172-183

A middle helladic settlement at Aidipsos and comments on the middle helladic period in Euboea

Σύμμεικτα

• Σαμψών, Αδαμάντιος

After a prolonged surface survey of the district, a trial excavation was carried out in 1983 in the prehistoric settlement of Koumpi at Aidipsos. In the limited area of the excavation trench the remains of two MH buildings were uncovered, which from the thickness of their walls seem to have been ground floors. We can date this building phase by the pottery to the end of the Middle Bronze Age.At a deeper level (2.20 m.) building remains were found belonging to a mature phase of the Middle Helladic, as indicated by the dark Minyan and matt- painted pottery. After a layer of sand a child’s cist grave was discovered. The presence of a burial beneath a floor is quite usual in the Middle Helladic period. In a trench opened in 1987 at another point in the settlement LH I pottery was found.It was observed that at Koumpi two building phases were found belonging to different chronological phases, as the pottery showed. The phase with the dark Minyan belongs to the beginning of the MH period and the other phase to the later part, and there appears to be no break between them. Two corresponding phases of this period were were found at Kirinthos in 1974, again with no apparent break. And limited excavations and surveys at other sites have also not confirmed the old established tripartite chronological scheme for the period. This division had originally been based on the development of the matt-painted pottery, which conventionally corresponds to three phases, but in reality the second and third styles go together. Consequently valid chronological conclusions cannot be drawn from the painted decoration of MH vases.In regions where there was intensive habitation it is likely that more building phases exist. At Lefkandi four phases were defined, which were artificial according to the excavators, and which did not correspond to building phases. At Manika only one building phase was found with Minyan and matt-painted pottery. What we observe in Euboea is that the transition from the EH to the MH period took place smoothly without intervening destructions, and the steady development of the pottery and the burial customs indicate the existence of the same racial element.If the MH period begins according to the recent high chronologies in 2ISO- 2100 BC, it would have a duration ofhalf a millennium, a long enough span for it to be divided into phases according to the pottery and building remains. The tripartite division, however, does not for the present correspond to the facts, since it is based only on the pottery and, in particular, on only one class of it. Until we have more excavation material at our disposal, the bipartite division of the MH is more convincing for Euboea, and it is probably also valid for the rest of the Greek mainland.

• History and Archaeology
• Arts

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)
• Architecture, Ancient
• Archaeological site location

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