Rodopi: Settlement was founded in 6,300 BC according to research presented at an Archaeological Conference

The at found in the microscope of archaeologists studying the history of Thrace. The scientific conclusions will be presented at an archaeological conference… New data that illuminate the very distant past of Thrace, up to 8,300 years ago, will present a team of researchers at the 36th Annual Archaeological Meeting on the Project in Macedonia and Thrace, to be held in Thessaloniki tomorrow and the day after (March 28 and 29). A settlement in Rodopi that was probably established in 6,300 BC, prehistoric settlements surrounded by moats, which were abandoned and repopulated after centuries, are the main conclusions of the MapFarm research project “Chartifying early farmers in Thrace”, to be presented during the conference. “We wanted to study the Neolithic period, i.e. the beginning of the production of land cultivation and livestock farming and the social organisation of early rural communities in Thrace. What was of great importance in this program was to reveal new data because this period in Thrace has not been particularly investigated. To this end we selected ten settlements, for which colleagues at the local Antiquities Boards had information that they had been inhabited during the Neolithic period we were interested in. Some of them had been investigated very limited in the past and others had never been investigated” states at the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency the professor at the Department of History and Ethnology at the Democritus University of Thrace Dusanka Urem-Kotsu. In the programme – which received funding of €200,000 from the Hellenic Research and Innovation Foundation (ELD). Hey. K.), involved five different research groups from various parts of Greece, who used the basic methods of research from a distance (p. non-destructive research, not including excavation), to answer the question “when did such a life begin in Thrace?”. These include archaeological surface research, geophysical explorations (Mediterranean Institute of Research), research on paleogeography of the paleoenvironment, geological turrets (Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki) and radiochronology (Archaeometrics Laboratory E.K.E. F. E. “Democritus”). “With these combined methods it was essentially revealed that one of the settlements, namely the Parademi, was probably founded in 6,300 BC,” stresses Mrs. Urem. These data, in fact, caused the launch of a new programme before MapFarm’s expiry to further investigate these new important elements. Thus, while the program lasted about 3.5 years and was completed last year, at the same time an excavation began under the direction of the Rhodope Antiquities Institute and co-director of the Department of History and Ethnology of the ICU, to investigate the exact foundation of the settlement, based on the indications of radiochronology that they speak about in 6,300 BC. In fact, the excavation attracted many foreign students (Poland, Germany, Croatia, France, Cyprus), as well as students from Greek universities. The second important element resulting from the investigation, brought to light geophysical explorations, which have the potential to reveal beneath the ground the architectural remains, “scanning” by special methods the subsoil. “It had hopelessly good results, because we found something that was not known: That most of the settlements we included in the survey were surrounded by one or more moats. Essentially, that is, the inhabitants wanted to surround the settlement with a moat, so that they could delineate it in some way,” the teacher adds. As he explains, this was a major public project, which was particularly difficult for the time when there were no suitable tools to build them. “At least four settlements are clearly surrounded by one moat or more. In the Parade, for example, there is at least one internal and an external moat, while in Crobylis Rodopis, the moat is up to 10 meters wide” concludes. The third important element revealed by the investigation is based on the radiochronisations of samples extracted by geologists from the cores of the habitation sites. “What appears, then, is that there is a gap in habitation. Somewhere towards the end of the modern Neolithic era, about the fifth millennium, settlements are abandoned for a few centuries and almost all are repopulated in the Early Bronze Age, i.e. 3,500 to 3,300 BC and abandoned again in this period to not be inhabited again in prehistoric times. This in general is a phenomenon that seems to exist in some areas in Northern Greece, just Thrace is now confirmed with this research,” says Mrs.Urem, proud of the small amount added to these elements in the overall research on the area of Thrace and its past. In the MapFarm programme “Charting the early farmers in Thrace”, apart from Mrs.Urem-Kotsos, the Apostolos Sarris, Nikos Papadopoulos, Kostas Vouvalidis, Giannis Maniatis, Chryssa Karadima, Maria Chrysafima, Dimitris Matsas, Anna Mousonis, Matthew Koutsoumanis, Stavros Kotsos, Despina Skoulariki, Kyriakos Sgouopoulos, Giorgos Polymeris, Pericles Chrysafakosglu, Dimitris Economou, Sophia Doani and Ioannis Chronis worked. The announcement will take place at 12:15 on the first day of the Conference, which will take place in the hall of ceremonies at the old building of the Faculty of Philosophy of AUTH