The Abdera Urban Plan Project (AUPP 2024): A Multidisciplinary approach to the study of urban identities

Abdera, Thrace (Kallintzi 2010)

The Abdera Urban Plan Project (AUPP) is a three-year SSHRC project (2023-2026) co-directed by Maria Chrysafi of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi and Maria Papaioannou, Department of Historical Studies, University of New Brunswick with generous support from the Canadian Institute in Greece, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the museum at Abdera, the local community and the Prefecture of Xanthi.  The AUPP began its first season this summer with a well-attended public lecture on June 15^th at the Abdera Museum by Maria Papaioannou entitled “Living in Roman Greece” that included a brief overview of the AUPP project. Following the lecture, enthusiastic attendees (students and non-students) came forward to volunteer for next summer’s excavations! The following Monday a geophysical survey of the site began under sunny and hot June skies accompanied by a cool breeze from the Aegean.

The island of Thasos in the blue background. View from the archaeological site of Abdera

For those not familiar with the site, Abdera is located along the Thracian coastal in the prefecture of Xanthi, just 5km south of the modern village of Abdera that features a majestic view of the island of Thasos against a clear blue sky.  The city was first founded in the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC by colonist from Asia Minor, and subsequently became a very wealthy and powerful city state as evidenced by its coins found in far away places such as Egypt and Mesopotamia; the poet Pindar praises the city for its ‘plentiful vines and bountiful fruits.’  For those however who favour the mythical foundation story, it was Heracles apparently who founded the city naming it after his companion Abderos who unfortunately met a grewsome death, devoured by the famous man-eating horses of the Thracian king, Diomedes.  In historical times Abdera was the home of many famous Greek poets and philosophers, among them Demokritos the father of the atom theory. The physician Hippocrates is also known to have spent some time there apparently invited by the citizens of Abdera to cure the ailing Demokritos.

Abdera, aerial view of Insula of Houses with the Roman period  peristyle house to the north (viewer’s left)

The site was first excavated in the 1950s by the newly appointed Director of Antiquities of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, Demetrios Lazarides, who discovered the remains of fragmentary houses of a late classical-Hellenistic grid planned city. No complete housing block has ever been investigated and only one-well preserved Roman period peristyle house from the Insula of Houses was revealed in its entirety (albeit missing almost entirely its north wall). The boundary roads to the east, west and south of this insula were discovered in subsequent investigations conducted between 1996 and 2019 by the Archaeological Service of Xanthi, but the north road has not been identified. Previous studies on this housing block includes an architectural study of the Roman period peristyle house (figs. 3 and 4) by the AUPP co-director Maria Papaioannou and in 2016 with an Insight Grant from SSHRC, Maria and collaborator Peter Dare from Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering UNB conducted Terrestrial Laser Scanning to create a digital archive of the Insula of Houses and visualization theories. 

The results of these earlier investigations sparked an interest in the study of the built environment, the various architectural phases of the Insula of Houses from Hellenistic to Roman times and its impact on urban identities. This new data combined with past studies will contribute to our understanding of the various political, social and economic networks that helped shape the town-plan of Abdera. We hope to answer questions that help identify those responsible for the project, what group of people it meant to accommodate, and the types of housing that existed at different time periods. The outcomes may challenge the long-standing theories regarding the uniform layout of the town plan of Abdera based on the democratic notion of isonomia, as some researchers have postulated.

The AUPP office under the oak tree at the SW corner of the site. The survey team taking a lunch break. From left, Nikos Papadopoulos, Gianluca Cantoro, Angelo Plageras and Demitri Oikonomou

On June 17^th the FORTH Team from the Institute for Mediterranean Studies arrived and set up their office beneath a large oak tree at the northwest corner of the site.  Although there were some delays as the Wi-Fi was not cooperating, which made it difficult for Angelo and Demitri to establish a connection between the GPS and the magnetometer, the problem was soon resolved, and work began.  Next Ground Penetrating Radar was also applied followed by Electrical Resistivity conducted by Niko (Research Director of FORTH) in selective areas that required some additional clarification.  Digital documentation (TLS) of the site in areas not previously covered in the 2016 study was conducted by Gianluca, Archaeologist of the National Research Council of Italy and member of the FORTH team.

