The Kastri culture ( el, Καστρί) refers to a "cultural" dating system used for the

Cycladic culture Cycladic culture (also known as Cycladic civilisation or, chronologically, as Cycladic chronology) was a Bronze Age culture (c. 3200–c. 1050 BC) found throughout the islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea. In chronological terms, it is a re ...

that flourished during the early

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

.Eric H. Cline (ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean'', , Jan. 2012. It spans the period ca. 2500–2200 BC and was named by

Colin Renfrew Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, (born 25 July 1937) is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, ...

, after the fortified settlement of Kastri near Chalandriani on the

Cycladic The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The nam ...

island of

Syros Syros ( el, Σύρος ), also known as Siros or Syra, is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is south-east of Athens. The area of the island is and it has 21,507 inhabitants (2011 census). The largest towns are Ermoupoli, An ...

. In Renfrew's system, Kastri culture follows the Keros-Syros culture. However, some archaeologists believe that the Keros-Syros and Kastri cultures belong to the same phase. Others describe this period as the ''Early Cycladic III (ECIII)''.

Anatolian connections

There are numerous cultural connection between the settlement of Kastri on

, and

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

. This settlement provides evidence for the extension of the ‘Anatolian Trade Network’ towards the Cyclades. This trade network went through the whole of Anatolia, as well as Thrace, and towards the Mesopotamia. Kastri was a small town surrounded by a fortification system with horseshoe-shaped bastions, quite similar to the much bigger fortifications of the same time period at

Liman Tepe The town of Limantepe, sometimes spelled Liman Tepe, located on Turkey's western coast is the site of a prehistoric (Bronze Age) settlement that includes an ancient port dating from 2500 years located underwater offshore. The area is situated in th ...

, on Turkey's western coast near Izmir. Kastri has produced many metal artefacts, so it was probably associated with their production and distribution. The pottery assemblage from Kastri is also very similar to that of Anatolia. The ''depas'' vessels, the bell-shaped cups, and incised

pyxides A ''pyxis'' (, plural ''pyxides'') is a shape of vessel from the classical world, usually a cylindrical box with a separate lid. Originally mostly used by women to hold cosmetics, trinkets or jewellery, surviving ''pyxides'' are mostly Greek pot ...

"are entirely Anatolian in character'. The tin bronzes are also quite similar.

Delos The island of Delos (; el, Δήλος ; Attic: , Doric: ), near Mykonos, near the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. The excavations in the island ar ...

(Mt. Kynthos site),

Naxos Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best ab ...

(Panormos fort) in the Cyclades, and

Palamari Palamari ( el, Παλαμάρι) is a mountain village and a community in the municipal unit Trikolonoi, in Arcadia, Greece. It is located on a mountain slope north of the valley of the river Alfeios, at about 700 m elevation. It is 2 km west ...

Skyros Skyros ( el, Σκύρος, ), in some historical contexts Latinized Scyros ( grc, Σκῦρος, ), is an island in Greece, the southernmost of the Sporades, an archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the ...

are quite similar settlements of the time, and they have also been linked with the ‘Anatolian Trade Network’.Vasif Sahoglu (2005)
THE ANATOLIAN TRADE NETWORK AND THE IZMIR REGION DURING THE EARLY BRONZE AGE.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology 24(4):339-361, p.353

External links

The Chronology and Terminology of Aegean Prehistory
Dartmouth Aegean prehistoric archaeology

References

Cyclades Cycladic civilization {{Greece-archaeology-stub

Anatolian connections

See also

External links

References