The fifth field season of the Central Achaia Phthiotis Survey (CAPS) project ran from July 6th to August 11th 2024. We welcomed back staff and volunteers as well as new field schools students. Despite the soaring temperatures (up to 40°C!) we had a successful and fun season!
The CAPS 2024 team. We are unfortunately missing Sophia Karapanou in the picture.
The project, codirected by Dr. Margriet Haagsma (University of Alberta) and Sophia Karapanou (Ephorate of Antiquities in Larissa, Thessaly), is funded by Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta. We have the pleasure of working with the support of the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG), the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Pharsala, and the town and people of Narthaki. We would like to thank all the many people involved in our project running so successfully. A special thanks to the mayor of Pharsala, Makis Eskioglou, who generously supported the addition of air conditioning units to the school where the students stay and visited us for dinner. We are fortunate to work with the village proedros, Thanasis Lelentzis, who is always available to help things run smoothly. Finally, we would like to thank Elias Papadopoulos and his family for their kindness and hospitality.
The CAPS project is interested in land use over time and seeks a diachronic understanding of the region: we ask how people's experience of the landscape has changed and how human actions have impacted the landscape. These research questions are addressed through a combination of intensive (broad, systematic survey over a large area) and extensive (long range, targeted recording of sites of interest) survey methodologies. Since the beginning of the CAPS project in 2019, we have been able to collect a tremendous amount of data regarding the past of Achaia Phthiotis, documenting material from the Neolithic to Early Modern periods.
Beyond ancient changes to the landscape we are increasingly aware of modern anthropogenic impacts. The solar panel prjects that were in the planning stages last year are now more conspicuously under construction with much of our survey area being impacted. The situation is complex, with many stakeholders including local landowners, foreign energy companies, and the Greek ephorate. Fortunately, thanks to the work of the Ephorate based on the results of our previous years of survey, areas with high densities of archaeological material have been excluded from the construction.
This season the field survey teams, consisting of University of Alberta field school students, volunteers, and staff, focused closer to our home in the village of Narthaki, intensively surveying agricultural fields. One major area of interest was the vicinity of the modern village of Platanos. This small village has been a landmark for both the CAPS project and previous Kastro Kallithea Archaeological Project, passed by almost every morning on the way to the Kastro at Kallithea or to regions marked for survey. Beginning in 2023 and continuing this year, we began investigating the settlement near enough to begin uncovering both its recent and more distant past.
In the first week of 2024, we began seeing the first signs of late Ottoman pottery in the region, as well as ceramic water pipes. Both speak to the longstanding occupation of the site, but it was not until the second week of the project (and the first week with field school students!) that we began to appreciate the volume of material. Field school students were treated to many archaeologists' dreams: a long-term dumping site. From near the edge of Platanos, huge volumes of broken ceramic, dating from the modern back to at least the Ottoman period attested to the long and intense occupation of the settlement. These findings are somewhat unusual for our survey project, which normally collects highly dispersed material, rather than a site of occupation. The material we have recovered dates from c. 18th to 19th century CE, speaking to the early modern occupation of the region, and the likely presence of the Ottoman çiftlik Tzakerlı.
As we moved further from Platanos, we once again began to once again recover older material. Moving further from the modern settlement, we began to encounter fields with large concentrations of stones, out of context, but possibly hinting at early architecture. Fragmentary ceramics, from these areas point to the long standing occupation of this region, with pottery sherds ranging in date from the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods recovered. Less frequently, we also caught a glimpse of even earlier periods, when stone tools and lithic debitage dating as far back as the Neolithic period were collected.
Undergraduate students Abraar, Erin, and Emme showing the archaeological material recovered from a single tract!
Along with our intensive survey, we were joined by Dr. Grigoris N. Tsokas (University of Thessaly) and his team who performed geophysical survey of two sites of interest: Kastraki and Platanos Magoula. The Platanos Magoula was discovered as part of the CAPS survey during the 2021 season. Professor Tsokas kindly invited the field school students to watch the work in the field and gave a lecture on the methods using case studies drawn from the 400 sites (!) he and his team have surveyed. The results of this analysis will inform future work in the region.
Field school students, volunteers, and staff at Dr. Grigoris N. Tsokas’ lecture on geophysical survey.
In addition to our director, Dr. Margriet Haagsma, and the undergraduate field school students, the team consisted of a graduate students and volunteers (Dustin Berndt-Setter, Kate Grabinsky, Anna Hijmans, Amilia Hildahl, Ava Laville, Matt Spinks, and Dana Stephens) who worked hard to make the field season a success. Ed Middleton (McMaster University) ran the intensive survey as field director with Ava Laville. Dr. Magie Aiken (Swedish Museum of Natural History) was responsible for the GIS of the survey. The apothiki was run by Adam Wiznura (University of Groningen) who taught students how to classify ceramic material. Dr. Gino Canlas (University of Western Ontario) supervised the study of the material from Kastraki, one of the archaeological sites we identified in the survey. We were joined by Dr. Sandra Garvie-Lok (University of Alberta) who worked with faunal material from the Kastro Kallithea project and was kind enough to teach a module on isotope analysis to the students.
Beyond our survey work, the field school students benefited from field trips to visit archaeological sites, museums, and other archaeological projects. If you are interested in more information on our project you can check out our website https://caps.artsrn.ualberta.ca/ or, if you’re interested in the pictures, you can find us on Instagram (@achaiaphthiotis) and Facebook (Central Achaia Phthiotis Survey).
Magie Aiken, Margriet Haagsma, Edward Middleton, CAPS
