The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Pagans and Christians in the Journal of Late Antiquity

The newest number of the Journal of Late Antiquity has hit newstands (only if you live in a very dorky community) or, better, the RSS feed. This is only the second year of this ambitious new journal's existence, and as the only major English language journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity, I've looked to it with a particularly critical eye. It's clear that the editors have sought papers from both established scholars and "up-and-coming" graduate students and recent Ph.D.s as well as the representing the Eastern and Wester halves of the Roman Empire. This is a good sign. The journal also seems to have a distinctly international character representing well the common ground within the international field of Late Antique Studies.

The current number has two articles that immediately caught my eye. First, L. Foschia offers a short article entitled: "The Preservation, Restoration, and (Re)construction of Pagan Cult Places in Late Antiquity, with Particular Attention to Mainland Greece (Fourth-Fifth Centuries)". Foschia argues that the 4th and 5th century saw continued attention to pagan cult places in Greece and drew upon evidence from Argos, Athens, and Kenchreai, the Port of Corinth. At each site, there was evidence for some significant reconstruction of a pagan cult site. This is unlikely to surprise scholars of Late Roman Greece, but is nevertheless a good reminder that some form of large scale, perhaps even institutional, support for paganism persisted into 5th century. The late (and getting later) date of many Early Christian basilicas in Greece reflects that rather belated shift of resources from the sphere of pagan (and in some of the examples used by Foschia, civic) monumental architecture to Christian architecture. The biggest weakness of this paper (which, unfortunately has many small issues that one might hope not to see in a top tier scholarly journal) is the absence of many examples that show how the practice of paganism in Greece represented a broad continuum of behavior from formal cult practices (at major sites) to informal, highly ambivalent practices, as seen in late cave sanctuaries or places like the Fountain of the Lamps in Corinth (see, in particular, the work of Tim Gregory, Richard Rothaus, and Frank Trombley here) . The evidence from many pagan sites in Greece suggest that the maintenance of more monumental expressions of cult practice may have been the manifestation of something far more "Late Antique" in character than earlier civic or even imperial supported pagan cults. This distinction is important because it understands "late" paganism as part of the same cultural milieu as "early" Christianity and insists that the public expression of religious practice, ritual, and identity is meaningless outside of a view of Greek (or Late Antique) society that does not include all shades of pagans and Christians.

The second article worth reading is (veteran blogger) Troels Myrup Kristensen's, "Embodied Images: Christian Responses and Destruction in Late Antique Egypt". His article looks at the relationship between attacks on pagan images (and sometimes pagans themselves!) and Christian (and more broadly Late Antique) ideas of the body. It's a thought provoking read, and contributes to the discussion of Christianization as a profoundly "embodied" phenomenon which saw its roots in P. Browns, Body and Society. Troels does good job of thinking about how bodies worked in the context of both Egyptian monasticism and, to a less extent, Early Christianity and Late Paganism. The only reservation that I had when reading his article was how he dated some of the episodes of destruction to Late Antiquity. The archaeologist in me (and someone who has periodically pondered the seemingly ritual destruction of statues in Greece) has confronted how difficult it is to date episodes of ritual destruction. This is particularly important, as in Egypt (like Greece) the centuries long presence of a powerful and equally iconoclastic Muslim population expands the potential context for ritual destruction of ancient images up until almost the present day. As I know that Troels sometimes reads this blog, I'd love to understand more fully how he dates his destroyed statues to the impulses of such Late Antique Christians as Shenoute rather than later Christian or Muslim practices.

  

City, Village, Monastery Podcasts from the Modern Greek Studies Association Meeting

I've posted podcasts from our panel at the Modern Greek Studies Association Meeting at our Squinch page. Since I haven't blogged about Squinch much lately, it's probably useful to remind my readers that it is the official website of the Archaeology of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of America. We post our meeting minutes there, maintain (or not) a very out of date membership list, and post other bits of interesting new for interest group members. The most valuable thing about the site, however, is a little section of podcasts.

We could do better with these. In fact, since our interest group was founded, we have organized panels at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America three times (counting this coming year), at the Byzantine Studies Conference (in 2007), and now at the MGSA meeting, but have only prepared podcasts for a few of these events. Moreover, members of the interest group have undoubtedly given numerous lectures around the world and only one, Timothy Gregory's lecture at the Gennadius Library in 2008 appears on the page.

