Our week started with a trip to the Athenian Agora, a commercial and political hub for the classical state of Athens. This tour of the Agora was led by the head of excavation at the site, John Papadopoulos. Later in the week, we went on our first overnight trip to the central Greek city of Volos. Here we saw many different neolithic sites (of the late Stone Age) where we examined the origins of complex society in Greece.
Throughout the past week, I was struck by the extent to which geography helped shape society. In each site we visited, geography played a key role in determining both the placement of and the function of the sites themselves. For example, in our visit to the Agora, we discussed how there was an older Agora that predated the central Athenian one. This older Agora was on the other side of the Acropolis, directly between it and the old Athenian Port. The Agora of classical Athens was also located directly between the Acropolis and a port, just the one that was in use at that time––Piraeus. The change in location of the Agora space and place are interconnected. When we change the placement of our material culture, how we occupy and utilize the space surrounding these places changes as well. Similarly, in our trip to Volos, we saw several fortifications that were developed due to their strategic location as through points between various mountain passages and plans
More generally, the geography of the area surrounding Volos was also discussed as being key to its success as a starting point for complex civilization in Greece. It is known that two different groups of early humans migrated to what is now Greece––one group in Volos, and one group in Crete. Despite these two different groups, only the area surrounding Volos seems to have maintained a significant presence during the Neolithic period. We discussed how this was likely due to the geography of the region, as it has a large amount of arable land, water, and flatter plains. This created the environment for society to spread and develop.
Within Volos, we also discussed the formation of more complex societies, and how they structured their towns. The built environment was created through a process of selecting slightly elevated hills and using mud and stone to create structures. Over time these structures were rebuilt as the mud would move to the ground, and this would both build up the hill even further and provide a material record of the culture at the time. These settlements were also often quite close to the coast, to access waterways and fish when they were first built. However, over the centuries, rivers infilled the surrounding areas, making the sea much farther away than they otherwise were.
The Landscape of these cities also started to create a sense of hierarchy, culture, and power. In Dimini, one of the oldest sites we visited, concentric rings of walls suggest that as one lived closer to the center they were more well respected and more powerful within the society. It is theorized that in this case because the buildings were slightly larger, they were more well-protected, and with that protection, access was more limited. Large tombs in the built environment also show that certain individuals or families were well respected and had the political and economic power to centralize their death within the society’s mind as well as outsiders. Similar structures of power developed further in later sites such as the Mycenaean palace of Demetrias, that displayed wealth and power. In combination with the creation of the city itself, which forced nearby villages to all move to the newly formed city the landscape of these cities can reveal power relations and dynamics of the societies themselves.
Overall the last week showed me that geography and landscape don’t necessarily determine culture, rather they help provide context for it. How a society forms and develops will be influenced by the environment, both natural and built, surrounding the society. These various landscapes will provide uniqueness to each place, with geographic barriers marking clear distinctions in culture. As this geography becomes more easily navigable cultural distinction may begin to fade and merge into something new.