This year’s Annual Meeting of Aegeus will take place on Wednesday 11 June 2025, 18:30 in the British School at Athens (52 Souedias Street, Athens).
“Wetlands as refugia? Reassessing the emergence of Phaistos as a central place between the late fifth and late 3rd millennia BC”
Simona Todaro (University of Catania)
Phaistos is mainly known in Aegean archaeology as a place where, at the beginning of the
second millennium BC, a palace of Minoan type was constructed on a hill with a commanding view over the Messara plain. The plain, the largest in Crete, is commonly considered to be a fertile agricultural heartland and the emergence of Phaistos as a central place has been traditionally linked to its favorable position for controlling the production of agricultural surplus and the significant population growth that this sustained. However, archaeological and paleoenvironmental research at Phaistos and in its surrounding area over the past 25 years have forced reconsideration of this model. It is now clear (a) that the site was surrounded by a dynamic coastal/riverine wetland altered through time by natural and/or human factors; and (b) that its settlement history saw alternating phases of expansion and contraction seemingly inversely related to settlement contraction and expansion at a regional level. This talk focuses on the changes recorded at Phaistos and in its wider region in phases II and VIII, dated to 4350-4250 BC and 2200-2050 BC. Building on newly acquired paleo-climatic proxies, it will argue that the Phaistos ridge was more densely populated during periods of increased aridity because its wetland setting acted as a buffer and refugium, especially if managed or improved through specific types of collective intervention.
