Water, Animals and Agricultural Technology: A Study of Settlement Patterns and Economic Change in Neolithic Southern Greece

Summary. This study, based on evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations in southern Greece, demonstrates two major shifts in the subsistence economy during the Neolithic. In the EN and MN periods the presence of large villages in locations near reliable water‐sources and permanently moist or seasonally flooded soils of high and sustained productivity illustrates a village farming economy concentrating on arable agriculture. The first economic shift occurred in the late MN‐LN with occupation of highland caves and islands, indicating increased sheep/goat pastoralism, fishing, and perhaps hunting, with a reduced number of farming villages present in the plains. The second shift took place in the FN‐EBA, when a dispersal of agricultural settlements into dry upland regions indicates expanding plough agriculture and pastoralism, important factors contributing to the development of the flourishing EBA economy. The expansion of settlement was most marked in southeastern Greece, and it is suggested here that the extensive grazing areas provided by the open vegetation and mountainous terrain of this dry region, and its relative scarcity of well‐watered fertile lowlands, may have stimulated the LN‐FN expansion of pastoralism.