Project information

Research project’s title: Minyans and Trojans in the Middle Bronze Age (MITAMBA): multi-scale networks in the northern Aegean
Project No: NCN 2023/50/E/HS3/00578
Project financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, SONATA BIS-13 competition
Keywords: production, consumption, and distribution networks; chemical analysis; petrography; experimental archaeology; morphometrics
Project lead: Christopher Mark Hale
Project lead, institutional: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Description:

MITAMBA investigates the connections between central Greece and the northern Aegean during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA, ca. 2100—1550 BCE). This region has often been viewed as peripheral to the contemporary networks centered on Crete, the Cycladic islands, Aegina, and the southern Greek mainland. Nevertheless, there are signs of significant long-distance links, such as the introduction of the potters’ wheel from northwestern Anatolia to central Greece at the end of the Early Bronze Age (Rutter 1979; 2008; Choleva 2018; 2020) or the notable technological similarities, along with central Greek typologies, among certain pottery types found along the coast of northwestern Anatolia and in central Macedonia during the later MBA (Pavúk 2007; 2008; 2010; Horejs 2007a; 2007b). However, the materials representing these phenomena have rarely undergone analytical examination, often leaving their origins uncertain and the dynamics unclear. Similarly, occasional parallels have been observed across broader material culture (including chipped stone tools, weaving equipment, and architecture), suggesting largely unexplored connections beyond pottery production and consumption.

MITAMBA hypothesizes that some MBA communities throughout these regions were variously connected, and that these links can be identified through similarities or regionalisms in the production, consumption, and distribution of material culture. These links may have ebbed and flowed due to a myriad of factors, such as the appearance or disappearance of important nodes, the advent of important innovations in transportation technologies, or shifts in wider regional networks. Exploring these connections is crucial to properly understand this region’s role as a potential intermediary between the southern Aegean and places like central and eastern Europe or northwestern Anatolia.

With resources for new sampling and analytical examinations, the cataloguing of important assemblages, network and chronological modelling, experimental archaeology, and investigations of morphometrics and use-wear, MITAMBA brings together a range of expertise to produce insights allowing central Greece and the northern Aegean to be considered within inter-regional dynamics and with new perspective.
Interested in contributing or collaborating? Contact c.hale(at)iaepan.edu.pl

Latest activities:

12/06/2025:
MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale and Bartłomiej Lis (IAE PAN) presented a paper titled “Re-Evaluating Central Euboean Middle Bronze Age Pottery Production and Distribution” at the Spaces and Landscapes of Production in the Aegean World and Beyond workshop organized by Sylviane Déderix and Stephanie Aulsebrook at the University of Warsaw.
This paper used new neutron activation analysis results to argue that central Euboean pottery production in the Middle Bronze Age was far more intensive and had a far greater distribution than previously understood. For MITAMBA, this raises the significant possibility that many so-called “True Grey Minyan” pots known throughout central Greece, and occasionally identified at some island and coastal sites in the northern Aegean, could be central Euboean imports. This requires more sampling and future investigations.

08/06/2025:
Salvatore Vitale (University of Pisa) and MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale presented a paper titled “Bridging Sequences: Northeast Peloponnese Deposits as Proxies for LM IA-LH I Synchronisms between Crete and Central Greece” at the Reconsidering LM IA Pottery Sequences and Chronologies workshop organized by Emilia Oddo and Iro Mathioudaki at the INSTAP Study Centre in Pacheia Ammos on Crete.
This paper synchronized the emerging Central Greece Late Helladic I pottery sequence as represented at Mitrou in East Lokris with the better known sequences in the southern Aegean. In doing so, one of MITAMBA’s core regions can now be linked to a much more established regional relative chronological framework at the end of the MBA and the early LBA, allowing a better understanding of diachronic developments and their importance.

