Prehistoric settlement in the Klisoura Gorge, Argolid, Greece (excavations 1993, 1994)

The Klissoura Gorge connects the Argolic Plain and the Limnes Plateau in the eastern Peloponnese. The systematic survey in the years 1993-1994 enabled us to register more than 30 caves and rock shelters of which majority contained traces of prehistoric settlement. Three caves were tested using trial trenches. Cave 6 yielded remains of Late Palaeolithic occupation with industries with backed bladelets with straight or convex backs and microburin technique from the end of the Xanth Interstadial. Cave 7 produced a sequence falling at the very end of the Pleistocene which covered the Xanth Interstadial and Dryas III; the sequence yielded an industry with simple backed bladelets with marginal abrupt retouch.

In Cave 1 the erosional phase marking the stratigraphic hiatus which separates the lower part of the sediments earlier than 16 000 - 19 000 years B.P. from the upper part which is much later, mainly Holocene. The lower part of the sediments produced flake industry with carenoidal and simple end-scrapers accompanied by big and small game remains. The upper part produced a sequence of flake industries with a few microliths. In the latest phase of the sequence single artefacts made from extralocal raw materials occurred bearing witness to possible contacts with the Early Neolithic of Argolid.