Islands in the Stream: the geoarchaeology of lived spaces in the Hebros delta (Northern Aegean)

Anca Dan1, Wolfgang Rabbel2, Helmut Brückner3, Ercan Erkul2, Simon Fischer2, Martin Thorwart2, Tina Wunderlich2, Lyudmila Shumilovskikh4, Anna Pint5, Martin Seeliger6, Sait Bașaran7, Chrysa Karadima8, Domna Terzopoulou9, Luc Lapierre1

1 : Archéologie et Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident (AOROC) CNRS : UMR8546, École normale supérieure [ENS] - Paris, École Pratique des Hautes Études [EPHE], Labex TransferS

2 : University of Kiel, Germany

3 : University of Cologne, Germany

4 : University of Gottingen, Germany

5 : University of Jena, Germany

6 : University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany

7 : University of Istanbul, Turkey

8 : Greek Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of Antiquities of Rhodope

9 : Greek Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of Antiquities of Evros

Hebros (modern Maritsa/Meriç) has been the most important river of the Northern Aegean. Its wide mouth, which could host the greatest fleet brought together by Xerxes in 480 BC, allowed the development of Ainos, first a Thracian and later an Aeolian city founded in the 7th century BC by migrants from Alopekonnesos, Kymè and Mytilene. The city, continuing today as Enez, in the Turkish province of Edirne, has an unbroken history of 3000 years, despite some severe changes in its environment. Yet, before the German geoarchaeological project started in 2012 by Helmut Brückner and Wolfgang Rabbel and sustained, from 2017, by the French CNRS and governmental projects directed by Anca Dan, there has been no scientific investigation of this major delta, of its progradation and of the human impact on these sensitive environments. This paper presents some of our most important results about urban and rural occupation at the mouth of the Hebros river: the evolution of the Ainos peninsula, the human transformation of the potential harbor sites, the network of sites at the mouth of the river.