The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project at the International Association for Classical Archaeology Congress, Rome.

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project will be presenting a paper at the International Association for Classical Archaeology Congress in Rome (22-26 September 2008).  It will be in a panel on Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean.  The other papers in the panel and our abstract are listed below. 

For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project see our sister blogs: Pyla-Koutsopetria Graduate Student Weblog, Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog, Pyla-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives.

 

Session Title: Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean

Session Co-ordinator: James Whitley, University of Cardiff

Discussant: Professor Carla Antonaccio, Duke University

Session Abstract

This session looks at a number of interrelated issues covered by the word exchange (which necessarily covers, but is not limited by, all forms of trade), and the technological and geographical conditions that made such exchange possible (particularly Mediterranean ‘connectivity’). First it looks at the exchange of goods, whether primarily social (as gifts or other ‘entangled objects’) or commercial (as commodities), and the social and economic networks these exchanges create. Second, it looks at how the exchange of goods mediates changes in technology, ideas and culture – exchange, that is, as a medium of acculturation. It seeks to relate these wider patterns to the particular, local circumstances of two of the East Mediterranean’s larger islands, namely Crete and Cyprus, whose respective social and economic development take radically paths in the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods.

PAPERS

Transport of goods in the Mediterranean region from the Geometric to the Classical period - Images and meanings

Athina Chatzidimitriou, Hellenic Ministry of Culture

This paper presents various aspects of the iconography and sources related to the transport of goods, as attested from the Geometric to the Classical period. The paper focuses on Greek finds, such as the ones from Attica, as well as from Italian, Greek or indigenous Mediterranean centres. A small number of clay models of wheeled animals shown loaded with transport amphorae were deposited as offerings in Greek graves as early as the Geometric period. Later, carts (hamaxa or apènè) used for transporting people on special occasions such as weddings, funerals and religious festivals, as well as heavy goods, are depicted in the Archaic and Classical Attic and Boeotian vase painting. A number of vases bear representations of two-wheeled carts drawn by mules, loaded especially with amphorae, the main storage vessel for the trading of wine and oil throughout the Mediterranean. The easy carrying of the amphorae and other products over short distances by the use of a pole, usually held by two men is also attested.

In the same period, two-wheel wagons, with similar construction and constituent parts to those of the Attic vase painting occur in the art and finds of the region of Etruria and in the colonies of Magna Graecia. In the 5th to the 4th century B.C. a number of figurines of mules and horses, loaded with vases and other goods, are found in the workshops of Greek coroplastic centers as well as in Cyprus.

Merchant ships, although the most common means of goods-transportation, are seen to have been rarely represented on vase painting, when compared to war ship images. Clay models and depictions of merchant ships, found in Greece and Cyprus, tend to share construction similarities with depictions of the same on Etruscan vessels.

From the study of transport methods, we can therefore trace the development of commercial relations between various Mediterranean centers. These relations underline the primary role of trade and exchange of goods in the development of cultures in the Mediterranean area.

Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus

William R Caraher, University of North Dakota
R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College

Traditional work on the Late Roman economy focused on the role of urban areas as large coastal commercial centers. More recently, however, scholars have begun to recognize the important place of mid-sized coastal sites in Late Antique exchange systems. These smaller nodes of exchange supported independent trade routes standing between urban centers and more rural areas of agricultural production and allowed inhabitants of non-coastal and ex-urban areas the opportunity to participate in

economic and cultural exchange. This paper provides a case study of a Pyla-Koutsopetria, a mid-sized, Late Antique harbor town of between 30 and 50 ha. situated 10 kilometers east of ancient Kition, Cyprus. Five seasons of archaeological fieldwork by the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project have produced archaeological evidence for local and interregional exchange on the micro-regional level. The midsized site of Pyla-Koutsopetria suggests a decentralized pattern connectivity which links exurban and rural regions in Cyprus to broader Mediterranean currents. This connectivity not only provided an economic lifeline but also an opportunity for cultural exchange independent from dominant urban areas. This study considers how greater Mediterranean connectivity supported by an increased number of recognized autonomous economic nodes challenges the longstanding view of ancient culture as an urban phenomenon.

