Sesklo: One of Europe's Earliest Neolithic Settlements

Sesklo is a Neolithic settlement in Thessaly, central Greece, first occupied around 6850 BC and ranked among the earliest farming villages in Europe. It gave its name to the Sesklo culture, the Middle Neolithic farming society of the Thessalian plain known for its painted pottery and stone-built houses. The site shows how agriculture, introduced from Anatolia, took root in Europe and grew into prosperous village communities.

Setting and discovery

Sesklo lies on a low hill near the modern village of the same name, about 15 kilometres west of the port of Volos in the region of Magnesia. The fertile Thessalian plain nearby is one of the best farming areas in Greece and has hundreds of Neolithic mounds, known locally as magoules.

The Greek archaeologist Christos Tsountas excavated Sesklo in 1901–1902, together with the nearby site of Dimini, and published his results in 1908. His work first revealed the richness of the Neolithic in Greece. Dimitrios Theocharis led larger excavations between 1956 and 1977, reaching the site’s earliest layers.

The first farmers

Sesklo was settled at the very start of the Neolithic in Greece. Theocharis argued for an early phase without pottery, although whether a true aceramic stage existed in Greece is still debated. Most dates for the first occupation fall in the late 7th millennium BC, with c. 6850 BC often cited as the earliest.

The first inhabitants grew emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, lentils and peas, and kept sheep and goats, with smaller numbers of cattle and pigs. None of these crops or animals were native to Greece in their domestic forms. They had been brought from Anatolia and the Near East as part of the spread of farming into Europe, and many of the animals descend from the herds of the domestication of sheep and goats.

Ancient DNA studies have shown that the early farmers of Greece were genetically close to Neolithic Anatolian farmers, confirming that farming spread mainly through the movement of people rather than only through the exchange of ideas.

The Sesklo culture

The settlement reached its peak in the Middle Neolithic, roughly 6000–5300 BC, the period known as the Sesklo culture. Similar communities existed across Thessaly and into parts of Macedonia.

The village consisted of a fortified-looking upper area, often called the acropolis (Sesklo A), and a wider settlement on the surrounding slopes (Sesklo B). Older estimates suggested that several thousand people lived there at its height, but the size of the outer settlement and the number of houses in use at one time remain uncertain, and many archaeologists now favour smaller figures.

Houses were usually rectangular, with stone foundations and walls of mud brick or wattle and daub. Some were rebuilt many times on the same spot, gradually raising the level of the mound. Buttresses on some walls suggest that houses may have had heavy roofs or upper floors.

Sesklo was not isolated. Settlements of the same culture lay only a few kilometres apart across the plain, and obsidian from the Aegean island of Melos reached Thessaly, showing that seafaring and exchange linked these farming villages with communities across the wider Aegean world.

Pottery and figurines

The Sesklo culture is famous for its fine pottery. Vessels were carefully made by hand, without a potter’s wheel, and many were painted with red or brown geometric designs on a pale background. Zigzags, triangles and flame-like patterns were common.

Clay figurines, many of them stylised female figures, were also produced in large numbers. Their meaning is debated: they may have had religious, social or domestic uses. People also made stone tools, bone implements, stamp seals and ornaments of shell, including shells of the Mediterranean thorny oyster (Spondylus).

Later history and the Dimini culture

Towards the end of the Middle Neolithic, part of the settlement was damaged by fire, and Sesklo declined. In the Late Neolithic, after about 5300 BC, the nearby site of Dimini became more prominent and gave its name to the following Dimini culture.

Sesklo was reoccupied in this later period. A rectangular hall with a porch on the acropolis, often described as a megaron, belongs to these later phases. Activity at the site continued until around 4300 BC, late in the Neolithic period.

Timeline

• c. 6850 BC: Earliest settlement at Sesklo, at the beginning of the Neolithic in Greece.
• c. 6850–6000 BC: Early Neolithic farming village develops.
• c. 6000–5300 BC: Middle Neolithic Sesklo culture flourishes across Thessaly.
• c. 5300 BC: Sesklo declines; Dimini becomes more important in the Late Neolithic.
• c. 4300 BC: Neolithic occupation of the site ends.
• 1901–1902: Christos Tsountas excavates the site.
• 1956–1977: Dimitrios Theocharis carries out major new excavations.

Why it matters

Sesklo is one of the clearest windows on the arrival of farming in Europe. Its long sequence, from the first farmers to the Late Neolithic, shows how a way of life first developed in places such as Çatalhöyük and the Fertile Crescent was adapted to the landscapes of south-eastern Europe.