The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Site Reports Revisited

Dedicated readers of this blog know that I have already offered some commentary on the American School practice of Site Reports.  These short(ish) reports by the Regular Members have formed a central pillar to the regular program from time in memoriam (and should generally be distinguished from the times when the excavators of a site or scholars with some particular expertise present the sites).  Regular Member Site Reports are largely performative (as opposed to providing information regarding the site per se): students act out on site their scholarly persona and recite with proper emphasis and deference the main contours of the relevant academic debates.  The best reports use the archaeological material visible at the site to to comment on the validity of past scholars' claim; the more mundane reports merely demonstrate an awareness of an academic tradition.  Despite these subtle variations, most sight reports are boring.  They are not, generally speaking, innovative scholarship and, at their worst, take up a substantial amount of time on site (with the most decadent running for over 40 minutes) thereby cutting into our time actually spent looking at the archaeology (although as I noted in an earlier and not-entirely-well-received post, spending time actually on site may be overrated: Lessons from the Borders of Attica). 

That being said, site reports do provide the impetus to dig deeper into the historiography of a site.  After all, it is generally because scholars have written about these places that they appear on the ASCSA itinerary in the first place!  It would be disingenuous to ignore the scholarly debate that makes the site, in fact, something worth seeing.  Moreover, it would be inhumane to expect the Mellon Professor who leads the trips to prepare a bibliography for every site.  The students must be involved in the presentation of the site, if for no other reason than to drive home the point that sites in the Greek landscape are largely products of an academic discourse. 

The real issue, however, is balancing the need to be aware of the archaeological discourse as emerging professionals in the discipline and the dreadful tedium of site reports, which are inevitably more boring than the archaeology of the site itself.  Moreover, having at least one individual at the site who has read over all of the excavation reports does make viewing the site more interesting.  The real issue is, then, how do you enforce the historiographical rigor and ensure at least one very well-informed interlocutor on site without crushing boredom of site reports?

What I have done is prepare short papers on the site which provides a good bit of descriptive and when applicable historiographic information on each site.  As I have noted, this doesn't necessary always succeed in engaging the students in the place, but if these short papers were distributed prior to arrival on the site, they would not only provide an introduction to the place, but also form a handy reference on site.  They might be slightly more work for the Regular Members, but they have the advantage of coming together to form the basis for a guide to important Greek sites at the end of the program.

The downside of this, of course, is that it does take away the experience of lecturing on site -- an important skill for academics who might want to lead study tours or give site tours in the future.  Moreover, the Regular Member who is responsible for the site itself, must still be able to engage the material remains at the site.  The best alternative might be a combined system where each student must give one formal (15-25 minute) site report and otherwise provide short papers (2-3 pages) on each site for which they are responsible.  When the School visits the site, the students should point out features in their short papers, but cannot go on for more than a few minutes. 

It's an inelegant solution.  I know.  I've appended my site report from yesterday to this post and some photos of the Byzantine Church of Holy Apostles below.

The Church of the Holy Apostles

The earliest remains on the site appear to be a Nymphaeum of the 2nd C. A.D. The church dates to the late 10th or early 11th century and marks it the earliest standing Middle Byzantine buildings in Athens. Earlier churches, however, appear to have all been destroyed (John Mangoutis (9th c.), Prof. Elias sto staropazaro (10th? c.), Taxiarchs sto staropazaro (Early 11th ? c.). The church stood in the Solaki neighborhood probably the name of an important Athenian family who lived nearby. The church evidently remained in continuous use from the time of its construction serving the residents of this area of the Agora. There is evidence for at least 4 major modifications from its original construction until the 16th, 17th,and 19th century including the construction of numerous tombs under the Middle Byzantine floor level. Renovation work carried out in the 1954-1956 removed most of the later additions and restored the church to its Byzantine form. The church was first noted by Lenoir in 1839 and photographed by Lambakis in 1890

The plan of the church is a tetraconch. The western apse, however, had largely been destroyed during modifications which extended the western end of the nave into an elongated narthex. The basic plan of the building, however, evokes typical cross-in-square type architecture with four columns (three of Hymettian marble with spoliated capitals) supporting a Attic-type octagonal dome on pendentives (triangular sections of a sphere). The masonry is cloisonné type with double layers of brick in horizontal courses (cf. Os. Loukas Theotokos church). The vertical joins between the bricks received pseudo-kufic design (cf. Kapnekarea, Ay. Theodoroi, Os. Loukas, Soter Lykodemou). Further defining the exterior the building are a series of 5 dentulated frieze courses. The courses not only frame the windows, but coincide with the major architectural divisions of the building. The topmost course marked the eaves of the apse and the second course marking the springing of the interior vaults. The windows are of the arcade-type.

