Spissky Stvrtok may belong to Puchav culture, not Otomani, reclassifying it to Iron Age

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Key facts

• When discovered in the early 1970s, the site was dated to the Otomani culture and interpreted as Greek-derived architecture due to known amber and metal trade networks connecting Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean
• Linear B was deciphered in 1952, significantly expanding knowledge of Mycenaean Greece since the original 1970s excavation
• Unlike Mycenaean citadels used by aristocrats, Spissky Stvrtok was fully surrounded by fortifications containing housing, craft production, and possible ritual activity for common people
• Greek fortified settlements on islands like Paristria (c. 1700-1500 BC), with a 30 m dressed stone wall, and Kyifth, with a 145 m wall and two towers, are more comparable in function but evidence remains limited
• Spissky Stvrtok used timber, earth, and clay alongside stone, materials not found in comparable quantities in Greece; stone sizes were small, worked, and consistent, unlike Greek examples; the Aegean region did not use defensive ditches on the scale of Otomani sites
• Artifacts of the Puchav culture (2nd century BC to 1st century AD) have been documented within the fortifications, suggesting the site may date more than 1,200 years after the Otomani culture ended
• Puchav defensive architecture features a primary wall behind a larger secondary wall, stone worked into small slabs, and ditches, all of which match Spissky Stvrtok's fortifications
• If Puchav attribution is correct, the site would be removed from the Bronze Age entirely and would not derive from Mycenaean architecture

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