Petrota and its Stones

Highslide JS
Fig. 7: An old quarry of rhyolite drums destined for olive presses. Note the two drums that were never fully extracted. Such quarries operated in recent centuries, until the 1950s.

figure 7

Highslide JS
Fig. 8: The castle-like feature crowning the hill seen in this photo is Vrahos, the main prehistoric quarry of cryptocrystalline rocks in the Petrota area. It was first exploited in the Middle Palaeolithic, c. 50,000 years ago or earlier, and again in the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age.

figure 8

Quarries

Some of the tougher rocks of the area were exploited in various periods from prehistory to modernity, and not only as building materials. Rhyolite, for instance, has been quarried in the form large drums, to be used as critical parts in olive presses, in recent historical times (Fig. 7). On the other hand, stone tools have been made from the area’s cryptocrystalline rocks for tens of thousands of years in prehistory and even in the historical period (Fig. 8).