Reconstructing Cycladic Prehistory: Naxos in the Early and Middle Late Bronze Age

Abstract

The lack of published deposits from Cycladic settlement contexts has been a serious setback to our knowledge of Cycladic prehistory, as it has led to inflexible ‘pan‐Aegean’ models of cultural history, imposed on the islands without consideration of local particularities and regional variations. Naxos, the largest and most central of the Cyclades, is a prime example of an important island, whose cultural history, especially in the early and middle Late Bronze Age (roughly from the sixteenth to the thirteenth centuries BC), is not well known. In the present article the author reconstructs the stratigraphic and chronological sequence of the island’s only excavated settlement at Grotta, examines the development of settlement pattern on Naxos, and attempts to assess the position of the island in the Aegean during the periods in question. It is suggested that the fluctuations in the number of settlements and the changes in settlement pattern of the island could be tied to the degree of integration of the island into the Minoan and Mycenaean exchange networks. In periods of limited integration (LC I/II and LH IIIB) the settlement pattern consists of one or two important centers (Mikre Vigla and/or Grotta) and a number of small settlements dispersed in the interior of the island. In periods of advanced integration (LH IIIA1‐IIIA2), a process of nucleation takes place, in which small settlements are abandoned, Mikre Vigla declines, and Grotta is established as the only settlement of the island.