As the acting web master for Squinch and the Medieval and Post-Medieval Interest Group, I'd encourage any member who gives a public talk to consider recording it and sending it along so that we can continue to expand our collection of podcasts. The only equipment that you need is a little hand held recorder (generally costing less than $80). I generally edit the podcasts using Audacity, a free audio editing program that is nearly intuitive to use.

For those of you too busy to follow the link to the podcasts in this blog post, I've made the talks available here:

1. Athens in the 19th Century: Archaeological Landscapes and Competing Pasts
Effie Athanassopoulos, University of Nebrask-Lincoln
Abstract

2. Ancient Corinth from the Ottoman Empire to the Archaeologists
Amelia Brown, Princeton University
Abstract

3. Between Sea and Mountain: The Archaeology of a 20th-Century ‘Small World’ in the Upland Basins of the Southeastern Korinthia
William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota, David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College, Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia
Abstract

4. The Sacred Grip: Landscape, Art and Architecture in Mount Menoikeion (19th-20th Centuries)
Nikolas Bakirtzis, The Cyprus Institute, Kostis Kourelis Franklin and Marshall College, and Matthew Milliner, Princeton University
Abstract

Next time you give a talk some place, consider recording it and passing it along to me to post at the Squinch website!

Modern Greek Studies Association in Vancouver

I attended the Modern Greek Studies Association conference in Vancouver, B.C. over the last few days. It was a great show. Our panel on the archaeology of modern Greece was sparsely attended, but the discussion was vigorous and the feedback good. It was great to reconnect with Effie Athanassopoulos, Amelia Brown, and Kostis Kourelis. It was also fun to meet Matthew Milliner, blogger at millinerd.com. and northamericanchurches which I have now happily added to my delicious blogroll and will link to regularly. (His Wordless Wednesday feature is the kind of alliterative brilliance that I can truly appreciate).

Here's a link to our paper. My understanding is that Kostis Kourelis has recorded the session and I hope to make these links to our papers as MP3s available soon. As a preview, the papers captured the variety of methods employed to come to grips with modern Greece with an archaeologist's tools. These methods ranged from diligent work in paper archives to field work rooted in the best practices of processualism to post-processual practices that sought to reconcile the varieties of relationships and experiences recoverable within the modern landscape. What was perhaps striking is that none of our methods were particular to the Greek national experience. This is perhaps good in that it avoids reifying age old arguments for Greek exceptionalism (rooted in the archaeological practices derived in large part from the study of ancient Greece), but it was a bit disappointing as well in that the unique history of Greek archaeology and its institutions must contribute more than just a particularly well-curated body of knowledge, but also distinctive ways of understanding the landscape, the place, and the people.   

Vancouver was a great city. The trip to the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology was a particular highlight. Much like our panel and the project of archaeology more generally, this dramatic building sought to wrap the material culture of the first nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest in a modern setting. The interplay between the elaborately carved, yet functional house posts and totem polls and the austere economy of the poured concrete building made obvious the act of translation performed at the museum. The artifacts of the various local tribes found themselves recontextualized within the museum of the colonizer. The relationship between the vertical lines of the museum and the dimensions and functions of the architectural fragments and objects housed within it proved that some cross-cultural understanding is possible, and while it would be neither precise nor value free, it could at least be dramatic and emotionally evocative.

  

The scenery around Vancouver was simply ridiculous. The rain, the coastline, the diversity of the city's neighborhoods, and the company made the entire experience memorable (and how often can we say that about an academic conference?).

More on the Post-Classical Parthenon

If you want more traffic to your archaeology blog, just post with the words Acropolis, Parthenon, or Athens in the title!  I posted a couple of weeks ago on what I termed the "destructive power" of the Athenian Acropolis and declared it to be one of the most unapologetically modern of all ancient monuments.

This past week, while frantically preparing for classes, I used my down time to read A. Kaldellis new little book on the Christian Parthenon.  As per my usual practice, I am not going to review this book.  And in the interest of full disclosure, he allowed me to read an early draft of his manuscript.  The book is an exciting one.  Kaldellis combs the difficult and dispersed Byzantine sources for the Parthenon and argues (among other things) that the Parthenon was more important as a church than it ever was as an ancient temple.  Dedicated to the Mother of God, the temple was the Cathedral of Athens, an important pilgrimage site, and the location of a persistent miracle involving some kind of mysterious light.

