothon-site and off-site activity, but the potteryon-site activity only—it is noticeable thatbetter correlation occurs in the (again) tinysample of prehistoric finds from the collec-tions on historical sites in the district: nine ofthe 18 historical sites sampled provided bothprehistoric ceramics and lithics This must inpart reflect the closer attention of fieldwalkersduring collecting processes of a more inten-

sive kind across gridded site surfaces.The ‘windows’ opened up through gridded

collection on the historical sites again pro-vide confirmation of the ubiquitous presenceof prehistoric ceramic, and hence of vestigialsites, throughout the district. Rather thanseeing the locations of historic sites as ‘spe-cial’ also for prehistoric small-site locations,we are arguing that the recognition of low-density prehistoric artefact scatters is purely amechanical result of the greatly enhancedattention given to the less conspicuous sur-face finds during on-site collection in theseplaces. The ‘reconstructed’ pattern of prehis-toric sherds would probably cover much ofthe landscape, but everywhere in small quan-tities. Again, we believe it appropriate to bor-row from our Czech colleagues, this time theirinterpretative model for this striking land-scape phenomenon. They have argued thatsuch a widespread but thin carpet of prehis-toric ceramics arises as the result of a processof continuous horizontal displacement ofsmall farm and hamlet sites around fertile dis-tricts of the landscape over long periods oftime. The likely explanation for recurrentrelocation of small prehistoric rural sites (inclear contrast to the far rarer, larger, longer-lived sites that comprise the traditional ‘pre-historic site’), is a long-fallow system, wherefarmers shifted the location of their farms torest soils and take advantage of less intenselycultivated areas in the vicinity, perhaps everyfew generations or even more frequently.House structures might last one to two gener-ations, and arguably micro-locational shifts toclosely adjacent field plots around a landscapeof broadly similar agricultural potential wouldultimately lead to an almost continuous dis-tribution of surface artefacts, whose ceramictraces were rapidly reduced by later cultiva-tion and weathering.

We must emphasize the considerable risks ofchronological generalization based on sub-



samples of the very tiny samples of prehistoricmaterial collected on- and off-site in theLSE/THS sector. Yet a consistent patternmight be hypothesized on the data available,for further testing on a much larger sample. Incontrast to the multi-period occupations char-acteristic for the ‘prehistoric sites’ found byboth extensive and intensive survey on ourown and other regional surveys in southernGreece, the prehistoric ceramics amenable todating by phase from the rural sector in thispresent investigation, as so far studied, showthe following statistics. The finds from histori-cal site collections provided EBA from ninesites, MBA to LBA from three; the finds fromoff-site transects datable by phase were only ofthe EBA and LBA, the former predominatingby about 3:1 over the latter. Very tentatively,we might suggest that small-site, shifting agri-culture is especially important in the FinalNeolithic-EBA. In the MBA and LBA, there isfar more emphasis on larger settlement sites ofhamlet-village size (none from this sector—butseveral ring our study district here—see Figure7), alongside a less widespread small farm-sitenetwork in the countryside interveningbetween such minor foci.

Other surveys (e.g. Melos, Argolid, Meth-ana) have produced similar on-site and off-siteevidence for greater nucleation of settlementand a reduction in dispersed minor rural siteactivity between the EBA and MBA-LBA,which may become greatly enhanced if theimplications of our reinterpretation of smallprehistoric scatters were generalized. In south-ern England, Barrett (1994) has identified asimilar long-term trend, contrasting a domi-nance of long-fallow shifting settlement sys-tems leaving minimal artefact debris duringthe Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (fifth tothird millennia BC) (rarer larger and long-lived foci excepted), with more stable nucle-ated settlement systems commencing in theMiddle to Later Bronze Ages of the second

millennium BC. The latter are marked by thecreation of hierarchical formal field systemsand are interpreted as representing a changeto short-fallow, more intensive land use and anew emphasis on property rights. Closer toGreece, the Neothermal Dalmatia SurveyProject (Chapman et al. 1996), in present-dayCroatia, has evidenced a very dramatic reduc-tion in identified small rural sites and ‘off-site’transect finds between the Bronze Age and theIron Age, in parallel with a marked transfor-mation towards a more hierarchical politicaland settlement system in the region. Chap-man and his colleagues (1996: 259-64) see the‘off-site’ Bronze Age finds as indicative ofeither non-residential discard in a heavily utilized countryside, or the debris of a short-term shifting settlement system much alongthe lines of the model favoured in this paper(indeed, the typical surface ceramics of laterprehistoric Croatia, with their characteristiccoarse fabrics, would in our view make the lat-ter interpretation easily the most likely). Thedeeper social and ideological meanings drawnfrom this process of transformation in thelandscape may therefore, in our opinion, offerimportant future insights into the formation oflater Bronze Age hierarchical societies in low-land southern Greece (although, of course, itis not necessary to assume that such animplied pattern holds true everywhere in thisregion).

