Well...the field season has ended. I have returned to a green Grand Forks ND which means the digital studio season has begun. I now begin the daunting process of wading through 70+ gigabytes of photos taken during the 2009 season. I will continue to post images on my personal blog. Please feel free to visit anytime.
The 2009 PKAP field season is drawing to a close. The project's directors are furiously writing reports, final papers, digitizing all of the field notes, washing and reading pottery, and performing countless other tasks (all wo/ the volunteer force, which left on Sunday). As a trench supervisor my responsibilities were limited: produce a final report detailing the stratigraphy of my trench, and couple this with an interpretation of the trench in the context of the site of Koutsopetria. Since my last post some very interesting happenings have "happened" in EU 13, forcing us to revise our understanding of the trench, the annex building (perhaps), and also the site of Koutsopetria. The culprit: one pot sherd of middle Byzantine date (10-13th centuries) from a sealed deposit. We discovered this sherd in the fill under the floor associated with our wall (mentioned in an earlier blog, and our primary research focus, partly). So, instead of finding evidence for early or middle Roman settlement at the site, we found medieval Byzantines. Since the pot sherd was found under the floor--in a sealed deposit--the floor and wall must post-date the sherd. In other words we have a good terminus post quem for these features. This also means that the major and total collapse of the annex building occurred even later, since the debris is sitting atop both floor and wall. The annex building, it seems, has a ca. 700 year history stretching from late antiquity (ca.500) into the middle ages. There is also a case to be made that the annex building is later in date, closer to the floor and wall we excavated. Whatever the case, the annex building (and so Koutsopetria) now has a Byzantine phase. EU 13 stands as a perfect example of the benefits that can come from limited (opposed to open area) excavation framed by specific research questions. Although EU 13 answered some questions, it also created many more.
But the trench would never have been finished without the help of Paul Ferderer (University of North Dakota) and Mellissa Hogan (Messiah College), the hard-working and highly capable volunteers with whom I was privileged to work. It is to their credit that everything turned out as well as it did and I thank them for their work and good company. It was, however, warm out on most days.
I leave the island today for Greece, where I will be doing some dissertation research and working at Isthmia for the next month.
EU 13 and annex building
The depths of EU 13
Melissa Hogan, to the left
Paul Ferderer
PKAP: The Next Generation
djd
Yesterday morning I sat out on the balcony to read and enjoy some coffee as Larnaca slowly came to life. I picked up Philip Sheldrake’s Spaces for the Sacred again to review his comments on contested space…another of the central ideas following me in Cyprus. Even long before the 1974 revolution, this place has been contested…likely even back to the times of the ancient settlements that we are excavating. Looking on the internet I learned of the shooting at Holocaust Museum in DC. This tragic event is only additional proof of the contested nature of space and memory. I mention this all as preface to the Cypriot situation. Here the island rests divided by political, religious, and other ideological space imprinted upon the literal space of the island. The North and its Turkish influence is often painted as the aggressor holding the Greek land hostage since 1974. While this past is too complex and long for me to recount here (as if I even know enough about it to do so), Cyprus is a fine example of contested space. A few days ago Becky Savaria, and undergraduate from Messiah College made a fine posting on the PKAP Undergraduate Blog regarding these tensions as they are made evident here in Larnaca (a central city within the Greek side of the island). Greek Cypriots who were displaced during the revolution have employed some subtle and not so subtle ways of carrying on their memories of the 1974 events (As Becky's post suggests). The image here is another of those place memories that inheres a political statement as well. Famagusta is one of the Turkish occupied cities lost to the North in '74. This shop owner, and many like them, keep the collective memory alive, as well as their political allegiance in a public way. For many tourists who do not know the tragic history of this remarkable island, these are simple store names rather than signs of contested space and memory. Place studies have historically focussed on a singularity of meaning the work of Mircea Eliade's work. Not until recently have scholars begun to question the political nature of place/space and the pluralities of meaning and interpretations offered by distict people groups. Place in general, and sacred spaces in particular are "just as likely to cause division as provoke consensus and harmony" (Sheldrake, 5). Once postmodernity had moved past Eliade's modern concepts of singularlized placed meaning, we are allowed to see the power of naming place. Paul Ricouer also suggests that we look to the narrative of the oppressed and in so doing we examine place by which stories are being told and which are being suppressed. The French philosopher Henri LeFebvre reminds us that the ways of which we understand space is historically conditioned. His "socio-spatial outlook" becomes our means of orienting both ideologically and literally in our environments. It would seem that the metanarratives of those in power become culturally and even in the case of these images, architecturally embodied to reinforce the Greek Cypriot narrative. Sheldrake reminds us that with such images or narratives of power, there seems to be a responsibility to explore the variety of meanings (told and untold) upon any given site. What does this mean for photography today, and for me particularly on a residency in an ongoing contested space? I haven't work this out yet, but when I look at other contemporary landscape photographers like Jeff Brouws, Edward Burtynsky, John Ganis and others, ones notes a sort of objectivity of their work, a sort of banality in composition renders these politicized places as cultural oddities. Certainly their choice of subject denotes a subjectivity of the artist, but they are imaged in a manner that offers sort of enduring grace in the degraded environment. Could this be a way forward? Can such images be made of contested spaces that are open enough in meaning to allow suppressed narratives to emerge? Can the two coexist in an image? Sorry for the roughness of these thoughts...writing usually helps me clarify my thoughts. I think these need more work.