Nikos and Angelo conducting electrical resistivity; Maria Papaioannou “mowing the lawn -and lending a hand with the GPR; TLS by Gianluca; Dimitri and Angelo with the magnetometer

GPR revealed remains of a peristyle house (highlighted in a red rectangle) at the southwest corner of the Roman period peristyle house at the north end of the insula

Preliminary results from the geohpysical survey have revealed some exciting finds.  A complete plan of a large house, featuring remains of well-preserved stone walls, with rooms surrounding a central peristyle coutryard appeared just to the southwest corner of the excavated Roman peristyle house!   (Rectangular red area in figure 7). The dimensions appear to be similar to those of the Roman peristyle house which features a ground floor plan of approximately 500 m2. This was an unexpected find that made our day!  The final results will be submitted by the FORTH team in September. Based on the geophysical findngs we will select areas to conduct test trenches next summer. We hope to locate the road boardering the north side of the Insula of Houses and thus verify the exact dimensions of the insula, identify walls and plans of early Hellenistic period houses and confirm the existance of structures (domestic?) in the neighbouring insulae to the north, east and south.  We look forward to organizing our 2025 field project and excavating a site next season which promises to be full of surprises… we hope!

At the end of the day…Dimitri, Nikos, Angelo, Gianluca, Maria Ch. and Maria P.

Former Director of the Ephorate of Xanthi, Konstantina Kallintzi, and current Deputy Director Maria Chrysafi surveying from the north end of the housing block the cleared areas surrounding the Insula of Houses.

Maria Papaioannou, University of New Brunswick, co-director, AUPP

The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) 2024: Koroni-ing Achievement

Miriam Clinton and Robert Stephan atop a ruined structure while mapping on Koroni in 2024

Anyone who spends enough time working on archaeological field projects will eventually learn several immutable ‘rules’ about how things tend to go. First, the most interesting and exciting finds always appear on the very last day of an excavation when you desperately need to backfill trenches and wrap things up to complete the season. Second, whenever you wish there would be a nice breeze to cool your team off on a hot day, the air will be a thick, humid doldrum of stillness, while on days where you need to fly your drone, the most horrendous hurricane-force gales will mercilessly pummel your site as if propelled by a vengeful god. Finally, most definitely guaranteed: you can rely on the fact that no matter how many times you test out your electronic equipment prior to the season, it will not work properly when you really need it to – this is especially true if there are important or many people staring at you as you continuously click buttons, turn the unit on and back off again, and otherwise struggle to troubleshoot various tech issues while muttering and cursing quietly under your breath.

In other words, archaeological projects almost involve at least a little bit of chaos, and even the best-laid plans end up scattered in a colorful confetti of nonsense on the lab floor. This is not meant as a criticism! Rather, it simply comes with the territory. Many practitioners (present company included) arrive in the field having freshly emerged, gollum-like, from dark winter lairs requiring struggles with musty tomes rather than dGPS units and require a few beats to reboot. Archaeological fieldwork involves a lot of elements that are out of one’s control – like the weather – or hard to predict – like what turns up when you stick a shovel in the ground. Part of the fun of the entire operation is that you don’t really know how things are going to go and must make constant adjustments to deal with surprises, as in a video game.

After 15+ years spent learning these rules, I was fully prepared to embrace a ‘chaotic era’ while getting ready to co-direct a field project for the first time in 2019, when we were setting up for the first season of the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS), back in 2019. Weirdly, however, the project went extremely smoothly, with an almost disappointing lack of proper chaos from beginning to end, even taking into account the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Every season we had about the exact amount of time and personnel that we needed to do what we needed to do, usually finishing up fieldwork a few days early so that we could spend time tidying up loose ends. Nobody got injured, no drones were crashed, and we never even lost a team member or an artifact into the sea, despite many opportunities amidst transferring people and objects on/off a boat nearly every day of every season. There was a potentially chaotic moment on the last day of mapping on Raftis Island in 2023, when we found a gold coin while walking back to the boat to leave (see rule #1 above). But even then, all we had to do was put it in a bag and take it to the museum – hardly making a confetti of nonsense out of our plans!

