Posted on 06/26/2008 6:06:10 PM PDT by blam
Archaeologists uncover 5,000-year-old jewellery workshop
By Jean Christou
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered was appears to have been a jewellery workshop during excavations at the 5,000-year old Souskiou-Laona settlement.
According to the Antiquities Department, a dense concentration of the mineral picrolite in the west ridge of the cliff-top settlement indicates that the spot was a workshop for the production of the cruciform figurines and large pendants.
“The assemblage mainly consists of the raw picrolite material, possibly quarried from the Troodos Mountains rather than imported in pebble form from the Kouris River valley, many waste chips flaked from that raw material in order to reduce it to convenient form and a roughout for a probable figurine,” the Department said in a statement.
It said the roughout bore a multitude of tool marks that showed how the artisan began to fashion what was probably meant to be a cruciform figure.
“Many chipped stones occurred together with these picrolites,” the statement said.
It said more investigations were required, but it was already clear that for the first time archaeologists would be able to reconstruct the stages of production of remarkable prehistoric Mediterranean artwork, from procurement to near-finished product.
“The upper part of a delicate, cruciform figurine that still needed to be finished comes from another part of the West Ridge and it gives some idea of the capability of these Souskiou artisans,” the statement added.
The excavations were carried out by the Lemba Archaeological Research Centre and the University of Edinburgh.
“The 3000 BC settlement is ringed by a number of higher cemeteries, and this year a fifth, looted cemetery was located on the west ridge of Laona. Only a few rock-cut pit graves remain along the cliff edge since this side of the ridge was sharply truncated by the Dhiarizos River. To the south, additional examination of the Vathyrkakas plateau opposite the settlement brought to light more looted graves suggesting that burials had once been placed continuously along the lip of the plateau for a distance of 450 metres.
“It has always been assumed that the Laona settlement was confined to the south slopes of the East Ridge, occupying 1.23 hectares, and that as a consequence the settlement was too small to have generated the number of individuals recovered from associated cemeteries,” the Antiquities Department said.
“We had suspected that the few artefacts recovered in survey from this part of the site in earlier seasons were the result of specific, non-residential tasks, but it is now clear that buildings extend over a much larger area than we had supposed. Their location on the precipitous edge of the ridge means that a considerable part of the site has been lost to erosion.”
Further work will be required to determine if the settlement was sufficiently large to account for all the individuals in the cemeteries.
GGG Ping.
bttt
Crete was an ancient civilization 5000 years ago. I was recently reading about the Islands of St. Kilda, (Hirta) which is literally in the middle of nowhere and almost inaccessible except on the calmest Summer days, yet has been inhabited for at least two thousand years. How did people get there so long ago with animals no less when even today it is difficult to get there?
I suspect that there was not always as much water between land masses as there is now ;)
And this little piece of real estate we were given was kept from invasion until a group of men with like mindedness determined to develop a politic with the clear understanding that there is a God, and a Savior Son, and that this nation could only work and grow if we were spiritually minded and maintained our spiritual mind.
Why is there $4 plus gas and socialism's nose in the tent?
2 Chronicles 7:14.
Ancient people were a lot smarter, especially with boats, than we imagined.
There are theories now (these days) about how Modern Humans first left Africa by boat, eighty thousand years ago.
Mike Morford claims to have found human artifacts on the island of Flores that are 840,000 years old...no-one knows when Flores wasn't an island. Flores is where the Hobbits were discovered. The Hobbits survived the supervolcano Toba (nearby) 75,000 years ago too.
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Thanks Blam. |
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......How did people get there so long ago with animals .....
They were headed somewhere else and shipwrecked.....$.02
The American barrier Islands from Virginia south to Florida frequently have populations of both people and wild horses who got there from wrecks.
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