I'll make three short observations about this book and how his thinking about Byzantine views of antiquity is so enriching:

1. He is subtle in his argument, but he suggests that some of the Parthenon's modern fame is rooted in its Byzantine renown. While the lines of transmission can not be precisely defined, the long Frankish occupation of Athens and some continuity of practice between the Frankish and Byzantine period would have exposed the Crusaders to the temple's reputation as a church.  The Western suppression of the Byzantine period at the Parthenon, then, not only physically eliminated and historically vilified the Byzantine contributions to the building itself, but overwrote the Byzantine source for the temple's architectural and historical significance.  After all, how could the "Oriental" Byzantine have appreciated the Classical glory of the Parthenon?  This argument adds sting to Kaldellis observations "the Byzantines had done far less damage to the monument than had Elgin and the Venetians" (p. 4). 

2. He problematizes the Byzantine relationship to the past in a far more complex way than previous scholarship.  In doing so, he offers the suggestion that spread and importance of the cult of the Panagia Atheniotissa represented a sublimated knowledge of the city's glorious Classical past as embodied in the Parthenon which could not be expressed within the rhetorical and intellectual structures of Christian Byzantine rhetoric or, perhaps, even Byzantine society more broadly (p. 175).  This Freudian reading of the deep conflict between the pagan Classical past and the Byzantine present explain the emergence of the Parthenon as an important site by representing it as the manifestation of suppressed desire.  In other words, the Parthenon and the Classical past of Greece continued to function in societies unconscious (especially among the Byzantine intellectual elite).  It's a small leap to understand the historical and archaeological character of Greek dream life in the same way (for more on that see here and here).  The suppressed wish for a glorious Classical past (especially during challenging times faced by bishops like Michael Choniates) finds expression through the exaltation of the Byzantine temple.

3. For a while, I was looking serious at Byzantine saints lives from Greece and I was told, perhaps flippantly, by a senior archaeologist that he thought these texts had little value and were, more or less, all the same. While this did not cause me to give up on them entirely, it probably discouraged me from thinking that there would be much potential in attempting to bring together Byzantine hagiography (or Byzantine texts more broadly) and the systematic archaeology of the Byzantine period.  Kaldellis's work is a great model for any efforts in that directions and suggests that the integration of Byzantine texts and monuments is not only possible for Greece, but can be profitable.

Oh, one last thing in this non-review. Kaldellis prose is great.  He manages to combine analytical precision with an casual and readable diction.  A few of my colleagues can pull this off.  I can't.  I'm jealous.

Lakka Skoutara: The Survey

I've already blogged a bit about my collaboration with Tim Gregory, David Pettegrew, and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory in documenting the abandoned rural settlement of Lakka Skoutara (The Houses of Lakka Skoutara, Collapse, Provisional Discard, Construction in the Corinthia).  We conducted an intensive survey in this upland basin in 2002 and I've just begun to analyze the distribution pattern of material across the landscape there.  Since we only had about a week to do our survey at the site, we decided to sample the various parts of the basin so that we would capture the hillslopes, slope wash, the bottom of the basin and areas across the entire basin for east to west including fields in the immediate vicinity of the abandoned houses that David Pettegrew and I have so carefully documented.  In hindsight, I wish we had surveyed the entire area since the results of our survey were so interesting.

Daniel Pullen and Timothy Gregory read the ceramics from the site and the entire Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey helped out with the fieldwork.  The basin produced material from the Final Neolithic (ca. 3300-2500 B.C.) to the modern period with noticeable concentrations of material in the Roman, Medieval, and Early Modern periods.  In the maps below each dot represents a single artifact. 

The dates assigned to the various maps derive from the Chronotype dates and reflect the specificity with which our ceramicists could identify the individual artifacts.  The modern houses are represented by little dots and the larger black dots are threshing floors (alonia). The coloring of the survey units represents the total density of material present in each unit.

Final Neolithic

 
Final Neolithic to Early Helladic I

 
Early Bronze Age

Early Helladic I

Early Helladic II

Late Bronze Age

 

Archaic Period

Archaic to Classical

 
Archaic to Hellenistic

 
Early Roman

Roman

 
Late Roman

Roman to Medieval

 
Medieval

Late Medieval

Early Modern

Modern

 
Very Recent

It's clear, for example, that the prehistoric material clusters in a very different place than the highest density of ancient material (particularly the Roman material).  In contrast, the "Greek" period material and Roman period material cluster to the northeast of house 4.  Later, the Roman and Medieval material seems to concentrate in some of the same areas, particularly the units to the east of house 9.  These clusters of material suggesting some local continuity in occupation or activity.  For the material to cluster so relatively clearly in a small survey area was welcome and rather unexpected.  It will certainly make my job of writing up the distributional data from the survey easier.

Check back soon (maybe not today, though!) for more on Lakka Skoutara over the coming weeks.