Team members hopping off the dinghy onto Raftis Island via beach-rock hopscotch in July 2024

The closest we had to a chaos, I suppose, arrived courtesy of the unexpectedly massive tangle of architectural remains on the Koroni peninsula. The Koroni peninsula, located at the south end of the bay of Porto Rafti, is home to a fortified acropolis and town, mostly datable to the Hellenistic period (third century BCE) and associated with Ptolemaic mercenaries arriving to the area during the Chremonidean War (260s BCE). A small team of researchers from the American School of Classical Studies had produced a plan of the fortifications and other architecture on the site during a brief campaign in 1960. Since mapping and documentation technology has advanced considerably during the last sixty years, one of our goals in the BEARS project was to revisit the architecture on Koroni and re-document the remains to create an updated plan of the site, with a team of mappers led by Miriam Clinton from Rhodes College.

It turns out that the original plan of the site made by the ASCSA team was, to put it generously, a bit more of an abstraction, verging towards imaginary fever dream territory, than an accurate recording. As we progressed with Koroni mapping during the 2022 season, it became clear that there were hundreds upon hundreds of walls on the site that had simply been ignored by the ASCSA team, stretching across the saddle below the acropolis and down its slopes on all sides. We threw a ton of personnel at the project of completing a proper map of all these walls in 2022. However, much of the site is now badly overgrown, not to mention steep and sheltered from any breeze by the acropolis looming above, so the work was punishing, and progress slow. Moreover, the more team members slogged about the site, the more unknown and unmapped structures kept emerging from the bushes. Thus, following yet another seven-week campaign of mapping on Koroni during the 2023 study season, there remained at least eighty full undocumented structures in the saddle of the site.

Pondering architecture amidst the thorny slopes of the Koroni saddle

Thus, Miriam, myself, and fellow BEARS lifer Robert Stephan doggedly returned to finish the Koroni map in early June 2024. All in all, we ended up mapping more than 1,000 walls on Koroni, including not only Hellenistic structures, but also architecture dating to the Bronze Age, and many probably Medieval or Early Modern installations that had been ignored in previous maps. I am happy to report that the dGPS unit (mostly) behaved itself – following the obligatory preliminary muttering session on day one, of course!

In some ways it was slightly less than ideal to have such a small rump of a 2024 season; surely much more elegant to call it a full wrap after the epic and hugely productive 2023 campaign! At the same time, it was great fun to have an opportunity to spend a mellow time in the field churning through tasks with two very old and dear friends (I met Miriam working on the Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project way back in 2008 while Rob and I were in grad school together from 2007–2013). I guess that’s another important rule of archaeology – one of the best parts is that you get to meet amazing and interesting people who become your friends for life!

Triumphant Koroni mappers of 2024 after completing documentation of the final feature

In addition to – at long last – completing the gargantuan task of mapping Koroni, the work of the BEARS project in 2024 included a geological component. As readers of the 2023 BEARS blog post may recall, amongst the surprising finds from Raftis Island were a huge assemblage of groundstone artifacts made from a chaotic array of different materials – andesites and basalts and granodiorites and magnetites and gabbros galore! Thus, in July we arranged for a geologist, Christos Stergiou, to visit Raftis along with our groundstone specialist Eleni Chreiazomenou to gather some material for geochemical sampling and analyses, which will help us to better understand where all these materials came from. That, in turn, will help us fill in our reconstruction of the trade and exchange networks people living on Raftis in the Bronze Age may have been involved with.

Eleni Chreiazomenou and Christos Stergiou with a heap of groundstone artifacts on Raftis Island

It was a beautiful day out on the island, though of course (see rule #2 above) it was very, very windy, which made getting onto and off the steep slopes of the island a fun challenge (especially at the end of the day when everyone’s bags were weighed down with many kilograms of special rocks). Christos and Eleni also joined us in the Brauron museum the following day to have another look at the material we had collected in previous seasons. I was excited to learn that some of our ‘mystery rocks’ (every project has them!) are in fact iron ores, which may add another prong to the “fires of industry” theme of the project’s results. Some of these will also be sent for geochemical analysis, which will help us determine where they might have come from. It will be very interesting to see how these results shake out, hopefully over the coming year.

Eleni and Christos working with groundstone artifacts in the museum

Meanwhile, my co-director Catherine Pratt and I have begun gathering chapters for the final publication of the project’s results. We are excited to have many new things to say about the history and archaeology of this beautiful corner of Attica, from the hard-earned new multi-period architectural map of Koroni to detailed information about geological materials entering the bay in the Bronze Age, and heaps more in between. Thanks, as always, to all readers for taking an interest in our work in Porto Rafti and to the many organizations and individuals who have made the BEARS project possible!