Social networks and exchange in ancient Greece: the evidence of weight standards (a case study) .

Katerina Panagopoulou, University of Crete

The present paper capitalizes on the key convention in identifying monetary networks in antiquity, that of a weight standard. A weight standard may be defined as a unit of weight, the fractions or multiples of which provided the various denominations of a coin issue. The unit of weight adopted often varied from place to place. It was normal for a state to adopt (and adapt) for its coin issues the weight standard employed in the economic transactions in which it participated. A state (as an issuing authority) might also employ different weight standards for different coin issues, in order to facilitate transactions lying on different monetary conventions. In order to investigate the nature of the market defined through this convention, I will explore the structure of the market in a specific area through the application of the social networks’ theory. I will then examine the processual history of the integration of this given area into more global monetary systems dominated by standards as widely accepted as the Attic in the Hellenistic period. I will then focus on the impact that the integration of this area into the lingua franca of the Classical and Hellenistic period had upon local networks.

Pottery production in Iron Age Crete viewed in the context of regional and external trade networks: A ceramic petrology perspective

Marie-Claude Boileau, Fitch Laboratory, British School at Athens, Greece
James Whitley, School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, UK
Anna Lucia D’Agata, Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente, CNR, Rome, Italy

This study uses an integrated approach combining ceramic petrology to stylistic and contextual data to investigate how production of coarse utilitarian pottery in Central Crete was influenced by regional and external trade networks from the 12th to the 7th centuries BC. The gap in the textual record makes the Cretan ‘Dark Age’ highly dependent on material evidence to study the social developments which led to the emergence of the polis. Yet, scientific analyses of ceramics from this post-prehistoric period have been very few and deal mainly with fine decorated wares. In this regard, the scientific analysis of stratified pottery from the British excavations of Knossos in North-Central Crete and the Greek-Italian excavations of Thronos-Kephala (ancient Sybrita) in Central-Western Crete, two settlements showing uninterrupted Early Iron Age occupation with deposits belonging to domestic, funerary and ritual contexts, will significantly contribute to the current understanding of the early Greek period. The comparative study of the two assemblages is expected to provide a better understanding of the long-term changes and impact of external influence on the island’s potting traditions, especially from the 10 c. onwards.

The Cypriot Kingdoms in the Archaic Age: a Multicultural Experience in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Anna Cannavò, Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa and Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée «Jean Pouilloux» - Lyon

The Cypriot kingship in the Archaic Age is an interesting case of interaction between cultural experiences of different origin. Far from being merely a survival of the Mycenaean-type royalty or an imitation of the Phoenician city-kingdoms, it presents some features of both these institutions, modified and adapted to a different, very heterogeneous cultural context. Spurred and conditioned from time to time by greater and more complex realities active at the border of their world – the Neo-Assyrian empire, 26th dynasty Egypt, the Phoenician city-states, the expanding Greek world – the Cypriot kingdoms evolved during the Archaic Age in original and partially recoverable manners.

During the analysis the results of the excavations conducted in different sites of the island – Kition, Amathous, Paphos, Salamis - shall be considered. A comparison with the data resulting from the epigraphic and literary evidence shall be proposed: the textual evidence originates largely from the outside of the island, so the documents have to be read with the greatest attention to their context of provenance. At the end a development model, which accounts for the role and the contribution of each culture involved in the process, shall be proposed, thanks also to the comparison with similar realities in the Mediterranean world of the Archaic Age.

Byzantine Dreams in Athens

I was just sent the program for a conference  at the end of this month in Athens on "Dreams and Visions in Late Antiquity and Byzantium".  The program looks full of interesting approaches to dreaming ranging from the literary to the psychoanalytical.  The afternoon panel on the first day looks particularly interesting with papers by Steven Obherhelman, Maria Mavroudi, and Charles Stewart, the first and the last of which consider the relationship between Ancient or Byzantine and Modern dream practices.  None of the papers appear explicitly deal with the relationship between archaeology and dreams (as in some of my earlier posts: Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology), judging from the titles, with inventio, so my research might have had something to add to these proceedings.  It's always heartening to open a conference program like this one and not see paper dealing with my current research.