11/04/2025:
MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale and Johannes H. Sterba (Technical University of Vienna) published the open access paper “From Pottery Provenance to Multiscale Diachronic Connectivity at Middle Bronze Age Mitrou, Greece” in the European Journal of Archaeology.
While the paper is focused on connectivity between central Greece and the southern Aegean, some important neutron activation analysis groups point to northern links, such as with Magnesia or Thessaly. Some small unlocated groups hint at links elsewhere, perhaps to the northern Aegean, but further investigations are required.

Project information

Research project’s title: Producing medieval history within Roman Catholic and contemporary Pagan religious practices in Poland

Project No: NCN 2022/46/E/HS3/00118
Project financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, konkurs SONATA BISResearch team: dr hab. Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska (PI), dr Kaja Kajder, mgr Paweł Karolczyk

Charakteristics

The project aims at ethnographic research on producing medieval history within religious practice. Fieldwork will be conducted in three regions of Poland: Małopolska (Lesser Poland), Wielkopolska (Great Poland) and Pomorze Zachodnie (Western Pomerania). The subject of the study are Roman Catholic and contemporary Pagan celebrations and their role in interpreting the past. Reflection on the place of religion in social life has been dominated by secularization paradigm which ascribes religion less importance. Such a research approach has limited looking for new places in which religion is present. This project offers investigation on one of such places, namely producing history within religious practice. To achieve this goal it applies post-secular perspective enabling research on how secular and religious are defined and used in social practice, dependently on situation or needs. Moreover, such an approach opens a way for considerations on intertwining of these two notions and finally leads to undermining the dichotomy: secular – religious. Therefore the post-secular perspective encourages crafting new interpretive categories allowing for leaving the secularization paradigm. Empirical research on producing history within religious practice and on the role of this history in the public sphere offers possibility to develop new approach discerning the unrecognized places of religion in the social life.

Project information

Research project’s title: From the first to the last Mycenaeans in the area of the Gulf of Volos (Thessaly)
Project No: NCN 2020/38/E/HS3/00512
Project financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, konkurs SONATA BIS
Keywords: Mycenaean culture, Thessaly, Late Bronze Age, Aegean archaeology
Project lead: Bartłomiej Lis
Project lead, institutional: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Characteristics

The region of Thessaly, located in the northern part of Central Greece, for a long time has been considered as a periphery of the Late Bronze Age (1650-1050 BC) Greek Mainland, characterized by a culture that is referred to as Mycenaean. However, due to extraordinary discoveries over the last 30 years in its coastal part, in the area of the Gulf of Volos, this view is subject to dramatic change. These discoveries include a previously unknown administrative center at Dimini, otherwise famous for its Neolithic remains, the finding of two Linear B tablets at the site of Kastro Palaia in Volos, the first such written documents to be found north of Boeotia, and an industrial quarter at the site of Pefkakia, beyond the artificial tell that was considered to be the location of also Late Bronze Age settlement. This important research has attracted much of scholarly attention, and coastal Thessaly is now perceived more as a core Mycenaean area rather than a periphery.

This project will investigate how the societies of coastal part of Thessaly became fully Mycenaean, at least in terms of material culture remains accessible to archaeologists. This process was a gradual one, and was a result of both internal processes and external influences. The mechanisms of this change in material culture, so far poorly understood, are the main focus of this project. In order to shed light on them, the analysis will be conducted on multiple levels – starting from individual sites, through regional perspective including the interactions between the main settlements, to the relationships of coastal Thessaly with other regions. The hypothesis proposed here is that in the first stage of the process, the adoption of some elements of Mycenaean culture was the initiative of local elites that competed among themselves for power and prestige. In later times, the direct interest of palatial polities that formed in the south might have played a decisive role.

