Fieldwork Updates – The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey

October 28, 2023October 28, 2023

A Visit to MODI!

On a glowery overcast October day last week, two BEARS team members (Bartek Lis, LH IIIC pottery guru, and your faithful blog correspondent, co-director Sarah Murray) had the great and glorious privilege of visiting Christos Agouridis and his team of underwater archaeologists during their campaign of excavations at the shipwreck of the northern shore of the islet of Modi in the Saronic gulf.

As faithful blog readers will know, Modi is a small, craggy island off the coast of Poros. Like our own Raftis islet, Modi is covered in a dense scatter of LH IIIC and Late Roman (7th century CE) pottery. Excavations by the Greek Archaeological Service produced some really interesting LH IIIC finds on Modi, including evidence for engagement with long-distance exchange networks, and these finds are matched by the amazing finds from Agouridis’ excavations of the shipwreck mentioned above.

Visiting Modi was a real dream come true – all made even better by the incredible friendly hospitality offered by Christos and his team. We were given wonderful explanations of and insights into the daily work routines involved in excavating underwater remains on a steep, rocky slope, and had many great discussions about potential connections between the finds from Modi, the wreck, and what we’ve found in Porto Rafti. Perhaps most importantly – we were never short of coffee and delicious Greek snacks! We could have stayed forever; though neither Bartek nor myself are qualified divers, perhaps we could contribute to the sieve?

Overall, we left (reluctantly) having learned a huge amount about this “cousin” site to Raftis and with a strong impression that this must be one of the best and most well-run projects in Greece these days. The Modi team is doing really amazing work in challenging circumstances. What’s more, they have been partnering with various innovative EU organizations and initiatives to develop new technologies for underwater archaeology and heritage. Modi folks are working with a program called BCT Hubs to help connect underwater and maritime heritage sites throughout European seas. And one day, with input from awesome projects like the Modi excavation, remotely operated submersibles will apparently be on hand to help underwater diggers! Let’s just hope they don’t go squish like some other famous submersibles in the news lately.

Might there be a shipwreck under the waters of Porto Rafti bay, perhaps near the islets of Raftis or Praso? This is an intriguing question….perhaps something to ponder along with our new friends from the Modi team someday in the future….an exciting prospect indeed, especially if we can get some robots involved! For now, there’s plenty to do as we work towards publication of the BEARS survey finds.

September 6, 2023September 6, 2023

Blog Post on the BEARS 2023 Study Season

BEARS blog readers may be lamenting the dearth of updates through the summer – rest assured we were busy working on BEARS business in May and June, and have been industriously getting reports ready and preparing for our final push toward publication since then! Amidst the madness of many moving parts and trying not to let all of our brains sweat out through our ears, the blog seems to have fallen by the wayside. There is a nice wrap up of the season now available on the CIG’s blog, and we’ll try to get some posts going this fall as we are writing up material and looking forward to the final study season in 2024.

https://cig-icg.gr/the-bays-of-east-attica-regional-survey-bears-2023-season-putting-pieces-together/

Meanwhile, fans of BEARS t-shirt designs can check out this trifle of a news story on a certain co-director’s unquenchable amateur graphic design habit here:

https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/infusing-life-laughter-and-colour-courses-lectures-even-clothing

August 29, 2022August 29, 2022

BEARS Sighting in Thorikos!

A Ghent – Toronto Collaboration

by Kat Apokatanidis

During the sweltering weekend of August 19-20, 2022, I had the unique opportunity to travel to Thorikos, an ancient settlement only a five-minute drive from modern day Lavrio, in Attica, Greece. The site of Thorikos is on the coast northeast of the Lavriotiki, the Lavrion area. This is a metalliferous region of Attica. The ancient town or deme comprised three areas: a double-bay harbour by the Aghios Nikolaos peninsula, the Adami plain with the lower reaches of the Potami valley, and the double-peaked Velatouri hill, c. 144 m asl.

The area has seen human activity since the Final Neolithic period (c. 4100-3100 BCE). Archaeological excavations have produced direct evidence, such as litharge and tools, which indicate that, at least since the end of the 4th millennium BCE, silver was extracted locally from the Lavrion argentiferous ores. The site of Thorikos has primarily been the focus of research by the Thorikos Archaeological Research Project (TARP) standing in a long tradition of Belgian fieldwork in the area. Such fieldwork started in 1960 with the excavations by Herman Mussche in the maritime fortification on the Aghios Nikolaos Peninsula. Since then, the site has been explored extensively by various Belgian teams. For more information on the history of this site and the research that has been done and is still ongoing, you can visit the project’s website.

The meeting in Lavrio between TARP and BEARS (the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey) was the result of regular scientific contact between Prof. Roald Docter (Ghent University) and Prof. Sarah Murray (University of Toronto). The two scholars and other Mediterranean Archaeologists working at their respective institutions share common research interests in the regional domains of Attica and Crete, two areas that hitherto only rarely have been discussed in connection with each other. The purpose of this first meeting between the representatives of the two projects was to bring eleven young researchers from the two universities together for discussion in an intensive two-day seminar.