It is all too predictable that a conference with a focus that falls near one of my current research areas would happen less than two weeks after I leave the country!

Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Blog Carnival

As many of my regular readers know, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project has experimented with using the "New Media" to expand the accessibility of our fieldwork on Cyprus.  In particular we've used video and blogs to introduce our project, its participants, and our site to the wider community both on Cyprus and around the world.

This year we are planning the most ambitious project yet.  In terms of archaeology, we are planning to both survey and excavate as well as continuing our geophysical work, creating high-resolution maps of the entire site, and completing the documentation of the material collected during last year's fieldwork.  The team will be larger than ever before and at most times this season we will average more than twenty people ranging from faculty with extensive fieldwork experiments to the least experienced undergraduate volunteers. 

The experiences of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Team will appear on the internet with an unprecedented degree of transparency.  PKAP is planning an almost continuous blog carnival documenting the various perspectives on the the project.  To do this we have set up three new blogs where we hope to be almost continuous activity. 

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog will document the reflections of the PKAP staff including the project's directors, Scott Moore and David Pettegrew, the field director Dimitri Nakassis, our prehistoric specialist, Michael Brown, our registrars, Susie Caraher and Katie Pettegrew, and our camp manager Brett Weber. 

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives Blog began last year and this year will continue to provide a venue for the reflections of our graduate students: Brandon Olson, from Penn State, Chris Gust, from the University of North Dakota, Dallas DeForest, from Ohio State, and Mat Dalton, our illustrator and leader of the survey team.  This group has already begun to blog on their experiences as they prepare for our field season!

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives Blog is a new feature for this year.  It will feature undergraduates from Messiah College and Indiana University of Pennsylvania blogging on all aspects of the project. 

So follow one or all of these blogs over the next six weeks and share with us the excitement, tedium, frustration, and comradery of an archaeological project.

The End of One Thing and the Beginning of Something Else...

I leave the comfortable confines of the American School early tomorrow morning for the beginning of my field season in Cyprus.  It was an exciting year to be at the American School for many reasons.  First, I was able to focus heavily on my own research including my work on Cyprus on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project, on Early Christian epigraphy, architecture, and decoration.  I was able to develop a small (but rapidly growing) project on "dream archaeology" and begin to conceptualize more formally how to approach editing the autobiography of a scholar as accomplished as Elwyn B. Robinson.  I was also able to form many new professional and personal relationships.  I learned more about the Archaic religion in Athens, the Peloponnesian agora, the Great Mother, Greek landscape and survey archaeology, Roman figurines and magical objects from the Athenian Agora, and the official and unofficial history of the American School. 

I also had front-row seats for some of the interesting changes taking place at the School.  The lecture series at Cotsen Hall was more extensive than I could remember or even imagine.  The regular program included a trip to Western Macedonia and lectures on GIS and Survey Archaeology.  There was a new website.  Women wearing uniforms with the words "Cleaning Team" on the back introduced a new policy where all members of the school community will be required to wear uniforms clearly marking their position in the community ("Regular Members Team", "Academic Team", "Management Team", and the very important "Board of Trustees Team").  This will certainly cut down on those awkward moments when you accidentally assume that a member of the Board of Trustees is the person responsible for cleaning your office!

The Blegen, Gennadius, and neighboring British School Libraries continue to amaze me.  If you think that you need a book that is not in one of these three excellent libraries, it is probably the first sign of a much deeper problem with your own research model.  I might be kidding, but it is hard to say.

I also was supported by a good group of colleagues in the new director, Jack Davis, who generously gave me time off to pursue my own research, in the Mellon Professor, John Oakley, who welcomed my onto his flawlessly organized trips and encouraged my regular contributions, and the two Whitehead Professors, Kirk Ormand and Barbara Barletta.  Chuck Jones at the Blegen consistently impressed me with just how much he understands about the digital media and Maria Georgopoulou at the Gennadius gave me a venue to pursue and present my research.  The staff at Loring Hall made the American School a welcoming place to call home and patiently saw to the slow improvement of my Greek.

The other people that I need to thank here are all those back at the University of North Dakota who allowed me to take advantage of this year away.  My colleagues in the Department of History kept me in the loop on things.  More importantly, however, my wife made my stay here possible with her patient support.

