Kephala
Kephala ( Greek Κεφάλα ( f. Sg. )) Is the site of a settlement and a burial ground from the end of the Neolithic on the Greek island of Kea in the Cyclades archipelago .
In the north-west of the island, facing the Attic mainland, several burial grounds were discovered. Traces of settlement can only be found at Kephala. The site was excavated between 1964 and 1973 by a team from the University of Cincinnati .
Settlement and cemetery
The settlement only existed for about 100 years and was estimated using the radiocarbon method to about 3300 to 3200 BC. Dated. It is therefore already in the transition to the Bronze Age , with which the Cycladic culture is associated in the southern Aegean .
Only a few foundation walls have survived from the village, the buildings consisted of one or more rectangular rooms of small size and the whole settlement will never have consisted of significantly more than 50 people. All structures were made of the island's limestone.
The adjacent cemetery consisted of 40 graves, 35 of which were surrounded by low stone walls. The other five contained children's bodies and were simpler. Several bodies lay in some of the graves, up to 13 were found in one burial chamber. These are interpreted as family graves. Grave goods were rare and consisted of a simple vessel, only one (male) corpse received a flint scraper as a grave object.
Artifacts
The people of Kephala used tools made from obsidian imported from Milos Island . Stone fragments prove, however, that they knocked the raw chunks into blades themselves on site. Such traces are missing for the few flint tools and the rock does not occur on Kea, so it can be assumed that these tools were imported ready-made. Some figures made of terracotta take up forms of the Cycladic idols of other islands, but are much simpler. Ceramic shards come from bowls and jugs found in the clay on the island itself. Ornaments are rare. A few fragments refer to vessels made of marble .
Noteworthy is the use of copper , which has been detected by slag and metallic fragments. Artifacts themselves have not been preserved.
Culture
The Neolithic settlement of Kephala is closely related to cultures on the Attic mainland and the islands in the Saronic Gulf . It is considered to be the forerunner of the Grotta Pelos culture at the beginning of the Bronze Age . There are no close connections to the earlier Neolithic settlement on Saliagos , between Paros and Antiparos .
Another Neolithic settlement on the island of Kea is believed to be in Agia Irini , but it was completely overbuilt in the Bronze Age and can no longer be reconstructed in more detail.
literature
- Werner Ekschmitt : The Cyclades. Bronze Age, Geometric and Archaic Age . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-8053-1533-3 .
- John Coleman: Kephala. A late neolithic settlement and cemetery , Keos: results of excavations conducted by the University of Cincinnati under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, American School of Classical Studies, Princeton, New Jersey 1977, ISBN 0-87661-701- 1 .
Web links
- Dartmouth College website for the Neolithic in the Cyclades