Lasithi: A History of Settlement on a Highland Plain in Crete

Watrous, L. Vance; Blitzer, Harriet

doi:10.2307/1353935

Cited by 35 publications

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“…The first settlements of the Lasithi highland mesa have been dated to the later Neolithic, approximately 3500 BC, possibly as a result of population expansions from coastal homesteads. 4 The archeological evidence suggests that, although they enjoyed a relative physical isolation, the inhabitants of the Lasithi Plain were, throughout its history, in communication with the inhabitants of the coastal regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The material culture of the latest Bronze Age displayed the hybrid Minoan/Mycenaean styles that were typical of this period in Crete. 4 After another reduction in population density around the third century BC, the area became populous again in the 4th century AD, presumably as a result of a Roman settlement. 4 During the period of Venetian rule, the Lasithi Plateau served as a refuge for Cretan insurgents.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 After another reduction in population density around the third century BC, the area became populous again in the 4th century AD, presumably as a result of a Roman settlement. 4 During the period of Venetian rule, the Lasithi Plateau served as a refuge for Cretan insurgents. 5 The Venetian government reacted by banning settlement and cultivation of the area from the mid 13th century to 1463 AD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 The Venetian government reacted by banning settlement and cultivation of the area from the mid 13th century to 1463 AD. 4,5 Subsequently, in an attempt to increase grain production and alleviate the effects of the Ottoman blockade, the Venetian government decided to recolonize the plain in 1548 with settlers from the Greek mainland (eastern Peloponnese 4,5 ). Although some have suggested that with every foreign intrusion into the Lasithi Plateau the local residents deserted the area, 4 it remains entirely unclear as to what fraction, if any, of the local population departed in each period and the geographical origin(s) of those who remained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Paleolithic Y-haplogroup heritage predominates in a Cretan highland plateau

et al. 2007

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The island of Crete, credited by some historical scholars as a central crucible of western civilization, has been under continuous archeological investigation since the second half of the nineteenth century. In the present work, the geographic stratification of the contemporary Cretan Y-chromosome gene pool was assessed by high-resolution haplotyping to investigate the potential imprints of past colonization episodes and the population substructure. In addition to analyzing the possible geographic origins of Y-chromosome lineages in relatively accessible areas of the island, this study includes samples from the isolated interior of the Lasithi Plateau -a mountain plain located in eastern Crete. The potential significance of the results from the latter region is underscored by the possibility that this region was used as a Minoan refugium. Comparisons of Y-haplogroup frequencies among three Cretan populations as well as with published data from additional Mediterranean locations revealed significant differences in the frequency distributions of Y-chromosome haplogroups within the island. The most outstanding differences were observed in haplogroups J2 and R1, with the predominance of haplogroup R lineages in the Lasithi Plateau and of haplogroup J lineages in the more accessible regions of the island. Y-STR-based analyses demonstrated the close affinity that R1a1 chromosomes from the Lasithi Plateau shared with those from the Balkans, but not with those from lowland eastern Crete. In contrast, Cretan R1b microsatellite-defined haplotypes displayed more resemblance to those from Northeast Italy than to those from Turkey and the Balkans.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Paleolithic Y-haplogroup heritage predominates in a Cretan highland plateau

et al. 2007

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“…The climate for coastal areas is typically mild Mediterranean, dry and warm. At higher altitudes, as for instance the Lasithi plain at 800m altitude, the climate is clearly of a non-Mediterranean type, with an average winter temperatures from 5°C to 10°C (Watrous 1982).…”

Section: Geological Geomorphological and Climatic Attributes Of The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science : From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach

Kluiving¹,

Guttmann-Bond²

2012

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The publication of this book is made possible by grants from: All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.Every effort had been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book.Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. PrefaceSince the 1960s, 'landscape' has been a key topic of archaeological research all over the world. Initially drawing on environmental archaeology, and using models from the earth sciences as well as cultural ecology, landscapes have been conceptualised predominantly as the natural environments determining human behaviour or as a backdrop to human action. In the New Archaeology of the 1960s, ecology and settlement patterns were studied together with anthropology, with the aim of piecing together information on past economic and social systems (Trigger 1989, 295). Lewis Binford argued that the goal of archaeology should be to understand the range of human behaviours and the differences in culture, based on a belief that cultures were adaptive responses to our environment (Binford 1962), and archaeologists at the time were optimistic that culture and culture change were rational and could be predicted based on archaeological assemblages and settlement patterns.In This volume will begin with a discussion of Landscape Archaeology and its history, followed by a discussion of themes and summaries of the papers in this volume. We end with some concluding remarks 10 · landscape archaeology between art and science and suggestions for future research. Although the editors have put a lot of energy into editing the text of this volume, please note that many contributors are writing in English as a second language. We have endeavoured to smooth out the English, but we apologise for the awkwardness of some phrasing in the text.All 35 papers of the LAC2010 proceedings have been peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers. The editors have approached a large number of peer reviewers within the participating institution within the VU University, the Cultural Heritage Agency and the international Advisory Board of LAC2010. We wish to thank the following colleagues who have made the realisation of the proceedings of LAC2010 possible.

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Middle Eastern and European mtDNA lineages characterize populations from eastern Crete

Martinez

Mirabal

Luis

et al. 2008

American J Phys Anthropol

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Throughout centuries, the geographic location of the island of Crete has been one of the leading factors shaping the composition of its population. Invasions and commercial and cultural ties at various time periods with European, Middle Eastern, and North African civilizations have created a collage of genetic and/or cultural influences from each of these regions within the island. Previous Y-chromosome diversity analyses uncovered pronounced differences in the frequency distribution of haplogroups from a mountain refugium and surrounding lowland populations of eastern Crete. In this study, the current geographic stratification of mtDNA haplotypes in eastern Crete was explored to elucidate potential sources of maternal gene flow. Our work includes a comparative characterization of two lowland collections from the Heraklion and Lasithi Prefectures in eastern Crete, as well as of an isolated mountain population from the Lasithi Plateau, all three previously examined using Y-chromosome markers. In addition to the presence of European mtDNA haplogroups in all three collections, our analyses reveal a significant contribution of Middle Eastern and Central Asian genetic signatures in the island of Crete, and particularly in the two populations from the Lasithi region at the eastern-most portion of the island. Close association between these Cretan groups and the Balkans can also be discerned, which in the case of the Lasithi Plateau corroborates previously uncovered Y-chromosome affiliations with the same geographic region.

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Lasithi: A History of Settlement on a Highland Plain in Crete

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Paleolithic Y-haplogroup heritage predominates in a Cretan highland plateau

Paleolithic Y-haplogroup heritage predominates in a Cretan highland plateau

Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science : From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach

Middle Eastern and European mtDNA lineages characterize populations from eastern Crete

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