Two final observations might be made. First,it is quite possible that similar factors could beat work in later phases of landscape occupancyin southern Greece, if coarseware could beshown to have formed a dominant componentin the domestic assemblage—for example, the‘Dark Age’ of Sub-Mycenaean to earlier Geo-metric times, or the ‘Dark Age’ of the EarlyByzantine centuries; if so, considerable revi-sion would be required of present views on the location and density of population foci.Secondly, we have excluded from our range of




Figure 7. Distribution of prehistoric ceramic finds from sample collections in the on-site (numbers per site inboxes) and off-site (shaded transects) areas of the LSE/THS sector, in relation to recognized prehistoric‘sites’ in the surrounding district. The ancient city of Thespiae immediately adjoining this rural surveysector to the north has rich multi-period prehistoric material from the Magoula hillock (neo = Neolithic,eh = EBA, mh = MBA, lh = LBA) and also from the wider area of the city west of the Magoula. TheBronze Age settlement on the hill of Palaeokarandas is several hundred metres southeast of the outerlimit of the rural survey sector and has finds of all three bronze age periods. The large prehistoric site atAskra is approximately 5 km west of ancient Thespiae city, and has Neolithic to LBA finds.


analysis the possibility—indeed, likelihood—that in certain periods of Greek prehistory andhistory the levels of ceramic production andconsumption varied independently of simplepopulation numbers (Millett 1991).

The Hidden Landscape Uncovered: Impli-cations

If we were to accept the entirely different pic-ture of the surface traces of prehistoric settle-ment and related activity foci which has beenput forward, it would provide us with a com-pletely new way of making sense of intensivesurvey data. We have suggested that, at thevery least, it will be worth testing in the rest oflowland Greece (the Pylos district included),the insights achieved over two decades inBoeotia, and over an equivalent period by ourCzech colleagues, into the taphonomy of pre-historic surface sites. We shall therefore con-clude this study by introducing relevant datafrom other recent intensive surface surveys insouthern Greece, where a similar revisionaryinterpretation of prehistoric settlement activ-ity might tentatively be hypothesized.

In a forthcoming study of Neolithic site evi-dence from Peloponnesian field surveys,Cavanagh (1999) reports that the LaconiaSurvey has identified some 12 locations withFinal Neolithic-Early Bronze I evidence. Ofthese, just one findspot has significant artefactnumbers, the rest consisting of very few sherdsor merely lithic finds. Cavanagh suggests thatthe latter group could either represent loca-tions without permanent occupation, or—significantly—those where severe destructionof prehistoric ceramics has occurred.

On the Methana Survey, the authors report51 findspots with EBA (Early Helladic [EH])finds (Figure 8, from Mee and Forbes 1997: fig.4.1). Twenty-five of these delivered more thanfive sherds of that period, and are consideredto be full sites; almost half of these were alsohistoric sites. The remaining 26 EH ceramic

findspots gave less than five diagnostic sherds(with five having only one recorded sherd).Mee and Forbes (1997: 42) suggest that thelatter 26 findspots have insufficient finds todenote occupational status, especially giventhe strong local diagnosticity of EH coarse-ware, and should therefore be attributed to‘off-site’ activity or ‘scatter’. Nonetheless, theynote the discordance between the location ofsome of these ‘field’ scatters and that ofaccepted ‘sites’. Following the model proposedin the current paper, we would suggest thatmany if not most of the 26 EH ‘scatters’ actu-ally represent vestigial occupation sites ofshifting settlement, small-site character. Inthe later Bronze Age periods, the followingstatistics are noteworthy (Mee and Forbes1997: 51-53): for the MBA (Middle Helladic[MH]), there were three findspots with morethan five sherds, while one findspot had lessthan five sherds; all four had historic periodfinds on them. Nonetheless, the authors doubtthe occupation status of all but one of thelocations with more than five MH sherds, dueto low find numbers. For the LBA (Late Hel-ladic [LH]) all eight findspots with LH sherdswere also historic sites; there were fivefindspots with more than five LH sherds, whilethere were two further locations with a singleLH sherd recovered.

