Aigeira () (, or Αἴγειρα, ) is a town and a former municipality in northeastern Achaea, West Greece, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it has been a municipal unit of the Aigialeia municipality, with an area of 103.646 km2. The municipal unit stretches from the Gulf of Corinth, where the town of Aigeira is located, to the mountains in the south. The town of Aigeira is southeast of Aigio, northwest of Corinth and east of Patras. The archaeological site of ancient Aigeira is located approximately 6km from the modern town. It is an important site for the Mycenaean and later periods, with particularly extensive remains from the Hellenistic period. It has been excavated since 1916 by archaeologists from the Austrian Archaeological Institute at Athens. History Prehistory Settlement at Aigeira is known from the Middle Neolithic and Final Neolithic, beginning around 5500 BCE. The first settlement was situated on the acropolis, and has furnished evidence of pottery, including vessels likely used in the production of cheese. A small quantity of obsidian blades, using material from Melos, have also been found from this period. Some evidence of Neolithic settlement has been found on a lower plateau, approximately 150m to the east of the acropolis. Patterns of settlement around the Gulf of Corinth in the Final Neolithic show a few 'main sites' and a much greater number of apparently-transient settlements, used only briefly before abandonment. In the Early Helladic period (beginning around 3100 BCE), settlements appear to become more permanent, being used over multiple chronological phases, and to be involved in more intense contacts between each other, particularly maritime exchange. While there is a great deal of evidence for social and cultural continuity at Aigeira between the Final Neolithic and Early Helladic, particularly as concerns patterns of food production and consumption, there are also signs of technological development, particularly in higher-temperature ceramic production, the use of flax or double fibres in textiles, and possibly the addition of arsenic to copper in metallurgy. In the EH II period, the acropolis site was abandoned, and settlement moved to a low-lying and more fertile site at Kassaneva, close to the Krios river. The acropolis was re-occupied in the Middle Helladic period: little evidence of this phase survives, though what does exist points to new cultural connections with the western Peloponnese. Relatively little is known of Aigeira for most of the Late Helladic period. Aigeira