This week we were meant to go to the Acropolis in Athens as well as Archaeological sites at The Mazi Plain, Oinoe, Eleutherai, and Aigosthena. Ruby and I however got stuck in Copenhagen on our way here and missed the Acropolis visit which we will get to make up in the future. This meant that I did get to wander around Copenhagen some and see the harbor, Danish palaces, eat some tasty fish, and explore a Danish grocery store. I did however get to see the Acropolis from afar from both CYA’s Academic Center and while taking the bus around the city. Seeing such an iconic ancient structure just incorporated into the city and surrounded by people just going about their days itself is striking as that is something that we do not really see at all in the USA. There is nothing that is nearly as comparably old and a lot of our historical sites are also not as visible in the same way but are instead enclosed in museums or historical parks. Though they are not the same, the Acropolis is much more visible and accessible to the public than Mount Vernon or the Liberty Bell.
Once here my first class was the class with Alex introducing us to Greece, Archaeology, and the Mazi Plain. I’d heard a fair amount of this information before, primarily from Alex from a previous class but also from other Classics courses at Carleton, but it was a nice refresher into Alex’s work and survey Archaeology. It got me thinking a lot about how artifacts and buildings could survive to us both in layers, as Alex’s diagram demonstrates, and also with neolithic, Classical, Helenistic, Roman, etc. materials just sitting on the surface. I was a bit confused as to how they could coexist and how, at this point with the amount of interest there has been throughout thousands of years in these places, things could just survive and still be sitting on the ground for us to see. Going and actually seeing the places, the vegetation around them, the way the roads no longer go through and by them with the same proximity, and then actually getting to find, pick up, and examine the pieces helped. I could see how pieces stay there and then are put down again, but this also raised more questions. We were fairly careful to put the sherds we found back near where they were, but that might not have been true throughout history. People may have walked through and picked up pieces and then carried them to a different part of the plain and dropped them there. It is not a huge area and so it is likely easy to wander much of it in a day. This however would redistribute the sherds and other potential artifacts such that they are no longer representative of what the people who may have used these pieces but instead of someone else traveling through or around in the hundreds of years since. It is also a pass that has been used seemingly fairly continuously, or perhaps on and off but still has seen heavy usage, and so if it was in use when people were moving other archaeological remains from another place through there in the Victoria era then something falling/getting dropped/left behind could also mess with the statistics. Additionally, the pieces can only really be dated, from what Alex was saying, to creation (based on style and vessel) but this does not really account for reuse through other periods, though I do not know how much of that is possible and how sturdy the pottery is for continued use. I suppose what I am getting at is that there seems to be a lot of room for era in survey archaeology because it is looking at the surface and so I am wondering how this is accounted for within survey archaeology and would love to hear more about it in class!
Seeing the fortresses themselves was so exciting! We started off with Oinoe which may have been the least climactic because it appears to be the least well preserved, or at least has the littlest amount of standing walls. It did however have the most sherds, which were wild to hold in my hand. I know that so many people have touched and messed with them since they were held by ancient peoples, but it is still wild to just be standing there holding something that an ancient person held and used. Oinoe also had the foundations or at least outlines of other buildings, which Alex said were likely later, and the reuse of some of the stone blocks from the wall to outline a grave. This site also allowed us to see really clearly the difference between conglomerate stone blocks and limestone blocks as there were constructions made out of both of them from different times.
We next hiked up to the Fortress of Eleutherai and once up there the positioning made a lot more sense. Looking up at it from the plain it seemed like an odd place to put a fortress but it is backed by a cliff and well fortified on the side that it is possible to attack from. It had some beautiful views of the plain as a whole, which serve the practical militaristic purposes of course, but were also breathtaking to me. The preservation at this site was also so impressive, there were lots of tumbled stones, but great parts of the wall and the towers were preserved and were explorable. It was also so cool to see an inscription in the wild!
On our way to lunch we then also stopped at a temple to Dionysus. This temple was fairly nondescript from the road but once we were there climbing all over it it was clear that we were looking at foundations of the temple and also potentially some other buildings. I know ancient temples are typically smaller than I expect, especially ones not in big cities that are massive feats of architecture, but this temple felt both small but also not crowded, even with the whole group practically standing inside of it. We then went to lunch which also boasted some beautiful views of the town we were eating in and also some delicious food.
We were then off to our final stop for the day trip: Aigosthena. Here we saw truly the most impressive sites of the trip–both of nature and of the fortress. One of the towers of the fortress has been completely reconstructed and getting to climb it was truly a highlight of the trip. It made really clear how tall these towers that are being described as tall are, which isn’t super tall by modern standards but is impressively tall to construct and as tall as necessary for its job. The location was fairly remote but the views were so gorgeous. This was my favorite part of the day trip just for the gorgeous views.
On the weekend a small group of us then decided to pay a short visit to the National Archaeological Museum just to get a look around before we learned more and went in class. We knew we would be back so we were more concerned with seeing what we were interested in and getting a feel for the museum as a whole and specific rooms than investigating everything but it was such a fun visit. Getting to casually see museums is one of my favorite activities, especially when I am so interested in the subject matter and know that I will be back. This was a super fun visit, I got to see some really cool art that I love, and it made me super excited to go back.