The prehistoric settlement of the Heraion on Samos: work in 2017

Speaking in Greek at the annual review of the archaeological work of the University of Cyprus, Ourania Kouka presents the 2017 study season of the university's excavation north of the Sacred Way at the Heraion on Samos. Begun in 2009 at the invitation of Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier and the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, this is the university's first field project abroad.

Kouka outlines four episodes of the settlement's history north of the Sacred Way: the earliest Chalcolithic settlement of c. 4500 BC on the Imbrasos river; a fortified Early Bronze Age I to early II settlement (3000–2500 BC) with rectangular houses, a bastioned gate and a communal building; an expansion in late Early Bronze Age II and III (2500–2000 BC) into a 3.5-hectare proto-urban centre with a communal storeroom and a Cyclopean building; and a Middle Bronze Age settlement with six house phases and three successive flood-protection walls.

In 2017 the team completed the macroscopic study of the pottery, lithics, archaeobotanical and anthracological material, and textile tools. Kouka reviews the ceramic sequence from the Chalcolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, noting Cycladic, mainland Greek, western Anatolian and Minoan Protopalatial imports and imitations, alongside archaeometric analysis of 250 sherds and Samian clay beds by Sergios Menelaou. Radiocarbon dates by Yannis Maniatis at Demokritos fill gaps between 4500 and 1700 BC and support the Aegean high chronology. The talk closes with 3D reconstructions by Angeliki Chalkia and Markos Panayiotou, and Late Geometric and early Archaic sanctuary finds studied by Giorgos Bourogiannis, including the base of a Cypro-Archaic kore.