The "Kastri" fortress peak was inhabited for the first time at the beginning of the 5th millennium BC and shows continuity of habitation from the earliest to the last phase of the New Neolithic Period At the end of the Neolithic Age (end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th BC . millennium) the settlement was abandoned and inhabited again a few centuries later in the Late Bronze Age (1600-1050 BC), while it showed a particular population boom in the Early Iron Age (1050-700 BC).
The abandonment of the settlement around 700 BC coincides with the arrival of the Parians on the island of Thassos in the period of B Greek colonization. At the beginning of the 7th BC h. Parian colonists establish their first North Aegean colony, Thassos, at the northern end of the island, which took its name from the settler Thassos and developed into a powerful city-state in the North Aegean.
The excavations that have been carried out on the top of the Kastri hill have identified a Neolithic settlement with an organized structure and a complex social organization, as documented by the appearance of stone-built houses and a stone-built enclosure. The use of stonework, a characteristic element of Aegean architecture, which seems to prevail in the Neolithic settlement at Kastri, at least at the base of the walls of its buildings, differentiates the architecture of Neolithic Thassos from the piled architecture of wooden buildings that prevails in the Neolithic settlements of Macedonia and Thrace. However, the vases, tools, figurines, objects of prestige and symbolism found in the Neolithic settlement of "Kastri", as well as in the earliest settlement of Limenaria, reflect the cultural tradition also of the opposite land, with which Thassos remained inextricably linked throughout the periods of its prehistory and history.
With the end of the Neolithic Age, the habitation in the settlement of the "Kastri" site is interrupted. There is no evidence of Early Bronze Age occupation of the site. The archaeological investigations showed that in this period (4th and 3rd millennium AD) new settlements were founded on the coast of the island.
During the Late Bronze Age (2nd half of the 2nd millennium BC) the archaeological researches in Thassos detect a movement of the population from the coasts to the interior.. This movement towards the mountainous places inside the island is completed in the Early Siderou (1050-700 BC. The fortified citadels bear witness to the search for safety in the mountainous areas, which were offered not only for livestock farming but also for the exploitation of the mineral deposits in the interior of the island.
The resettlement of the fortified position "Kastri." in the middle of the 2nd BC millennium. is a representative example of the movement of the population from the coasts to the interior. In the Late Bronze Age and especially in the Early Iron Age, the settlement developed into the strongest residential center of the island. Its population boom is evidenced by its extensive necropolises. as well as the small settlements that were around it. Excavations on the flat top of the fortified hill have brought to light a small part of the building remains of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age settlement.
The burial buildings are also stone-built. that the excavations revealed in the scattered around the settlement cemeteries in the places "Kedria" "Tsiganadika" "Vrysoudes" and "Larnaki" Most of the burial buildings contained burials - burials. However, the sporadic appearance of burials and cremations dating back to the Late Bronze Age is of particular interest.
There are three types of burial buildings:
I. Burial buildings in which cremations were deposited. These are stone platforms, on which the urns with the burnt bones of the dead were placed, which were then covered with a thick layer of stones.
II: A single-compartment burial chamber with a circular or rectangular floor plan and stone-built walls that sloped downwards to enable their covering with one or two large slates. These large tombs contained a large number of burials while burials were disturbed by superimposed burials. In some, the last burial could be seen.
III: A later development of the spacious single-compartment burial chamber were the narrower rectangular tombs with or without a vestibule, which also had stone-built side walls tapering upwards and were covered by a large slate. Inside tombs of this type the number of dead was smaller and often limited to one male and one female burial. The gender of the dead was determined by the anthropological study, but also by the type of their offerings: the men were accompanied by a knife - bronze in the oldest burials and iron in the newer ones - and the women a clay flywheel. Children were buried either inside the tombs or outside the tombs in jars that were placed in brick cases. Large storage vessels were found in the vestibules of the tombs, which was probably intended for funerary rituals. Outside the funerary buildings fragments of vases and figurines, as well as the remains of animal bones, which are apparently the remains of the ritual funeral dinners held for the dead, came to light. The clusters of mason family tombs with the multiple burials inside them reflect the general organization of a society of farmers and herders who had proceeded to extract the local deposits of copper, lead, gold and iron while at the same time they had also developed local metallurgy.
From the presence of the piled buildings, as well as from the technology, the shapes and the decoration of the vases, the integration of the "Kastri" settlement into the cultural community that has been formed in the east of Axios Macedonia and in Aegean Thrace is confirmed.
Although the Homeric epics do not mention Thassos, archaeological findings testify that the island was not cut off from the Aegean world. At the end of the Late Bronze Age, Mycenaean vases from mostly regional workshops appear in the settlement of "Kastri", whose local handmade imitations survive into the Early Iron Age. With the ships of the Mycenaean world, objects from the northern European area also arrive at "Kastri", such as beads made of electricity originating from Northern Europe and of glass mass, the manufacturing technique of which refers to glass mass production technology known from Northern Italy .
In the Early Iron Age, the local hand-made vases show shapes reminiscent of the wheeled vases of the southern Greek proto-geometric style, while copper buckles circulating in the Aegean world appear with great frequency. On top of the hill at the southeast end of the peak are examples of religious symbolism and rituals of the prehistoric settlement. These are small hollows carved into a flat rock with carved snakes between them. There was probably an open-air sanctuary of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age reminiscent of similar open-air sanctuaries of Aegean Thrace.
Editor: Fotini Anastasopoulou