Roman pottery from an intensive survey of antikythera, Greece

Recent intensive survey over the entire extent of the small island of Antikythera has recovered an episodic sequence of human activity spanning some 7,000 years, including a Roman pottery assemblage that documents a range of important patterns with respect to land use, demography and on-island consumption. This paper addresses the typological and functional aspects of this assemblage in detail, and also discusses Roman period Antikythera's range of off-island contacts and affiliations

Pots, piracy and Aegila. Hellenistic ceramics from an intensive survey of Antikythera, Greece

The small Greek island of Antikythera has a long history of human exploitation, of which one of the most interesting episodes is represented by a fortified settlement on the north coast of the island that can be plausibly identified as a centre of Hellenistic piratical activity. Hellenistic ‘Aegila’ has left both impressive standing remains and a range of portable finds that have attracted academic interest for over much of the last two centuries. This paper examines the pottery assemblage from this period recovered during a recent intensive survey over the island’s entire extent. We consider the spatial and typological character of this material as well as the implications it has for the Hellenistic community’s wider social, economic and political connections

The fragile communities of Antikythera

While many Mediterranean islands have been subjected to archaeological survey methods of one kind or another, until now few if any have been covered in both a comprehensive and intensive manner. In this article the authors describe a survey on the Greek island of Antikythera (the Antikythera Survey Project – ASP) and demonstrate how full investigation of a tiny, remote and very sparsely populated island offers distinct analytical advantages for archaeologists. Some of the resulting benefits are methodological, relating to simplified sampling procedures, while others relate to the archaeology itself and include the documentation of rollercoaster demographies, changing connections with the wider world and the development of idiosyncratic insular lifestyles