Beyond the Sea: New Light on Mediterranean Colonization

By: Helen Dawson

Like a sea in continuous motion, Mediterranean communities are constantly changing and adapting through time, while paradoxically maintaining their distinctive character. As an archaeologist studying the earliest human colonization of the Mediterranean islands, I am interested in understanding when, where, and how people decided to settle the islands. Who were these people and why did they risk venturing out to sea?

Archaeological discoveries on islands in the last two decades have transformed our understanding of seafaring capabilities in Mediterranean prehistory. Meanwhile, advances in genetic studies have refined our population models for this region, especially in terms of the spread of farming and a new sedentary way of life associated with the Neolithic “package” of domesticated plants and animals, ceramics and polished stone tools. As one might expect, the spread of farming from the Near East into Europe, which gradually replaced a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle, took more than one route and was in fact far less smooth than we once believed.

Recent DNA studies, both on contemporary and prehistoric Mediterranean populations also traced a likely maritime route from the Near East via Cyprus and the Aegean islands into Mediterranean Europe linking neighbouring areas on the basis of genetic similarities (another route into continental Europe followed the main rivers, such as the Danube). The hypothesis of an island-hopping route is confirmed by recent archaeological discoveries that are also proof of ancient early seafaring capabilities.

In fact, there is growing evidence for seafaring even before the Neolithic. In the western Mediterranean, human presence is first attested on the largest islands during the Upper Paleolithic: in Sicily (ca. 17,500 BCE), and Sardinia (ca. 18,000 years BCE), although in both cases the exact timing is still debated. Radiocarbon dates place the earliest occupation of Corsica more reliably in the Mesolithic (ca. 8,500 years BCE). This is “indirect” evidence, since no early boats have ever been found. Nonetheless, even allowing for movement facilitated by lower sea levels, reaching these islands would have entailed sea crossings (admittedly just a short hop in the case of Sicily).In the east, Cyprus and Crete provide the earliest evidence, with confirmed dates from the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic (12th to 9th millennium BCE). Mesolithic occupation is attested also on an increasing number of smaller islands in the Aegean Sea (so far, Chalki, Kythnos, Ikaria, Lemnos, Melos, Naxos, and Youra). Finds of possible Lower and Middle Paleolithic date are reported from Crete and Naxos, which could even indicate that Neanderthals were also skilled seafarers, a scenario explored in a recent book by archaeologist Alan Simmons.This growing body of evidence lends support to the archaeologist Cyprian Broodbank’s idea of the Aegean Sea as the Mediterranean’s ‘seafaring nursery,’ where people learnt to practice seafaring in relative safety. The very idea of seafaring is enshrined in famous literary works from this part of the world, such as the Odyssey and the epic of Jason and the Argonauts. But we must not get carried away: these very early crossings, possibly on board of dugout canoes or reed boats, often took place within sight of land with no need for night-time navigation, as islands lay close enough to each other to be reached within day time.

Not all sea crossings led to actual settlements on the islands but there is evidence for a range of activities once people arrived from neighbouring coasts and islands, ranging from seasonal base camps to more established settlements, especially starting from the Neolithic. It is striking, however, that the Neolithic period, seemingly the time of greatest expansion into the islands, corresponded to a limited range of actual movement, with islands closer to the coast being targeted. Neolithic colonists were rather ‘land-loving’ and tended to have a terrestrial-based diet with little evidence for deep-sea fishing.

For more adventurous seafaring, of the type depicted in the Odyssey, we must wait for the Bronze Age (3rdmillennium BCE). Then, thanks to the development of deep-hulled sailing ships – most of the smaller and more remote islands were finally occupied, often as strategic nodes in social and economic networks, eventually connecting the Mediterranean from east to west. With the Bronze Age, there seems to be a greater variety in the way the islands were used (also as places of pilgrimage and sanctuary) and, archaeologically, we can see more clearly networks emerging from similarities in material culture. Moreover, there seems to be a much more conscious and concerted effort to depict maritime activities and landscapes in art and decoration, epitomised by the famous Minoan “flotilla fresco” from Akrotiri on Thera.

Why did different people move, at different times? Was it in response to environmental, economic, and demographic conditions? Or were there also social and cultural factors responsible for mobility? There are some indications that early seafaring occurred during a period known as the Younger Dryas, around the 11th millennium BCE, which saw dryer and colder conditions which may have put pressure on mainland populations in the Near East, pushing them westward towards the coast and the islands. While this is certainly a strong argument, it is worth considering that mobility is a way of life and that it is not always fuelled by extreme necessity but also by social and cultural reasons.

Environmental factors may provide effective explanations for mobility in earlier periods, up to the point when communities were sufficiently established to overcome geographical obstacles and secure survival through networks of mutual assistance. But for the Neolithic, it was probably more the case that a ‘pioneer ethic’ was responsible for the inevitable and irreversible adoption of a new, self-reinforcing way of life. Different survival strategies were available and mobility may have been a pre-emptive measure, if difficulties could be anticipated and if alternatives, real or perceived, were available.

Turning to the present day, the widespread depopulation of several small Mediterranean islands is linked to economic and social reasons. Those who cross the southern Mediterranean in order to enter the European Union often lose their lives at sea but the biggest barrier they face is political rather than geographical. In prehistoric times, the Mediterranean did not pose such an insurmountable barrier to mobility, which was in fact facilitated by the sea’s insular configuration.

Viewing the development of Mediterranean cultures from the islands casts new light on a number of key activities, including but not limited to: 1) the development of seafaring; 2) the spread of the Neolithic; and 3) the development of networks of social, cultural, and economic interaction. A Mediterranean “attitude to interact rather than to be isolated” (to use the words of historians Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell) can be traced from prehistoric to modern times, and was made possible by the sea and by seafaring.

Helen Dawson is Research Fellow in Archaeology at the Free University of Berlin.

For Further Reading

Broodbank, C. 2000. An island archaeology of the early Cyclades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Broodbank, C. 2013. The Making of the Middle Sea. A history of the Mediterranean from the beginning to the emergence of the Classical world. London: Thames & Hudson.

Dawson, H. 2014. Mediterranean Voyages. The Archaeology of Island Colonisation and Abandonment. Institute of Archaeology Series (UCL) Vol. 62.  Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press. Horden, P. and Purcell, N. 2000. The corrupting sea: a study of Mediterranean history. Oxford: Blackwell.

Robb, J. 2013. Material Culture, Landscapes of Action, and Emergent Causation. A New Model for the Origins of the European Neolithic. Current Anthropology 54(6): 657-683.

Simmons, A. H, 2014. Stone Age Sailors. Paleolithic seafaring in the Mediterranean. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press.

Zilhão, J. 2001. Radiocarbon evidence for maritime pioneer colonization at the origins of farming in west Mediterranean Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 98(24): 14180–5.