Sesklo is a village in Greece, near Volos.
During the prehistory of Southeastern Europe, Sesklo was a significant settlement of Neolithic Greece before the advent of the Bronze Age and millennia before the Mycenaean period. The settlement at Sesklo gives its name to the earliest known Neolithic culture of Europe, which inhabited Thessaly and parts of Macedonia.
The oldest fragments researched at Sesklo place the development as far back as 7510 BC. They show advanced agriculture and a very early use of pottery. Available data indicates that domestication of cattle occurred at Argissa as early as 6300 BC during the pre-pottery Neolithic.
The ceramic layers at Sesklo also contained bone fragments from domesticated cattle. The Neolithic settlement of Sesklo covered an area of 20 hectares during its peak period at 5000 BC and comprised about 500-800 houses with a population estimated potentially to be as large as 5000 people.
The people of Sesklo built their villages on hillsides near fertile valleys where they grew wheat and barley. They kept herds of mainly sheep and goats and also had cattle, swine, and dogs. Their houses were small with one or two rooms built of wood or mudbrick in the early period.
The Sesklo people soon developed very fine glazed earthenware that they decorated with geometric symbols in red or brown colors. Another significant characteristic of this culture is the abundance of statuettes of women, often pregnant, probably connected to fertility cults.
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