The Medieval and Post Medieval Mediterranean at the 2010 Archaeological Institute of American Annual Meeting

We got the good news last week that the panel put together by Kostis Kourelis and Sharon Gerstel for the 2010 AIA Annual Meeting in Anaheim has been accepted.  The panel is titled First Out: Late Levels at Early Sites and will feature papers by Jack Davis, Kathleen Quinn, Anne McCabe, Adam Rabinowitz, Guy Sanders, and Tim Gregory and myself.  Here's a link to the abstracts and overview statement.

Tim Gregory and I plan to re-examine the data produced by the decades old Ohio Boeotia Project around the ancient city of Thisvi.  This survey data was initially analyzed in a series of publications in the 1980s.  Since that time, digital analysis tools have become considerably more powerful and there is a growing body of work in the region, particularly associated with the Cambridge Boeotia Project and its various spin-offs, that promises to add significance to any re-examination of the OBE results.  Returning to excavation and survey results -- so called legacy data -- has taken on new importance in recent years as excavation permits have become more difficult to acquire, a vigorous ethical discourse has put pressure on project directors to make unpublished finds available, and the digital archaeology "movement" has improved our ability to make published and unpublished data alike visible and accessible to the professional public.  A recent issue of the leading electronic journal in archaeology, Internet Archaeology, has dedicated an issue to the reanalysis of "legacy data" taking advantage of the intersection of digital distribution, new technologies, and the remarkable potential of the existing pool of archaeological data to inform contemporary research questions.  We hope our paper frames not only some of the methods and procedures at stake in the re-examination of survey data, but also makes the argument that this kind of secondary analysis marks the coming of age of intensive pedestrian survey.  It marks the potential of survey data to go beyond its applicability to narrowly defined research questions and to have the kind of enduring value that excavations have nurtured by long standing methods and carefully cultivated archival practices. 

Proving that survey data is available for re-analysis is absolutely critical for its persistence as an archaeological methodology in the Mediterranean.  And the recent transformation of post-Classical landscapes from spaces seen as stagnant and unchanging to dynamic "contingent" countrysides makes the study of the post-Classical world ideally suited as a test case.

Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium 2009

We heard this past week that the Modern Greek Studies Association accepted a panel coordinated by Kostis Kourelis and Effie Athanassopoulos under the auspices of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in the Mediterranean Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of America. 

The panel is entitled "From Town to Country: The Archaeology of Modern Greek Landscapes" and here's the description:

Since the birth of the nation-state, the identity of Modern Greece has been defined by its relationship to antiquity. The discipline of archaeology has, thus, played a central role in the construction of Greece, but only in so far as it concerns ancient periods (archaia). For Greece, the archaeology of the recent past is an etymological contradiction. Material culture dating to after 1850 is considered non-archaeological; it can be exported and traded freely. Archaeological studies on 19th- and 20th-century Greece are greatly lacking, leaving a huge disciplinary gap with Historical Archaeology, a discipline that flourishes in the United States.

This panel brings together recent work applying archaeological perspectives to the material culture of Modern Greece spanning a spectrum of ecological milieus from the metropolis, to the small town, the village, the monastery and the rural landscape. The theme that connects the individual papers is that of “landscape” approached through the lens of archaeology. Landscape as a concept refers to the external world mediated through subjective human experience. In archaeology, approaches to landscape have changed drastically over time, from economic and ecological perspectives of the 1960s to more recent post-modern views that focus on the social and symbolic construction of landscapes. In Greece, the field of landscape archaeology has grown out of the tradition of archaeological regional surveys, introduced by American scholars during the 1950s.

The individual papers offer diverse perspectives and examine a wide variety of landscapes in the 19th and 20th century. The settings range from the urban space of 19th century Athens to the town of Corinth, to rural space in the upland basins of Corinthia, to monastic space in Mount Menoikeion in northern Greece, and to landscape features such as Mt. Pentadaktylos in Cyprus. Each paper applies a different methodological tactic. Some revisit older historical records, others collect new data or re-conceptualize physical relationships. Collectively, they represent the richness of a growing field. Susan Buck Sutton, who pioneered the study of the Modern Greek countryside and single-handedly developed the discipline of ethno-archaeology, has agreed to serve as the panel’s respondent.

The panel is sponsored by the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The Group consists of AIA members with an interest in the archaeology of post-classical Greece, and in promoting its understanding through various programs and publications.