We would be very much more positive con-cerning the site status of all the MH ceramicfindspots, and underline the importance of theeasier recognition of historic surface sites inleading to the recovery of associated prehistoricoccupation in both MH and LH. We suspectthat a policy of continuous surface collection intransects would have yielded a far greater num-ber of small scatters from all Bronze Age eras, asin Boeotia, but note the significant trend in thefindspots recorded for settlement nucleationafter the Early Bronze Age.

For the Keos Survey, the authors map animpressive number of findspots of lithics andprehistoric ceramic (Figure 9, from Cherry et




Figure 8. Methana Survey: findspots with EBA ceramics, distinguished by find quantity and overall site size (Meeand Forbes 1997: 44, fig. 4.1).


al. 1991: 218, fig. 9.1; findspots without num-bers mark transect scatters outside of identi-fied ‘sites’ of historic or prehistoric date). Yet,tellingly, they state:

Virtually none of the sites in the survey area,other than Ayia Irini, Kephala, and Paoura,has produced substantial concentrations ofprehistoric pottery or other finds. Indeed, atmost locations, whether on-site or off-site…prehistoric activity is represented by less thana handful of pottery and at several by just asingle positively diagnostic sherd… Suchimpoverished finds can scarcely be taken asindicative of the repeated use of a site, letalone its seasonal or permanent occupation,in prehistoric times (Cherry et al. 1991: 217).

Significantly, the three confirmed prehistoricsettlement sites listed above were all known pre-vious to the Keos survey, and (other than AyiaIrini) lack evidence of historical occupation,while of the remaining 24 prehistoric ceramicfindspots, 18 are either historic sites or findspotswhere historic sherds outnumber those recog-nized of potential prehistoric date. Since off-sitetransect pottery was not collected systemati-cally, and prehistoric sherds in particular wereextremely rarely observed in fieldwalking (thereare only three ‘off-site’ prehistoric pot scatters,two of which also have historic finds), our viewwould be that the very high rate of coincidenceof the observed prehistoric pot scatters with thelocation of historic ‘sites’ is unlikely to be due to


Figure 9. Northern Keos Survey: findspots with prehistoric ceramic or lithic artefacts (Cherry et al. 1991: 218, fig. 9.1). Unnumbered locations indicate tract, as opposed to on-site, finds.


the repeated selection of a limited number offavourable activity locations, or proximity tocoastal settlement nucleations (Cherry et al.1991: 232, n. 1). We propose instead the mech-anism already argued for from the Boeotianmaterial, whereby the heightened visibility ofhistoric pottery sites sets in motion a ‘window’for the enhanced detection of far thinner pre-historic sherd scatters, which are in actualitydispersed more generally across the cultivablelandscape. Were such exaggerated attention tosurface finds as is given to ‘sites’ to be applieduniversally to the ‘non-site’ areas of north-westKeos, we believe that a far greater number ofsuch prehistoric scatters would be revealed.

For the recent Pylos survey, we have alreadynoted earlier the potential for a comparablerevision of its prehistoric site record.

Finally, we might mention the urban sur-face survey at the site of Phlius (Alcock1991), conducted as part of the Nemea ValleyArchaeological Project, primarily to showonce more the ubiquity of low-density prehis-toric sherd and lithic material within richceramic site carpets of historic age. System-atic sample collection across the 120 haancient urban site produced some 9500 piecesof sampled ceramics (Alcock 1991: 443). Just10 pieces of prehistoric lithic were recovered;1-2 possible Neolithic sherds (at oppositeends of the site); 1-2 pieces of EBA potterywere recorded at 16 locations all over the siteand at two locations with 2-3 pieces, with justone location with more than 3 sherds; MBAfinds amounted to two widely separated loca-tions with 1-2 sherds; finally LBA finds wererecorded at the level of 1-2 sherds from 10locations all over the site, at just one with 2-3. Perhaps not surprisingly, Alcock avoidsattempting an interpretation as to whatexactly these curious, thin and dispersed dis-tributions might represent in terms of prehis-toric settlement, although she does seem tosuggest that the LBA finds (as plentiful as forany other prehistoric phase) would hardlysupport village status.

