BMCR 2009.08.21: Button on Sampson, The Cave of the Cyclops: Mesolithic and Neolithic Networks in the Northern Aegean, Greece. Vol. 1, Intra-site Analysis, Local Industries, and Regional Site Distribution. Prehistory Monographs; 21

Adamantios Sampson, The Cave of the Cyclops: Mesolithic and Neolithic
Networks in the Northern Aegean, Greece. Vol. 1, Intra-site Analysis,
Local Industries, and Regional Site Distribution. Prehistory
Monographs; 21.  Philadelphia:  Institute for Aegean Prehistory
Academic Press, 2006.  Pp. xxii, 255+.  ISBN 9781931534208.  $80.00.

Reviewed by Seth Button, University of Michigan ([email protected])
Word count:  3211 words
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Our understanding of Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic activity in
the Aegean has changed with astonishing rapidity over the past two
decades. This pace of development has been due in part to energetic
synthesis and theory-building, in part to the reams of new data
generated by fieldwork. In the latter category, one of the most
important developments was the discovery and excavation of the Cave of
the Cyclops on Youra in the Northern Sporades, an important site which
spans the Mesolithic to Late Neolithic. It was excavated in the early
1990's by Adamantios Sampson and his colleagues, who made many of their
findings available in useful and timely preliminary reports. This most
recent publication, part of a commendable effort on the part of the
INSTAP Academic Press to bring excavation data to print in a timely
manner, represents the first installment of a complete final report on
the Cave of the Cyclops; a second volume is forthcoming. Volume I
consists of twelve chapters (full titles and authors' names are listed
at the end of the review). Some are more detailed than others; many
will be of interest primarily to specialists, while others may find a
wider audience, especially among students of island archaeology. While
not without problems, these chapters generally present excavation data
in an intelligible way, and some of the authors also contribute to
ongoing debates over island colonization, neolithization and the nature
of post-Pleistocene maritime activity in the Aegean.

Sampson sets the scene in Chapter 1, describing the physical setting of
the cave, its stratigraphy, and the excavation of the six trenches, A
through F. Briefly, in the Mesolithic, an area near the entrance of the
cave was used or occupied at least seasonally. Both goat and pig are
present throughout the Mesolithic levels, but fishing, attested by fish
bone and by artifacts interpreted as fishhooks, was economically
important, while other animals, from red deer to birds, were also
hunted. Early Neolithic activity, perhaps intermittent visitation, was
initially restricted to the entrance to the cave, though towards the
end of the period it may have intensified, as attested by several
hearths near the cave entrance. In the Middle Neolithic, an area deep
within the cave, a shallow pool surrounded by stalagmite and stalactite
columns, became a focus of activity: it was from this area that most of
the remarkable Middle Neolithic painted pottery derives, though
material plausibly interpreted as domestic waste is absent from this
location, which is therefore suggested to have something to do with
symbolic or ritual behavior. There is an apparent hiatus of almost a
millennium before the Late Neolithic occupation of the cave, attested
by floors, hearths, and storage vessels near the entrance, and by more
pottery deposited near the pool.

A selective catalog and typology of some of the Neolithic pottery
occupies Chapter 2, by Sampson, while other wares are discussed
separately in the following chapters. Most of the Early and Middle
Neolithic pottery is strongly local in character, though early painted
ware (red on white), transitional Early- to Middle- Neolithic in date,
is suggestive of connections with Thessaly. Late Neolithic ceramics, in
contrast, find parallels throughout the Aegean and may derive from clay
sources in Thessaly, Euboea, and the southern Aegean (the results of
petrographic analysis are forthcoming). Later forms include storage
jars, which along with the hearths and floors belonging to that phase,
suggest a more intensive occupation on Youra. Such occupation may still
have been seasonal, as in historical periods, when small groups of
herdsmen would bring their flocks to the island for several months at a
time, a fact which should surely inform our modeling of island
utilization and contact in the northern Aegean.