I leave for Cyprus tomorrow and the beginning of the PKAP season.  This will bring some exciting changes to this blog! So stay tuned even as I end one thing and begin something else...

Images from the History of the University of North Dakota

Steven Robinson has generously provided me with some photos take by his father Elwyn B. Robinson.  Those included here were primarily taken by him in 1947 (with exception of the photograph with Dr. Robinson in it!).  

Elwyn Robinson was an avid photographer (as was Robert Wilkins), and he came by this honestly as his father owned a professional photography studio in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. In his autobiography you can feel his excitement in his description of purchasing the camera presumably responsible for these photographs in 1947:

"On May 8 I had purchased a second-hand Leica, a model IIIb manufactured before the war, paying $175.00 for the camera, case, four filters, and a sunshade. I was much excited to have one of the famous German-made cameras with an Elmar f 3.5 lens and a focal plane shutter with speeds from one second to 1/1000 of a second. In June I bought a copy of the Leica Manual by Morgan, Lester, and others, and spent a good deal of time with it. I must have taken a lot of pictures that summer in the enthusiasm of having a fine camera. I can't remember what I did with my Argus AF, but looking back I expect that I could have taken as good pictures with that $15.00 camera as I could with the Leica. I soon devised a way I could use the Leica lens with the Argus enlarger. I owned the Leica until the 1970's when I sold the Leica to a collector for almost as much as I had paid for it. I devised a system for saving and filing the films that I took, numbering and dating them. They were finally thrown out in preparation for the move to Tufte Manor."

His photographs capture life in Grand Forks in the late 1940s and some of the character of the figures that populate Geiger's history of the University and my own meager offering in the history of the department.  I particularly like the photograph of Dean Bek who must have died less than a year after this photograph was taken.  Bek did much to see the University through the Depression and the Second World War and his famous address to President West and the faculty in 1944 captures the optimism of the post war university:

“The University is coming out of the blight and fog of depression. A new day is dawning. The depression did some terrible things to us… Before the university was hamstrung by insufficient funds it had an enviable reputation among sister institutions…” (“Remarks of Dean W.G. Bek at the Faculty Meeting of the University of September 23, 1944,” Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection. William Bek Papers. Collection #120, file 1. Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.)

George Wheeler longtime head of the Biology Department and Famous Friend of Orin G. Libby.  He served with Libby and Gillette on the committee that recommended the appointment of John C. West as University president.  He was known to represent the old guard well into the 1960s when he resisted the idea of rotating department chairs introduced by President George Starcher.

Robert Wilkins longtime member of the Department of History

Arleigh Lincoln (Sociology) and daughter Ann. The Lincolns lived at the SW corner of the intersection of Hamline & 5th Ave N. 

 
Francis Butler (founder of the Butler Construction Co)  who lived in the second house to the south of 425 Princeton

Elwyn Robinson with  Gordon

Dean Thormosgaard (Law)

Dean Bek

Friday Quick Hits and Varia

Some quicker quick hits:

• Cyril Mango's lecture, "Imaging Constantinople", here in Athens was very well-attended.  Cotsen Hall was packed!  He imagined Middle Byzantine Constantinople to be much less monumental than the Constantinople of Justinian's time.  Sounds like discontinuity...
• The symposium celebrating Mango's 80th birthday picked up on some of these themes particularly Anne McCabe's discussion of the Byzantine remains from the Athenian Agora.  Of particular notes was Erkki Sironen's discussion of verse inscriptions from the Late Antique and Early Byzantine period in Athens.  His volume of Inscriptiones Graecae is to appear by the end of this year and will supercede his presently invaluable Helsinki dissertation: The late Roman and early Byzantine inscriptions of Athens and Attica.
• An interesting preview of the new Acropolis Museum done on the BBC.  Word on the street here is that none of the considerable remains of the Christian Parthenon will be displayed inside the new museum including the considerable and important fragments of the church's ambo.  This seems hard to believe as it represents such an important piece in any argument for the continuity of Greek culture from antiquity through Christian times.  It is particularly surprising since there is so much interest at present in Hellenism in Byzantium (e.g. see "A Heretical (Orthodox) History of the Parthenon" as a preview of Kaldellis forthcoming book: The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)., also Writing off the Wall: Transcription as Resistance).
• IV International Cyprological Congress was two weeks ago in Nicosia.  I forgot the blog about it!  I did not attend, but everyone who did has reported that is was both well-organized and intellectually productive.  Here's a link to the program and abstracts.

