Argilos, a multilingual colony

What kind of residential, political and commercial structures did the Greek colonies on the northwestern coast of the Aegean have 2,700 years ago? Which language prevailed when the colonists mixed with the local Thracian population and what was their relationship to the rest of the Hellenic world?

An ongoing joint Greek-Canadian excavation at ancient Argilos - the oldest of the four colonies (the others being Sani, Akanthos and Stageira) established in the region of Macedonia by people from the island of Andros in 655 BC - began in 1992 and the research team, headed by Zisis Bonias and Jacques Perreault, is now able to piece together the first historical narrative about the colony's gradual Hellenization, its commercial and artistic activities, its heyday in the 5th and 6th centuries BC and its demise in the late 3rd century BC, attributed to the establishment of Amphipolis...