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This paper explores the early stages in the history of fishing in the Aegean Sea in Greece, and highlights its formative phases and its specific characteristics in different points in time. This is testified by various physical remains, such as fish bones, fishing tools, and representations in art, which are gathered in the course of archaeological research. The aquatic resources in the Aegean Sea have been exploited and managed for millennia by communities that lived near the water and often made a living from it. The earliest evidence for a systematic, intensive exploitation of marine resources in the Aegean Sea dates to the Mesolithic, eleven millennia ago. In the Neolithic period, the adoption of a sedentary, agro-pastoral way of life led to a reduction in the intensity of fishing and shellfish gathering. Its importance as an economic resource remained high only in certain regions of rich, eutrophic waters. In the Bronze Age, an era of social complexity and centralized economy, the exploitation of aquatic, mostly marine, resources became a complex, multi-faceted activity which involved subsistence, industry and ideology. The range of preferred fish and invertebrate species, the fishing technology, and the processing of fish and shellfish in order to produce elaborate foods or prestige items are all traceable aspects of the complex relationship between humans and the aquatic resources throughout the prehistory of fishing and shellfish gathering in the Aegean area. The broadening of collaboration between archaeology and physical sciences offers new means to explore these issues in a more thorough and nuanced manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Tsunami generated by the Late Bronze Age (LBA) eruption of Thera were simulated using synthetic tide records produced for selected nearshore (∼20 m depths) sites of northern Crete, the Cyclades Islands, SW Turkey and Sicily. Inundation distances inland were also calculated along northern Crete. Modelling was performed by incorporating fully non-linear Boussinesq wave theory with two tsunamigenic mechanisms. The first involved the entry of pyroclastic flows into the sea, assuming a thick (55 m; 30 km3) flow entering the sea along the south coast of Thera in three different directions all directed towards northern Crete, then a thin pyroclastic flow (1 m; 1.2 km3) entering the sea along the north coast of Thera directed towards the Cyclades Islands. Flows were modelled as a solid block that slowly decelerates along a horizontal surface. The second mechanism assumed caldera collapse, of 19 km3 and 34 km3 modelled as a dynamic landslide producing rapid vertical displacements. Calculated nearshore wave amplitudes varied from a few metres to 28 m along northern Crete from pyroclastic flows, and up to 19 m from caldera collapse (34 km3 volume). Inundation distances on Crete were 250-450 m. Waves produced by pyroclastic flows were highly focused, however, as a function of sea entry direction. Smaller volume pyroclastic flows produced nearshore wave amplitudes up to 4 m in the Cyclades islands north of Thera. Wave amplitudes in the Cyclades from smaller volume caldera collapse (19 km3) were up to 24 m, whereas in SW Turkey were as low as 2.1 and 0.8 m (Didim and Fethye where LBA tsunami deposits have been found). Wave amplitudes for the larger volume caldera collapse (34 km3) were generally 2.5-3 times larger than those generated by the smaller volume collapse (19 km3). These results provide estimates for understanding possible consequences of tsunami impact in LBA coastal zones, thus providing criteria at archaeological sites for detecting inundation damage, as well as for contemporary hazard assessment; they also provide additional criteria for deciphering homogenite layers in the abyssal stratigraphy of the Ionian and eastern Mediterranean Seas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of the study of the surface survey material from the island site of Mitrou. The survey was carried out under the auspices of the Cornell Halai and East Lokris Project (CHELP) in 1988 and 1989, and the finds were studied by the authors between 2000 and 2003. Pottery and small finds indicate that Mitrou was one of the major Bronze Age sites in the region, occupied from Early Helladic II through the Protogeometric period without interruption, and benefiting from trading contacts throughout the Aegean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]