I was invited next year to contribute to the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual lecture program. To help local chapter of the AIA decide whether my lectures would fit their needs, drawn an audience, and interest their members, I was asked to offer a few abstract on talks that I could give.
So I looked through my “works-out-of-progress” folders and concocted three abstracts from the various projects that continue to float about in my scholarly consciousness. They range from the accessible and popular to the technical and obscure and unresolved.
Here they are:
Ten Years at an Ancient Harbor in Cyprus
This lecture would consider the history and archaeology of the coastal site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on the south coast of Cyprus where a now in-filled ancient harbor served a community that prospered for over 1000 years. While travelers and scholars had periodically visited the site and documented stray finds, including the infamous Luigi Palma di Cesnola, systematic work at the site did not begin until 2003 when the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project began a campaign of intensive survey, remote sensing, and excavation that documented an extensive area of habitation along the coast. With a Iron Age sanctuary, a Hellenistic fortification, a Roman period olive press and town, and an Early Christian basilica, the coastal zone of Pyla village contains a startling assemblage of features common across the island of Cyprus during the historic period. The high-density scatter of ceramic artifacts demonstrates the diversity of activities at the site and the wide range connections between the site and the wider Mediterranean world.
Between sea and mountain: the archaeology of a 20th century “small world”in the upland basins of the southeastern Korinthia
Between 2001 and 2009, a small team of archaeologists investigated a number of geographically well-defined and fertile upland basins or poljes located between the villages of Sophiko and Korphos in the southeastern Korinthia. We conducted intensive pedestrian survey in the largest of these valleys, known as Lakka Skoutara, as part of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS). The results of this survey show that despite its seeming isolation, the valley supported human activities throughout antiquity. The most fascinating aspect of the valley, however, appears in more recent times when it supported a cluster of farmsteads and agricultural and pastoral activities. These small houses are now largely abandoned, but can nevertheless tell us a tremendous amount about the “small places” in the Greek countryside that played a vital role in the 20th century in the subsistence of its local population. The team documented the modern landscape of the valley through a series of regular visits, and these allowed up to observe the continued dynamism of changing land use patterns on a very small scale. In particular, we worked to document formation processes and life cycles of use, reuse, and abandonment connected with the modern structures in the valley. By combining archaeological survey with oral information obtained from local residents, we were able to reconstruct part of the landscape history of this small, low-density rural settlement and its relationship to the wider world.
Dream Archaeology
For over 1000 years excavators have relied upon dreams to guide them to hidden treasures, sacred buildings, and lost relics. St. Helena’s excavations of fragments of the true cross and other stories of inventio inspired later Christian archaeologists to follow the inspiration of dream to find sacred relics. The practice was consistent and widespread enough to qualify as a form of Byzantine indigenous archaeology. In more recent times, excavators as revered as Anastasios Orlandos and Manolis Andronikos have recognized the influence of dreams on their own excavations. As Y. Hamilakis and C. Stewart have shown in their recent work that archaeological dreams played a key role in the developing Greek national consciousness. They do not, however, link these modern archaeological dreams explicitly to Byzantine and Early Christian practices. This paper will not necessarily establish an irrefutable connection between modern and Byzantine dreams or argue for the presence of some unconscious continuity. Instead, I will sketch the outlines of an indigenous archaeology in Byzantine times and consider how such pre-modern practices can influence our ideas of archaeological knowledge in more recent times.
Which would you pick?