The windows and masonry provide a date for the building based on Megaw’s typology of church architecture. The arcade-type windows (cf. Skripou (9th) and Moni Petraki (10th)) are his earliest type window. The well-wrought Ps.-Kufic masonry design is 10th-11th in date.

While the dating of the church makes it contemporary with the major wave of Middle Byzantine church building in Athens, the design of the church is distinct. Despite its cross-in-square core, an octagonal shape is formed by the four major apses which project beyond the core of the building and alternate with four smaller apses at the angles between the cross arms. This octagonal plan has parallels with buildings of the more imposing cross-domed-octagon types (cf. Panayia Lykodemou, the Katholikon Os. Loukas, and Daphni). The cross arms of Ay. Apostoloi extend beyond the northern and southern walls evoking free-cross building like the Koumbelidiki at Kastoria. The most obvious problem that the architect needed to overcome was joining a centralized, tetraconch plan with the western narthex. This architect managed this with some elegance by adding two lateral spaces on either side of the western apse and piercing the northwest and southwest apses with doors. The wall of the western apse guides the visitor toward the doors in its flanking apses thereby unifying the lateral space of the domed narthex with the centralized plan of the church. It does not work perfectly but it is the best solution among the Middle Byzantine churches in Greece.

A. Frantz, The Church of the Holy Apostles. Agora XX. Princeton 1971.

A. Lenoir, L’architecture monastique. Vol. 1. Paris 1852.

H. Megaw, “The Chronology of Some Middle-Byzantine Churches,” BSA 32 (1931-1932), 90-130.

Lessons from the Borders of Attica

I spent Friday at the Border Forts of Northwest Attica (which I had scouted some weeks ago: Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, Aigosthena in the Rain).  The weather started out cold and cloudy, but by mid-afternoon gave way to bright sunshine.  I learned two important lessons leading the Regular Members on a day trip.

First, despite the relatively similar background of the Regular Members, they engaged the sites that we visited in very different ways.  (Most readers of this blog recognize my interest in ways of viewing the landscape.  If not here are some earlier posts: Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape, More Views of the Ancient Landscape). Some staggered around in a bit of fog.  Others ambled with the stooped gate of an archaeologist, while others still puzzled over buildings or spend time taking photographs.  Some didn't appear to look at the site at all, finding a nice seat on some antiquity and smoke and chat or hung out on the beach taking in the dramatic scenery of the harbor at Porto Germano.  I tend to think about how I would go about documenting the site; that is, I tend to think about the site as an archaeological problem.

The penultimate site of the day, for example, Aigosthena is relatively undocumented and produced the widest range of responses from the Regular Members.  In an effort to inform their reading of the landscape, I provided the requisite textual description of the site, bibliography, and plan:

Aigosthena

Unlike the nearby Eleutherai, Panakton, or Phylai, Aigosthena was a city under the control of Megara. The site nevertheless had strategic value as it controls the major route running along the north coast of the Corinthian gulf potentially. From Aigosthena a force could either continue south toward the Megarian ports of Pagai and Panormus or turn inland through the Villia Valley toward plain of Mazi/Oinoe and the major passes to the Athenian Saronic coastline. The most prominent feature at the site is the imposing early 4th-early 3rd century polygonal fortification walls. Ober has suggested that the Athenians helped to fortify the site during the 4th century. The polygonal masonry of the walls encompasses a low acropolis and extends south toward the sea in a technique reminiscent of the Athenian long walls. Towers to the south of the site linked Aigosthena to the vicinity of the mountainous region of the Vathychoria and a system of towers that would have communicated with the Mazi plain. Finally, the long walls would have provided Athens with a fortified naval stronghold on the gulf of Corinth.

The later history of the site is relatively undocumented. There is evidence for Roman activity near the coast with the remains of a cemetery and perhaps a villa. Orlandos excavated a large 5 aisled early Christian basilica some 100 m from the coast. It had mosaic floors and a cruciform baptistery to the south. The church shows multiple phases, but probably dates largely the late 5th  century. Atop the church is a triconch cruciform middle Byzantine church perhaps dating to the 12th c. with many in built inscriptions and spolia. The acropolis was clearly refortified at a “late date”; it is tempting to associate the rubble and mortar walls with the settlement of the Late Roman period. A Frankish date might also be possible and is perhaps more in keeping with the construction style.

