After arrival on Tuesday, our first week was a blur of jetlag, site visits and frequent grocery store trips. I enjoyed our Wednesday trip to the Acropolis / Ακρόπολη, and I was glad for a chance to adjust to our neighborhood Pangrati / Παγκράτι, but by Friday I was ready to get out of the city and into the countryside for our field trip to the Mazi Plain and Aigosthena.
We stopped first at Oinoe, a classical deme site (though, Alex noted, “certainly diachronic”) on the east side of the Plain, where we started in the fortified / upper part of town and walked around to find the remains of many walls, buildings, potsherds and roof tiles. The lower town was extensive, and the tiles found during survey (and we saw a few during our visit, too) suggested that the houses were relatively nice, given that they were roofed with tile rather than thatch or a less sturdy material.
During this visit, Sam and MJ helped us learn how to differentiate between roof tiles (curved one way so the water slides off) and other kinds of pottery, like amphora, that curve two ways because they came off of a round vessel. We also learned about “slip” after finding a slightly discolored piece that looked like a substance darker than the pottery’s normal color had been brushed onto it. I did not fully understand the intricacies, given that it seems that this term is sometimes interchangeable with paint… According to a quick google search (which yielded MA archaeology month slipware lesson plan), the slip technique consists of painting a slightly discolored clay onto the pottery before it is fired, for decorative purposes.
In discussing the diachrony of the site, Alex showed us how during different time periods, constructions at the site used different rocks– limestone and conglomerate (which I learned about in intro geology– shout out Clint Cowan). While conglomerate was more readily available, it didn’t look as nice as limestone because of its messy appearance with a matrix containing many other smaller rocks.
Our second site, Eleutherai, required a hike up from the road, and overlooked the plain on the eastern side. We sat along the northern wall and discussed the evidence for why it is a Boeotian rather than Athenian fortress. Many thought it was an Athenian fort because it faces Boeotia, but archaeologists argue that the direction is more likely a product of military strategy, given that this side would have been the most likely to be attacked. Eleutherai also shares many architectural similarities with other Boeotian constructions in its masonry and stone cutting. We also discussed a mythological reference that gives Eleutherai an association with Boeotia: the legend of the cave of Antiope. According to this myth, Antiope, one of many maidens to have been impregnated by Zeus, gave birth in a nearby cave to her two sons, Amphion and Zethus, who built the walls of Thebes, a main city of Boeotia. Furthermore, the walls were constructed using emplecton, a technique common to other Boeotian architecture that involves using cross stones to weave others together and make walls more structurally sound.
Alex also explained an architectural technique used to precisely align the blocks in the walls, and showed us a wheel rut that was intended to prevent carriages from falling off the cliff (we see this feature only on the cliffside). Before lunch, we briefly stopped at the town of Eleutherai and stood in the stone foundations of the temple that housed the wooden cult statue of Athena taken by Athenians to the Acropolis.
The ancient fortress of Aigosthena was our final site of the day, cut slightly shorter than intended because of bus scheduling. Here, walls enclosed a small town built either by Megorians with the help of Athenians around 340 BC or by the Macedonian Dimitrius. The name of the fortress is said to have come from a boy, Melampus (potentially misspelled), who was abandoned on a nearby mountain and saved and fed by a goat, for which the Greek word is “αίγα” or “aiga.”
Most of our lecture was dedicated to explaining the restoration work that went into this site after a 1981 earthquake destroyed the previously exquisitely-preserved southeastern tower. During the reconstruction, a team of archaeologists and specialized construction workers built scaffolding for support and brought in a huge crane to lift the blocks. Even the blocks that had remained intact, however, had to be dismantled and repositioned because they were no longer standing straight, and they used an internal scaffolding as well to push the interior walls 35 cm back because they were leaning inward. Broken blocks were bonded together using titanium bars and special mortar, to bond the blocks as seamlessly as possible. In total, the team lifted over 140 to rebuild the 18m, 3-floor tower, using 9m long chestnut beams from Mount Athos in northern Greece. This is the only ancient tower that has been fully restored.
