1. Introduction
On the western bank of the stream crossing the valley of Pyri, known as Litharés, between the hills of Kokkinovrachos and Stroulogos, and at a small distance from the south-eastern coast of Lake Yliki, the remains of a 3rd millennium BC settlement have come to light. The settlement’s cemetery, which contained fifty graves, was also identified and excavated; it is situated on the western slope of the hill Kokkinovrachos. This area, at the feet of the Stroulogos hill, is considered an ideal spot for an agrarian settlement, for it afforded its inhabitants some natural protection, a water supply and immediate access to the fertile lands of the Theban plain which extends southwards.
This settlement was continuously occupied from the Early Helladic Ι period (±3200-2800 BC) until the middle of the Early Helladic ΙΙ (±2400 BC), when it was abandoned and its population probably relocated to Thebes, which is situated only 12km to the south. During the late Early Helladic II, Thebes was the dominant urban centre of Boeotia.
2. Organization of the settlement
Excavations have revealed seven consecutive building phases, yet only the seventh, uppermost excavation layer has yielded well- preserved building remains. The inhabited space extended over an area measuring less than 40 sq.km. and was organized on the basis of a plan revealing adherence to the elementary principles of town planning. The settlement exhibits an elongated plan, as it developed along a long and narrow road; the section of the road that has been unearthed measures 67 m in length and has a width ranging between 1.70 and 3.50 m. This roadway is the public area along which 56 small and medium-sized spaces, rooms and corridors of a rectangular or trapezoid ground plan, are arranged without following any specific plan. As the structures are densely packed, one area abuts to the next, hindering our efforts to identify a specific number of houses.
Furthermore, the walls are preserved only at the lowest layer of their foundations, and no thresholds survive, which usually reveal the spots where the spaces communicated with each other. The sole room, in which we can securely identify a door opening, leading in from the settlement’s central roadway, is the so-called ‘shrine’. We should note that the excavator, Tzavella-Evjen, relying on the orientation of the foundations of the rooms, has identified eighteen houses, comprising up to four rooms.
The buildings were rather carefully constructed. Their foundations are made of stone, measuring approximately 0.50 m in width, while the floors were paved with cobblestones, gravel or clay. In the interior of the rooms we often find structures linked with the function of the spaces and the everyday activities of the inhabitants, like circular or semicircular hearths for cooking, stone-paved areas along the walls destined for placing clay wares or even wicker baskets to protect their contents from humidity, as well as small circular bothroi (pits), coated in clay for placing pithoi (large earthenware jars).
The architectural and construction technique features of the rooms do not indicate any differentiation in terms of their function. Therefore, any distinctions drawn can only rely on the finds recovered inside these rooms. Although all spaces yielded the same categories of finds, greater concentrations of waste from the processing of obsidian tools in certain rooms allow us to speculate on the existence of workshop areas. Furthermore, area no. 17 stands out and has been interpreted as a ‘shrine’ or a workshop area due to the discovery of a concentration of 16 clay bull idols around a pile of ash, perhaps a hearth.
3. Movable finds
Movable finds reflect the usual categories of artefacts found in other contemporary settlements and are mainly associated with everyday activities of the members of an agrarian-stock farming community (preparation and consumption of foodstuffs, tanning, weaving, hunting etc.) and with activities probably connected with special social occasions or private practices of an adorational or apotropaic content (zoomorphic idols, stylized anthropomorphic figurines). Identifying potters’ marks on pottery sherds and the presence of obsidian artefacts as well as obsidian cores are some indications alluding to the existence of specialized craftsmen. Moreover, the variety of objects and the existence of forms and types that were either imports or imitations of models well-known in the Cyclades, the Peloponnese and Central Greece reveals the breadth of contacts and trade relations the inhabitants of Litharés maintained (frying-pan clay vessels, Melos obsidian tools, lead from Laurion and Seriphos, marble vessels from the Cyclades etc.)
The most numerous category of finds is that of pottery wares catering for all everyday needs related to the storage of agricultural produce and water, food preparation, offering and consuming of foods or beverages. All pottery vessels were hand-made and usually coated in a brown-red, red or -more rarely- black slip, and their surfaces were burnished. There is a great typological variety of semicircular jugs featuring a simple, inward or T-shaped rim, followed by plates, two-handled skyphoi and cups. The deep spouted ellipsoid jugs, known as ‘saucer boats’ are a type of vessel emblematic of Early Helladic II; abundant specimens were uncovered in the settlement’s sixth and seventh building phases. These are superior quality vessels, made of pure clay, featuring extremely thin walls and a silky red-brown or off-white coating. We should also remark on the percentage of Cycladic type frying-pan vessels, produced locally or imported, which bear a distinctive incised ornamentation comprising spirals, triangles and concentric circles. The less common spherical pyxides also bear incised decoration. Finally, an important number of cooking utensils was unearthed, as well as amphorae and krateutai (supports for skewers). Jars of various sizes are less common.
A large number of tools and smaller artefacts were also unearthed, like obsidian and flint blades, grind stones, pestles, clay loom weights, spindle-whorls, discs, fishing weights and clay anchor-shaped artefacts, bronze chisels, needles, a dagger, bone awls and stone beads.
4. Necropolis
The graves are arranged in dense lines on the downward slope of Kokkinovrachos hill towards Lake Yliki. These belong to the type of rock-cut tombs, with a circular or trapezoid chamber with a stomion (entrance) and a dromos (passage way). They contained one or more burials, with the deceased placed in a flexed position. As a rule, burial gifts were included, mostly clay round pyxides and more rarely other small drinking or libation vessels and obsidian blades. This type of grave is also known from other contemporary cemeteries in nearby Paralimni, Ipato Thebon, Ampheius hill at Thebes, Manika of Chalcis and elsewhere.