Seascape Survey on the Inner Ionian Sea Archipelago

Abstract

Meganisi and its satellite islands lie in the Inner Ionian Sea Archipelago, a relatively short distance from Aetoloakarnania and Lefkas (Fig. 14.1). The abundance of top-quality flint and the presence of small wetlands and karstic cavities were the first points that attracted our attention to this corner of western Greece. But there was something more. In the Pleistocene, the short distance between these islands and the neighboring Lefkas and Aetoloakarnanian coast, combined with the shallow seabed in this area, meant that changes in sea level during glacial and interglacial periods would have caused the islands to become alternately connected to and isolated from the larger landmasses. Thus, over time, new living conditions and environments were constantly created for the Paleolithic communities of southeast Europe, which responded to these in their turn. The islands of the archipelago form fragments, the higher tips, of the original Pleistocene landscape, a large part of which now lies submerged under the sea. It was only after the first millennia of the Holocene that the coastline assumed its present form and offered to the communities of late prehistoric and historical times a new set of insular attractions (Fig. 14.2). Marine and fresh water resources have been bountiful, and it is no coincidence that the coastline of our research area is today protected by Natura 2000. From a diachronic perspective, then, Meganisi and its neighbors posed a methodological challenge for the realization of a hybrid island archaeology – alternating as it was between mainland and islands, passing points, and landing places – on a small and viable spatial scale.