Friday, May 27, 2011

Institute Fieldwork Begins and Sacred Landscape in Crete


Eleon
The Institute’s fieldwork and study seasons have begun for 2011! The Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project starts its first season of excavation at Eleon tomorrow. The Kastro Kallthea excavation in Thessaly has already started its study season. In Central Macedonia the Argilos project’s study season will start shortly, as will the Mytilene excavation study season, with the study season at Stymphalos in the Peloponnesos following in July. The Leukos Survey Project on Karpathos will conduct its final field season in July.

We anticipate that the directors of each one of these projects will write an Institute blog this summer so as to give you our loyal followers some idea of what they have found and what materials they are studying this year. So starting in July, look eagerly for these guest blogs!

Book of the Blog
When an archaeological project undertakes a comprehensive pedestrian survey of an area it discovers many things it wasn’t expecting along with those which were the primary objectives for the fieldwork. Sometimes these unexpected revelations were always in plain sight, but their potential and significance were overlooked. To understand and to interpret such a dataset requires additional work, sometimes in the field but often in archives and/or through interviews with local informants.

The Institute’s Sphakia Survey, co-directed by Jennifer Moody and Lucia Nixon in the late 1980s and early 1990s, explored a large research zone in southwestern Crete seeking information on human settlement and resource exploitation from 3000 BC to 1900 CE. Nixon became interested in the many outlying churches (exokklesia) and the numerous icon stands (eikonostasia) that they encountered, scattered across the landscape apparently randomly. The examples from the 20th century, and the reasons given by local informants for their erection and placement, add an important dimension to this investigation.

Using a postprocessual approach derived from Chris Tilley’s Phenomenology of the Landscape. Places, Paths, and Monuments (Oxford, 1994), she sees these religious structures of Hellenic Christianity as components of a sacred landscape of the region constructed during the Byzantine-Venetian-Turkish periods that continues to the present. The natural and cultural landscapes were transformed into a scared space by the placement of these structures. Their spatial distribution, Nixon argues, is based on a “grammar of location”. A major factor in the grammar is the capabilities of the landscape in terms of water and good land. By erecting these structures the land was defined and claimed in order to defend against perceived external and later internal threats. Their relationship to settlements and other such monuments also plays a role in the placement, especially in terms of inter-visibility.

The fact that some of these churches and icon stands are located in the same place as earlier religious sacred places might give credence to the idea of continuity of location. By examining carefully the locational grammar for Minoan, ancient Greek, Christian/Greek Orthodox and Christian/Roman Catholic sacred places, however, she concludes that such is best explained as an overlap of the individual locational grammars.

Her fascinating, detailed, complex and provocatively-argued study (with four appendices and an exhaustive catalogue of all of the monuments studied) was published in 2006 as, Making a Sacred Landscape. Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete (Oxbow Books). This well-documented and well-illustrated book should be read by anyone examining sacred landscapes and how they were constructed as well as those researchers who utilize a landscape archaeology approach to analyze and to interpret the patterning of human settlement and exploitation.

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

Friday, May 20, 2011

Boeotian Studies and a Donation of Books


Canadian classical scholarship and the Institute have had strong ties to Boeotia since the 1960s. First, John Fossey, then with Jacques Morin, followed by Duane Roller and now the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project have focused research and fieldwork on various topics related to this vast territory in central Greece. This past week John Fossey (retired from McGill University and now the Curator of Ancient Art at Montreal Museum of Arts) was in Athens. He must have read our minds, as he donated to the Institute the archives of his excavations at Kastron Khostion, ancient Khorsiai, which took place in 1980 and 1983. He gave as well all of his publications relating to his work in Boeotia. His thoughtful contributions to the Archives and to the Library strengthen our existing collections relating to Boeotian studies.

One of our projects for the 2011-2012 academic year is the acquisition of the archives of the past archaeological projects which carried out their fieldwork under the aegis of the Institute. Such archives, along with others such as the B/W negative collection of Greek and Roman architecture of Fred Winter, will enable researchers to delve into the basic documents on which publications are based.

Book of the Blog
This week I have not reviewed a new book from our Library. Rather I wish to comment of the generosity again of John Fossey for his gift of a small, but important, collection of books relating to Classics, Classical Archaeology and Archaeology. A small Institute such as ours, in existence for only 35 years, has great difficulty building its Library so that it can serve well the scholarly community. To meet this challenge, we have chosen a strategy of specializations in our purchases so that we can provide what is generally not available at other libraries. Fossey’s donation of older books, as well as Greek and Latin texts, helps us to fill the gaps in our basic collection. By such means our Library will grow over time and begin to take its place as one of the important libraries in Athens. We are waiting for your donation as well!