The Venetian or Ottoman period saw a small group of buildings in the upper acropolis – including an olive press and a church of Ay. Georgios. It seems likely that the buildings on the acropolis which appear to be a monastic structure date from this period as well.

Benson, E.F., “Aigosthena,” JHS 15 (1895) 314-24.
Giannoulidou, K. “Aigosthena,” Platon 16 (1964) 143-172.
Sakellariou, M. and N. Pharaklas, Megaris, Aigosthena, Ereneia (Ancient Greek Cities 14; Athens 1972).
Orlandos, A. “Anaskaphi tis basilikis ton Aigsothenon,” Praktika 1954, 129-142.

Many archaeologists would argue, of course, that sites are a kind of text and that as individuals we engaged texts differently depending upon our own background.  The act of reading traditional literary texts, both in antiquity and the modern world, has even generated a considerable corpus of scholarship.  In contrast to the ways of reading literary texts, reading an archaeological texts can be a much more visible process.  There isn't so much a correct and incorrect way of engaging an archaeological site (any more than there is a "right" way to read a text), although I suppose some have the training, experience, and interest to read a site more carefully and take more away from the experience. 

I gave the students about 2 hours at the site reasoning that it took about a half an hour to walk from the coast, where we had eaten lunch, to the acropolis.  So, another hour to look around and an hour of walking time would provide almost everyone with enough time.  Some students took the full time, others took only a small fraction of the time allotted. 

Aigosthena

I am not sure whether the students who were done more quickly were bored or not, but I suspect that they were.  And this boredom (or "site fatigue") perhaps explains the second lesson that I learned: When leading a trip, never leave anything to a vote.  We departed Aigosthena at around 3:30 pm, and I reckoned that it would take slightly over an hour and a half to get back to Athens.  5 pm is generally when we return to the American School, so if we stopped at another site -- namely Eleutherai which was only a short detour on our way back -- it would probably get back later than usual, probably after 6 or even (with traffic) 6:30.  So rather than unilaterally decided to return later than usual, I asked the Regular Members what they wanted to do.  It was a close vote but it seemed to me that the majority of students wanted to go to one more site and did not mind returning late.  So, we went to the site and since the vote was close, I asked that we visit the site quickly as a compromise to those who wanted to get back to Athens sooner. 

Here's the interesting part.  The students who didn't want to go Eleutherai decided not to go.  (This is like not paying taxes because "I didn't vote for the guy!").  Instead they stayed on the bus (or went to a nearby coffee shop for coffee).  My logic for putting the issue to a vote was because I felt that we would get back to Athens later than usual.  Sitting on the bus didn't help us get back to Athens any sooner and replaced looking at another (relatively impressive site) with staring idly at the inside of a rather generic tour bus or drinking coffee at an equally generic coffee shop.  That was an unanticipated way of viewing a site, indeed.

 
The opposite of the inside of a tour bus

More Views of the Ancient Landscape

I lead a trip to the border forts of Northwest Attica tomorrow (report and photos on Monday!).  Preparing for the trip was a good excuse to re-read some of the classic descriptions of Attic topography.  This region of Attica has attracted continuous attention from the days of the Early Travelers and the work of Hammond, Edmonson, and Ober did much to establish the archaeological landscape of the region.  (This post is in some ways an extension of my post some weeks back Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape)

Much of the work of Hammond and Edmonson was done with rather poor maps, and this clearly influenced their reading of the topography.  In particular Hammond's peripatetic method brought together the ancient and modern landscape of the area.  His descriptions of the fortifications, roads, and mountain passes depended upon modern features like roads and crops as well as the visible remnants of the pre-modern landscape.  A good example: N.G. L. Hammond, "The Main Road from Boeotia to the Peloponnese," BSA 49 (1954), 108.

"A second path leaves the road from Megara to Pagae at a point before one reaches the watershed.  Starting from this point on climbs up through a pass between the two peaks for Mt. Korona, follows the ridge between the two Vathikoria basins and drops down to Tower C.  This path is very well marked, and I noticed rut-marks in the rock-bed during the ascent.  This also took me one and a half hours of walking.  Although steeper than the road past Mikro Vathikhori to Tower C, it is fresher in the summer.  Both these paths were evidently practicable for carts in the past, so that there were three carriageable roads leading into the Vathichoria area from the Central Megarid."