Two random links:

• I am looking forward to reading newly released The Programming Historian by William J. Turkel & Alan MacEachern.
• And I enjoyed Natalie Zemon Davis's reading of Michel de Certeau in the New York Review of books, "The Quest of Michel de Certeau".

A Rambling about Survey from a Regional Perspective

A very recent article in the Journal of Archaeological Research (S. A. Kowalewski, "Regional Settlement Pattern Studies," JAR 16 (2008), 225-285) offers another in a recent spate of critiques of intensive survey in the Eastern Mediterranean (and in Greece, in particular).  Kowalewski's general treatment of regional settlement archaeology is an interesting read and brings together examples around the world demonstrating how settlement archaeology is indeed a global paradigm for understanding human behavior in space. 

He singles out Mediterranean archaeology for particular criticism, however, pointing out that most Mediterranean projects do not cover sufficient territory to address questions at a regional scale.  Drawing on definitions of regions developed in the discipline of geography, Kowalewski suggests that the smallest possible unit of study capable of providing useful conclusions regarding regional settlement is 150-250 sq. km (p. 257).  As in his earlier publications (most notably Kowalewski and S. K. Fish eds., The Archaeology of Regions: The Case for Full Coverage Survey. Clinton Corners, NY 2008 (originally Washington, D.C. 1990)) he recommends full coverage survey rather than employing any kind of regional sampling model.  Thus Kowalewski singled out projects like the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project for particular criticism:

"The Sydney Cyprus project spent five field seasons walking fields at hand-holding spacing, in 50 m transects 500 m apart, for 6.5 km sq., only 10% of the target region, which was small anyway.  The well-executed color maps still look like the world as seen through prison bars.  The data are not adequate for settlement pattern analysis; the surveys are actually something else, perhaps what Bintliff revealing terms "surface artifact survey." (p. 250)

Blanton offered a similar critique of Mediterranean Survey in his now famous "Mediterranean Myopia" article (R.E. Blanton, Antiquity 75 (2001), 627-629).  Both Blanton and Kowalewski's arguments, however, fail to account for the contributions of Mediterranean survey toward the history of settlement in the region (many of which were summarized in the M. Galaty, "European Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?" JAR 13 (2005) 291-363).  Indeed, the contributions of any one project might appear meager, the aggregate accomplishments of Mediterranean survey are impressive by any standard.

More importantly, the criticism of Blanton and Kowalewski are fundamentally incompatible with the kinds of surveys possible in places like Greece today.  Most survey projects find themselves restricted by limitations imposed by host countries (both in terms of time and area covered), the rapidly expanding and widespread rate of development, and the expense of doing fieldwork in Europe.  At the same time, the intensity of Mediterranean survey exceeds that of the kinds of regional surveys proposed by Kowalewski in part because regional studies in the Mediterranean (and in Greece in particular) operates in a discourse dominated by longstanding, large-scale excavation.  This creates a very particular set of expectations for survey projects by demanding very high degrees of chronological, spatial, and functional precision (i.e. like one finds in an excavation); see for example D. Haggis's review of M. Cosmopoulos, The Rural History of Ancient Greek States: The Oropos Survey Project in the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA 107 (2003), 305-307) for an interesting example of the influence of excavation on survey in Greece.  These demands for precision fueled a particularly active discussion over the nature, notion, and definition of the site in the Mediterranean world.  The slippery definition of site in a Mediterranean context and the continuing challenge in assigning a clear functional component to most agglomerations of pottery in the landscape has pushed regional survey projects to engage in somewhat different paradigms than those offered by "regional settlement archaeology".  Thus scatters of ceramic material in the Greek landscape are more likely to represent concentrations of particular kinds of resources at a particular place and provide insights into the complex network of economic, social, and even political processes that made such concentrations of material possible. 

