Mapping Hominin-Landscape Interactions in the Wetlands of Palaeolithic Lesbos: the Evidence from the Coastal Rims
Archaeological finds from Lesbos Island provide unequivocal evidence for the earliest settlement in
the Aegean region. The history of the Aegean begins here, at least half a million years ago, to judge
by robust absolute and relative dating from Rodafnidia, the site upon which archaeological
investigations of the University of Crete have focused. Systematic research has unveiled Lower
Palaeolithic knapped stone tools with Acheulean affinities, unprecedented in number and diversity
throughout the Balkans and west Anatolia. The Lesbos Palaeolithic offers historic depth and
geographic width in the Palaeolithic of the east Mediterranean. It dates to the Middle Pleistocene
and expands the Acheulean map of the Levantine-Anatolian dispersal corridor to the north and west.
At the same time, it expands the Palaeolithic map of Greece in the east Aegean. Finds uncovered by
excavation of stratified deposits and collected from the ground surface by fieldwalking suggest that
the Kalloni basin was repeatedly visited by hominins. What brought the Acheulean tool-using groups
to this part of East Mediterranean? HomLandWet places under its magnifying glass the Quaternary
wetlands of Lesbos and sets out to explore them as settings of Palaeolithic settlement. The working
hypothesis is that the eco-diversity of what are today coastal rims attracted animal and hominin
groups producing a robust Lower Palaeolithic signal. The project will bring together Palaeolithic
Archaeology, Marine Geophysics, Earth Sciences, and Information Technology to test this hypothesis
and disseminate knowledge in scientific audiences and Public Archaeology to share it with the
public. Using Palaeolithic finds as proxies for hominin activity, edaphics as proxies for eco-diversity,
along with marine geophysical research and computer modelling, the changing margins between
land the sea will be investigated through time and the archaeological remains of this zone will be
placed in a palaeogeographic context.