The second neolithic period in Eastern Thessaly is sharply severed from the first by the intrusion of a new culture which appears as something foreign and alien on the shores of the Pagasean Gulf. The pottery, for example, seems utterly different from that of the first period. The forms belong to a distinct series and are typologically older. The absence of feet and strap handles, so well developed in the A wares, precludes us from deriving Dimini ware from any of the latter. The characteristic designs, too, based on the spiral and the meander, are entirely foreign to the earlier series. Moreover, the use of fortifications beginning with this pottery (the traces of an earlier wall at Sesklo are exceedingly problematical), and restricted to its area, heightens this impression of foreignness. So too do the ‘megaron’ houses of Dimini and Sesklo, which do not seem to find their explanation in the curvilinear or square huts of the first period.
As to the provenance of this culture, the recent declaration of Sir Arthur Evans, that the origin of the spiral motive in Minoan ceramics is not to be sought in Crete itself, should dispose of the only reason for deriving it from the south; for there seems no ground for supposing that the Cycladic spirals antedate those of Dimini. Indeed I have argued in a previous paper, and my conclusion has been supported by more recent investigations, that Thessaly II. must be dated well back in the Early Cycladic Period. On the other hand, the theory of a northern origin has been strengthened by the discovery of Dimini ware in the Strymon valley. Indeed the general analogies between Dimini ware and the widespread group of painted and incised spiral-meander pottery north of the Balkans have been long recognised, and elaborate theories of an invasion, not only of Thessaly, but even of Crete itself, have been built up thereon.