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director

Friday, May 13, 2011

Arrival of the York University Intern and Egyptian Art



Every year in May the Institute welcomes an undergraduate intern from York University for a three month educational experience. Our latest intern is Miglena Todorova, who hails originally from Sofia, Bulgaria. She is currently a third year undergraduate student in the Bachelor of Administrative Studies programme (Honours Marketing) at York. For the past two years she has also been working as a Page in Toronto Public Library, so accessioning and cataloguing new acquisitions at the Institute will hold few surprises for her! Miglena joined in immediately to help with the preparations for our annual Open Meeting last night.

Professor Weir’s entertaining and informative lecture introduced the large audience to the use of astrology to further the political ambitions and career of some rulers in the late Hellenistic period. You can see images from the successful evening on our facebook page.

Book of the Blog
Two of our members from Concordia University in Montreal, Jane E. Francis and George W. M. Harrison have donated to the Institute’s Library a small bilingual volume that they have edited. It is entitled, Life and Death in Ancient Egypt. The Diniacopoulos Collection (Concordia University, Montreal, 2011). The volume presents some examples of the works of art that were once part of the Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos Collection in Montreal. This large collection of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Cypriote, Greek and Roman art and artifacts was amassed in the latter 19th and earlier 20th centuries. The collectors appeared to have favored small-scale works of art in a variety of materials.

Ten of the twelve contributions focus on a range of art and objects, from Egyptian small-scale stone sculptures, a relief, a stele, stone bowls and an offering table to a mummy coffin and a terracotta lamp. These items range in date from the Old Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period. Besides providing basic information concerning the object in question, each essay contextualizes it in cultural terms as well as in terms of the relevant scholarly discussions. After an informative Prologue by the Editors, the volume begins with two essays, one on the urge to collect by Greeks and the other on how the Diniacopoulos Collection was formed and why. There are many valuable observations and thoughtful insights in each contribution.

Cordially,
David W. Rupp
Director

Friday, May 6, 2011

Annual Open Meeting and Archaeochemistry


Leukos Survey Project. Quickbird Satellite image with contours, 2010
Each foreign archaeological school or institute in Greece has an annual open meeting where the activities and the archaeological fieldwork are highlighted. In addition, a distinguished scholar is invited to give a special lecture on some topic related to the study of the past. The Institute is no exception, of course. On Thursday, May 12th at 7 pm at the auditorium of the Danish Institute in Athens in Plaka we will hold our Open Meeting. I will review the work of our members with permits from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Specifically, I will discuss the results of the excavations at Argilos (Central Macedonia) and at Kastro Kallithea (Thessaly), the Leukos Survey Project (Kato Lefkos, Karpathos) and the study seasons of the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project and the Southern Euboea Exploration Project (Karystos, Euboea).

Professor Robert Weir (Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Windsor) will give the Invited Lecture. His topic is, “Antiochos VIII and the Star of Destiny”. Our members, friends and the public are cordially invited to attend. There will be a reception afterwards.

Book of the Blog
It is only natural for archaeologists to seek ways to that will inform them of how artifacts were used, reconstruct the foodways of ancient peoples or determine what food products were traded. The archaeological context in which artifacts are found can indicate sometimes the purpose and manner of use. Similar forms and manner of production with contemporary or historical examples can provide homologies. Ethnographical and ethno-historical sources offer another potential approach to answering such questions. Intuition or speculation is often evoked when there is no obvious answer. The result is frequently an inconsistency in interpretation of similar assemblages and conflicting descriptive models.

In some cases, however, there are other possibilities when there are visible botanical residues or chemical encrustations on tool or vessel surfaces. During the past half century the analyses of these macro-organic residues have led archaeologists and biochemists to go beyond this superficial level. They now investigate micro and molecular residues on external surfaces as well as organic compounds the have impregnated the fabric of the artifact. These residues “…represent carbon-based remains (in combination with H, N, O, P and S) of fungi, plants, animals and humans” (p. 1) found on or in ceramics, flaked and ground stone tools, grinding stones, bone, and coprolites. Further, researchers have isolated various biomolecules ranging from lipids, petides, proteins and starches to DNA and plant lignin. Besides food residues hafting adhesives, sealants and pigments can be identified. This specialized interdisciplinary endeavor has evolved into a new field called “archaeochemistry”.

At the 2005 annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in Salt Lake City, UT a symposium was held on the subject of organic residue analysis. The organizers, Hans Barnard and Jelmar W. Eerkins, promptly published the 16 papers that were given in, Theory and Practice of Archaeological Residue Analysis (BAR International Series 1650, Oxford 2007). The editors’ Introduction and the two appendices provide both a broad, but succinct, overview of the state of this rapidly developing field, its history and research path, the various analytical methods used, the problems and challenges of using the results, and a glossary of the scientific and technical terminology used. Although the papers represent a cross-section of current research and a range of analytical techniques most focus in one way or the other on ceramics using combined gas chromatography mass spectrometry.

For those archeologists seeking to understand topics such as the form and function of tools and vessels in a society, subsistence patterns, diet reconstruction, or the trade of agricultural products this thick, well-illustrated volume offers a means to access effectively this important analytical approach. The extensive references cited provide a direct connection to the relevant literature.

Cordially,
David Rupp
Director