The Prehistory of the Paximadi Peninsula, Euboea

Tracey Cullen · Lauren E. Talalay · Donald R. Keller · Lia Karimali · William. R. Ferrand

Oct 2013 · INSTAP Academic Press (Institute for Aegean Prehistory)

About this ebook

The results of two related fieldwork projects are presented: a brief salvage excavation at Plakari (a Final Neolithic site near the modern town of Karystos) and a survey of prehistoric sites on the Paximadi peninsula (the western arm of the Karystos bay), both located in southern Euboea. These ventures were part of the larger mission of the Southern Euboea Exploration Project (SEEP), a multidisciplinary research program dedicated to the study of the Karystian past and which maintained a presence in southern Euboea for over 25 years. These projects have found that, contrary to what archaeologists once believed, southern Euboea was hardly an uninhabited and isolated region in prehistory. The inhabitants actively participated in the expanded maritime and social landscape that characterised the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Aegean, taking part in exchange networks of stone, ceramics, marble figurines and vessels, and possibly agricultural goods and metalwork.

About the author

Tracey Cullen is an Aegean prehistorian who has participated in fieldwork in Greece and Cyprus, focusing on the study of early ceramics and funerary customs. She served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Archaeology and later as Editor of Hesperia, and currently lives in northern Minnesota (USA). Lauren E. Talalay is an Aegean prehistorian who focuses on the Neolithic period of Greece and the Mediterranean. Her research explores the use of the human body as a symbol, figurines, and gender. She also publishes on contemporary issues, particularly on the employment of archaeological and mythical images in modern advertising and political cartoons. The former Associate Director and Curator at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, she is currently Curator Emerita and Research Associate at the Kelsey Museum.