“Lefkandi in Euboea: Past and Recent Archaeological Research,” lecture by Professor Irene Lemos (University of Oxford, Director of the Excavations at Lefkandi, AAIA Professorial Fellow, 2014).
Synopsis
The site of Lefkandi has offered much to the archaeology of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Aegean. The amazing discoveries made by teams of archaeologists at the site have changed our perspectives of the period from 1200 to 700 BC. The history of Lefkandi started in the Early Bronze Age when the settlement was occupied for the first time and the site became an important node in the Aegean during the Middle Bronze Age. During the Mycenaean period Lefkandi was under the control of the powerful palace of Thebes, but after the collapse of the Mycenaean administration system the site became one of the key and most important settlements in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. During the last stages of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age the inhabitants exploited the beneficial location of the site in the Euboean Gulf and the natural resources of their region. Lefkandi developed into one of the most prosperous and affluent communities of its time. Was this an exceptional site whose wealth and complex social organisation was indeed unrivalled or is it because of the modern archaeological research that we can gain a glimpse of one of the less known periods in ancient Greece?
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