Paradigms that understand regions as networks of interaction (see for example Horden and Purcell's treatment of the Mediterranean) rather than geographically bound places in the landscape tend to privilege robust assemblages of material (namely pottery) derived from the increasingly narrow windows available for the study of the Mediterranean landscapes.  Mediterranean survey's deft adjustment to a peculiar set of practical and discursive conditions has pushed increasingly for cooperation and comparability between projects that employ similar degrees of methodological sophistication (see for example, the S. Alcock and J. Cherry, Side-by-side survey : comparative regional studies in the Mediterranean World).  Survey projects in the Mediterranean emerge as methodologically-defined windows into the material culture of place and appreciated the wide variation of scales at which interaction occurs in the landscape.  While recent challenges to the notion of the site has eroded the kind of clear functional assessment of the landscape at a chronological scale suitable for traditional historical analysis, it has privileged approaches that recognize the variation within survey assemblages as an important indicator of the vitality of larger networks of regional interaction.  Thus the kinds of regions identified by Kowaleswki (and others), which are external to the methods employed by archaeological survey, have given way to networks of interaction across space that are fundamentally tied to the archaeological methodology.  In a larger perspective it seems possible that survey archaeology in the Mediterranean represents a significant example of bridging the kind of mid-range theory that has become a kind of holy grail for processual and post-processual archaeologists alike.

PKAP Site Visits

One week before I leave for Cyprus and I am beginning to prepare for the upcoming season in earnest now.  In particular, I've been preparing material for our site visits with students.

Site visits are an integral part of our season at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.  Visiting a while range of archaeological sites -- from prehistoric to modern -- helps familiarize the students with the impressive array of archaeological material present on the island and often begins the process of creating a body of comparanda (objects of comparison) for helping us to understand our site.  We also work with the students on how to "read" an archaeological site and encourage them to formulate and address questions that put the site into a historical, archaeological, and environmental context.  This can be a bit tricky, of course, as the student volunteers on PKAP range from relatively experienced archaeologists to almost totally inexperienced undergraduates.  So, we attempt to frame our site visits in a way that will appeal to the entire range of students.  (You can see more about our site visits in the Emerging Cypriot short entitled "Sightseeing")

This year in order to focus our discussion of the various sites that we will visit, we're including three "site visit questions" on our handouts.  I've been working on them this week and include a sampling here (type-os and all!):

Paphos Site Visit Questions

1) Mosaic floors are an important, if complex, source for the cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean. What do these floors tell us about the people who lived and visited these fancy buildings?

2) Scholars have long sought to understand the use of rooms in houses as a key to understanding social organization. In Paphos, you can see several relatively well-preserved examples of Roman and Late Roman domestic space. What conclusions can you draw regarding the function of houses in the Roman and Late Roman period? What arguments can you make regarding the function of particular rooms in these houses?

3) The site of Paphos was an important place on the island of Cyprus for over 1000 years. What made this site so important? What advantages did it have compared to other sites on the island? In what ways was it similar to other Hellenistic and Roman sites on Cyprus?

Ay. Neophytos Site Visit Questions:

1) Examine the various phases of wall painting in the Enkleistra. What are the basic differences between earlier and later wall painting?

2) What are the major themes in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine wall painting? What is the significance of these themes in their architectural context? Can you recognize any pattern? What is the goal of Byzantine wall painting?

2) The Enkleistra represents an extreme in the practices of Byzantine monasticism. What does such an extreme say about the values of this strain of Byzantine Christianity? Ay. Neophytos became a popular figure even during his lifetime. What does it say about the values 12th and 13th century society in Cyprus society more broadly?

Ay. Georgios Site Visit Questions

1) The excavated churches at Ay. Georgios are the most impressive remains from the site. What can these buildings tell us about the other, unexcavated, components of the settlement at this site?

2) Unlike many larger sites where the urban centers have been excavated, only a small part of the remains have been excavated at Ay. Georgios. Looking at the remains present around the large Basilica A, what are the potential functions of these spaces? How do they relate both spatially and functionally to the Basilica?

3) Compare the topography and remains at Ay. Georgios to the site at Pyla-Koutsopetria. How are these sites similar? How are they different?

