Dunavec revisited: Fresh perspectives on a sixth millennium BC settlement at former Lake Maliq, Albania

Abstract

Efforts to drain Lake Maliq, in the Korça Basin of eastern Albania, during the 1940s and 1950s revealed waterlogged wooden structures that were excavated in the 1970s and identified as Neolithic pile-dwellings. Fifty years later, new excavations are exposing the exceptional organic preservation and complex stratigraphy of the Dunavec site. Through a combination of dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating, the authors provide the first secure absolute dates for the structures, placing early activity at the site within the beginning of the fifty-third century BC and creating a chronological anchor for our understanding of Neolithic communities in the western Balkans.