The DC event is not unique but it is complex. The museum, full of painful memory for most of the world, rests in an uneasy tension, like the sites of the Holocaust themselves, between the extremes of sacred and profane sites. They are at once set aside, protected, and made visible for memorial purposes, thus they seem to function like many truly sacred sites. And yet, they are record to the horrific atrocities that humanity is capable of. A sort of complexity begins when the ideological, political space is enacted or embodied within a literal space. In the DC event, an anti-Semetic ideology become embodied in a violent action within this space. While I dare say that most of the world would acknowledge the Holocaust and its lingering memories and sites, this was an act of contesting both space and memory.
It's been awhile since I've blogged on our field work at Koutsopetria, so here's an update. Our major research question seems solved. The trench was designed, primarily, to ascertain whether a wall visible in the scarp of a previously excavated Department of Antiquities trench was earlier than, contemporary with, or later than the annex to the early Christian basilica at Koutsopetria. The wall is, it seems, later than the annex building. It is partially constructed with a reused pier from the annex building itself. Our hypothesis right now is that there was an initial but partial collapse of the annex building, after which parts of it were robbed out and used to build our wall (in fact, the interior of the wall seems to be filled with more debris frags, esp. mortar). Then, at a later date, the entire structure probably came tumbling down, covering this wall (and making our excavation really hard!!). With this question answered (we think), we are now digging below the wall. We found a packed floor about 10cm into some debris beyond the floor of the D of A trench. It's a simple thing: packed earth and debris, with a lime wash on top. We took it out carefully, and it provided quite a bit of cultural material which should allow us to date the floor. It also extended to the face of our wall and the south wall of the annex building, so we can say that both were in use during this phase (in this space). Yesterday we went through the floor and we're now digging beneath it. Perhaps we will find evidence for earlier habitation, but I am skeptical at this point. More to come.
djd
I spent yesterday afternoon on Vigla bouncing between the two trenches and observing the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) team. The team was working on the SW slope of Vigla around a series of depressions. The GPR is used to analyze what resides just below the surface of the ground. This particular site posed considerable challenges given its grade, loose rock, and significant drops if someone lost their step. The 1st (notice Larnaca in the backround), 2nd, 3rd images are of the team setting up their grid on the hill. The 5th image is of the team hauling the very expensive GPR up the hill. You can read more about this process from Jon Crowley in his posting from yesterday.
This week has been a wide ranging affair from doing my usual photography at the sites, to shooting around Larnaca in the mornings, and even getting to work in a trench at Vigla.
One of my roles with PKAP is to help document various aspects of the project and landscape, which extend beyond my conceptual artistic goals, though they often can be made to intersect. On Monday I had the opportunity to assist Bill Caraher and Alex from Messiah to take GPS readings of the ancient rock wall remnants that surround Vigla. The wall fades in and out brush and existence which makes such work interesting. Often it seems as if a simple tumble of rocks that most would pass by without noticing its presence. Other places it is easy to visually articulate.
I wanted to also include in this post a few shots of Larnaca at night. If you have been following the PKAP blogs you have no doubt read about Kataklysmos. Monday night we at dinner on the roof awaiting the fireworks of this celebration that is unique to Cyprus.
Of my studies in place, sacred space is one of my primary interests. During my short time in Cyprus I have passed through a series of mosques, basilica ruins, churches and monasteries. I have visited these places, photographed them from a variety of angles and purposes, and yet, have I really entered them?
I wrote last week of Belden Lane’s text Landscapes of the Sacred, in which he makes a fine delineation between Plato and Aristotle’s conceptions of place. Earlier Lane uses a 4 fold typology with which he interprets sacred space: 1) sacred space is not chosen, it chooses, 2) sacred space is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary, 3) sacred place can be tread upon without being entered, 4) the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal.
