Maroulas is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

Kythnos Kythnos (, ), commonly called Thermia (), is a Greek island and Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality in the Western Cyclades between Kea (island), Kea and Serifos. It is from the Athenian harbor of Piraeus. The municipality Kythn ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. It is a

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic i ...

settlement located in Loutra and dates back to between 8800 and 8600 BC. Maroulas seems to have been used for a few centuries at the beginning of the

9th millennium BC The 9th millennium BC spanned the years 9000 BC to 8001 BC (11 to 10 thousand years ago). In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC (11.7 thousan ...

, and it is considered as the oldest settlement in the island region of the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

.Arvanitaki pp. 79-80 The site was identified as a pre-

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

settlement in 1975, but this view was contested until the first exploration of the site in

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

. The excavation continued between 2001 and 2005 by the

University of the Aegean The University of the Aegean (UA; ) is a public, multi-campus university located in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Syros and Lemnos, Greece. It was founded on March 20, 1984, by the Presidential Act 83/1984 and its administrative headquarters ar ...

and the 21st Ephorate of the

Cyclades The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...

. Architectural structures, tombs, stone tools and food residues of

fauna Fauna (: faunae or faunas) is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding terms for plants and fungi are ''flora'' and '' funga'', respectively. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively ...

and

flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

have been discovered at the site.Karelanidou pp. 50-1{{Cite web , title=Αρχαιολογικοί Χώροι , url=https://www.kythnos.gr/αρχαιολογικοί-χώροι/ , access-date=2022-07-15 , website=Κύθνος , language=el

General information

Maroulas is the only open area Mesolithic settlement whose architectural elements have been preserved. While the sea level was 40-60 meters lower in the

Mesolithic period The Mesolithic ( Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonym ...

, today the settlement is located at sea level and a significant part of it has been destroyed. It seems to be the only Mesolithic settlement in the Aegean that has been partially spared the rising sea levels as it was not a coastal settlement at that time.

Architectural structures

Based on the excavation data, the buildings of Maroulas were circular in shape with a diameter of 3 to 4 m. Their floors were covered with stones, while some of them were used more than once.Arvanitaki p. 80 Sometimes the structures are found clustered together, as is the case in the central part of the settlement, and elsewhere they are spread out more sparsely . There are 15 or 31 such structures. The majority and the most damaged of structures are located on the eastern side of the settlement adjacent to the sea. The type of circular dwelling at Maroulas was inhabited by groups of

hunter-gatherers A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, especially w ...

with a questionable level of permanence, although it appears that there were reconstructions, indicating long-term use. Similar types of dwellings are not found in the context of the Mesolithic period in

southeastern Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and Archipelago, archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of t ...

Burial structures

At Maroulas there is a diversity of burial structures, judging from those that have been discovered. The existence of secondary graves is mentioned, which refer to burial practices of the Natufian phase, while the placement of the stone over the body is reminiscent of respective examples from Ain Mallaha and

El Wad El Wad is an archaeological site of the Epipalaeolithic Near East in Mount Carmel, Israel. The site has two components: El Wad Cave, also known as Mughārat al-Wād () or HaNahal Cave (); and El Wad Terrace, located immediately outside the cave. ...

. The burials at Maroulas are part of a limited number of burials of the Mesolithic period in

, since burial practices have only been observed in caves at Frachthi in Argolida and at Theopetra in

Trikala Trikala () is a city in northwestern Thessaly, Greece, and the capital of the Trikala (regional unit), Trikala regional unit. The city straddles the Lithaios river, which is a tributary of Pineios (Thessaly), Pineios. According to the Greek Natio ...

.Arvanitaki pp. 80-1Karelanidou p. 52

Stone tools

The stone tools of Maroulas were mainly made of local

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

and to a lesser extent of

obsidian Obsidian ( ) is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Produced from felsic lava, obsidian is rich in the lighter element ...

and

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

from

Milos Milos or Melos (; , ; ) is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. It is the southwestern-most island of the Cyclades group. The ''Venus de Milo'' (now in the Louvre), the ''Poseidon of Melos'' (now in the ...

. There is a belief that these tools indicate the attempt of the groups to adapt to the use of the local raw materials and, specifically, to quartz. Maroulas shows similarities with other Mesolithic sites in Greece, such as Frachthi, mainly in terms of the emphasis on scale production and of the limited presence of microlithic tools. The use of the obsidian suggests navigation in the Aegean for the supply of raw materials or ready-made tools from Milos.

Animal and plant remains

Remains of pigs, rabbits, birds, etc. were found in the area of the settlement. The inhabitants even fed on fish, sea shells and land molluscs. The

archaeobotanical Paleoethnobotany (also spelled palaeoethnobotany), or archaeobotany, is the study of past human-plant interactions through the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains. Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany (from the Greek words ...

remains are limited to samples of seeds of open steppe plants.Arvanitaki p. 82 However, in one view, the existence of millstones and mortars suggests the presence of morphologically wild cereals, although these have not been identified. A study of the finds from the swine and fish, based on the seasonality of their births and the period of their fishing respectively, indicates that the settlement was inhabited seasonally, at least from

mid-winter Midwinter is the middle of the winter. The term is attested in the early Germanic calendars where it was a period or a day which may have been determined by a lunisolar calendar before it was adapted into the Gregorian calendar. It appears with s ...

to late

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a he ...

.Karelanidou pp. 55-6

References

Bibliography

Margarita Arvanitaki (2012). ''Η αρχή της Νεολιθικής στην Ελλάδα και τα νέα δεδομένα:''. doi:10.26262/HEAL.AUTH.IR.129477.

Olga Karelanidou (2017). ''Το θέμα της μονιμότητας στην Αρχαιότερη Νεολιθική του βορειοελλαδικού χώρου''. doi:10.26262/HEAL.AUTH.IR.295135.
Archaeological sites on the Aegean Islands Prehistoric sites in Greece Kythnos