Hidden treasures in forgotten archives: exploring the archaeology of Greek caves into the archives and the bulletin of the Hellenic Speleological Society

The Hellenic Speleological Society was founded in 1950 with the aim of exploring and studying the cave forms of Greece. In these 65 years of research more than 10,000 caves have been recorded in the H.S.S. archive. The H.S.S. has also been publishing an annual bulletin on Greek caves since 1950. The archives of the H.S.S. and the Bulletin volumes have been thoroughly researched in order to highlight the archaeological data from the caves from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. A spatial analysis of the data has provided information about the geographical distribution of the archaeological cave sites in Greece, the type of their uses and the type of the caves that people seemed to prefer to exploit. The main focus is how the caves showcase the different lifeways of their users. Additionally, it demonstrates the actual number of caves that were used in a specific area during a specific era