Neolithic Athens (aug 14, 5000 BC – feb 28, 3200 BC)

Description:

During the Stone Age, the landscape of Athens was not a unified city, but a series of distinct, open-air agricultural encampments scattered around natural water sources.

The Landscape:
The people did not live on top of the Acropolis yet. Instead, they built small villages at the base of the rock, specifically near the natural, marshy springs of the Ilissos and Eridanus rivers (areas that later became the Classical Agora and the Olympieion).

What Dwellings Looked Like:
Houses were tiny, rudimentary, one-room rectangular shacks. They were constructed with simple timber wooden frames, walls made of packed mud or wattle-and-daub, and simple thatched roofs.

The Lifestyle:
These people were Greece's earliest pioneer farmers. They cultivated primitive varieties of barley and wheat, and kept domesticated sheep and goats.

Material Culture:
Metal did not exist yet. Tools and weapons were fashioned entirely from bone, wood, and chipped obsidian stone. Archaeologists have dug up heavy, thick-walled clay pots that were burnished (rubbed smooth with a stone) to make them waterproof, along with small clay fertility figurines representing animals and full-figured women.

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