Eleni, Christos, and the author traipsing off into the horizon on the slopes of Raftis Island

Sarah Murray, University of Toronto, co-director, BEARS

Archaeology at ancient Eleon and Graduate Training

Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project team photo 2024

From May 13-June 23, 2024, the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project again conducted excavations at the site of ancient Eleon in central Greece. This project is a synergasia of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia, directed by Alexandra Charami, and the Canadian Institute in Greece working with the University of Victoria. In 2024, we continued excavations, but rather than work on the top of the low plateau where we have previously worked and uncovered substantial Mycenaean remains, this year, we moved our investigation to the lower town surrounding the acropolis. In previous seasons we had surveyed in this area and noted polygonal masonry comparable to the large polygonal wall along the eastern edge of the acropolis. We opened trenches to test our survey methods and we were very successful in exposing a significant stretch of the lower town fortification system, complete with towers and stone socles which supported mudbrick superstructure. With detailed study of the ceramics, including roof tiles, we discovered that the construction date of the fortification system is in the late Archaic period, and it was destroyed in the early Classical age (ca. 500-450 BCE). We hope to report on this work at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in January 2025 in Philadelphia.

Lower town tower (left) and wall socle (right)

Trevor Van Damme and pottery in apothiki (left) and excavation (right)

Our work in 2024, like every year since the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project began in 2007, provides research-engaged learning and university course credit for undergraduates at the University of Victoria, Wellesley College, and other universities in Canada and the US. Some of our team members miss their graduation at their home institution so we have our own ‘EBAP Graduation’ party each summer.

Graduates 2024: Lucas Goulden, Shayla Faminow, Riley Kernohan, Haley Bertram, Hana Sugioka, Ben Watts Wooldridge

Excavation supervisors: Bryan Burns, Hana Sugioka, Graham Braun, Haley Bertram, Ben Watts Wooldridge, Brendan Burke

In addition to hands-on learning for undergraduates, EBAP also provides research opportunities and experience for graduate students who engage with material from our project, supervise excavation, and conduct research projects of their own. Many of these projects have resulted in Master’s theses and PhD dissertations. In 2024, we had four excellent graduate students who supervised individual trenches and we are very grateful for their dedication. All the supervisors have worked with our project previously including Haley Bertram, who started with us in 2011 and successfully completed her dissertation at the University of Cincinnati. Haley was the senior supervisor leading the team and will start as Resident Instructor at the Intercollegiate Center in Rome in September. Hana Sugioka just completed her MA at the University of Texas at Austin in Art History and will start a PhD at UC Berkeley after an internship at the Getty Museum. Ben Watts Wooldridge is completing his MA at the University of Victoria and will start his PhD work at Princeton University this year. Graham Braun completed his MA at UBC and is in the PhD program at Cincinnati. This coming year he will be the Emily Vermeule fellow as a Regular Member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Our graduate student supervisors are an extremely valuable part of the team and without their detailed record keeping and effective management of our undergraduate students, we would not have accomplished all that we did in 2024.

Team on break from lower town excavation

One of the things all graduates are told about their research projects, especially their PhD dissertation topics, is that their work should be original and one that advances the field of archaeology and Greek studies. Finding something new to say can be a great challenge since the field of Classical archaeology has such a long and distinguished history. By providing newly excavated material from our excavation for study, analysis, and publication, our project believes it is a doubly successful endeavor: graduate students get original material to work on to complete their degrees and our shared research results are disseminated and published. Recent projects include Haley Bertram looking at our archaic and classical figurines for an MA at UBC; Max MacDonald looking at textile equipment for an MA at UVic; Matthew Bullock studying faunal remains from Eleon for his MA in Anthropology MA at UVic; Janelle Sadarananda studying clay chemistry of the Archaic ceramics for her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania; Scott Evans looking at the lithic/chipped stone from Eleon for his UVic MA; Alix Galumbeck examining the bull figures and Mycenaean religion at Eleon for her UVic MA; Ben Watts Wooldridge from UVic studying figural decorated pottery from ancient Eleon for his MA; and Krysten Cruz studying our early Mycenaean human population for her PhD at Texas Tech.

