ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the earliest colonisation data in the eastern Mediterranean islands. The Ionian group comprises eight main islands: Corfu, Paxos, Lefkas, Kefalonia, Ithaka, and Zakynthos; officially, it also includes Kythera and its satellite Antikythera. The earliest colonisation of these islands in the Neolithic and the subsequent development of Early Bronze Age Cycladic cultures have been considered in fine detail by Broodbank in his book An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades. Cherry argues that it is quite possible that humans encountered the last survivors of the island's endemic fauna but unlikely that they were responsible for their systematic depletion over the whole island. He concludes that many of the islands of the southeast Aegean, both large and small, seem to have been settled during the later stages of the Neolithic'. The evidence reviewed highlights the difficulties in correlating diagnostic artefacts and colonisation activities, but also that settlement is but one type of colonisation.
