 
The cultural achievements of the Neolithic society are impressed on the material remains bequeathed to us and which have been revealed through excavations. Architecture, burials, tools, pottery, figurines and jewellery demonstrate, after a silence of thousands of years, with a unique eloquence and descriptiveness the natural environment and its economic exploitation, the ways of disposing farming products, the structure of society and codes of behaviour, the channels of artistic expression and, finally, the contacts and exchanges, that reveal new worlds, beyond the confines of the small settlements. |
 The above mentioned features were shaped on matter, since they were not expressed in written speech. The wooden tablet, with the incised linear symbols, from the lakeside settlement of Dispilio- Kastoria (5260 BC), is likely to be an early form of written speech as conjectured about similar symbols incised on clay, discovered in settlements of the southern Balkans (Vinca culture). Pottery, an inseparable element of the Neolithic man's every day life, became a form of artistic expression, on which a variety of colours and decorative styles and themes could be impressed. The exceptional quality of Neolithic vases is attributed to the developments in pottery know-how and pyrotechnology (composition of clays and earth pigments, firing). Weaving and basketry also favoured artistic creation. |
The variety found in figurine art makes it a unique art. Its products (people, animals, houses) have a wide socio-ideological content and accompany man at birth, in every day life, in death as well as being used in symbolic acts (e.g. offering for the house's foundation). Jewellery of clay, stone, gold or silver and possibly seals for the adornment of the body express the tendency for embellishment both in everyday life and in exceptional cases as well (e.g. rites of a religious character, festivals for rich harvests). During the last phases of the Neolithic the use of jewellery made from the sea-shell Spondylus, as well as silver and gold jewellery (ring idol pendants, earrings) worn by only a few members of the Neolithic community, suggests new social conditions had arisen and a desire for individual promotion. Jewellery from precious materials, as well as arrow heads of obsidian and copper tools, were all objects of social prestige. The need to exchange diet products and raw materials lead Neolithic farmers to explore beyond the confines of the settlements. Thus, a farmer came into contact with metals, copper, silver and gold, and further developed his know-how in the fields of pyrotechnology and navigation. Finally, burial practices reflect a respect for human life and a belief in a life after death, expressed with the offering of funerary items. |