Pelasgians on the Attic-Boiotian Frontier
Archaeological artifacts are unreliable evidence for ethnic identity. But possibly the distribution of archaeological evidence across the landscape can reveal patterns of settlement that may have an ethnic explanation. Traditions of Boiotian identity as related by Ephoros tell of an ethnically mixed population that was expelled from the land by the Thebans as they returned to their ancestral homeland in the migrations that followed the Trojan War. One detail among these traditions recalled that the Thebans were battling the Pelasgians at Panakton. Victory was promised to the Thebans by the oracle at Dodona if they committed an act of impiety. Doing so, the Thebans drove the Pelasgians out of the land (into Attica, it is said), and propitiated the oracle by instituting and annual offering of a tripod to Dodona. Settlements on naturally defensible mountaintop sites in the foothills of Parnes surrounding the Skourta plain may provide some substance to the stories of a residual Bronze Age population expelled from their mountain domain as the ethnic unity of Boiotia to the north and Attica to the south was consolidated. Panakton was one such site, occupied in the LH III C, Submycenaean, and Protogeometric eras, and then abandoned for at least four hundred years, when the Athenians established their fortress there on the eve of the Peloponnesian War. Evidence from Panakton and other mountaintop settlements will be presented as we consider how these remains relate to the history of Boiotia in the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age.
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| Work Title | Pelasgians on the Attic-Boiotian Frontier |
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| License | In Copyright (Rights Reserved) |
| Work Type | Research Paper |
| Publication Date | 2025 |
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| Deposited | November 19, 2024 |