The Environment and Interactions of Neolithic Halai

Abstract

Halai, on the North Euboean Gulf, was excavated by Hetty Goldman and Alice Walker Kosmopoulos during the earlier 20th century and by the Cornell Halai and East Lokris Project in the 1990s. The Neolithic levels on the northwestern side of the hill, which later became the Classical acropolis, date roughly to 6000–5300 B.C. Small buildings are densely grouped together, although with at least one outdoor area that was built over several times on the same plans. A general description focusing on the town’s chronology, architecture, geographical setting, and interactions with other sites and regions is followed by summaries by specialists on shells, animal bones, botanical remains, food processing, pottery, and chipped stone. These show that the town fully enjoyed the rich benefits of its immediate terrestrial and marine environments. Exchange networks probably existed by land and sea between other contemporary sites in the immediate area, and medium range contacts are suggested by the similarities between the pottery and other artifacts from Halai and sites of the interior of central Greece. Melian obsidian, brought to the site in the form of roughly decorticated nodules and worked there, might have been distributed from Halai into the interior of the mainland or even Thessaly. The working of local Spondylus shells also suggests that Halai may have participated in the far distant networks that brought Spondylus ornaments to the rest of Europe.