This volume presents the work of two related projects near Karystos, Euboea, both part of the long-running Southern Euboea Exploration Project (SEEP). Fieldwork was conducted between 1979 and 1988 – the first project an excavation of the Final Neolithic (FN) site of Plakari; the second a survey of the Paximadi peninsula. This book is a welcome publication of the results relevant to prehistory, and will be useful to Aegean prehistorians and survey archaeologists, as well as other scholars with an interest in Euboea.
The first two chapters introduce the research and environmental context, including discussions of early travellers, previous and ongoing archaeological work, and the geological and climatological character of the region. Some of this is worth rehearsing here. SEEP was established in 1984 by one of the authors (Keller) and M. Wallace (also the dedicatee of this volume; for related work see D.W. Rupp and J.E. Tomlinson [edd.], Euboea and Athens: Proceedings of a Colloquium in Memory of Malcolm B. Wallace [2011]). The results published in this volume represent only two of several phases of fieldwork carried out over the last three decades. Fig. 2 provides a map of the spatial and chronological extent of each project: the Keller survey (1979–81), the Paximadi survey (1986, 1988), the Eastern survey (1989, 1990, 1993) and the Kampos survey (2006–08); to these we can now add an excavation directed by J.P. Crielaard of a Late Geometric site at Plakari, an excavation of the Agia Triada Cave by Z. Tankosic and F. Mavridis, and a survey of the Katsoriano plain (the Norwegian Archaeological Survey of the Karystia). The Kampos and Katsoriano surveys represent a sort of second generation of SEEP, under the direction of Z. Tankosic.
The heart of the book is a detailed description of the results and interpretation of the archaeological fieldwork, well illustrated by 37 figures and 47 plates at the end of the volume. Chapter 3 presents the investigations at Plakari. Surface artefacts were noted by the prehistoric survey of Euboea by Sackett et al. (BSA 61 [1966], 81), then again by Keller in 1979. A small rescue excavation was carried out over a few days in 1979, which revealed artefactual and limited structural evidence from the FN period, possibly extending into the Early Bronze Age (EBA).
Turning to the survey, the authors provide a thorough account of methods, including some usefully transparent self-critique of the methodology and evidence collected (Chapter 4). The field methods fall somewhere in between reconnaissance and the ‘new wave’ of contemporary intensive survey projects in Greece in the 1980s. While detailed coverage of the landscape was made by teams of field-walkers at 5–10 metre spacing, there was not a systematic recording of off-site artefact densities. The focus was on the identification of concentrations of archaeological material, called findspots, some of which were dubbed sites after further investigation, including revisitation, mapping and gridded collection. Nine sites and eleven findspots of FN to EBA date (c. 4300–2200 b.c.e.) were identified by the project (pp. 44–6; table 8; fig. 12). Three of these – Kazara, Agia Pelagia and Akri Rozos – are discussed in detail; the seventeen other sites and findspots are presented in the appendix, accompanied by catalogues of significant finds. One matter of concern is that there is little discussion of whether or how the non-prehistoric material encountered on the survey will be published. The publication of 20 sites/findspots comprises only a fraction of the 162 such locations identified by survey teams throughout the peninsula (p. 44). Some discussion, or even a simple table or map, of the other 142 sites would have been useful for researchers interested in the area.
The final part of the book places the results in a broader context. A synthesis of ceramic and lithic industries (Chapter 5) reveals stylistic similarities between FN southern Euboea, Kea and eastern Attica, suggesting an interaction zone encompassing the outlet of the southern Euboean Gulf (p. 70). Modern fishing routes, especially for tunny, stretch between here and obsidian-bearing Melos, making this a particularly advantageous, dual-resource maritime corridor (p. 63). Evidence from EB I is (unsurprisingly) rather more ambiguous, while EB II assemblages renew strong similarities with neighbouring areas (p. 75). The seaward orientation of sites like Agia Pelagia, which may include a small corridor house, and Akri Rozos, both on small promontories on the east and west sites of the peninsula respectively, speak to participation in the expanding maritime spheres characteristic of the period.
The volume concludes by summarising and contextualising the results presented in terms of their contribution to the study of settlement patterns, emergent complexity and connections to the wider world, both in Euboea and beyond. The authors rightly point out that the settlement history of southern Euboea is apparently distinct from the central and northern part of the island. The earliest evidence of habitation in the Karystia appears in the Agia Triada cave in the LN period. The more marginal landscape of the Paximadi peninsula is not occupied until the FN, when signs of habitation are widely dispersed throughout the study area. EBA remains are present at all FN sites as well. Finds from all periods suggest a mixed agriculturalist and pastoralist economy. Although no artefacts related to fishing were found on the surface, maritime activity, and even orientation, is clear from the locations of settlements, pottery and the presence of Melian obsidian.
While the title of the volume might suggest a broader chronological discussion, evidence is in fact limited to FN and EBA periods. There is a single MBA site in the Karystia at Agios Nikolaos, but the total lack of Mycenaean material in southern Euboea remains curious – problematic, even – especially since this is now one of the more thoroughly investigated regions in Greece (p. 103). Given the mention of ka-ru-to in Linear B tablets from Thebes (see Palaima in Rupp and Tomlinson, op. cit.), and substantial Mycenaean activity at Thorikos and Lavrion on the opposite side of the Euboean Gulf, we expect a Mycenaean presence, yet surface investigations in all of southern Euboea have turned up no more than a few LBA sherds. It is not clear what to make of this absence, and it seems unlikely that Mycenaean material has been overlooked or completely obscured by later construction. One explanation may be that the Thebes tablets refer to another place altogether, although this scenario, too, is not entirely satisfactory. The contextual discussions here should be read alongside Tankosic's Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana University [2011]) and more broadly include S. Fachard's study of the territory of Eretria, which meets the territory of Karystos at its southern extent (La défense du territoire: Étude de la chôra érétrienne et de ses fortifications [2012]). Although the latter's focus is on historical periods, it provides numerous references to and discussions of prehistoric remains in southern Euboea.
The principal criticisms one might make of the volume, concerning the delay in publication, now somewhat out-of-date methods and limitation of the discussion to prehistoric periods, are acknowledged by the authors in their preface (p. xx); they also note – and leverage throughout the volume – that such a delay has allowed this work, done mostly in the 1980s, to be viewed alongside the results of more recent iterations of SEEP. So while the delay in publication is regrettable, the authors are to be commended for making the most of the present circumstances. They have produced a thorough account of the prehistoric findings from the Paximadi peninsula, and provided an excellent discussion of their broader Euboean and Aegean context. Scholars will eagerly await the publication of other phases of the project, but for now the authors have succeeded in their stated goal (p. 109) of bringing the Paximadi peninsula and southern Euboea ‘out from the shadows’ of Aegean prehistory.
