Humans and landscapes are tied to continuous interaction processes that dynamically and reciprocally transform them. Current debates on landscape studies reconsider the dynamics of human-environment interplays by examining historical embeddedness in landscapes of action, putting emphasis on changes at the local scale, and re-evaluating the impact of social transformations on past communities. These ever-changing properties were involved in the formation of distinct cultural and social identities as people became increasingly entangled with local territories. It has been suggested that new areas of habitation not only sheltered people from the elements and tethered them to places, but that they also created new habitual spaces, formed new identity maps and new conceptual understandings.
Historically, Aegean archaeology has considered islands as special places; as ‘laboratories’ for the study of past communities and human behaviours. It is believed that island social identities were formed by the ontological notion of insularity and connectivity. A progressively increasing number of Neolithic cultural remains in the Aegean basin, however, challenges the widely held perception of islands as stepping-stones for the Neolithization of mainland Greece and give rise to the need for an examination of the causal processes of visits, colonization and settling down. The systematic and broader inhabitation of Aegean islands during the Final Neolithic period could indicate transformations of social scale as well as possible changes in landscape preferences. Moreover, islands are not involved in the discussion of settlement formations and social organization that is ongoing for Neolithic mainland Greece and that omission has consequences for the interpretation of the trajectories of the Neolithic for this region. This paper examines forms of local social identities and island lifeways in Cyclades and Northern Sporades during the Neolithic period. I attempt a synthesis that holistically examines the fragmented information pertaining to settlement remains along with what this reveals to us about the choices of Neolithic people in terms of their preferred landscapes. Key elements of this analysis are the remains of architectural material culture such as buildings, boundary markers and open spaces.