The Middle Neolithic painted wares are treated in detail in Chapter 3,
by Stella Katsarou-Tzeveleki. Most (80%) of this material derives from
the area adjacent to the pool in the interior of the cave. The
decoration of these pots involved the painting of a rectilinear net of
fine lines over some part of the vessel, which Katsarou-Tzevelaki calls
"canvas." Spaces between intersecting lines were filled or left empty
to create complex patterns akin to weaving. These decorative schemes
are apparently unique, with little apparent connection to contemporary
ceramic traditions in Thessaly, Thrace, or Anatolia.

After cataloging the relevant ceramic material and advancing a typology
for decoration, Katsarou-Tzevelaki considers these painted ceramics in
no fewer than eleven different capacities: as reflecting membership in
cultural group, as economic objects, as products of (so
Katsarou-Tzevelaki) specialization, as "a product of know-how," in the
context of "practical use," as "a structural construction," as "symbol
and message of identity," as "a product of society," "a product of men
or women" (she concludes that weaving and pottery were both female
crafts), in relation to other symbolic behavior, as "historical
objects," and finally, as a "unity."

Katsarou-Tzevelaki emphasizes connections between early Greek Neolithic
ceramics and other forms of craft as diverse as basketry, wood carving,
or (so Katsarou-Tzevelaki) metalwork (101-102). She apparently believes
that weavers worked with wool obtained from woolly sheep, citing
Trantalidou's forthcoming chapter on the faunal material, but not
Sherratt's seminal paper (Sherratt 1981) or other more recent
literature on the Secondary Products Revolution, an omission which
contrasts with her bibliographical grab bag of structuralist theory,
semiotics, and psychology. Some of Katsarou-Tzevelaki's arguments are
thought-provoking, while other assertions and assumptions --for
example, that "cooking was invented in the Mesolithic"--will elicit
skepticism. Arguments about the symbolic function of painted pottery
and its relevance to identity formation and articulation could have
been made more concise and condensed into fewer sections.

Chapter 4, by Fanis Mavridis, is a more straightforward catalog and
discussion of Late Neolithic burnished and painted ceramics from the
Cave of the Cyclops. These represent a small fraction of the total
ceramic material and come mostly from disturbed contexts. Mavridis
argues that this pottery reflects membership in a Late Neolithic Aegean
koine, in contrast to other periods in which ceramic style reflects
connections with Thessaly (112).

In addition to the Neolithic ceramics, the excavations recovered a few
handfuls of Early, Middle, and Late Helladic sherds and four possible
Geometric sherds: these are covered by Sampson in Chapter 5. Overall,
the cave appears to have been used only sporadically over the millennia
represented by these artifacts. Classical and Hellenistic black-glazed
material is more abundant and allows the reconstruction of a number of
kylikes and kotyles. Most of the Hellenistic material was recovered
from a niche inside the interior of the cave. Its presence may suggest
some sort of ritual connected with the cave, as at cave sites elsewhere
in the Mediterranean, at Nakovana cave in central Dalmatia, for
example, and prefigures Roman ritual activity at the Cave of the
Cyclops.

Such activity is primarily attested on Youra by an unusual quantity of
Roman lamps, addressed by Georgios Koutsouflakis in Chapter 6.
Koutsouflakis argues that at this time the Cave of the Cyclops was a
cult place, perhaps visited by ships stopping to water at the island.
In addition to the lamps, the discovery of a thymaterion, or
incense-burner, is consistent with the hypothesis of cult activity. For
the most part, the lamps themselves fall into two major categories, the
first Attic or Attic-style and the second those deriving from Asia
Minor, suggesting something about the position of the Northern Sporades
in maritime routes of the 1st through 4th centuries CE.

