An island archaeology of uninhabited landscapes: Offshore islets near Paros, Greece (the Small Cycladic Islands Project)

Abstract

The Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP) is a diachronic archaeological survey of numerous small, uninhabited islands in the Cycladic archipelago. There is a rich history of archaeological survey and comparative island archaeology in the Aegean. SCIP narrows the size of an individual island survey, and at the same time expands the conceptual and comparative scope by surveying multiple islands with the same set of methods and in the context of the same project. All target islands are currently uninhabited, and many probably never sustained any habitation. We know from other cases, however, that such places were used for a variety of purposes in the past, including as goat islands, cemeteries, stopovers, and pirate hideaways. In its initial field season in 2019, SCIP carried out comprehensive surveys of 10 islets in the vicinity of Paros. This comparative program of research provides new insights concerning various types of human activities—habitation and non-habitation, diachronic and incidental—that took place in marginal island environments.

Keywords:

• Uninhabited islands
• diachronic regional survey
• settlement patterns
• Paros
• Cyclades
• Greece

Supplemental material

Supplement 1. Catalog of pottery referred to in the text, illustrated in Figures 6, 8, 12, and 14

Acknowledgements

We thank the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Norwegian Institute at Athens, and Carleton College for their sponsorship and institutional support. Funding was provided by Carleton College (through the Mellon Public Works Initiative, Humanities Center, Towsley Fund, and Dean of the College Office), the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, and the Norwegian Institute at Athens. From the Ephorate, we thank Zozi Papadopoulou, Yannos Kourayos, Apostolos Papadimitriou, Charikleia Diamanti, Eleni Kalavria, and Maria Sigala. We also wish to thank Jorunn Økland, Director of the Norwegian Institute, and Delia Tzortzaki. We are especially grateful to the other members of the 2019 field team: Sue Alcock, James Brown, Alex Claman, Liza Davis, M.J. Fielder-Jellsey, Aaron Forman, Ioannis Georganas, Aikaterini Kanatselou, Fanis Mavridis, Aubrey Rawles, and Sam Wege. Our warm thanks go to Maria Perantinou and the residents of Piso Livadi for their kind hospitality, as well as to the staff of the Archaeological Museum of Paros. As we were preparing this article, we were saddened by the passing of Demetrius Schilardi, long-time archaeologist of Paros. From the outset, Schilardi was an important supporter of our project, encouraging our research through consultation, advice, and access to material. We are very grateful for this, and for his decades of work in the Cyclades. Finally, we thank Scott M. Fitzpatrick and the three anonymous reviewers of JICA for their thoughtful feedback and suggestions, which improved this paper greatly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.