Prehistoric Thessaly: being some Account of Recent Excavations and Explorations in North-eastern Greece from Lake Kopais to the Borders of Macedonia

Abstract

MESSRS. WACE AND THOMPSON have opened a new-chapter in the history of early civilisation. They have shown that in northern Greece a Neolithic culture, with a peculiar geometric art of its own, held the field contemporaneously with the Bronze Age “Minoan” and “Ægean” culture of southern Greece until the latter had reached its final phase and was entering upon its decline. Bronze was not used by the prehistoric Thessalians until the “Third Late-Minoan Period” of the Ægean culture, when they finally accepted its use from the southerners, not earlier, probably, than circa 1300 B.C., and not very long before iron came into general use. This is a most revolutionary discovery, and its effect upon the supposed history of the development of the use of bronze in the rest of Europe cannot yet be gauged. M. Tsountas, the distinguished Greek archæologist, had already discovered important remains of the Neolithic Thessalian culture, with its remarkable polychrome geometric pottery, at Dimini and Sesklo, but he had failed to detect its remarkably late date. He placed it on the usual a priori grounds anterior to the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation merely because it was Neolithic. The discovery of Messrs. Wace and Thompson, for which they give chapter and verse in this book, is a much-needed rebuke to a priori arguments in dating prehistoric antiquities. Prehistoric Thessaly: being some Account of Recent Excavations and Explorations in North-eastern Greece from Lake Kopais to the Borders of Macedonia. By A. J. B. Wace M. S. Thompson. Pp. xvi + 272 + vi plates. (Cambridge: University Press, 1912.) Price 18s. net.