Unfortunately, due to travel delays, I missed our class trip to the Acropolis. Therefore, my week started with class on Thursday. Before coming to Greece, I had not had a great deal of experience with Archeology, particularly not survey Archeology, so it was interesting to hear about its processes, specifically in the context of locations that we will be visiting. I still find it amazing that you can find sherds that are over a thousand years old just sitting out in fields, and that these sherds, can, in turn, be analyzed to tell archaeologists about the area in the ancient world and people who lived there. Our subsequent trip to the Mazi Plain on Friday was a really interesting illustration of the presence and uses of types of archeological evidence across various sites. This trip was also an interesting look into how a single site can be used for a variety of purposes, both contemporaneously and across history, and how these purposes and uses can be determined from the archeological record.
Our first stop on our Mazi plain trip was Oinoe. Here we saw the remains of walls from an early Hellenistic fortification. Though there was not a great deal of this fortification remaining, the map in the handout, along with the walls and foundations which remained, provided a sense of the boundaries of the fort. These walls, or what remained of them, were made from conglomerate stone cut into large block and stacked without any type of connecting materials. Though the Hellenistic fortification was the best preserved structure at this site, there were also other foundations and evidence of ancient use throughout the site. This site represented a mixture of both military and residential uses, with much of the military activity focuses around the upper area and the residential activity concentrated in the lower town. In the lower town, we saw a variety of sherds, including those from ceiling tiles and the handle of an amphora. The presence of these sherds allowed one to imagine the goings on of everyday life in the lower town. This was particularly interesting to think about in conjunction with the military fortress and its tension with surrounding areas. Given the theory that Eleutherai and Oinoe were in a kind of “arms race” to see which could be more fortified as a response to tensions present across the Mazi plain, it is interesting to imagine what it would have been like to live surrounded by that tension. Though this type of tension would not have been all that unusual in the ancient world, the visible presence of Eleutherai would have made this constant threat all the more present.
Our second stop was across the plain, to the fortification of Eleutherai. To visit this site, we parked on the side of the road and walked of quite a bit of a hill to reach the fortress. This site was quite a bit more intact and Alex informed us that it was one of the best preserved ancient fortresses in mainland Greece. The walls were made from limestone blocks that were, again, placed together without any connection materials. From the fortification there was an excellent view of the Mazi plain below, as well as of the surrounding mountains. The effectiveness of the fortification was quite clear; its good view and steep surrounding terrain made it both defensible and good for observation of the surrounding area. Its position near a key mountain pass also played a key role in its functionality. Alex explained that the origin of this site is debated, and that it has been considered to be either Boiotian or Athenian. Though it has been thought to be Athenian previously, it seems most likely to be Boiotian based on its architecture, position directly above the cult to Dionysis, a stamped measure cup found at the location, an inscription on a gate on the road to the fortress, as well as the mythological links of cave of Antiope and her sons, located just above the fortification. It is these details, along with others, which the article The Fortress of Eleutherai: New Insights from Survey, Architecture, and Epigraphy draws on to make its claim that this is in fact a Boitation fortress. I find this argument compelling, and, despite limited background knowledge, think it would be logical for this to have been a Boiotian fortification.
Unlike Oinoe, there was not a residential lower town at the fortress of Eleutherai. It was instead located a few minute away by bus. We stopped on our way down the mountain to lunch, and here we saw the foundation of the cult to Dionysus, as well as of the residential town of Elutherai. This type of layout provided a much more substantial differentiation between military and non-military life; the fortification was on the hill while the residential center was below. It is difficult to say how this would have affected peoples’ experiences of the tension between the two fortresses as, on the one hand, distance from the fortress would provide distance from the immediate site of tension, but also would not provide the same kind of protection afforded by a fortification.
Our final stop of the day, after lunch, was to Aigosthena. If Eleutherai was impressively preserved, this site was even more so. We heard that a good portion of the original southeastern tower survived until an earthquake in 1981, allowing us to have photos of what it looked like originally. We were also able to walk up this tower and see the view from the top due to a very impressive 2011-2015 reconstruction project. I found the fact that they were able to determine where each block was originally placed and lift each back into place very impressive. I also thought the emphasis on the interdisciplinary effort that was required to pull off the project, between civic engineers, craftspeople, archaeologists, builders, ect. was important to acknowledge, as well as being interesting. The view from the top of the tower was amazing, and, aside from aesthetic purposes, would also have provided a very complete view of the surrounding countryside, as well as of the gulf of Corinth. Again, it emphasizes the importance of control of key mountain passes and waterways. Standing at the top and looking through the archer’s windows it was easy to tell how it could be easily defensible. Overall, across the sites I was impressed by the amount of ancient material that survived and my proximity to it. Interacting with the sites allowed for a level of reflection on the people who had lived in and used the spaces before, as well as thinking about the immense amount of effort and resources that were dedicated to their construction.