This seminar this August was entitled “Connecting Land- and Seascapes in the Greek world: Ghent-Toronto Young Researchers Meeting, Summer 2022”. It offered an opportunity for us younglings to showcase our work, get to know some of our colleagues, and hear about the interesting work that is being done in Attica and Crete by students at both institutions. The seminar offered the possibility of remote and in-person participation. Thanks to the tireless efforts of my Ghentian counterparts, Sydney Patterson, Killian Regnier, and especially the hero-figure and overall tech master Quentin Drillat’s tenacity, the presentations and the discussion went smoothly throughout the packed two-day schedule.

Discussion flowed effortlessly both in-person and remote. I personally got the chance to talk about my research and thus gain as diverse feedback as possible. I am sure my colleagues, Elliott Fuller and Taylor Stark presenting from Canada, felt the same. We came away from these talks with a sense of wanting to look beyond the boundaries of our respective research topics and were inspired to actively seek converging elements, new avenues to think with, and a much broader horizon than normally is afforded.

The dinner on Saturday night was a fun opportunity to discuss all things archaeology in a more informal way. It was such a nice outing as we were also able to hear from the team of Ghentian Undergraduate students talk about their experience in Thorikos. I was also especially grateful for the guided tour Prof. Docter, Sydney, Killian, and Quentin had arranged for us, despite having just wrapped up their fieldwork season the previous day. Thankfully the famed μελτέμια (meltemia), the north winds which descend upon Greece in August, kept the heat at bay.

In organising this first joint Young Researchers Meeting in Thorikos, the aim was that this may result in (bi-)annual follow-ups given the continuing engagement of the participants both in Attica and on Crete. And indeed, interest was expressed by both groups to collaborate and exchange resources. All of us left the seminar that Sunday afternoon with a better understanding of the kind of work that is currently being done by both teams and an eagerness to move forward together in the future. All in all, it was a successful business weekend trip for all parties involved. On behalf of the Toronto team, I would like to kindly thank Prof. Docter and his team for being such gracious hosts; the Sunday-morning coffee run by Prof. Docter was especially appreciated by yours truly! I look forward to working with everyone in the future and am excited to see the kind of archaeology we can do together.

August 19, 2022August 19, 2022

BEARS 2022 on the CIG Blog

Check it out: the BEARS project is featured on the blog of the Canadian Institute in Greece this week! World domination cannot be too far behind…

https://www.cig-icg.gr/content/bays-east-attica-regional-survey-bears-2022-season-snouts-grindstone

July 5, 2022September 6, 2023

A Roman Update!

Since the 2019 field season, BEARS has uncovered significant evidence of Roman period activity in and around the Porto Rafti bay (the Roman period in Greece is typically defined as the 1st BCE – 7th CE). This evidence includes parts of the good old marble statue on Raftis, but also, and maybe more tantalizing, a diverse assemblage of ceramic and non-ceramic artifacts from the many islands located in the bay. During the 2022 season, the team collected even more Roman period artifacts and had the opportunity to closely study those collected in the 2019 and 2021 seasons. By way of a preliminary sketch, here are some of our findings.

1) The Roman assemblage on Praso seems to date from the 4th-7th century CE. This coincides with Roman period settlement previously recovered by archaeologists elsewhere in Porto Rafti. By contrast, the Roman assemblage from Raftis is more circumscribed, dating only to the 6th and 7th centuries CE. This suggests that activity on Praso and Raftis were contemporaneous, but leaves open the question of why activity on Raftis only began in the 6th and 7th centuries CE.

2) The Roman assemblage on Praso appears to be more functionally diverse than the assemblage on Raftis. For example, the Praso assemblage includes significant quantities of cooking vessels (e.g., frying pans and stew pots), an artifact category that has not been recovered from Raftis. This suggests that Praso and Raftis may have been sites of different types of ancient activity, with Praso likely being a place of permanent or semi-permanent habitation.

3) The Town survey has collected several clusters of Late Roman material (4th-7th CE). These clusters of material suggest the existence of Late Roman habitation, possibly related to agricultural production, in the bay’s hinterland. This corresponds and adds to evidence recovered from the Mesogeia during rescue excavations for the construction of the Athens International Airport. The Town survey also recovered several artifacts that seem to date to the Early Roman period (1st BCE-2nd CE), including fine ware imported from Turkey. This is the only firm evidence that BEARS has recovered of Early Roman activity in the bay of Porto Rafti.

In the coming years, these findings will be expanded and refined. There is still much work to be completed in studying the Roman material collected from BEARS, an exciting and daunting endeavor!

June 9, 2022September 6, 2023

The 2022 Town Survey

As part of the 2022 field season, BEARS is expanding its search for ancient activity in Porto Rafi beyond the inner bay and islands. The “town survey”, as it’s called, is being led by the fearless Maeve McHugh and is focused on documenting parts of the ancient landscape that are a bit more distant from the beautiful waters of the Porto Rafti bay. This includes the urban core of Porto Rafti as well as agricultural fields that surround the city—a landscape diverse in vegetation and modern habitation. The goals of the town survey are different from the surveys of Praso, Raftis, Pounta, and Koroni. From the town survey, we hope to gain a better understanding of the relationship between our well documented bay sites (e.g. Raftis) and important settlements in east Attica outside our survey zone, such as the sanctuary at Brauron. The town survey also has the potential to shed light on land use in the “chora” (countryside) of the two Athenian demes that inhabited the bay of Proto Raftis (Steiria and Prasiae). Additionally, the survey will help define settlement patterns of the Bronze Age and Late Roman period, time periods that we have already documented on the islands.

