urban locations. The urban landscape of ancient Thessaloniki is com-
paratively well known, thanks to documentation carried out by a string
of scholars beginning in the nineteenth century, who bequeathed an
archive of drawings, photographs, epigraphic transcriptions, and per-
sonal accounts.^27 Much of this material related to the Late Antique city,
its fourth- to sixth-century monuments and extra-urban cemeteries.
Nevertheless, pre-Roman remains, including public and private inscrip-
tions, and parts of the Hellenistic urban plan, are accumulating. The
rapid expansion of the contemporary city has triggered a wide range of
rescue projects, which have yielded valuable data, though much of this is
still unpublished.^28 The most important evidence of urban development
in the area of the historic centre of Thessaloniki, prior to the civic
amalgamation effected by Cassander (Str. 7 FF21, 24–5), is located in
and around twotells(mounds): Toumba Kalamarias, north-east of the
inner urban core of the modern city; and Karabournaki, still a prominent
outcrop on a peninsula south of the main harbour.
The evidence from Toumba Kalamarias is still emerging from current
investigations, but what has been revealed since these began in 1984 has
proved to be unexpected and highly revealing. This mound, which was
already inhabited in the Middle Bronze Age, was a very lively centre of
high-quality craft production towards the end of the Late Bronze Age,
when murex shells were used to make purple fabric dye and gold
smithing was practised.^29 The latest dateable evidence on the mound is
from the late sixth to the midfifth centurybcand is hard to evaluate
because most structural material has been destroyed or eroded. These
vestigial early classical remains directly overlie those of thefinal stages of
the Late Bronze Age and the incipient Early Iron Age deposits that
superseded them. Here there is no reason to believe in a cultural caesura
such as took place in many other parts of the Greek mainland.
The low,flattened summit of Karabournaki hill was occupied from
Late Bronze Age times until well into the Roman period. Itflourished as a
(^27) Vokotopoulou 1985 is a compilation of key texts, beginning with an extract from
M. Cousinéry’s description of the city, published in 1831, and includes a substantial
architectural and epigraphic resource; Vacalopoulos 1963, 6–12, for a useful summary of
economic and social history; Vokotopoulou 1986 summarizes a good deal of work carried
out up to that date in the form of an exhibition catalogue. See now Adam-Veleni 2011, for a
diachronic synthesis.
(^28) Morgan 2000, 191–3; Archibald 2000, 220–6; regular reports of ongoingfield investi-
gations are provided inAEMThand are summarized inAGOnlineon behalf of the British
School at Athens and the École française d’Athènes, available at http://chronique.efa.gr/
index/php/ and http://bsa.ac.uk. 29
Andreou and Eukleidou 2007; see alsoAGOnline,ID828 with further references;
‘complex B’phases 2 and 3 contained LHIIIC style ceramic sherds.
56 Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces