Professor Colin Renfrew will give a lecture on “The Early Cycladic settlement at Dhaskalio, Keros and the sanctuary at Kavos in the light of the 2006 to 2008 excavations: Deciphering a mystery.”
The pioneering excavations by Christos Doumas in 1963 at the looted site of Kavos on Keros, followed by those of Photeini Zapheiropoulou, revealed a mystery which neither those of 1987 by Doumas, Marangou and Colin Renfrew, nor the publication of “The Keros Hoard” by Peggy Sotirakopoulou, were able to resolve. Why were all the finds at Kavos broken in fragments? Why so many? What were the relations of this site with the settlement on the small islet of Dhaskalio, now lying 90 metres offshore?
The excavations at both Kavos and Dhaskalio in 2006 to 2008 have revealed clear evidence for a pan-Cycladic sanctuary at Kavos in the Εarly Βronze Αge and a major settlement on Dhaskalio (fig. 1). Together they document what appears to be the first regional ritual centre of the Aegean, perhaps the first maritime ritual centre in the world. Is it now possible to speak of a Confederacy of Keros, which flourished in the Cyclades in the later third millennium BC?