Efestia sull’isola di Lemnos: forme insediative e struttura sociale in epoca arcaica

The discoveries that have been made in recent years by the SAIA, have revealed that Hephaestia was continuously inhabited from the Bronze and Iron Ages until the end of the Archaic period. Between the end of the eighth and the end of the sixth century BC, the site is distinguished by a peculiar culture which will suffer a drastic interruption following the Athenian conquest of the island, which took place by Miltiades around 500 BC. The urban landscape is characterized by a settlement structured by ‘family plots’, in which the tribal groups lived with a highly hierarchical social organization that also transpires in the burial ground.
The urban architecture is dominated by ‘prestige residences’, including the ruler dwelling of the acropolis, or anaktoron, inhabited by a kind of tyrannos or basileus with priestly prerogatives. These buildings are residential complexes with multifunctional characteristics: initially connected with production areas, then reveal a strong interference with the spaces intended for religious practices and the exercise of certain political functions. The distribution, multiplicity and specificity of the spaces of collective life that emerge from the end of the sixth century BC are the result of the processes of social transformation that take place over a period of about two centuries in the site, and reflect a sociopolitical reality organized in urban or protourban forms, paralleling trends under way in Greece and the Aegean at the time.