How to approach population size estimation for sites along the East Aegean - West Anatolian Interface?
Abstract
Several demographic studies have already attempted to reconstruct the size of the prehistoric population for the Aegean region, based on available archaeological resources. However, the region of the eastern Aegean islands and western Anatolia has not been considered thus far sufficiently. While seemingly not far away from the better documented prehistoric centres of Crete and mainland Greece, dealing with the Interface region made clear that not all areas can be approached in the same way.
The paper will thus present a new approach to demographic issues for this region and will propose an universal formula for calculating the population size of individual sites, as long as one can determine some of the proposed variables for a given site, on which this formula depends.
First, a synthesis of available demographic studies will be presented, carried out mainly in the Aegean region, but also from the Ancient Near East, whose method is also suitable for the Interface area. The proposed variables are based on preserved architecture, especially the type and size of the individual houses, general size of the settlements and percentage of build-up residential area. Finally, population size calculations for the most significant Bronze Age sites along the Interface area will be briefly present in contrast with values, which are already available for sites in the surrounding regions from other previous studies.