From Tower C a very steep path, fit only for a man or pack-animal, leads into Attica.  I climbed for one hour to a high saddle on Mt. Pateras between points 976 and 1108.  From there one descends by an easy route down a long valley to reach Ayios Yeoryios in one hour, and the Paliokhori of Koundoura in a futher one and a half hours, making three and half hours in all from Tower C. From Tower F Buchon took a path 'par un chemin assez facile' to the ridge west of Mr. Karidhi; from there he descended to Aegosthena, a path which he described as follows... A further path begins from Tower F, taking the same line as Buchon's path, and then turns around the end of a spur to join the main route over the saddle of Mt. Karidhi.  These three paths are, and always were, impracticable for carts; they ascend the very steep slopes in short zig-zags, such as mules make."

In this simple description he is able to bring together both the topography of the area as well as some of the historiography of the places and routes.  Because he spent so much time walking through the landscape, he is able to describe it on a particularly human scale.  Simple things like the number of hours that it took to walk between sites in some ways provides a much more meaningful measure of proximity than even the most precise cartographic treatment of the space.  Compare Hammond's description, for example, to my marking out of the sites in this Google Earth .kzm file where Tower C, Tower F, and Ay. Yeoryios (Ag. Georgios) are marked and visible on the Google Earth photos.  (You'll need to download Google Earth for this to work).

As a final note, the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project introduced their volume with an an imaginary encounter between their survey team and a farmer from the past.  This rather overt effort to link the landscape being created by the modern survey archaeologist to the lived landscape of the past employs in an imagined way many of the same techniques Hammond applied some 50 years before without the fanciful or the theoretical baggage.

Episode 4: Former Students Advice

Episode 4 of Emerging Cypriot is now posted.  This episode best reflects Joe Patrow's efforts to bring the student and volunteer voice into the project's narration.  He interviewed a bunch of the students who worked on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in the past and asked them to give advice to future participants on the project.  The next three shorts will move a bit away from the methodological concerns of a field project to the experience of the project's participants.  Their experiences reflect both their own background and our efforts as directors to construct a meaningful experience for the students.  The latter is something that we talk about constantly as we think about what we need to do to ensure not only a positive interpersonal atmosphere for the students, but also a rewarding intellectual environment. 

Without spoiling the movie, one thing that came out clearly in the interviews was the intense experience of living and working together.  This has resonated with a conversation that I have had about 20 times over the last two weeks.  As the American School's Regular Program is coming to an end, the Regular Members seem increasingly tired of the routine, tired of site reports, and perhaps most predictably tired of the bus, the lunch table, the dinner table.  The tensions created by living in close quarters are as fundamental to the archaeological experience as the repetitive tasks of field walking, excavating, or artifact analysis.  As I have noted before, living in Loring Hall is an intense experience, especially for the students who are sometimes together for over 12 hours a day.  While most intense academic discourse carries with it a personal tone as scholars attack one another arguments and assumptions, I continue to wonder how the Loring Hall Experience has shaped the discipline of Classics and Greek Archaeology by forcing a sub-set of the discipline to have the particularly unusual experience of knowing a large number of the individuals in the field personally.  

A few technical notes
The video is all in QuickTime which you will need to download to watch it.  If you right click and download the video, it is formatted for viewing on your iPod or even iPhone or iPod Touch.  When a new installment is made, the image will become a rollover image.  We'll add a short a week.  I borrowed the idea for this format from a video series at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  The center square in the last row is a link to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project web page where you can read more about everything that you see in these film shorts.

We have posted a particularly frank interview with the director of Emerging Cypriot and Survey on Cyprus, and you can read the commentaries on the first three shorts (with links to those shorts) below.

Punk Archaeology: Some Preliminary Thoughts

Kostis Kourelis recently included me on his list of Punk Archaeologist -- a complete honor!

My attraction to punk, I think, comes from the self-consciously ironic quality of the early punk movement and its easy resonance with the predominant character of much of the academic discourse.  This should be no surprise as the punk mentality was crystallizing at the same moment that intellectuals were trying to understand the implications of Hayden White’s Metahistory and M. Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge. Both works, but particularly the former recognized the ironic as the dominant force in modern intellectual life. Such spirit of the ironic is captured in the Velvet Underground’s first album cover which showed a realistically rendered banana with the instructions “Peel slowly and see”. Peeling the banana lead the viewer to discover the bright pink (and obviously phallic) unpeeled banana inside. This somewhat alarming discovery behind the ordinary banana encapsulated the ironic spirit of the M. Leigh book The Velvet Underground which reported on the sexually “deviant” practices underlying the typical suburban landscape. Peeling the banana and listening the album revealed the hidden tensions existing within even the most mundane elements of society.

