This grant will be used to publish the prehistoric remains excavated on the acropolis of Thorikos (Attica, Greece) by the Athens Archaeological Society in the 1880-1890s and by the Belgian Archaeological School in Greece in the 1960-1970s. The site of Thorikos (37° 44’ 25” N, 24° 03’ 20” E) extends over the slopes of the Velatouri, a double-peaked hill in eastern Lavrion. The metal resources of the Lavrion region fueled the Athenian economy from the late Archaic period onwards, but there is also clear evidence that access to (and perhaps control over) local ores was already of strategic importance during the Bronze Age. As demonstrated by lead isotope analyses, metal from Lavrion was exchanged in the Aegean and the wider East Mediterranean. The earliest evidence of occupation at Thorikos date in the Final Neolithic and the discovery of six monumental tombs (late MBA/early LBA) suggests that the site had become a major center ruled by an elite by the 17th-16th century BC. Yet, due to incomplete and piecemeal publication, the significance of Bronze Age Thorikos tends to be overlooked, which, in turn, affects our understanding of the technological, economic and socio-political processes at play in Lavrion between the 4th and the 2nd millennium BC. This project will redress this investigative imbalance by studying and contextualizing preliminary published and unpublished data, to produce a monograph on the prehistory of Thorikos. This monograph will act as a stepping-stone towards a renewed exploration of prehistoric Thorikos and thus give the site its rightful place in Aegean and Mediterranean archaeology.
The publication project is directed by Prof. Dr. Robert Laffineur.
