EXCHANGE NETWORKS IN THE NEOLITHIC OF GREECE: SERPENTINE AND TALC OBJECTS FROM THE DRAKAINA CAVE, POROS, KEFALONIA, W. GREECE

• G. Stratouli (17^th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Aristotelous 16, 582 00 Edessa, Greece)
• V. Melfos (Department of Mineralogy, Petrology and Economic Geology, Faculty of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece)

In the neolithic deposit of Drakaina Cave (mid 6th - early 4th millennium BC), located in the steep gorge of the Poros village, which lies at the SE coast of Kefalonia, a large number of lithic artefacts have been unearthed during the excavation periods 1992-2002. This assemblage includes several tools (e.g. arrowheads, scrapers, blades) and many by-products of the in situ flint manufacture. Furthermore, several artefacts used for the transformation of flint, few polished stone tools as well as some artefacts made from obsidian originated from the Aegean island Melos and, finally, some jewellery or other small objects of special use and value have been uncovered in the Drakaina Cave.

In order to approach issues concerning the pattern of the cave use, the degree of exploitation of the natural resources in both, the vicinity of Drakaina and its broader area, as well as the communication networks of the cave users, the archaeological material from the cave must undergo further interdisciplinary study. One of these studies is our joint project, which aims at the determination of the raw materials used for the manufacture of the stone tools recovered in the cave, their exact sources as well as their physical and chemical properties. This permits to reach important conclusions about the special rock types used by the neolithic inhabitants of the wider area of Drakaina, the quarrying and/or collecting locations, the distances of transportation and the networks of exchange between different communities.

A detailed mineralogical, petrographical and geochemical study of the lithic artefacts found in the Drakaina Cave has been already in progress. In this paper, we focus on two categories of raw material that do not belong to the natural environment of the Ionian Islands. The first includes a few edged tools and beads, manufactured on hard serpentine, whereas the second consists of a number of beads made from soft talc.

Both minerals, serpentine and talc, are alteration products of magnesium silicates in ultramafic rocks, which consist part of a special group of rocks called 'ophiolites'. In the southern Balkans, the ophiolites spread over a N-S extended chain including former Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece. Especially in Greece, large outcrops of these rocks occur in Pindos-Vourinos as well as in Othris mountains, while smaller quantities exist in western Attica, in eastern Peloponnese, in Euboia, in central Macedonia, in Evros region as well as in Lesbos and in Crete-Karpathos-Rhodes islands. Thus, it is obvious that the most probable source for the serpentine and talc of the Drakaina artefacts is the Greek ophiolites.

Moreover, questions are raised about the form of transportation of the rocks under consideration into Neolithic Kefalonia; did they arrive on the island as raw material or as completed artefacts being a product of exchange or even of "social storage" between Kefalonia and other Ionian Islands and/or the neighbouring continental coast? The conclusion from our study is that the Drakaina users had obtained not only allochthonous raw materials, but also completed stone objects via various communication networks.