William Cavanagh, †Christopher Mee, and Josette Renard, Kouphovouno: A Neolithic and Bronze Age Site in Laconia. Excavations 2001–06 (BSA Suppl., 54) London 2025. 486 pp (with 224 figures and 16 tables in text) + 40 pp plates (28 b/w + 12 colour). ISBN 978-0-904887-76-1.
New excavations at Kouphovouno, in the Peloponnese, yield fresh insights into the Middle and Late Neolithic, and the Early and Middle Bronze Ages of Greece. Living spaces, architecture, the agricultural economy, early technologies, site formation, chronology, burials and population are discussed in the light of new data. Innovative methods of analysis include isotopic characterisation of plant and animal remains to investigate the farming regime, and the site’s chronology has been clarified through a combination of stratigraphy, seriation, and Bayesian analysis of 14C dates. Results from an initial surface survey are compared with the results from excavation. The archaeological detail which underwrites the analysis, including the full petrographic study of the ceramics, is available as a downloadable PDF and is intended that this should also be a quarry of data for future research.