Janelle Sadarananda presenting her petrography research

In addition, we work with young scholars who include material from Eleon in their wider regional studies, some as post-doctoral projects. This includes Vernon Stafford from the University of Tennessee, Sally McGrath UNB, Bella Dimova of the British School at Athens, Amanda Gaggioli at the University of Memphis, Chris Hale of the Polish Academy of Science, Jeremey Beller and Annika Berendt from the University of Victoria, and Symeon Gkinoudis from Groningen University. Having advanced students and young scholars keeps our project engaged with the most recent methods of research and theory, and it provides a clear inspiration to our undergraduates on the wide variety of fields that engage with our excavations at Eleon. They see what is possible for them to continue their studies in the field of archaeology, classics, anthropology, etc.  Interdisciplinary training is also important for graduate students who are specializing in history and literature, including Luke Montgomery and Grace Niehaus, pursuing their MAs at the University of Victoria.

Symeon Gkinoudis presenting his research on paleobotany

We greatly value the contributions that all of our team members make to the project, but we especially appreciate our graduate students. We look forward to continuing working with them in the future and hope that many of them will incorporate research from Eleon in their future projects.. We look forward to continuing our work at ancient Eleon in 2025 and are very grateful to the Canadian Institute in Greece and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia for all of their help.

Team leaving ancient Eleon 2024

 Brendan Burke, Bryan Burns & Trevor Van Damme, EBAP

My Life is in (Ancient Greek) Ruins

When I got the news I was accepted for the CIG internship I was ecstatic. I just finished the third year of my undergraduate degree in Mediterranean Archaeology and felt a longing to engage with the material I was learning about in class. I had never been to Southern Europe before, but even as I saw the sun rise near the end of the 8 hour plane journey, I know I was going to embark on a life-changing adventure.

I was put to work straight away, helping out and guiding other travelers who had also just arrived in Greece to the CIG guest apartments. I also set to exploring my new home for the summer, and getting used to the entirely unfamiliar Greek sun. Although I started to melt right away, I was able to visit Hadrian's library. I was fascinated by the supple marble, porous clay bricks, and the simple fact that I was standing in the same places as the people I studied while an ocean away.

My time in Greece followed this pattern of helping keep the institute running and cataloguing newly arrived books, then going out to explore on the evenings and weekends. One weekend I was visiting Delphi and the scenic Mountain town of Arachova, while the next I was off to ancient Mycenae and Epidaurus. I was able to cross the Aegean to visit Aegina; sampling pistachios and running up mountains scattered with ruins of a long gone city. Even within Athens, after work was over, I toured through the city visiting sites like Philoppapos Hill, The Agora, The Acropolis and more. Much to my delight, I had the opportunity to peruse the collections of artifacts and sculptures like those at Benaki Museum or the National Archaeological Museum, unburdened by the cost of entry thanks to the Ministry of Culture pass I received as part of my internship.

On top of all this, then there were darts nights at the Red Lion. Here I was able to bask in the familiar presences of my Professors from Trent, alongside new faces like Janne, the Intern from the Finnish institute. I was able to talk to working Archaeologists, those who I hope to join as I continue onwards forming my skills as an apprentice in the field, pushed on by a reinforced passion for history. Now, I also may or may not have a new hobby to pick up back in Canada. I even had the opportunity to celebrate Canada day under the Acropolis with the Ambassador of Canada; an event I was extremely privileged and honoured to be invited to, and which was only possible through the Internship.

Now not only do I have hobbies and souvenirs to bring back, but also friends and experiences that will last with me for the rest of my professional and personal life. One of these memories was a trip to Meteora, where I was able to watch the sun slowly slide below the horizon, casting bronze light across the Thessalian plains. Here, I met some friends and acquaintances I knew from back home, which made the fading sunlight feel even warmer. Another fond memory I'll keep with me is watching the sunset over the Odeon of Herodes Atticus as Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto is beautifully played by an orchestra as part of the Athens-Epidaurus festival.

The story doesn't even end there, as my last excursion outside of Athens during the internship came and went like the sun over the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. Through my work at the internship, I found the resources and advice I needed to be able to make a pilgrimage to Mount Athos in August. This experience, I hope, will round out this chapter of my life as one full of professional, spiritual and personal growth. While I’ve seen a few beautiful sunsets over the ruins in Greece, I hope that because of the time I spent here, I’ll be able to come back one day and experience the sunrise over the ancient sites to which I’ve decided to dedicate my career.

Brandon Montague

Trent University intern, summer 2024