developed successful and rather specialized forms of storage in their Late
Bronze and Early Iron Age phases, albeit slightly different in each case.^11
Cereals were stored in pits, ceramic containers, bins, and baskets. At
Thessaloniki itself, the larger containers were also used for storing a
variety of artefacts as well as natural produce. The topography of these
hilltop sites makes it hard to distinguish private patterns of behaviour
from what was publicly owned or publicly organized. So although we can
be confident that these sites represent what look like rather socially stable
environments, it is not yet possible to determine precisely how these
forms of storage related to social units, whether individual families, or
kin groups, or wider social networks.
The settlement on the plateau of Angelochori seems to have come to
an end sometime in the earlyfirst millenniumbc, but the evidence has
been disturbed by later activity. The nearby site of Agrosykia, close to the
corresponding northern foothills above the Thermaic Gulf, offers a
broader chronological sweep to show how settlement developed in the
area west of the River Axios. In thefifth millenniumbcthere was a
community living here on a low hill below Mount Paiko, known as
‘Peliti’Agrosykias. Early Iron Age burials have been discovered close
by, distributed in the low-lying plain between‘Peliti’Agrosykias, the
inhabited mound, and Leptokarya to the north of it. Both of these
localities would later become suburbs of Pella.^12
Pavlos Chrysostomou briefly describes the rural landscape of the area,
which corresponds to the ancient district of northern Bottiaia.^13 We
must imagine a landscape of densely wooded hills separated by well-
watered valleys, providing an excellent environment for early commu-
nities, which would in principle have been for the most part self-suffi-
cient. With the move of the capital to Pella, these areas became more
closely integrated with the life of the new capital and its port, although
many of the settlements located in the landscape remained small, inde-
pendent farmsteads or villages throughout their history in classical
antiquity. Expansion of the environs of Pella began in the latefifth
centurybc. The area around Pella saw the emergence of new sites and
(^11) Margomenou 2008; Tsiafakis 2010, 382–3.
(^12) Inventory,850; Chrysostomou et al. 2007; A. Chrysostomou 2007, 210–79: post-
Geometric pottery found without stratification including silvered and gold-tinged fabrics,
pls III.1.2–4, resembling material from Kastanas, Thasos, and elsewhere; Gimatzidis 2010,
250 andfig. 75; the EIA cist tombs contained 8th–6th centurybcmaterial.
(^13) Chrysostomou et al., 2007, 289–90; cf. P. Chrysostomou 1990, 205–31, reports on 34
sites added to the 17 known until then, comprising 16 Neolithic, 20 Bronze Age, 17 Iron
Age and 22 classical/Hellenistic sites in the environs of Pella, coveringc.18,000 ha.
140 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean