This volume presents and discusses the Neolithic (NL) excavations, architecture and ‘minor objects’ (small finds aside from pottery or flaked stone) from fieldwork led by J. Caskey at Lerna between 1954 and 1957. B. focuses on a large contiguous excavation (areas JA and JB) and a series of ‘supplementary trenches and pits’, but also includes shorter chapters about unphased or mixed material and burials. The catalogue of minor objects follows, and the main text ends with a synthetic discussion of the settlement and the lives of its inhabitants. Several appendices (a list of walls, a list of pottery lots, and an analysis of faunal remains by D. Reese) and concordances reconciling various inventory systems applied to material from Lerna follow. A consolidated list of references, a brief index and plates (consisting entirely of black-and-white, small-finds drawings; other illustrations and photographs appear throughout the text) conclude the volume. The organisation of the volume and the presentation of the material will be immediately familiar to anyone who regularly consults excavation reports. B. states that while she adopts Caskey's approach, the present volume represents a comprehensive re-working of the Lerna material, based directly on field and pottery notebooks, the excavators’ annual reports and architectural plans.
This volume complements K. Vitelli, Lerna: a Preclassical Site in the Argolid V: the Neolithic Pottery (2007), J. Kozłowski, M. Kaczanowska and M. Pawlikowski, ‘Chipped-Stone Industries from Neolithic Levels at Lerna’, Hesperia 65 (1996), 295–372, and B.’s earlier treatment of triangular plaques, ‘Neolithic Tangas from Lerna’, Hesperia 46 (1977), 324–39. B. uses Vitelli's chronology, based on the Franchthi Cave sequence, and also reproduces some of Vitelli's plans (while noting disagreements of interpretation). Reese's appendix on faunal remains, based on a re-examination of extant bone lots, supersedes the analysis published by N.-G. Geyvall in Lerna: a Preclassical Site in the Argolid I: the Fauna (1969), which examined only a highly selective sample of the remains.
After a brief introduction, the core of the report can be found in Chapter 2, ‘The Settlement in Areas JA and JB’, and Chapter 3, ‘The Settlement in the Supplementary Trenches and Pits’. Together these chapters constitute almost half of the volume.
Chapter 2 begins with a brief description of Lerna's environmental context and the duration of its habitation, plus a review of the fieldwork that led to the opening of areas JA and JB, where the most coherent body of NL architecture and associated deposits were found. Using Vitelli's chronology, B. proposes a series of levels beginning with transitional Early(?) to Middle NL material resting on virgin soil, through a succession of Middle NL levels, to some Final NL pits and burials with no associated architecture. Late NL material is almost entirely absent.
B. presents levels (including deposits and features) based on this phasing in succession, beginning with the earliest. A schematic elevation of the whole is provided near the beginning of the chapter. For each level, she typically provides an overview (chronology, soils, features, finds, a basic interpretation of use or purpose), a plan (sometimes supplemented with a section), one or more photographs, an inventory and detailed description of deposits and/or features, a comparative stratigraphy of Lerna and Franchthi, and a schematic inventory of pottery, lithics, objects, and bones and shells (with cross-references to other chapters of the volume where appropriate). Particular attention is paid to architecture and building materials in the overview of any layer in which they occur.
B. continues this approach in Chapter 3, which includes results from the excavation of five other trenches at the site, including one that was dug through the floor of the House of Tiles to test pre-House strata, and a long, narrow trench dug for the northern footing of the protective shelter built over the House of Tiles. Each trench is presented like areas JA and JB, proceeding level by level from the earliest to the latest, with similar information provided.
A series of short chapters follows. Chapter 4, ‘Unphased Neolithic’, presents a schematic inventory of pottery, objects, lithics, and bones and shells found elsewhere across the site. Chapter 5, ‘Mixed Fill’, discusses levels containing mixed NL and Early Helladic (EH) material with no associated architecture, which were found in trenches and pits across the site. This fill was likely produced by earth-moving activities undertaken during EH II. B. proceeds from trench to trench where such fills occur, describing the deposits and providing inventories of finds. This chapter includes all instances of mixed fill, both from previously discussed and ‘new’ trenches. Chapter 6, ‘The Burials’, contains a table of features for the nine or eleven (the count is uncertain) burials alongside a short discussion of shared characteristics (e.g. they are all inhumations, usually with few or no associated offerings). B. observes not only that the number of burials was few, but also that their documentation was incomplete, which limits their ability to shed light on burial practices in Neolithic settlements (although they do demonstrate the presence of burials within Lerna's boundaries).
Chapter 7, ‘The Minor Objects’, is longer. It consists primarily of a detailed catalogue, expanding the schematic inventories presented in previous chapters. B. proceeds through objects of different materials and function: copper (pin, awl, circlet), stone (grindstone, celt, pounder etc.), bone (awl, scraper/polisher etc.), shell, terracotta (sling bullet, whorl, figurine etc.); sometimes these categories are further subdivided into specific types. B. provides a description of each artefact type, while a catalogue accompanies each material/functional category (e.g. copper pins or terracotta figurines). A typical catalogue entry includes condition, dimensions, Munsell colour, a description and references. It is not entirely clear how selective or comprehensive the catalogue is.
The main text of the volume ends with Chapter 8, ‘Concluding Discussion’. Here, B. tells the story of a village founded around the Early NL–Middle NL transition, growing to its greatest extent during the Middle NL (c. 1 ha with perhaps 100 inhabitants), before abandonment in the Late NL and use by (mostly) mobile agropastoralists in the Final NL. Middle NL Houses were predominantly small and rectilinear, built of stone and mudbrick, with spaces (inside or out) for animals, storage and work. Buildings are similar enough that B. considers them all ‘ordinary dwellings for nuclear families’ (p. 262), with little evidence of social differentiation or more than part-time craft specialisation. Subsistence strategies focused on the intensive mixed farming and herding typical of the NL Balkans. Most resources were local, aside from imported obsidian, flint and small marble objects. No defences were found. Terracotta figurines and triangular plaques offer some insight into the symbolic life. B. warns, however, that since only a small portion of the NL site was excavated (a little over 100 m2 by this reviewer's count), any conclusions remain provisional.
B. admits that the evidence she presents is problematic: excavations and analyses were not entirely systematic or fully recorded, fill was not routinely sieved, inexperienced participants were employed, pottery lots were combined, much material was discarded and thus unavailable for re-examination. She nevertheless mitigates these problems to achieve her goal of producing a volume that serves as the basis – and justification – for further investigation at Lerna. In addition, this reviewer (a landscape archaeologist often tasked with identifying artefacts from surface survey or features from small test trenches) found the volume accessible; it will also be useful to survey or landscape archaeologists for the identification and interpretation of NL materials in the Argolid and beyond.
This reviewer's only criticism is not of B. in particular, but of broader disciplinary practices. Today, archaeological reports should include digital datasets housed in domain-specific repositories. Publishing the excavation and artefact data digitally would dramatically improve its utility and reusability.