Kourion Site Visit Questions

1) At Kourion you can get a clear sense of the urban area of a Roman site and at least some idea of how it developed over time. What kinds of buildings clustered around the main forum? What do these buildings have in common and what does it say about the site through antiquity?

2) As a coastal site it has certain similarities to other coastal sites that we have (and will) visit including (albeit distantly) Pyla-Koutsopetria. What the similarities and differences between the site of Kourion and others that we know? How does this make it unique? Can we generalize about coastal sites on Cyprus?

3) The House of the Gladiators and the House of Eustolios represent another pair of Roman houses on Cyprus. Like at Paphos, these houses can tell us some thing about both their owners and what Roman Cypriots regarded as important. Produce an informal list of the things common to these houses. How are they different from the way modern Americans decorate their homes?

Amathus Site Visit Questions

1) Like Kourion, Amathus features a well-preserved paved forum/agora area surrounded by public structures. Judging from the preserved remains at the site, what features are the most commonly encountered in the public space of the city?

2) The sanctuary on the acropolis is one of the rare sites on Cyprus where the pagan and Christian sanctuaries are directly superimposed upon one another. How did the Early Christian basilica incorporate or erase the earlier sanctuary? What does this tell us about Cypriot Christianity at Amathus and specifically on the acropolis there?

3) The site of Amathus was situated to take advantage of several natural features. How did the residents of the site shape their environment to take the best advantage of the natural landscape and resources?

Angeloktiste Site Visit Questions

1) Walking around the outside of this church, how can you tell the different phases of construction? How many phases can you recognize? Can you assign them dates relative to one another – earliest to most recent?

2) The apse mosaic is particularly important in the history of Byzantine art. How is it similar to other mosaics that we have seen from a slightly earlier period (e.g. Paphos or Kourion)? How is it different?

3) The church at Kiti stands amidst a modern village. What does its existence say about this area in antiquity and after?

Zygi Site Visit Questions

1) The site of Zygi appears along an otherwise unexceptional stretch of Cypriot coastline. What environmental advantages does the site of Zygi have? Why would there be a coastal site here?

2) The nature of Zygi-Petrini as a “self-excavating sites” provides an profile view of an abandoned site and a window into the site’s stratigraphy. What can we say about the processes that created the site? Are their specific events that appear in the archaeological remains that are invisible in thoroughly excavated and cleaned sites?

3) The modern village of Zygi provides an intriguing point of comparison for the nearby ancient site. How does one go about comparing ancient and modern sites on Cyprus? What historical events must a scholar recognize in order to make valid or useful comparisons?

Christian Spolia in Medieval Greece

The study of spolia in a Medieval context is certainly not new and it has received particular intensive attention in the last few years.  Most scholars, however, have focused on the use of Ancient spolia in a Medieval context and focused on monuments like the 9th-century Panayia at Skripou (see in particular A. Papalexandrou, The church of the Virgin of Skripou : architecture, sculpture and inscriptions in ninth-century Byzantium (Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton University, 1998)) or, here in Athens, the Little Metropolis.  One almost wonders whether this emphasis on the use of Classical stones represents a lingering apologia for Medieval period monuments -- an effort to prove that even the Byzantines recognized the importance of Classical Antiquity or reinforces the timeless aesthetic of Classical monuments or an abiding sense of continuity with the Classical past.

We know, however, that by far the largest class of spolia reused in Byzantine monuments did not date from antiquity, but rather the Early Christian period.  Columns, column capitals, marble chancel barriers, inscriptions, even mosaic decoration complemented obvious efforts to mark the place of earlier buildings in the landscape. 