Here are the papers (for full abstracts):

"Athens in the 19th Century: Archaeological Landscapes and Competing Pasts"
Effie Athanassopoulos (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

"Ancient Corinth from the Ottoman Empire to the Archaeologists"
Amelia R. Brown (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

"Between Sea and Mountain: The Archaeology of a 20th-Century “Small World” in he Upland Basins of the Southeastern Korinthia"
William R. Caraher (University of North Dakota)
David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College)
Timothy E. Gregory (Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia)
Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory (Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia)

"The Sacred Grip: Landscape, Art and Architecture in Mount Menoikeion (19th-20th Centuries)"
Nikolas Bakirtzis (The Cyprus Institute)
Kostis Kourelis (Connecticut College)
Matthew Milliner (Princeton University)

An Early Draft of an AIA Abstract

Lots going on this week!  If you're in Grand Forks -- and have dug yourself out of the snow -- come and check out my research talk at the Lecture Bowl at the Memorial Union at the University of North Dakota today at 12 pm. 

If not, here's part of my chaotic life: an abstract for next January's Archaeological Institute of America's meeting.  The plan is for a panel that looks at post-Classical levels at well-know ancient sites sponsored by our Medieval and Post-Medieval Interest Group of the AIA.  My paper will tweak that a bit by looking at data collected from a handful of small intensive survey projects and re-analyzing them in light of recent work on the post-Classical world and changes in the basic questions survey archaeology has proven adept at addressing.

New Views on Old Data
Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results After 30 Years

Intensive pedestrian surveys across Greece have vastly expanded our understanding of the Greek countryside, particularly for the post-Classical period.   Over the past 25 years, the publications of the so-called second-phase intensive survey projects have contributed to our understanding of a more prosperous Late Roman east and refined our view of the post-Classical settlement structures.  With these successes in mind, this paper will reexamine the results from several small-scale survey projects conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Boeotia and the Corinthia.  Using a series of case studies, this paper argues that there is much to be gained by returning to old survey data with an eye toward addressing recent questions regarding the post-Classical landscape.

The survey projects examined in this paper coincided with many of the early second-phase survey projects, like the Cambridge Boeotia Project and the Argolid Exploration Project, but were published earlier and in a less comprehensive way.   Returning to the material from these projects, in much the same way that archaeologists return to excavation material many years after its recovery and publication, both represents the coming of age of intensive survey and continues the reflexive trends in the study of survey material and data.  Re-examining the data and these projects’ underlying assumptions increases the transparency of these older efforts, enriches the pool of material available for the comparative study of the Greek countryside, and contributes to the way in which current survey projects collect and organize their data.

Phi Alpha Theta Conference and Other Fun Stuff

If you are in the Grand Forks area, stop by the Red River Valley History Conference today at the Memorial Union at the University of North Dakota.  In particular, stop by my panel at 9:30 am in Medora Room 209.

Historical Idealism & Religion
Dr. W. Caraher, Commentator,
Memorial Union Medora Room 209     

"Croce and Collingwood: Continuities in Idealism"
Dalton Little,University of North Dakota

"A Late Antique Saint"
Kathryn A. Hughes Nedegaard
University of North Dakota    

“Standard of Salvation: The Christian’s Use of Greco-Roman Literary Genre”
Paul Ferderer, University of North Dakota

______________________

And stick around for the other panels and our keynote speaker:  Dr. James Stewart: "The Old Slavery and the New: History, Memory and the Challenges of Human Trafficking"

A few other fun quick hits:

• Some interesting discussion over that Teaching Thursday.  Check it out and leave a comment!
• This is interesting and cool.
• This will be fun to follow.

Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Lots of interesting and news worthy things this week:

• Sad news about Tom Clifford's passing.  He was President of the University of North Dakota from 1971 to 1992.  Dan Rice's book is the best treatment of his term as President.  The Alumni association has put up a nice biography and interactive space.
• Congratulations to Kostis Kourelis and all the contributors for the publication of Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material Culture  in the New Griffon publication series of the Gennadius Library at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. This books came out of a panel held at the 2007 Archaeological Institute of America meetings under the banner of the Archaeology of the Medieval and Post Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group.
• An interesting review and response to Y. Hamilakis' book, The Nation and Its Ruins at Archaeolog.
• Lux Interior of The Cramps died this past week.  The Cramps concert at the California State Mental Hospital remains one of the landmarks in Punk Archaeology.
• Some good comments from Ryan Stander over at Axis of Access on my Historical Jesus talk.

I have the feeling that I had more varia and quick hits, but I can't remember them.  So, the list will likely be updated.

Have a good weekend.