Dispilio is a lakeside settlement by the Orestias Lake, Kastoria, northern Greece. The site was inhabited from the Middle Neolithic to the Chalcolithic, with some surface evidence of Bronze Age occupation. Microfacies analysis of the sediments, supported by a suite of environmental indices, has provided detailed paleoenvironmental data and elucidated the main processes involved in the formation of the site and its history of occupation. The settlement was established on the lakeshore, on a shallow sand ridge and a shore marsh. Initially, houses were built on raised platforms above the water. After a major conflagration, a range of depositional microenvironments were established that caused local changes in the sedimentation rate. Therefore, some areas quickly emerged and became dry land, while some others continued to be flooded as part of the transitional supra-littoral environment. On the dry land, houses were built directly on the ground, whereas in the transitional areas houses continued to be built on raised platforms. Thus, gradually, a mound was formed and further shaped by subsequent lake-level fluctuations. One of the lake-level rises is tentatively related to the abandonment of the mound in the Chalcolithic and the development of a hardpan on its surface. There is also evidence of later occupation during the Bronze Age in the form of a few, mostly surface, archaeological remains.

The Eastern Mediterranean Sea lies in a climatological transition zone, under the influence of both tropical and mid-latitude climate processes. Within this basin, the Aegean Sea has been recognized as a highly sensitive area to global/regional climate change. Sediment archives provide robust evidence for changes in its hydrological properties and biogeochemical functioning as a response to past climate variability. In order to investigate the region's paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic patterns during the Holocene, with a special emphasis on the sapropel S1 interval, we have investigated marine sediment cores along a N-S transect in the Aegean and the S. Cretan Seas. We focus on combined geochemical, micropaleontological and palynological proxies, namely organic biomarkers, organic carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, coccolithophore and pollen assemblages, aiming at reconstructing climate-related parameters such as sea surface temperature (SST), marine productivity patterns, stratification and nutricline fluctuations, continental vegetation patterns and land-sea interactions. SST patterns depict major global/regional climate fluctuations during the last glacial and deglaciation periods, depict the warm transition to the Holocene optimum, when the formation of the S1 sapropel takes place, a distinct cool episode around 8 ka BP (coeval with the S1 interruption), a conspicuous mid-Holocene warm phase (5.4-4.3 ka BP) as well as other distinct fluctuations. Diagnostic marine lipids, δ15N, and coccolithophore assemblages allow documenting the variability of primary productivity and associated organic carbon accumulation in sediments, as well as fluctuations in water column stratification and nutricline, especially during the deposition of the S1 sapropel. Combined terrigenous proxies record warm/cool and dry/humid time intervals, allowing land-sea correlations, and document changes in the delivery of terrestrial material to the sea related to climate-driven fluctuations in freshwater discharges. The network of sediment cores studied provide a better constrain of the regional climate patterns in the northeastern Mediterranean Sea and enables assessing potential time lags and gradients.