In the light of our own and others’ experi-ence at other urban sites—such as Askra,mentioned earlier—we would agree with thisview, but would also offer a model for theBronze Age thin scatters: we suggest that theregular survival of sherds of all Bronze Ageperiods across the later Graeco-Roman urbanzone points to the site being previously occu-pied by numerous, small and short-lived resi-dential and burial areas, not necessarily everrepresenting a large contemporary popula-tion. Now since total surface ceramic densityat this site can rise to as much as 5000 sherdsper ha, a proportional extrapolation of thesmall prehistoric component within the sam-ple dated collection of some 9500 sherds fromthe entire 120 ha site would, as we haveargued for the offsite prehistoric finds in theLSE/THS sector in Boeotia, enrich the plot-ted prehistoric scatters at Phlius to a muchfuller cover, but of equally thin density, per-haps indicating that farm and hamlet occupa-tion shifted continuously around the entirelater surface of the ancient city.

Conclusion

In summary, we have argued in this paper thatthe characteristic triple phenomena (low-fre-quency ‘prehistoric site’ distributions with astrong emphasis on multi-period use and largersize; the common occurrence of small numbersof prehistoric finds on historical sites; and thechance hints of a landscape draped withextremely low-density carpets of prehistoricpotsherds) are indicative of a hitherto unrecog-nized prehistoric landscape. A small number ofprehistoric settlement sites survive today indense surface form, through their unusual sizeand prolonged period of use (or perhaps occa-sionally, through atypical taphonomic circum-stances having prevented an earlier exposure tointensive plough damage or natural surfaceweathering). But by far the majority of prehis-toric settlements were small sites of farm orhamlet character, whose vestigial ceramic



traces are usually not noted at all in intensivesurvey; if they are, through the double action ofrare transect collection and indirect discoverywithin historical site collection, then numeri-cally their contribution to surface density is soslight that their one- or two-piece presence onthe surface as recorded attracts no special inter-est. In Messenia, as in Boeotia and the otherGreek survey regions discussed in this article,just as in Bohemia, these sporadic finds of a fewfragments represent the tip of a giant iceberg ofmany thousands of small and ephemeral occu-pation- and activity-foci, shifting within smallareas of landscape, across the millennia of farm-ing prehistory.

Acknowledgments

The field survey of the Leondari South East andThespiae South transects was directed byAnthony Snodgrass and undertaken by theCambridge University team within the BoeotiaProject, a collaboration between Durham (pre-viously Bradford) and Cambridge Universities,sponsored by the British Academy and carriedout under the joint direction of John Bintliffand Anthony Snodgrass. The prehistoricceramics were identified by Oliver Dickinson(Durham University). The computerization ofthe survey database and its ongoing investiga-tion utilizing GIS was begun by Mark Gillings(Leicester University) and is currently theresponsibility of Phil Howard (Durham Univer-sity). The interpretative analysis of the materialis the responsibility of John Bintliff andAnthony Snodgrass. This paper has also bene-fitted from constructive comments by JeremyTaylor, Chris Mee and Nicola Terrenato, as wellas those provided by the JMA referees and thejournal’s editors. Members of the Pylos RegionalArchaeological Project kindly elucidatedaspects of their preliminary publications. Theinvitation to John Bintliff to undertake a studyvisit to the Institute of Archaeology in Praguewas a major catalyst in the making of this paper.

About the Authors

J.L.Bintliff is Professor of Classical Archaeologyat the University of Leiden. He was trained as aprehistorian at Cambridge by David Clarke andE.S. Higgs, and has been successively Lecturerand Reader in Archaeology at the University ofBradford and Reader at the University ofDurham. His publications include NaturalEnvironment and Human Settlement in PrehistoricGreece (1977), European Social Evolution:Archaeological Perspectives (1984), The AnnalesSchool and Archaeology (1991), Europe BetweenLate Antiquity and the Middle Ages (with H.Hamerow) (1995), and Structure and Contin-gency in the Evolution of Life, Human Evolutionand Human History (1999).

P. Howard is Senior Experimental Officer inthe Archaeology Department at DurhamUniversity. He took his BA in Prehistory andArchaeology at Sheffield University and anMA in Scientific Methods in Archaeology atBradford University. His research interestsinclude geophysical prospection and archaeo-logical computing, particularly the applica-tion of Geographical Information Systems.

A.M. Snodgrass is Laurence Professor of Classi-cal Archaeology at the University of Cam-bridge. He trained as a Classical Archaeologistat Oxford University, then was successivelyLecturer, Reader and Professor at the Univer-sity of Edinburgh, before moving to his presentchair in 1976. He has specialized in protohis-toric and early historical Greece, and his publi-cations include The Dark Age of Greece (1971),Archaic Greece (1980) and An Archaeology ofGreece (1987).

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