The band, the Velvet Underground, occupies a central place in the emergence of the punk rock movement, first in New York and around the world. The vivid urban scenes narrated by Lou Reed, John Cale and company helped to situate punk in an urban context. Kourelis has brought to the fore this celebration of the urban and linked the punk ascetic with the notion of squatting.

The idea of occupying urban space, however, reflects the mixed roots of many of the pioneers of punk rock. While some punk rockers with clearly urban roots (particularly such key players in the New York scene like The Ramones (Queens), David Johansen and Johnny Thunders (Staten Island and Queens respectively), many the genres early heroes were suburban: Lou Reed (Long Island), Richard Hell (Kentucky) and Tom Verlaine (Morristown, NJ – Hell and Verlaine met at a suburban high school in Wilmington, Delaware at around the same time that Bob Marley was living in downtown Wilmington (ca. 1965-1966)), Paul Westerberg (and the Replacements – Minneapolis), Bob Mould (went to Macalester!), Iggy Pop – Muskegon, Michigan. In fact, punk rock was closely associated with (and perhaps developed from) the idea of the “garage band” which only made sense in a suburban, post-war context. While playing in a garage was another aspect of the squatter aesthetic, it also implied the centrality of the car and reflected their membership in (and rejection of) a suburban middle class.

In fact, the urban world created by many punk bands brought to life the fears, myths, and contradictions derived from the typically suburban origins of the musicians. The image of the urban painted by these musicians resonated with suburban kids throughout the country (including me when I first heard it). Punks viewed the city from a decidedly suburban perspective. In punk rock, the city was both intimidating and full of chaotic creative power (the ordinary, mundane, working classes who struggled to survive in the twilight of American urbanism rarely make an appearance in the early New York punk music). The earliest and perhaps most seminal expressions of the punk rock aesthetic, Velvet Underground with Nico is a great example of this; songs like “Waiting for My Man” and “Run, Run, Run” summarize a feeling of urban alienation and danger. Some of this intensity seems to conjure up the earlier fascination with the “urban” best summarized in Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro,” which extolled the virtues of the hipster many of whom, like many members of the punk movement, were second and third generation immigrants who retained some urban ties while at the same time seeking to reposition their identity at vital fringes of American urban culture.

The ironic in punk derives largely from the relative bourgeois background of many of the genre’s greatest lights. Punk created an urban experience that was both exotic and predictable. They glamorized the suburban perspective of the urban by filling with exotic characters, like drug-dealers (“Waiting for My Man”, "Run, Run, Run"), violence ("Guns of Brixton" or Iggy’s "Search and Destroy": “I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm | I’m a runaway son of the nuclear a-bomb”), distorted sexual tension (“I Wanna be Your Dog”) and ambiguity (“Blank Generation” – totally ironic, a generation “under erasure”; the album cover shows Richard Hell with an open shirt exposing the words "You Make Me ______" written on his chest.) that found open contrast to the seemingly controlled and superficial suburbia. Thus, punk held up the “declining” urban centers against the boring, mundane, and predictable suburbs while at the same time reifying the growing criticisms of the city offered by its suburban critics. The punk rock stories and life styles recycled a suburban vision of a vital urban energy for suburban (re)consumption. They understood at least to some degree the importance of the “safe media” of records, but that recorded performances had to capture the live feeling and excitement of “excursions” by suburban fans to such iconic venues as Max’s and CBGBs. The raw listening experience of punk album evoked the experience of live shows and made the particularly punk image of the urban mobile. At the same time, the heroes of the punk movement performed their own pilgrimage and gained the requisite authenticity through short residence at the Chelsea or Albert Hotels. Of course so many of the pioneers of punk not only celebrated the chaotic culture of the urban world of the suburban imagination, but also succumbed to the image that they in many ways created, dying violent deaths or struggling with drug addiction.

There is every evidence that many punks understood the irony of their own position. Punk rockers who experimented with narrative in their music, such as Lou Reed, openly embraced the ironic in their lyrics (e.g. The Velvet Underground's “The Gift”). Punk bands regularly covered old standards (my favorites are the Germs  “Round and Round” or Johnny Thunders’ live version of “Do you love me?”, but see also Sid Vicious “My Way” et c.) or borrowed and distorted melodies from earlier pop standards (echoing of course the practices in Hard Bop and other jazz idioms two decades earlier). Their intentionally cacophonic versions of these tunes not only reified the enduring value of the music from an earlier time, but also sought to distort, disrupt, and appropriate it for subversive purposes.  Punks translated the safe features of “classic” pop music into barely recognizable, distorted, burned out idiom of urban space in a highly-referential and explicitly counter-cultural performance.