Other artifact classes--ground stone, other stone objects, and small
finds--are collected in Chapter 7, by Sampson and Orphanidis. The
ground stone assemblage includes a variety of grinders from both
Mesolithic and Neolithic levels, though unlike other Neolithic sites in
the Aegean, including cave sites, the Cave of the Cyclops produced few
millstones. Among the small finds are a Late Neolithic violin type
figurine, spindle whorls, sling bullets or tokens, and a cupreous metal
needle which Sampson describes as bronze (it is approximately 75%
copper, 1.9% arsenic and .4% tin). The presence in Lower Mesolithic
levels of two grooved stones, conventionally described as "shaft
straighteners," is noted: this class of artifact is well represented in
the Epipaleolithic and early Neolithic of the Upper Euphrates valley
and now on Cyprus, at the site of Agia Varvara-Asprokremnos (McCartney
et al. 2007). The well-known fishhooks from the Cave of the Cyclops are
not discussed here; rather, they are the subject of a forthcoming
chapter in the second volume.

The chipped stone assemblage is discussed by Malgorzata Kaczanowska and
Janusz Kozlowski in Chapter 8. The Mesolithic assemblage is primarily
flake-based, and local silaceous stone the primary material, with
reduction on site. However, this straightforward tradition apparently
existed alongside an unprecedented tradition of Mesolithic obsidian
microliths, distinctly different from those on mainland Greece. The
authors consider the possibility that these artifacts are intrusive,
but argue against it. As in many other places, the transition from
Mesolithic to Neolithic saw an increase in blade production and change
in raw material procurement strategies, with obsidian becoming the
material of choice. However, the Neolithic component of the assemblage
includes not only standard obsidian blades, but crescents and geometric
microliths. The persistence of this microlithic tradition in the
Northern Sporades into the Late Neolithic is an unusual feature, to say
the least, but research is making clear the extent to which chipped
stone industries across the Mediterranean are the product of long-lived
traditions and multiple and diverse influences.

In Chapter 9, Sampson reports on survey and limited excavation on other
remote islands of the Northern Sporades. The methodology of this survey
is nowhere discussed, but it seems to have been simple extensive
reconnaissance at the discretion of the investigators. The general
picture is of an ephemeral and intermittent human presence on these
islands from at least the Late Neolithic, and perhaps earlier; finds
from Psathoura and Youra are attributed by Sampson to the Middle
Paleolithic (184). Ostensibly Paleolithic material not only in the
Sporades but elsewhere in the Aegean has often been treated with
skepticism (Cherry 1990) but is becoming increasingly convincing
(Broodbank 2006).

In Chapter 10, Sampson continues on from the results of the survey to
present data gathered on historical land use and vegetation history and
human habitation on Youra but also on other islands of the Northern
Sporades, including Pappous, Koumbi, Gramiza, Piperi, Skantzoura,
Psathoura, Psathonisi, Kyra-Panagia, and Alonessos. Despite its brevity
this is a useful contribution to the literature on traditional
agriculture and animal husbandry in the Aegean. The substantial degree
of variation in both local microenvironmental conditions and in
historical subsistence practice is significant. Historically,
stock-keeping has been more important than fishing, with cereal
agriculture, olives, nut trees, bee keeping and gardens also helping to
support small communities such as the monasteries on Youra and Piperi.
Water shortages were a persistent problem on those islands without
perennial springs; human and animal populations often depended on water
stored in cisterns (and perhaps the pool in the Cave of the Cyclops).

A Mesolithic human cranial fragment recovered in the 1995 excavation
season is described by Nickos Poulianos in Chapter 11, which also
touches on other human remains recovered. The cranium apparently
belongs to a female of mature age, perhaps 65-70, and is slightly
deformed by use of a cradle board or swaddling band. Poulianos argues
that the skull's measurements suggest membership in a
"Mediterranean-Aegean" group, proving "diachronic interaction between
European anthropological types, as well as those of other continents"
(196-7). The fact that this individual lived to an advanced age is
taken as evidence of "high average life expectancy" due to diet,
climate, and social conditions (198).

