Islands out of Time: richness and diversity of prehistoric studies on the Northern Aegean

The aim of this paper is to investigate the contribution of the north-eastern Aegean in the formation of the prehistoric archaeology of Greece. Not so long ago the district defined by the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, Thasos, Samothrace and Lesbos was treated by many scholars as a "marginal" area, of less interest than other regions of Greece. The geographically peripheral position of the district led prehistorians to ambiguous and wavering opinions as to whether it is part of Mainland Greece or of Anatolia. The reasons for this ambivalence can be traced to two different ideological and theoretical positions. The first relates to the tradition of the French School in Athens, which, since the first archaeological explorations in Macedonia at the end of the 19th century, has insisted on the connection between northern Greece and the north-eastern islands, and so conventionally named this area Nord-Est egeen. The second could be attributed to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which focused on relationships with western Anatolia, in particular with the Troad.