Vathy Astypalaia: Recent Data from a Diachronic Palimpsest of the Aegean

The site of Vathy on the island of Astypalaia, Greece, was strategically located along several maritime routes linking the prehistoric societies of the Aegean Sea. Recent excavations at Vathy have brought to light a site of major importance for our knowledge of Mediterranean cultures in the 4th- and 3rd-millennia BCE across a vast area, from Anatolia to Iberia. The megalithic walls of the settlement are densely engraved with petroglyphs that point to a Mediterranean artistic “koine,”a common visual language expressed in rock art. Moreover, coastal enclosures served to contain carefully arranged infant pot burials that are paralleled by similar ritual depositions in Anatolia, the Balkans and the Aegean. Finally, marble figurines found at the site connect Late Neolithic and Early Cycladic Aegean statuary with material from Anatolia and the Aegean islands and the broader Mediterranean world. In this lecture, recent finds from the excavations at Vathy will be discussed and will be placed in their Aegean context.