Updates on a « missing period » – The Middle Bronze Age in the Northern Aegean | ArchéOrient – Le Blog

Although contacts with the well-known cultures of Southern and Central Greece always existed, the Northern Aegean developed quite differently during the Bronze Age (3100 – 1100 BC). The region is mainly characterized by long-lived inhabited tell sites and it shows many connections to the Balkans of which it is the southernmost part. The topography is dominated by mountain chains and some coastal plains, as well as river valleys (Fig. 1 and 2).

Our knowledge of the Middle Bronze Age, i.e. the first half of the second millennium BC, is based for the most part on coastal sites, which yielded southern imports that allow for quite reliable dating, whereas this phase can hardly be identified inland, due to the shortage of well-defined characteristic material culture that can be separated with certainty from the Early or the Late Bronze Age. This fact, combined with the evidence for the abandonment of several key sites during the Middle Bronze Age (Gori 2015a) and stratigraphic lacunae suggests a considerable gap in settlement.