In Chapter 12, Sampson presents his conclusions. He rightly argues that
the use and eventual colonization of Aegean islands was not necessarily
resource-driven, at least not in a straightforward way. Rather, he
highlights the importance of sea level changes at the end of the
Pleistocene in altering local microclimates (and therefore the
conditions of subsistence practice) and encouraging maritime activity.
Consideration of possible maritime routes in the Mesolithic Aegean
leads Sampson to suggest that from at least the Early Neolithic and
possibly earlier, long open-water crossings between points not
intervisible were commonplace. However, it is hard to escape the
conclusion that the case of the Northern Sporades generally supports
the use of now familiar spatial models such as target/distance ratios
for understanding prehistoric maritime mobility, and also reinforces
the importance of seasonal resource availability and "island nurseries"
for seafaring. The increasing body of evidence for high maritime
mobility in the Mesolithic Aegean fits well with recent work by
Broodbank (2006) suggesting a partly maritime dispersal of populations
and/or transmission of Neolithic technologies and behaviors from
Southwest Asia to the Aegean and Southeast Europe, made possible by a
long seafaring tradition. Many readers will wish Sampson had engaged
more directly with important literature by e.g. Renfrew, Cherry and
Broodbank on island archaeology in the Aegean.

The evidence from the Cave of the Cyclops bears directly on the
question of neolithization, on which Sampson inclines towards an
indigenist position. The facts that wild wheat (Triticum monococcum)
grows in Greece, and the possibility that wild ancestors of sheep and
goats might at one time have lived there, are argued to support local
domestication "without foreign intervention" (226). The presence of
morphologically "transitional" domestic animals, likewise cited in
support of indigenous neolithization, is difficult to evaluate until
Trantalidou's final report on the animal bones is published; however,
it is necessarily exceedingly difficult to differentiate such
"transitional" forms from feralized domestic caprines or the products
of interbreeding between wild and domestic populations (see e.g. Vigne
et al. 2003). The apparent absence of Early Neolithic sites in Thrace,
noted by Sampson, cannot be taken as strong evidence against demic
diffusion, especially if such dispersal was partly maritime in
character; Holocene marine transgression is likely to have submerged
many coastal sites (and see Ammerman et al. 2008 for Early Neolithic
sites in Thrace).

While valuable, this book contains numerous small errors. In Figure
12.11, a map of important Early Holocene sites in the Eastern
Mediterranean, the dot representing the site of Cap Andreas-Kastros on
the Karpass peninsula of Cyprus is incorrectly labeled as
Akrotiri-Aetokremnos, while the dot in the Argolid purporting to
represent Franchthi Cave is placed at the head of the Gulf of Argos,
not far from the location of Klissoura Cave (the latter two sites are
correctly labeled in Figure 12.2 on the facing page). It would have
been better to choose a standard English transliteration for site
names: the site of Parekklisha-Shillourokambos is variously spelled as
"Silourokampos" (in Table 12.1) and Sillourokampos (Fig. 12.11), while
Klissoura is also spelled (as on p. 208) as Klisoura.

There seems to be some confusion concerning taxonomy. On pp. 188-189,
Quercus coccifera, Kermes oak, a common maquis component, is called
holly. Holly oak or holm oak is Q. ilex, while hollies proper are
generally placed in genus Ilex. On p. 202, while members of the genus
Patella are correctly identified as limpets, the Monodonta are simply
called mollusks, rather than given their common English name,
topshells.

A Late Neolithic stone figurine from the site is first mentioned (p. 7)
with no reference to the corresponding illustration in Figure 7.5 and
Plate 7.1. In these plates, and in Chapter 7, it is given the
identifying number S70, but on p. 165 the same artifact is referred to
as SF 70.

