Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting: The Corinthian Countryside at the AIA

The Archaeological Institute of American released it preliminary schedule of papers yesterday.  I haven't had a chance to look carefully at all the panels, but I did discover that our paper was accepted.  Here is our abstract:

Three New Sites in the Corinthian Countryside
William R. Caraher (University of North Dakota) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College)

The nature and function of rural towers in the Greek countryside has long interested scholars of the Classical and Hellenistic period.  Scholarship has particularly focused on the function of towers in Attica, Boeotia, the Argolid, and the islands.  Proposed functions for these building range from purely agricultural to exclusively military, as well as combinations of the two.

The Corinthia has largely been ignored in this debate.  A recent comprehensive article by Morris and Papadopoulos, for example, cites no examples of rural towers from the Corinthia.  Recent work in the Eastern Corinthia, however, has produced several new sites that can be read along side a small corpus of known buildings to contribute to how we understand both the countryside of the Corinthia and Greek rural architecture more broadly.

This paper will focus on three sites in the immediate vicinity of Lychnari bay in the Eastern Corinthia.  In 2003 and 2008, a small team from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey documented two Late Classical to Hellenistic towers and a rubble fortification.  In doing so, we integrated careful topographic study, intensive survey and architectural analysis in order to bring these three unpublished sites in the Corinthia into the ongoing discussion of rural sites in the Greek countryside.  We argue in this paper that while the position of these sites in the local topography emphasizes their military function, the ceramic material and architecture of these buildings requires a more dynamic reading of the place of these structures in the Corinthian landscape. 

Some of the material in this paper will be familiar to regular readers of this blog.  The paper will include the results of what was probably the most fun "micro" field season that I have had for years: all of the archaeology (long hikes, good conversation, spectacular views, nice finds, good architecture, interesting landscape, focuses research questions) and none of the hassle (logistics, crazy undergraduates/graduate students, computer problems, bizarre meetings, endless arguments, complicated plans).  I  recorded a good bit of information regarding our work in a series of posts on the Corinthian Countryside in the late summer and fall:

New Research on the Corinthian Countryside: Vayia Microregion
The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia
The Corinthian Countryside: Distributional Data from the Site of Ano Vayia
The Corinthian Countryside: The Lychnari Tower
The Corinthian Countryside: The Passes of the Eastern Corinthia
The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia
The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology
The Corinthian Countryside: Some More Contemporary Thoughts

Here's the time and place of our session.  The panel looks fairly cohesive for the notoriously random "open sessions" at the AIA:

Session: 1F: Archaeological Field Work in Mediterranean 

Timeslot: Friday, January 9, 8:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Session Papers
1.     Priniatikos Pyrgos and the Classical Period in East Crete
Brice Erickson, University of California at Santa Barbara
2.     Survey of the Bouro--Kastri Peninsula in the Southern Karystia, Euboea, Greece
Jere M. Wickens Lawrence University
3.     Explorations around Karpathos 1923 and 2008
D. J. Ian Begg, Trent University and Michael Nelson, Queens College, City University of New York
4.     Three New Sites in the Corinthian Countryside
William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota and David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College
5.     The Albanian Coastal Survey: 2007-8 Campaigns
Jeffrey G. Royal, Archaeological Director, RPM Nautical Foundation
6.     Archaic Olive Oil Production at Azoria in Eastern Crete
Donald C. Haggis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Margaret S. Mook, Iowa State University C. Margaret Scarry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
7.     A Preliminary Study of Two Early Archaic Wrecks at Kekova Adası and Kepçe Burnu, Turkey
Elizabeth S. Greene, Brock University and Justin Leidwanger, University of Pennsylvania

I'd be remiss not to note a another paper that touches on the Eastern Corinthia:

Session: 3C: Mycenaean Periphery
Timeslot: Friday, January 9, 1:30 AM - 4:30 AM

3.     The Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project (SHARP): A Second Season at Mycenaean Kalamianos
Thomas F. Tartaron, University of Pennsylvania and Daniel J. Pullen, Florida State University

And a poster from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project:

Session: 2I: Poster Session
Timeslot: Friday, January 9, 11:15 AM - 3:00 PM

11. The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: Documenting the Experience of Archaeology
R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Brandon Olson, Penn State University, and Michael Brown, University of Edinburgh

It will take some time to digest the program and make decisions on where to be when.  So, stay tuned!

Comments

[Kostis Kourelis]

I'm psyched!!!