Punk, in my analysis, foreground the process of translating the sense of place.  As Kourelis has pointed out, their self conscious use of architectural fragments in their cover art, which was designed to evoke the urban context for their music (but consider the Replacement's Let it Be with its more suburban setting), set the stage for their music.  This work of translating and transposing the experience of space has featured significantly in almost all archaeological approaches to the past (and the present as well!).  Punk rock and archaeology both foreground the necessity to communicate the meaning of place.  The act of uncovering, of excavating in an archaeological context ("Dig slowly and see") presupposed an ironic tension between the surface of the ground (or the expected view of a landscape) and the "reality" that emerges from excavation (or, in the case of landscape, intensive investigation).  On the one hand, it may be fair to argue that irony represents the quintessential narrative mode of late/post modernity (as it coincides so well with the major epistemological positions of the modern world), but on the other hand, punk and archaeology both embrace a spatial aspect of this ironic mode of narration that keys upon the unexpected energy of neglected, hidden, and dangerous places and seeks to translate the energy and knowledge of this space into media appropriate for broader consumption and use. 

Real Snow in Athens

I've posted some photos of snow on Hymmetos, but last night there was real snow in downtown Athens, and we are said to get more today.  So, the requisite Athens snow pictures:

Loring Hall in the Snow

The Gennadius Library in the Snow

The snow is pretty, to be sure, but the more amazing thing for Athens is the silence.  The roads are almost completely empty of cars.  I'll defer to my wife Susie's description of downtown Athens on a normal day, and post the final photo in contrast

Epigraphy and Hybridity in Early Christian Greece

Regular readers of this blog (both of them) recognize that I have been slowly constructing several arguments through a series of posts; one of these arguments draws upon Postcolonial theory to argue for the hybrid nature of Early Christian space in Greece (part 1, part 2).  It's my current research project and the topic of an article currently under construction.  (Plus, it's what the cool kids are into these days; see Derek Count's article in the most recent AJA).I've been posting on it here, in large part, to force me to consider my research in an accessible way and to make sure that my arguments have an essential simplicity.  This, I think, is part of the process of finding my own voice as a blogger and scholar.

The second case study exploring the notion of the hybrid in the Early Christian architecture and society in Greece draws upon the epigraphy associated with Early Christian basilicas there. The inscriptions in these churches are overwhelmingly found on mosaic floors.  They commemorate the donors of the churches, in some cases, and the donors of the floors in others instances. The language in these texts is diverse and reflects myriad cultural influences that led to the construction of these buildings. 

Take three texts for example:

From the Basilica Alpha at Nikopolis a text:
(E. Kitzinger, "Studies on Late Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics: I. Mosaics at Nikopolis," DOP 6 (1951), 87).

Here you see the famous and boundless ocean.
Containing in its midst the earth
Bearing round about in all the skillful
images of art everything that breathes and creeps
The foundation of Dometios, the greathearted archpriest.

From the church at Antikyra in Boeotia:
(P. Ασημακοπούλου - Ατζακά, Σύνταγμα Των Παλαιοχριστιανικών Ψηφιδωτών Δαπέδων Της Ελλάδος. (Thessaloniki 1987), 150).

For her vow, Elizabeth [together with
Simian] paved this for a one gold piece.

From the church at Daphnousia in Locris:
(A. Orlandos, “Une basilique paléo-chrétienne en Locride,” Byzantion, 5 (1929/30), 229).

Eugeneios, the illustrious, and his wife
Dionyseia for a vow of themselves and
their children completed the whole building
of the holy church of God from the foundations.

These three texts provide three different perspectives on the act of making donation to Early Christian churches.  The first text is from a mosaic floor at Nikopolis that shows an edenic garden scene and the line "everything that breathes and creeps" is a quote from Homer ((Il. 17.447; Od., 18.131).  The donor, a Bishop named Dometios, is greathearted and, elsewhere, "greatest of all, a great light to the fatherland."  The Homeric quote and the grandiose language draws upon traditions of patronage dating back to the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Bishop Dometios was a local elite and continued the practice of ancient building patronage by constructing a church.  He promoted his elite identity through elaborate inscriptions that remind the reader of his learning, piety, and loyalty to the city.

