Landscape and Early Farming Settlement Dynamics in Central Greece

Current hyperintensive surface survey in the Tanagra district of Boeotia, central Greece (J. L.Bintliff et al., 2002), together with a recent reanalysis of survey results from the Thespiae dis-trict (J. L. Bintliff et al., 1999), have led to a radical rethinking of how and where early farm-ers exploited the Greek landscape between earliest Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times.This new work is described, and its significance for the wider debates about the Greek land-scape in this period is further discussed, to demonstrate that alongside widely spaced villagesin earlier Neolithic times there were also small, short-lived farms; both were associated withwetland hand cultivation. In later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times, these locationsremained, but vestigial traces discovered by hyperintensive survey methods have identified anexplosion of small, short-lived, and horizontally migrating farms across the newly clearedinterfluve zones. A largely lost alluvial terrace provides a major resource for the earlier, wet-land farming foci.