An island archaeology of uninhabited landscapes: Offshore islets near Paros, Greece (the Small Cycladic Islands Project)

Abstract

The Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP) is a diachronic archaeological survey of numerous small, uninhabited islands in the Cycladic archipelago. There is a rich history of archaeological survey and comparative island archaeology in the Aegean. SCIP narrows the size of an individual island survey, and at the same time expands the conceptual and comparative scope by surveying multiple islands with the same set of methods and in the context of the same project. All target islands are currently uninhabited, and many probably never sustained any habitation. We know from other cases, however, that such places were used for a variety of purposes in the past, including as goat islands, cemeteries, stopovers, and pirate hideaways. In its initial field season in 2019, SCIP carried out comprehensive surveys of 10 islets in the vicinity of Paros. This comparative program of research provides new insights concerning various types of human activities—habitation and non-habitation, diachronic and incidental—that took place in marginal island environments.