Food Storage in Prehistoric Northern Greece

Interrogating Complexity at the Margins of the ‘Mycenaean World’

Abstract

Despite systematic archaeological research since the mid-1970s, developments in prehistoric northern Greece are not well understood. The paper focuses on the Late Bronze Age and the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition (c. 1700/1500–1100/1000 BC). This is often considered a formative period for the appearance of institutionalized inequality at the end of the Late Iron Age (Archaic). One of the main sets of evidence in the discussion regarding state emergence in northern Greece pertains to food storage. This paper reviews some of this evidence and presents new data from an ongoing comparative study of storage practices in the region (Northern Greek Storage Project). This further affords the opportunity to revisit the question of state emergence and sociopolitical complexity within an anthropological framework that stresses historicity, agency. and a focus on the local scale.