The second text reflects a different perspective on giving to the construction of a church.  Here the humble Elizabeth and Simian donate a single gold piece for the pavement of a mosaic floor.  A gold piece is a small donation, but not a tiny one.  A skilled artisan perhaps would earn the equivalent of 5 or 6 gold pieces a year, maybe less.  A grave plot seems to be the nearest equivalent: they often seem to have cost about a single gold piece and were seemingly purchased by wealthier members of the artisan class for the burial of their close relatives.  The reasons for the donation are clear in this text as well.  Elizabeth pledged the donation for a vow (hyper euxis, in Greek).  Presumably she asked God for something in exchange for a donation to the church.  This simple act was then commemorated with this text which both reflected the piety of the donor and the power of the Christian God.  There is none of the aristocratic posturing, Homeric quoting, or elaborate decoration in Antikyra.

The final text commemorates the generosity of Eugeneios "the illustrious".  The word used here in Greek (and it is poor and potentially confusing translation) is lamprotatos, and it is a word that denotes a particular rank in Late Roman society.  Originally the emperor awarded this rank to members of the Senatorial aristocracy (vir clarissimi), but by the 6th century it had become a generic honorific that placed an individual in the upper ranks of Late Roman society.  Eugeneios may not have been a Senator, per se, but he was clearly from an important family.  While so much is obvious by his donation of an entire church "from the foundations," his proud assertion of his rank reflects a longstanding practice of elite presentation.  The text itself, however, remains very different from the elite inscription of Dometios.  There is no Homeric language and the reasons for the construction reflect the same kind of piety present in the humble text of Elizabeth.  The family of Eugeneios, his wife Dionyseia, and his children (a delightfully homey touch) gave the church "hyper euxis" for a vow.

The hybrid moment of Christianity emerges from the intersection of diverse identities in the space of the Early Christian basilicas of Greece.  The humble Elizabeth and the pompous Dometios represent differing motivations and traditions of representation.  In the "illustrious" Eugeneios and his family these identifiers intersect to produce an rich in the Christian piety and aristocratic diction. 

These texts and others like them provide another good example of the permeability of Early Christian churches.  This permeability to various influences from the longstanding traditions of civic munificence to the piety of non-elite donors created a space that did not produce a unified or consistent meaning but rather displayed the ambiguity and ambivalence of continuously negotiated rules and identities.  This tension present in the iconography, epigraphy, and architecture of church buildings stands in contrast to the representation of Early Christian space in literary accounts, where it often appears as a space of comfort and spiritual, theological, and ritual coherence (see for example the exciting article by C. Shepardson, "Controlling Contested Places: John Chrysostom's Adversus Iudaeos Homilies an the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy," JECS 15 (2007), 483-516).  The spread of churches often represented the spread of Christianity, but the fluidity of representation within their walls leaves open what that really means.

I'm off to the Nemea Valley today with the Regular Members to hear Jack Davis talk about his Nemea Valley Archaeological Project.  Then, Tim Gregory and I will present something on the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey.  It's cold and maybe rainy, and the Regular Members are getting restless.  As I told them in an email -- The American School of Classical Studies: Always leave them wanting less.  Andy Warhol would be proud.

Special Saturday Quick Hits: a New Archbishop, a New University President, and Blogging Archaeology Again

Three quick hits in a special Saturday edition:

• The new Metropolitan Archbishop of Greece, Ieronymos II formerly Bishop of Thebes, brings to his office some scholarly credentials according to the press releases.  The official church bulletin said that before entering the clergy he served as a lector or academic assistant under Anastasios Orlandos and pursued an academic which included studying at the University of Athens and then in Germany and Austria -- Graz, Munich, and Regensburg  --  but Ieronymos left slightly before the time of that Regensburg's most famous professor -- Pope Benedict XVI -- taught there from (1969-1977). He also served for a time as the abbot of Os. Loukas.  He published two books on Christian archaeology: I. Liapes, Μεσαιωνικά Μνημεία Ευβοίας (Medieval Monuments of Evia) (Athens 1971) and in 2005 or 2006 a book on Christian Boeotia which I have not been able to find.  I leafed through the former at the Gennadius Library this morning, and it is a careful and well-done survey of the Medieval Monuments of the island of Evia with a nice collection of plans, drawings, and plates complete with proper academic citations and bibliography.  It's interesting that Kostis Kourelis wrote a post entitled "Bishops, Earthquakes, and Diaspora" about the relationship between the Orthodox church and American archaeologist just a week or so ago over at his Buildings, Objects, Situations blog.  It will be interesting to see if having an individual with a serious interest in archaeology as Metropolitan leads to closer ties between the church and the American School.
  
