An Archaeological Survey of Polyaigos: Landscape, Lidar, and Long-Term History on the Largest “Uninhabited” Island in the Aegean

This article presents an archaeological survey of the island of Polyaigos, undertaken in 2022 by the Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP). Since 2019, SCIP has surveyed 87 uninhabited islands in the southern Aegean, most of which are well under 1 km2 in size. The larger island of Polyaigos (18 km2) was included in the project in order to investigate the importance of island size (among other things) in long-term population and land-use dynamics. SCIP used a layered approach to survey across different spatial scales: island-wide lidar analysis and ground verification, sample-based intensive fieldwalking, site-based gridded collection, drone survey, architectural documentation, and archaeological ethnography. Pottery finds from Polyaigos range from the Neolithic period to the very recent past, and more than 9,000 chipped stone artifacts were collected and studied. A combination of lidar-based and pedestrian architectural documentation revealed patterns of intensive cultivation and landscape modification. Particularly noteworthy was the discovery of a large, previously undocumented Bronze Age site at a place called Benardou; architecture and surface artifacts indicate that this was a major settlement throughout the Bronze Age. This article discusses the survey results and their significance for Aegean archaeology; it also reflects on how patterns of small-island occupation and use in the Cyclades are relevant to other archipelagic contexts.1