Publisher's Synopsis
The purpose of this book is to acquaint a wider audience with an archaeological project that could hardly be more revolutionary: the effective discovery and excavation, from 1952 onwards, of the first Greek establishment in the West, Euboean Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. This vast trading settlement is not at all typical of the Western colonial scene. Pithekoussi is very large and very early, and it marks the northern limit of Greek South Italy; furthermore, the earliest immigrants may not all have been Greek. This book about Pithekoussai and its implications is based on Giorgio Buchner's excavations there, which have revealed a variety of component sites so far without parallel in the contemporary Greek homeland. The cemetery, the acropolis dump and suburban industrial quarter each shed light on a different aspect of everyday life at one of the great crossroads of antiquity.
