Page 39 - TINA Dergi Sayi 09

TINA

Maritime Archaeology Periodical

As is always the case, archaeologists try to re- exceptions, although recent archaeological evidence
construct aspects of the everyday life of these early may soon change the picture (Fig. 1).
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islanders from the fragmentary material remains they Questions about the types of boats that were used
uncover during their excavations, depending great- are impossible to answer, aside from reckoning that
ly on favorable geomorphological conditions and a they must have been spacious enough to hold a large
good state of preservation. In the case of Agios Pet- cargo, including pairs of animals (sheep, goats, pigs,
ros, this clearly refers to remains, including evidence or even cows) that would be transported to the is-
for the ecology of the island, the spatial organization lands for live stocking. Indeed, animal bone remains
of the settlement, and the socioeconomic structure of at Agios Petros confirm that domesticated and wild
the community, which had to survive either the con- animals (both taxa not endemic in the area) were
tinuous rise of the sea level that led to the disappear- brought in by the first settlers around 6,000 BCE.
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ance of large parts of the site under the water, or the Three thousand bones of domesticated sheep, goats,
exposure of the archaeological deposits to long and pigs, and cows, together with fallow deer (Dama
severe sea for thousands of years. The reconstruction dama) and wild goat (Capra ibex) found at the site
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which follows may be tentative but should be con- document this practice, which throws light on the
sidered sea action very close indeed to the available logistics required of these early sea adventurers,
archaeological evidence derived from the excavation whether they are described as ‘farming seafarers’ or
of the site of Agios Petros. A small group of farmers ‘seafaring farmers.’ 25
traveling on boats, loaded with every kind of provi- It is equally critical at this point to try to envisage
sion (food, animals, tools, etc.), landed in the shel- how the coast of the island of Kyra Panagia appeared
tered bay of Kyra-Panagia, an island of the northern when early farmers first arrived. An archaeological
Aegean located mid-way between Anatolia and main- reconstruction of the coastline in the 1980’s involved
land Greece, which is still today the best anchorage reconnaissance studies and represented pioneering
in the entire region of the Sporades (Fig. 5). Where underwater fieldwork for its time, revealing the cir-
this group began its journey is not clear, but the east- cumstances and the momentum that those daring
ern islands might be considered a possible departure seafarers were able to utilize, the navigational skills
point, as recently suggested. It is unfortunate that that allowed them to travel in the treacherous waters
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the islands of Lesbos, Lemnos, Chios, as well as of the Aegean, and their deep knowledge of island
those of the Anatolian coast are still unexplored. In- charts. It boosts the hypothesis of a long, but still
vestigated sites, such as Çukuriçi Höyük in the Men- archaeologically ill-documented, seafaring tradition
deres delta area opposite the island of Samos, remain going back many millennia.

21 HOrEjS 2016.
22 ÇİLİNGİrOĞLU et al 2012.
23 EFSTrATIOU 1985.
24 SCHWArTZ 1982.
25 PILAAr-BIrCH 2017.

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