Workshop by Eva Alram-Stern

Platia Magoula Zarkou is a Neolithic and Bronze Age tell settlement in the western Thessalian plain which was excavated between 1976 and 1990 after the discovery of the rare find of a Late Neolithic cremation burial cemetery nearby. The excavation comprised a stratigraphic trench with habitational horizons dating to the Middle Neolithic (about 5800–5300 BC) and Late Neolithic phases (until the first, Tsangli-Larissa, sub-period, about 5300–5100 BC). For these periods, the evidence of the pottery from the site decisively changed our understanding of the Neolithic chronology and made Platia Magoula Zarkou a key site for the study of the Neolithic of Greece. The upper layers of the tell comprise an Early Bronze Age sequence covering Early Bronze Age II and III and continuing to the Middle Bronze Age.

This workshop will present a discussion of the preliminary results of a project granted by the Austrian Science Fund aiming at the final publication of the site, which will be a comprehensive and holistic study of this tell settlement, giving an authentic picture of cultural change during these most prosperous periods of early farming culture in the Thessalian plain.