Geoarchaeology of Ancient Aulis (Boeotia, Central Greece): human occupation and Holocene landscape changes Matthieu Ghilardi a, * , Maxime Colleu b , Kosmas Pavlopoulos c , Sylvian Fachard d, f , David Psomiadis a , Pierre Rochette a, e , François Demory a , Alex Knodell f , Maria Triantaphyllou g , Doriane Delanghe-Sabatier a , Andrew Bicket h , Jules Fleury a, e a CEREGE, UMR 7330, CNRS, Europôle de l’Arbois, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, Cedex 04, France b University of Paris 1 Sorbonne, Histoire de l’Art et de l’Archéologie, 3 Rue Michelet, 75006 Paris, France c Harokopeio University of Athens, Department of Geography, Eleftherios Venizelou Street 70,176-71 Kallithea, Athens, Greece d Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies, 3100 Whitehaven Street, Washington, DC 20008, USA e University of Aix-Marseille/AMU, France f Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, Box 1837, 60 George Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA g University of Athens, Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, Department of Historical Geology e Paleontology, Panepistimiopolis 15784, Athens, Greece h Wessex Archaeology, Coastal and Marine, 7/9 North Saint David Street, Edinburgh EH21AW, Scotland, United Kingdom article info Article history: Received 18 May 2012 Received in revised form 4 December 2012 Accepted 9 December 2012 Keywords: Paleoenvironmental reconstruction Borehole study Geoarchaeology Shoreline migration Recent Holocene Aulis Boeotia Euboean Gulf Greece Mycenaean period abstract This article presents the results of a coring operation which brought to light new evidence for the evolution of the coastal plain of Aulis (Boeotia, Central Greece) in the Holocene. Thanks to Homer, Aulis is best known as the gathering point of the Achaean fleet before it sailed to Troy and a sanctuary of the goddess Artemis. Ancient sources and archaeological evidence suggest the presence of an ancient marine bay, potentially used as a harbor. In the course of investigation, we drilled two cores, to a maximum depth of 4.20 m in the marshy lowlands and performed mollusc and micro-paleontological identifica- tions, laser grain size analyses, and magnetic susceptibility measurements in order to reveal the facies evolution of the area. We obtained a chronostratigraphy sequence through a series of seven AMS 14 C radiocarbon dates. Our study shows that the area was affected by a shallow marine incursion from the first half of the 6th millennium BC and gradually turned into a succession of shallow marine/lagoon environments from ca. 5000 cal. BC to the 2nd Century AD, and into a confined lagoon environment during the Roman and Byzantine periods. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Ancient Aulis is located in southeastern Boeotia, Central Greece (Fig. 1), on the gulf that separates the Greek mainland from Euboea, the second largest island in the Aegean Sea (ca. 3685 km 2 ). The sanctuary of Artemis at Aulis is located on the margin of a small coastal plain ca. 200 m long and 50e100 m wide, and situated at a distance of 300 m from the modern shoreline (Fig. 3). From a geological point of view, this corresponds to a semi-graben, with a NNEeSSW direction, in-filled by red clays (Terra Rossa) and limited on the sides by fault scarps composed of dolomitic limestone. During the Holocene, it is obvious that the rapid sea level rise since the Last Glacial Maximum strongly modified the coastline position and the landscape configuration in the study area, this has been also well established in different coastal plains of the Aegean Sea (Kambouroglou, 1989; Lykousis et al., 2005; Pavlopoulos et al., 2010). The study of Holocene shoreline migration within an archaeological context has been the subject of research in the North Aegean (Kraft et al., 1977; Ghilardi et al., 2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2012; Syrides et al., 2009; Vouvalidis et al., 2010), the Cyclades (Evelpidou et al., 2010; Pavlopoulos et al., 2010) and Attica (Pavlopoulos et al., 2006; Triantaphyllou et al., 2003, 2010). However, little research has been conducted in the southern Euboean Gulf (Notios Evoikos), where many archaeological sites are located close to the modern shoreline. The ancient city of Eretria has been investigated more thoroughly, suggesting that an * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ33 4 42 97 17 78. E-mail address: ghilardi@cerege.fr (M. Ghilardi). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas 0305-4403/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.12.009 Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013) 2071e2083