Two large components will contribute to answering the research questions of the project. One of them is the study of materials deriving from old excavations in the area, the other focuses on the site of Pefkakia and involves fieldwork with three excavation seasons. Material from old excavations includes predominantly pottery and its study will have two main aims – to establish precise relative chronology, necessary to reconstruct the interactions between settlements within coastal Thessaly, and to understand the contacts of Thessaly with other regions thanks to identification of imported pottery. This will be achieved through an application of several scientific analyses, combining non-destructive and destructive methods.

The site of Pefkakia, the focus of the second component, has the largest potential out of the three big sites in the area to reveal new information. Research conducted there so far revealed only a small portion of the site, and it may be that it is the largest one in coastal Thessaly, and not the smallest as believed so far. Another exciting perspective is the location of ancient harbour, since it is assumed that Pefkakia was a major port in the Late Bronze Age. It is clearly shown by numerous finds of large transport containers (stirrup jars, mostly from Crete) and single imports from as far as Near East. Geophysical and geoarchaeological investigation will be carried out to learn as much as possible about the site and its history before excavation starts in the most promising areas of the site. The investigations at Pefkakia will be a collaboration between the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Magnesia, under the auspices of the newly established Polish Archaeological Institute at Athens.

Project information

Project Title: From waste to workshop. Activity areas in settlements of the Pleszów-Modlnica Group of the Lengyel-Polgar Circle from the western Lesser Poland in the light of functional and spatial analyses of lithic artefacts
Project No.: NCN 2022/45/N/HS3/03475
Financed: National Science Centre, Poland, Preludium 21
Keywords: The Neolithic, the Pleszów-Modlnica Group, The Lengiel-Polgar Circle, lithic
analysis, use-wear analysis, intra-site analysis
Project lead: Tomasz Oberc
Project lead, institutional: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences
email: toberc(et)iaepan.edu.pl, tomaszoberc(et)gmail.com

Characteristics

In the second half of 5th millennium BC in the western Lesser Poland a local variant of so called Lengyel-Polgar Circle (LPC) exist, known as Pleszów-Modlnica Group (PMG), with a division on older (Pleszów) and younger (Modlnica) phases. Most of basic characteristics, such as sedentarism, agriculture, general localisation, forms of settlements and houses, form and localisation of burials or rudimentary tool inventory of LPC are shared with model established by Linear Pottery Culture (ger. Linerabandkeramik, LBK) about a millennium earlier. At this time another set of changes in circulating styles of pottery, settlement and symbolic systems is observable in the area south of Carpathians, known as the Enelithization. Although some of the Eneolithic elements are visible in Lesser Poland only after 4000 BC, some of inferred economical changes included in ‘the Eneolithic package’, as a spread of flint mining techniques can be seen also in PMG. This process was also observed in changes the flint industry, and is thought to cause a shift in local settlement system.

A goal of the proposed project is to find patterns in work organisation within the settlements of Pleszów-Modlnica Group in Western Lesser Poland based on lithic implements, that would reflect economic choices of these societies. More detailed question concerns changes in these patterns between Pleszów and Modlnica phases of PMG. The hypothesis is, that the general model of activity around the household established at the beginning of Neolithic in area north of Carpathians by LBK people was kept, with some adaptations. The exact scope of these differences can be inferred by study of tasks achieved in settlements and subsequently checking how it fits in general model of Neolithic societies’. It is assumed, that the patterns of activity should be observed based on the sets of used lithic artefacts.

The work plan includes 4 stages of study. Firstly, an evaluation of materials and documentation from PMG sites will be made, resulting in ranking of 10 clusters of features most appropriate to planned analyses. During this task, 15 samples for radiocarbon dating will be selected, examined by specialists and send. Secondly, a use-wear analysis will be performed, enhanced by morphometric analyses and experimentation, to establish a way the lithic artefacts were used. Lithic artefacts selected for residue extraction and analysis will be chosen and send to the laboratories. The third task is a spatial and stratigraphic analysis of selected clusters of features. Aided with obtained radiocarbon data, models of deposition will be created based on catchment areas of features, with extraction of potential zones, where the artefacts have been used. Combination of these areas will be then constructed representing places, where specific tasks have been performed. Tasks – sets of simple activities performed on the specific material, such as hide tanning - will be contextualised in network model of processing of raw materials, and compared between sites to obtain generalised model of PMG economic behaviour. Detailed analysis will be conducted by comparison of spaces used for tasks in settlements. An interpretations will be made basing on known facts from other Neolithic sites, mainly of LPC, experimental and ethnographic data.

