Iron Age

 

The Early Iron Age (1050-650 BC) remains discovered in the Voulokalíva area, situated north of New Halos, were certainly the most remarkable finds of the first survey campaign in 1990. Instead of ten burial mounds, the number quoted in the early 20th century by Wace and Thompson, the survey team mapped 35 tumuli in an area of only 2.5 square kilometres. Unfortunately many of the mounds had already been destroyed. A relatively large multi-period site in the same area yielded Early Iron Age artefacts of a different character as those found at the mounds.

Excavations along the national road by the 13th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities revealed Iron Age and Archaic graves and in the excavation of the House of the Geometric Krater artefacts of the same period were found below the habitation layers of the Hellenistic period.

The tumuli in the Voulokalíva area form part of a large ‘funerary landscape’ including various kinds of graves and representing a tradition that extended into the Archaic period and may have had roots in the Late Bronze Age.