Two relatively recent works highlight the significance of studying this Christian spolia in a Medieval context. L. Nixon's Making a Landscape Sacred: Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete. (Oxford 2006) (for more on this book see my: Sacred Landscapes in Crete and the Corinthia) focuses some attention on the reuse of Early Christian spolia in Venetian era buildings in Crete.  She argues:

"I suggest that what we have in Venetian Sphakia is the expression of a particular chronology of desire, made material and visible through the incorporation of earlier Christian elements, especially in the case of he churches built over basilicas, but also in the churches which include palaeo-Christian spolia. The desired chronology is one that links local Orthodox Christianity with an earlier authentic and original Christian presence, ruined but not destroyed (according to local tradition) by the Arabs. The placement of new churches over basilica sanctuaries shows a precise awareness of the older structures, and a desire to bind two points in time into one authoritative chronology." (p. 72)

Oddly, she over looks the work of John Xenos (for more on him see: To Crete with John Xenos) who many centuries earlier on Crete showed a similar sensitivity to reconfirming the Christian landscape of the island.  It can perhaps be added to her argument that this was not only building physical continuity with Early Christian remains on the island, but also in practice by re-performing deeds documented in the texts of their Byzantine predecessors. 

Another recent article shines valuable light on this matter as well.  B. Kiilerich, "Making Sense of the Spolia in the Little Metropolis," Arte Medievale 4 (2005), 95-114 not only offers a relatively radical re-dating of this building, but also notes the important role of Christian spolia in a building perhaps better known for its wide array of ancient stones.  The basis for redating the building to the 16th century is an inscription built into the church but recorded by Kyriakos of Ancona among stones said to be near the agora.  Kyriakos was unlikely to record an inscription built into a church without noting the church and its wide array of other spolia suggesting that the building was, in fact, not built until after his visit to Athens in 1436.  Kiilerich argues fairly convincingly for a date in the 1450s after the city had fallen to the Ottomans.

More interesting for a discussion of spolia, however, is her idea that the church sought to integrate both pagan and Christian spolia into a monument as a mark of a distinct Byzantine and Greek identity.  Her final paragraph summarizes this nicely:

"The most prevalent sign on the spoIia is the cross. It is presented more than fifty times on the exterior of the church, and on the northern wall, inscribes itself upon a particular large number of ancient and medieval reliefs. In this context the many crosses - some of which were probably inserted into the ancient images long before the stones were reused in the church - were hardIy due to superstitious minds fearing pagan imagery; rather, they were aimed at the Ottomans as a visual manifestation of religious identity, The Little Metropolis was a monument to Athens and the Orthodox faith in the form of a church that displayed tangible physical evidence of Athens' Byzantine and antique culture. The spolia with the dominant sign of the cross were markers of identity, visual reminders of Christianity, the auctoritas of which was rooted in antiquity." (p. 111)

Both Nixon and Kiilerich demonstrate a willingness to see spolia in a Medieval context as capable of evoking an Early Christian past as much as what scholars would see as an ancient one.  Kiilerich in particular is even willing to see pagan spolia in a Medieval context noting that some of the material used in the Little Metropolis may have had crosses already inscribed in it from previous reuse.  Thus, some ancient spolia might not necessarily function to evoke a Classical past that at times seems to be of more interest to contemporary archaeologists and historian than to Medieval Greeks who reused the stones. 

Modern Jeremiahs

Since Monday has somehow become my North Dakota day , it seems appropriate to give a short plug for Mark Jendrysik's new book: Modern Jeremiahs: Contemporary Visions of America's Decline.  He's the head of the Political Science Department at UND, a PKAP fan, and a good buddy. 

The book develops further ideas that he introduced in an important 2002 article in the Journal of Popular Culture ("The Modern Jeremiad: Bloom, Bennett, and Bork on American Decline," JPC 36 (2002), 361-383).  In this article, Jendrysik defined the modern character of the longstanding genre of the Jeremiad as manifest in works of William Bennett, Robert Bork, and Allan Bloom.  He draws examples from their popular and influential books dating from the late 1980 to the late 1990s (The Closing of the American Mind, Slouching toward Gomorrah, The De-Valuing of America, and The Death of Outrage).  These books attacked in a rather formulaic way the excesses of American culture and attributed the decline of American society to the expanding influence of relativism, the expanding power of external influences, and the lack of moral and social discipline of the masses.  Rather than critiquing these propositions based on their internal logic, philosophical rigor, or historical accuracy, Jendrysik places these texts in the historical context of the rhetorical Jeremiah who is braced between wanting his audience to "repent!" and needing conditions to get worse to prove the fundamental accuracy of their claims.

You can get it from Amazon, and I have been told that it makes a great Mother's or Father's Day gift!