Lithic artefacts of PMG will be analysed with use of up-to-date protocols and equipment, that create an opportunity to reassess results obtained during earlier studies of this archaeological taxon. Obtained data on use of lithic artefacts will be supplemented with the zoological and botanical data, as well as residues analyses, resulting in multiproxy study of economic choices of the Neolithic societies. Analysis of chains of use and deposition, as well as conceptualisation of work division, will aid interpretation of PMG and Neolithic economic systems. This study is also set to shift the focus from lithic production to lithic usage and deposition. In doing so, it proposes dynamic work frame of use-wear analysis of Neolithic assemblages. As a result the “classic” Neolithic sites from the Lesser Poland area will be recontextualised, and provided with new radiocarbon determinations aiding understanding of reception of Eneolithization process in the periphery of the Central-European Neolithic ecumene.

Project information

Project title:: Man, the environment and the economy: Economic exploitation of Wilczyce micro-region in the Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Project lead: Dr Tomasz Boroń
Project lead, institutional: IAE PAN
Project financing: IAE PAN, Voivodship Landmark Preservation Inspectorate in Kielce – Sandomierz Office; Karpacka Spółka Gazownicza company, Sandomierz branch; Chief Executive Officer of Świętokrzyskie Voivodship.
Contact:
- e-mail: boron@iaepan.edu.pl
- telephone: 502 102 754

Project implementation

Institutions involved:

IAE PAN Institute, Warsaw,
Voivodship Landmark Preservation Inspectorate in Kielce – Sandomierz Office,
Karpacka Spółka Gazownicza company, Sandomierz branch,
Chief Executive Officer of Świętokrzyskie Voivodship,
Wilczyce Municipality

Researchers involved:

Dr Tomasz Boroń
Mgr Halina Królik
University of Warsaw students
Responsibilities: students – exploration, inventorying finds, drawing plans

Characteristics

Research objective:

Wilczyce 10, Świętokrzyskie Voivodship, is known as one of the most important Final Ice Age sites in Europe, yielding a collection of Magdalenian artefacts that is both huge and unique. The findings of research into Late Palaeolithic settlement were published in national and international journals — and the successes of the research have inspired the local authorities at Wilczyce to put up an archaeological open-air museum and a covered museum.
The resulting follow-up excavations, necessitated by the planned construction project, have revealed astonishing, unique traces of Neolithic settlement. Several thousand flint and ceramic artefacts, animal-consumption bones, and a plenitude of plant micro- and macro remains.

Detailed goals of the project:

The project agenda includes cataloguing the finds and searching for more of archaeological material. Thanks to the geo-morphological conditions, conducive to artefact preservation, it will be possible to accurately reconstruct the environment and have a look into the community’s economic arrangements. But specialist analyses have to be conducted on a wide scale. Their findings will be included in a typescript report on research outcomes, which will provide a basis for producing a monograph in the future.

Measures to achieve the goals:

The exceptional insights obtained from the remains of Wilczyce 10 settlement greatly expand our knowledge about Neolithic populations in southern Poland. Comprehensive research at Wilczyce is also of high importance for the micro-region.

Project timetable:

The project agenda involves several years of excavation research

Results so far:

Discovery of an exceptional Corded Ware sepulchral object, containing 13 whole vessels, 6 battleaxes, 6 axes, 29 arrowheads, a dog-fang pendant necklace and many bone and horn artefacts.

Planned results:

To publish a monograph on Neolithic settlement in Wilczyce micro-region