Since the prehistory the people tried to secure the safety of themselves, their relatives and properties during the settlement location choices. In various periods and regions they relied purely on the topographical qualities of their settlements, elsewhere and at other times they took precautions against any possible danger by construction of the defensive architecture, most often by means of outer fortification in the form of an enclosure wall. In the area of Greece the earliest examples of fortifications are known already from the Neolithic, especially from the late phases of this period.
In this paper, not only the architectural typology and the summary of Greek Neolithic fortifications will be done. It will be mainly focused on the connection among the form (type) of the defensive architecture, the way of the defence of the settlements and land use. It will investigate if the ways of defence, which are better known and documented from the following Bronze Age, existed already in the Neolithic, i.e. defence of the settlement boundary/perimeter, defence of the selected (important) structures, founding of the fortified refuge area and the preventive way of defence (usually of the wider area) based on the monitoring of the surrounding landscape and the quick reaction upon the potential danger.
The existence, form and appearance of the defensive architecture also testify the extent and way of communities’ interaction and land use. By the construction of the outer fortification the community demonstrates its claim to the use of the close vicinity of its settlement. By the establishing of the advanced lookout posts or smaller forts it can widen or shift the boundaries of “its” territory even further and – in case of need – can also secure, for example, the safe access to the port or to the natural resources (water, forest, quarry etc.).
The author will thus carry out within selected (micro)regions the analysis of the above-stated assumptions and facts. On their basis he will define the ways of defence and land use in the individual phases of the Neolithic, which will then try to generalize into the universal model.