The settlement, with around 30-40 houses built of oak, pine and large juniper trees and home to around 400-800 people, reveals how society transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. The site in Lin, Pogradec, occupied between 6200 BC and 4000 BC, reveals how people lived around 8000 years ago in Neolithic lakeside dwellings called palafites. Archaeological research in Switzerland and Albania confirmed that the site is one of the oldest lakeside settlements in Europe. It is also one of the first places where agriculture spread from the Near East to Europe, first via the Mediterranean and then up the continent.
The project's director, Professor Albert Hafner from the University of Bern, explains that the site hasn't been continuously inhabited for 2,000 years. Rather, several villages were built on the site over time. “People used about 300 trees to build the settlement, which corresponds to an entire forest. The main aim of the project is to understand how agriculture developed. The organic layer in the marsh archaeological site preserves the material much better and provides important information about how agriculture spread to Europe. We are tracing key moments in this transition,” he says, as the team continues its underwater excavations in Lake Ohrid near Pogradec.
The research has been funded by the European Union under the EXPLO project, which aims to explore the drivers and causes of prehistoric land-use change in the cradle of agriculture in Europe.
“We knew that this region had great potential for archaeological research into the origins of agriculture. From an archaeological point of view, this is a large-scale project involving four professors, three countries, the universities of Bern, Oxford and Thessaloniki, and more than 200 people, including archaeologists, divers and technical support staff. This research requires significant resources – boats, vehicles and even laboratory setup – and would not be possible without sufficient funding. A project of this scale is only possible with grants like this,” says Professor Hafner.
The Neolithic lake shore is thought to have been close to a modern road, so archaeologists are excavating two areas, each 3-4 metres deep. “The site is 300 metres long, 200 metres wide and covers about six hectares. Currently, part of the site is underwater and part is on land, so we are excavating both areas,” he points out.
The trees used in the construction of the Palafito houses and palisades are now being analyzed to estimate the age of the ruins from their tree rings. “We used two methods: carbon dating and dendrochronology. The term dendrochronology comes from the Greek word dendro, meaning wood, and chronology, meaning the study of time. By studying the tree rings, we can determine the age of the ruins. In Lynn, we found two palisades that are 500 years apart,” explains Professor Hafner. While radiocarbon dating is accurate to a few centuries, dendrochronology is more precise and may be able to pinpoint specific years.
A similar settlement in Switzerland is already a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but is around 2,000 years newer. Professor Hafner believes this is also a possibility for the Lin site, but suggests that because Lake Ohrid is already a UNESCO World Heritage Site, “it would make more sense to incorporate the site into the existing World Heritage project for Lake Ohrid.”
Adrian Anastasi of the Albanian Archaeological Institute, who has spent years investigating underwater sites in both seas and lakes, said he chose this site over six similar ones in the region because they were endangered by treasure hunters, but last year's find exceeded his expectations.
“This year we have confirmed our discoveries from last year. Initially we thought the site was three hectares, but now we have data that shows it covers six hectares. We are working on creating a site plan and a scale drawing and aim to answer some questions, such as why people chose to build a house on the lake, which is more difficult than building on land. We also want to determine whether the plan was rectangular or circular and what was its orientation in relation to the lake,” says Anastasi.
The excavations have also uncovered pottery and bones, and a European team has been formed, involving several students from Germany, Austria, France and Albania, to conserve European prehistoric remains.
Background information
The EXPLO project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. By uniquely combining archaeological, biological and dynamic mathematical modelling approaches, the project proposes a new interdisciplinary approach to investigate key questions about past human lifestyles, land use and interactions with the wider environment. Archaeological sites in the lakes of the Southern Balkans (Greece, Albania and North Macedonia) offer an excellent opportunity to investigate the rich record of social and environmental change in the cradle of agriculture in Europe. Natural lake deposits and submerged prehistoric settlements offer an exceptional state of preservation and a unique integrated insight into past anthroposphere, biosphere and geosphere dynamics. Field information from excavations combined with off-site palaeoenvironmental data from the same lakes will investigate adaptation strategies to past environments and the impacts of past societies on their environments. Dynamic models integrating archaeological context and paleoenvironmental data open opportunities to explore the vulnerability, resilience, tipping points and thresholds of ancient agricultural economies that will impact future food systems under a rapidly changing climate.