For thirty years or so, the terms of investigation and debate have been
defined by work on island colonization and the applicability of
biogeographical models to human movement. A strong focus on
colonization has tended to result in the documentation of the earliest
recorded presence or apparently permanent presence on islands without
requiring that much be said about the nature of that presence. With
this publication, Sampson and his colleagues have helped to broaden the
discussion in several ways. First is by contributing to the increasing
body of evidence for the antiquity of maritime activity in the Aegean,
with Paleolithic seafaring looking increasingly likely, however obscure
the specifics at this point (cf. Broodbank 2006). Second, by moving
away from the focus on colonization and investigating how the spatial
configuration of islands and "seascapes" influence the social dynamics
of mobile communities -- including changes driven by global climate
change, changes in sea level, and (probably) local environmental
changes in both fauna and flora (cf. Simmons 1999, 2004). Finally, the
Cave of the Cyclops points to regional diversity in ceramics,
subsistence practice, symbolic behavior, resource procurement, and the
importance of local factors in producing variability and change in
subsistence practice at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.

List of Chapters and Contributors:

1. The Cave Setting and Stratigraphy,  A. Sampson
2. The Pottery Analysis, A. Sampson
3. The Middle Neolithic Weavers Paint: Red Painted Patterns as Markers
of the Local Group's Identity, S. Katsarou-Tzeveleki
4. The Late Neolithic Painted and Burnished Decorated Wares, F.
Mavridis
5. The Lamps of the Roman Period, G. B. Koutsouflakis
6. The Ground Stone Utensils and Miscellaneous Finds, A. Sampson and L.
Orphanidis
7. The Chipped Stone Artifacts, M. Kaczanowska and J.K. Kozlowski
8. The Survey in the Deserted Islands of the Northern Sporades, A.
Sampson
9. The Animal-Husbandry Ethnoarchaeology of Alonnessos and the Deserted
Islands in the Northern Sporades, A. Sampson
10. A Mesolithic Cranial Vault and Other Human Remains, N. Poulianos
11. Conclusions, A. Sampson.

References:

Ammerman, A.J., N. Efstratiou, M. Ntinou, K. Pavlopoulos, R. Gabrielli,
K.D. Thomas,  and M.A. Mannino
2008. Finding the early Neolithic in Aegean Thrace: the use of cores.
Antiquity 82.315:139-150.

Broodbank, C.
1999. Colonization and Configuration in the Insular Neolithic of the
Aegean, pp. 15-41 in P. Halstead, ed., Neolithic Society in Greece
[Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology 2].  Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press.

2006. The Origins and Early Development of Mediterranean Maritime
Activity. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 19.2:199-230.

Cherry, J.F.
1981. Pattern and process in the earliest colonization of the
Mediterranean islands. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 47:
41-68.

1990. The first colonization of the Mediterranean islands: a review of
recent research. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3:145-221.

McCartney, C., S.W. Manning, D. Sewell and S.T. Stewart
2007. The EENC 2006 Field season: Excavations at Agia
Varvara-Asprokremnos and survey of the local early Holocene landscape.
Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus: 45-86.

Sampson, A.
1998. The Neolithic and Mesolithic occupation of the cave of Cyclope,
Youra Alonessos, Greece.Annual of the British School at Athens 93:1-22.

2006a. He proistoria tou Aigaiou. Athens.

2006b. The Sarakenos Cave and the Paleoenvironment in the Copais Basin,
Boeotia, Central Greece, pp. 61-75 in P.J. Smith, ed., Cults, Coins,
History and Inscriptions VII: Studies in Honor of John M. Fossey.
Montreal.

Sherratt, A.
1981. Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products
revolution, pp 261-305 in I. Hodder, G. Isaac and N. Hammond, eds.,
Pattern of the Past: Studies in honour of David Clarke. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Simmons, A.
1999. Faunal Extinctions in an Island Society: Pygmy Hippopotamus
Hunters of Cyprus. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

2004. Bitter hippos of Cyprus: the islands first occupants and last
endemic animals -- setting the stage for colonization, pp. 1-14 in E.J.
Peltenburg and A. Wasse, eds., Neolithic Revolution. New Perspectives
on Southwest Asia in Light of Recent Discoveries on Cyprus. Oxford:
Oxbow.