Provadia: The oldest town in Europe?

Type the words "oldest town in Europe" into a search engine and you will be flooded with hundreds of exited posts about how the "oldest town in Europe was recently discovered in Bulgaria, near the town of Provadia...dated between the middle and late Chalcolithic age from 4,700 to 4,200 BC".

Provadia site. A two-room structure.

Very nice! Cool!

But why the sensationalism? "Oldest town in Europe"?

I think not...From memory, and though this is far from my area of expertise, the names "Dimini" and "Sesklo" came uncalled for to my mind.

Both these sites are in Central Greece. Both are towns. And it would appear that both are older than the new Bulgarian site.

Dimini appears to be dated c. 5000 BC. Meaning that it is 300-800 years older than the Provadia site.

Dimini. In the center the "megaron" structure is visble.

Dimini. A reconstruction.

Sesklo is even older, dated tp 6850 BC with a +/- 660 year margin of error...This site was actually abandoned around 4400 BC, i.e. around the time that the Provadia site is dated...

Reconstruction of Sesklo 

Knossos might also be worth a mention in this context, given that the first settlement there dates to about 7000 BC, while I am sure that the Starčevo - (Körös) - Criş Culture, in the Central Balkans, dated from the 7th to 5th millennia possesses a couple of sites that could be qualified as towns...

And those examples are just the first that came to mind! Meaning quite a number of settlements that are older that the Provasia site. Unless the difference is in the term "town" and the Bulgarian team means that according to some unspecified criteria, all the other sites don't qualify as 'towns', while the new site does... [Note: Sesklo may have grown to 800 households, while the Provadia site is said to have been home to about 350 people...]

So once again, why the sensationalism? Would it not have been sufficient just to say "we made an important find: it appears to be an organised settlement, similar to others found in the region (Varna culture)"? That would have been the scientific way to go...

But then again without superlatives, how can you grab the headlines?! Not to mention the national(ist) satisfaction of saying "we have the oldest/biggest/greatest find"!

See also:
Provadia:

• To Vima, 01.11.2012 
• AFP, 31.10.2012

The Eclosure of a tumulus comes to light in Amphipolis.

It may be the grave of the wife and son of Alexander the Great.

Source: To Vima, 04.10.2012 [Translated from the Greek Original]

A circular enclosure, of a height of three meteres, with a perimeter that is calculated to be 500 meters, surrounds the toumba (the tumulus), that is situated in an agricultural area near Amphipolis of Serres, as the head of the 28th Ephorate of Antiquities, mrs Katerina Peristeri, declared.

The Kastas toumba, as it is called, has been known since 1965, but now for the first time its excavation was decided, without, however, having secured the necessary funding, resulting only in the partial uncovering of the verily impressive enclosure wall. There is a log way to go before the dig proceeds to a greater depth to verify the existence of burials and to explore and seek elements that will prove to whom these belong.

In Amphipolis, however, it would seem that they are in a hurry, both the Ephorate of Antiquities and the local authorities, who decided in advance that it belongs to well-known persons, Roxane, the wife of Alexander the Great and their son, Alexander IV.

According to history Roxane did indeed go to Macedonia after the death of Alexander, where she and her twelve-year-old son were murdered; but whether they were buried in Amphipolis, were according to one version they had been exiled, that belongs to the sphere of myth and not science.

“This is an enclosure wall that is one of a kind, as nor in Vergina nor elsewhere in the Hellenic area exists anything similar”, declared mrs Peristeri and no one can deny this. But the hurry to identify it with historical persons, as well as the fact that this excavation does not have a foreseeable future in these financially difficult times, can only be characterised unscientific.

A.M. Comment:

The article seems to be biased against mrs Peristeri. Neither in the declaration published here nor in her other public statements on the state TV does she mention specific “historical persons”. All she does is to point out the exceptional nature of the site. What the unnamed “local authorities” claim the site to be is of no consequence, and it is bad journalism to amalgamate the two.

In short the unsigned article has the smell of an archaeologist’s feud, something all too common in Greek archaeology… This should not, however, subtract from the fact that the Kastas toumba appears to be an extremely promising site which we hope will one day be properly explored and excavated.