• On the other side of the pond, my home institution, the University of North Dakota has a new president, Robert Kelly formerly dean of the College of Health Sciences and professor of medical education and public health at the University of Wyoming.  Read the press release here.  Let's hope that he supports the humanities at the University... particularly our archaeological fieldwork in Cyprus!
  
• Finally, Alun Salt and Tom Elliot move at the pace of the blogosphere (or blogging world as Alun puts it).  From conversation to concept in a mere few days, a lengthy and thoughtful post by Alun a few days ago, my slightly irreverent response, and an intriguing new concept designed to occupy the middle ground between a blog and a journal.

Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, Aigosthena in the Rain

The sites of Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, and Aigosthena are known for fortifying Attica's Northwest border and forming part of the famous Fortress Attica of the Late Classical period.  Their imposing walls of ashlar masonry stand out in the winter against the green cover of the Attic mountains. 

Phyli

Eleutherai

While the ashlar walls of the Classical period are by far the most dramatic aspect of these sites, what is perhaps more interesting from an archaeological perspective is the evidence for their continued use and significance sometimes into the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods in Greece.  These sites do not simply reflect an interesting example of Classical architecture and strategy, but also represent dynamic places in the landscape.  The reasons for this vary.  In many cases the abundance of building material make these sites appealing quarries for subsequent settlements.  In other instances, the siting of a fortification is well suited for settlement.  Panakton, for example, makes use of the blocks from the earlier fortifications there and occupies a naturally advantageous spot about the Skorta plain (for the publication of the later remains at this site see S. Gerstel, et al., "A Late Medieval Settlement at Panakton," Hesperia 72 (2003), 147-234).

 
Late Medieval Church at Panakton

The site of Aigosthena likewise shows a rather dynamic history of use.  It's position at the head of the bay of Porto Germano gave it both a decent harbor but also access not only to Boeotia but to the passes south in the Megarid and further east in Attica.  It appears to have thrived as one of the communities of the Corinthian Gulf which probably benefits as the point of contact between East-West trade across the northern Isthmus.  Plus, the prosperity of Thebes and even perhaps Athens ensured that there were local markets for goods.  The long term vitality of certain trading patterns ensured that sites like Aigosthena represented the persistent nodes of wealth from exchange.

Aigosthena with its Middle Byzantine church on the foundations of an Early Christian basilica with its Hellenistic fortifications in the background

I have to lead the Regular Members on the tour of these sites at the end of the month.  The challenge will be to bring together the topography, architecture, archaeology, and history of these sites in a way that reinforces the importance of their later history, but does not diminish their specific place in the history of Classical Attica.

Varia, Quick Hits, and Friday Notes

Some fun quick hits today.

• Kostis Kourelis at Buildings, Objects, Situations has a blog entry posing some good questions on the potential relations between the Archbishop of Corinth (and later famously of Athens) Damaskinos and American archaeologists during the 1920s and 1930s.  There is work to do in understanding the relationship between the American School and the Greek Church. 
• Kourelis work on the institutional and cultural history of the American School finds a happy counterpart in David Gill's History of the British School at Athens.  Both of these blogs show, I think, the real intellectual vitality possible in the genre of short academic notes.  While this kind of writing has seemed to die out in journals, the existence of good quality, small-scale academic writing in blogs suggests that the potential in this kind of work still exists.
• Some interesting photographs of the Archibishop's funeral from AP.
• Montana Archaeology is an new blog by Lance Foster focusing on North American archaeology in general and archaeology of Montana specifically.  It provides material for his Introduction to Archaeology class at the University of Montana. I've added it and a few others to my del.icio.us page.
• More North Dakotiana: An interesting article in the New York Times on campaigning in North Dakota.  The quotes from Mark Jendrysik (political theorist extraordinaire) on the second page really brings the piece and the place into focus. 
• And finally, a metadata update.  The Blogging Archaeology article has led to a relatively substantial uptick in both my number of visits and page views in the two weeks that the article has been online.  Interestingly, however, only about 137 visits (about 175 views) or 16.8 % of my total visits for the two week period) came directly from the Archaeological.org domain.  The hits from Archaeological.org, however, tend to be a more dedicated lot -- reading on average 2 pages for almost 3 minutes worth of total time on site.  Over the last two weeks, I've had about an 75% increase in views per week than over the preceding two months.  This is far in excess of the number of visitors from the Archaeological.org domain suggesting that some of the increase in volume to my blog is what I call "systemic" -- that is to say people finding my blog due via other linked blogs or sites (ideally this means that there is increased traffic in the system).  Whatever the cause, it is good to see that people are interested in what I am writing.