As the week has gone along, Lane’s third axiom, “Sacred place can be tread upon without being entered” stuck out. Was I merely treading upon these sites without entering into them? What does it mean to existentially enter such a site? W. Paul Jones in his wonderful work A Table in the Desert: Making Space Holy suggests there is a profound difference between “secular and sacred memory” where he contrasts tourist attractions with sites of holy pilgrimage. This reflects my own experience of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. It was only upon my 3rd visit did my heart and mind make that liminal journey from touring art student who appreciated the architecture to a pilgrim seeking to understand the O/other in that place.
Lane suggests that our bodily presence in a particular place is never identical to being open to the fullness of time and place. Heidegger, the modern philosopher suggested with his concept of “dassein,” which translates from German to mean “being” or more accurately “being there,” connotes the idea of dwelling deeply in a place as to unite the 4 horizons of being human: earth, sky, gods, and men. And yet, we often live in that paradox of occupying a place without entering into that place. In essence, we tread upon, without entering in…the literal threshold remains a ceases to become an existential one.
It is interesting to me that our projects involve work on, or near, an early Christian basilica. While we are not working directly within the nave or apse, we are working to understand the remnants of a side room that has toppled with considerable force. As we work to uncover mortar that once held the walls and floors together, are we merely treading upon this once sacred space? Has anyone, through the course of their work passed through the literal to that existential threshold to a sacred space as the original site intended?
What does photography add to this mix?
Photography is so closely related to memory and yet is often hard to tease out. Two of the primary texts that students of photography read, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and Roland Barthes Camera Lucida come down harshly on photography’s connection to memory. Barthes would suggest that photography actually stifles memory. Yi-Fu Tuan, the well known human geographer, alternatively suggests in his text Place and Art that photography and other art works become “virtual places” that viewers can return to over and over to rehearse memory and experience.
Perhaps that is why I love photographing place/space/landscape. These images provide me, and perhaps others, an opportunity to repeatedly return to places through a virtual pilgrimage. The images provoke the viewers memory and imagination that the liminal spaces may be entered into again without being physically present to the place.
One profound challenge to this theory I share with Tuan is the ubiquity of images in our consumer society. We consume images at an astounding rate and with the onset of the digital imagery we produce them at an even higher rate. Will the sheer volume of images negate the potential for a liminal entry into the image? Or, like the places themselves, do we need to learn to protect such images in the ways we “use” them? Is there a proper attitude with which we should attend to photography that would more readily facilitate or allow the slide from consumer or tourist of place to sacred place?
Just a few musings from a very full week.
Photos
1) Hala Sultan Tekke
2) Agios Lazaros
3) Apse of early basilica at Pyla-Koutsopetria
4) Apse of 5th C. basilica at Kourion
Kourion is one of the best archaeological sites I have visited personally. It is the Olympia of Cyprus to me. It gives you a great feel for a Roman city--not just parts of it, as so many sites do, but the whole. The site boasts a well-excavated Roman forum, which is approached from the east. At the the SE corner of the forum is an imposing episcopal compound, complete with church, baptistery, and residential structures for the clergy. Continuing west, past shops and other structures, is the public bath complex. It was built in the first century AD and consists of two bathing wings, with a central nymphaeum as an entrance. The structure is impressive and it's the largest bathing complex I have seen in person (a real boon for someone writing a dissertation on baths in late antiquity!). Past this are two preserved private homes that contain mosaics. The homes have been named after these mosaics--the House of Achilles and the House of the Gladiators. Kourion also has an excellently restored theater and the House of Eustolios, famous for its dedicatory inscription in which the owner lauds his house and his Christianity in dactylic hexameter.
Our excellent artist in residence, Ryan Stander, has already provided some photos. Below I have attached some inferior ones:
House of the Gladiators (Margareitis and Ellenikos are their names)
Public baths, forum: this photo details the hypocaust system,upon which the floor rested. Notice the pool to the right.
Public baths,forum: This photo details the water supply--pipe and reservoir.
Public baths, forum: Opus sectile paving of a pool
Public baths, forum: to the left and top tubuli, which heated the walls and so the rooms of the baths via radiant heat.
Episcopal compound: looking west over the baptistery
Episcopal compound: baptismal font in background
Parking at Petrou Bothers Hotel.....
djd
Sunday afternoon we visited Kourion, one of the most impressive archeological sites on the island. Perched on a high bluff overlooking the sea (see the last picture). This once prominent and likely wealthy city on the ridge is home to a remarkable 5th C. basilica, wonderful mosaics in what is called the House of the Gladiators, a fine agora where plays are now put on, and an amazing set of public baths.
I've posted new photos at my personal blog today (axisofaccess.blogspot.com). Come for a visit.
