L. Bernabò Brea - Poliochni, città preistorica nell'isola di Lemnos
Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni italiane in Oriente, volume I: testo e tavole, Roma, 1964.
L. Bernabò Brea - Poliochni, città preistorica nell'isola di Lemnos
Monografie della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni italiane in Oriente, volume II: testo e tavole, Roma 1976.
The prehistoric city of Poliochni is situated on the seafront, in the small bay of Vròskopo on the East coast of the island of Lemnos, close to present-day Kaminia.
Discovered by the Scuola Archeologica Italiana in Athens in 1930, excavations of the site were conducted down to 1936 by pupils under the direction of A. Della Seta and then in a renewed campaign from 1951.
The excavations have so far uncovered over half of the surface of the hill that represents a real tell, an artificial mound formed by the gradual accumulation and superimposition of archaeological remains reaching a depth of over nine metres. Exploration of the site has permitted the main lines of the urban topography to be identified, and its historical development to be traced through the early Bronze Age; the more recent strata (middle and late Bronze Age) had unfortunately been almost completely removed by erosion.
From a cultural point of view Poliochni is closely connected with Troy, far more so than with the great prehistoric site of Thermi on Lesbos. Yet, in the phases corresponding to Troy I and II, Poliochni was a good deal more extensive that Troy itself and not inferior to it in civilization and wealth.
Poliochni thus forms part of the extremely precocious Anatolian Bronze Age that probably lies at the origin of the European Bronze Age as a whole. It also maintained contacts with the Cyclades and with mainland Greece in the Helladic period.
Founded in a slightly earlier period that Troy, as a village of oval huts (Poliochni I, black), several times reconstructed (the excavations of 1933 and 1956 revealed no less than seven different strata of huts), the settlement was soon transformed into a real urban centre with houses of mégaron type, and with a large circuit of walls incorporating large warehouses, perhaps public granaries (Poliochni II, blue = initial phases of Troy I).
Whereas in period I metal in never attested, in period II it was already being worked with complex techniques such as cire perdue.
The most characteristic form among the glossy black impasto pottery is the tall pedestalled fruit-bowl.
The subsequent development of the site can be followed both through the many reconstructions of buildings and through changes in the types of pottery determined by the intensification of relations with the Cyclades and with the Proto-Helladic.
During Poliochni III, green (= middle phases of Troy I) and Poliochni IV, red (= end of Troy I and beginning of II) the city spread further with new quarters on the western slope of the hill and with the construction of a new and larger circuit of walls to enclose them.
A bronze hoard found in the ruins of a large mégaron-type house with many rooms dates to the end of Poliochni IV. The hoard comprised flat and conical axes, lances, daggers, awls, etc.
Volume II is devoted to Poliochni V, yellow (= late phase of Troy II) which is the best known phase in the city’s prehistory, because to it belongs the stratum that now forms the surface of the whole summit of the hill.
It presents a succession of large houses with central mégaron flanked by many rooms and facing on the south side onto a paved courtyard, aligned with the roadside of a wide principal thoroughfare which traverses the whole city longitudinally in the North-South direction, linking together two large squares, each furnished with a public well; the street then turns westward and leads out of the city into the countryside.
The individual insulae in the urban fabric are separated by narrow twisting alleyways.
Poliochni V was undoubtedly destroyed by an earthquake, perhaps the same that caused the destruction of Troy II g.
A rich hoard of gold jewellery found by Bernabò Brea in 1953 comes from the destruction layer, together with large amounts of pottery. It is a treasure second only to the Great Treasure of Troy.
No trace remains of the phases corresponding to Troy III and IV, but a small strip of deposit belonging to Troy V was discovered. Only the fill in one of the wells attests to the continuation of life in the city down to the threshold of Mycenaean civilization (16th century BC).
