Franchthi Cave

 place with historical importance, cave(s), petroglyph, archaeological site, prehistoric

Franchthi Cave is located on an inlet of the Aegean Sea in Greece near the modern village of Koilada. It has the distinction of being the site of the longest continuous occupation in within Greece, having had peoples living within it, either seasonally or year-round, from approximately 20,000 BCE until the site was abandoned in 3,000 BCE because of rising sea levels. The excavation of the sites, conducted between 1967 and 1976, recovered a range of lithics, plant and animal remains and eventually pottery and the remains of architecture located outside of the cave itself. The plant remains recovered span from primarily gathered grains and nuts such as wild oats, wild barley, lentils, pistachios and almonds during the Paleolithic period (20,000 – 8,300 BCE) through domesticated wheat, barley and lentils beginning in the Early Neolithic (6,000 – 5,000 BCE). In a similar vein, animal remains show initially the remains of a hunter-gatherer culture, seen through the high number of equid and caprine bones, to a group which developed a reliance on fishing in the Mesolithic (8,300 – 6,000 BCE) and then finally domesticated sheep and goats and sophisticated fishhooks in the Neolithic. Finally, a number of burials were discovered at several occupational time points within the cave, which show the development of more sophisticated burial patterns, the changing demographics of the cave occupants, and in the case of an infant entombed in a clay urn, possibly the beginning of social stratification. The abundance of obsidian found from the chipped-stone industry came primarily from Melos, which suggests active trade routes between the two areas.

Source projectsx.dartmouth.edu/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/...