To achieve these goals, the town survey is employing methods suited to detecting previously unidentified areas of ancient activity. Rather than collecting artifacts in 20 x 20 meter grid squares, we are doing transect collection, also known as intensive pedestrian survey. In intensive pedestrian survey, between 3 to 6 surveyors walk in straight lines in one topographic “unit” picking up and counting any artifacts they encounter along their path. This collection technique offers a sample of all the artifacts that might be residing on the surface of a particular land plot.

After only a week and a half of town survey, our team already has much to show! In agricultural fields in the northwest part of the survey area, we’ve found significant quantities of obsidian. In one unit alone, the team collected over 300 lithics! This has interesting implications for how obsidian, which may have been processed on the peninsula of Pounta, was moving from the bay to inland sites throughout Attica. In this same area, the team has detected significant Classical-Hellenistic as well as Late Roman scatters, suggesting the existence of settlement in these periods, potentially related to agricultural activity. Additionally, the survey team has collected Late Helladic IIIC material in areas south of the bay. This suggests that LH IIIC land use may have extended to many places around Porto Rafti, beyond the island settlement of Raftis.

The town survey, however, has not been without its challenges. Many of the plots of land in Porto Rafti that are not occupied by homes are gated or overgrown, preventing easy investigation of surface assemblages. These challenges have offered an opportunity for creative problem solving in the field and a careful consideration of how we “sample” the landscape for traces of ancient activity. All this work has been made possible by a fearless team who is willing to crawl under thorny bushes, hop over stone terrace walls, and climb steeply sloping olive fields. Overall, this part of 2022 fieldwork is off to a great start! We will offer more updates soon.

June 4, 2022June 4, 2022

Welcome to BEARS 2022!

This week, the BEARS team gathered in Porto Rafti to begin the final field season of the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey! A new field season means a new flurry of blog posts, so we thought we would start by introducing the 2022 team and outlining our research goals for the summer. The 2022 BEARS team is the largest yet, with sixteen students and five staff on the ground, together with our representative from the Ephorate of East Attica, Eleni Chreiazomenou, and many specialists who will visit throughout the season. On a typical work day, we have up to four teams working to improve our knowledge of the history and material culture of the Bay of Porto Rafti across the millennia.

Team 1: Return to Raftis Island

Fans of BEARS will know that in 2019, we conducted gridded collection on about half of Raphtis island – the distinctive pyramidal island in the Bay of Porto Raphti, famous for the Roman statue set atop its peak. Fieldwork on Raphtis in 2019 yielded a dense and varied scatter of mostly LH IIIC and Late Roman finds. We hope to finish gridded collection on the island this summer (where possible – the topography is extremely steep in places!) and gain a better understanding of the nature of the assemblage there in these different periods. True to form, Raphtis is producing ceramics and lithics galore, with the favorite find of the week so far being a Mycenaean dog figurine. Raphtis’ “little sister” island of Raphtopoula, located to its northwest, is another potential candidate for survey this year, if we can figure out how best to approach its rocky cliffs.

Team 2: Intensive survey in a highly developed environment

Much of our BEARS fieldwork during 2019 and 2021 focused on archaeological sites that were previously known, whether via extensive survey or excavation. This year, however, we’re seeking to gain a clearer sense of the distribution of finds around the bay by conducting intensive pedestrian survey in the fields and empty lots scattered around and between the vacation homes of Porto Rafti. Dr. Maeve McHugh is leading the charge in this arena and has started working in Zone B, which denotes the north side of the bay. Obsidian scatters and Classical-Hellenistic pithoi are already forthcoming, and we are looking forward to finding out what other material these fields will yield.

Team 3: Architectural documentation

We’re fortunate this year to be joined by Dr. Miriam Clinton from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, who is mapping and documenting architecture on the Koroni peninsula. Team members on Koroni have been measuring and photographing architectural features, as well as recording GPS points to be plotted in a GIS. The work has been focused on Koroni’s acropolis and is laying the groundwork for a detailed architectural plan of the site. We’re also very happy to welcome four undergraduate students from Rhodes College. BEARS is their first archaeological project, and we hope they will be hooked for life!

Team 4: The Brauron Museum

Finds analysis continues apace in the Brauron Museum. This week, Dr. Rob Stephan and Koroni expert Melanie Godsey have been processing the new finds from the field and reading the pottery collected from Praso in 2021. The small diachronic islet with material from every period from Early Bronze Age to Modern continues to offer new glimpses into islet life. We’re especially excited to hear what metallurgical specialist Myrto Georgakopoulou and tile expert Phil Sapirstein have to say about the fires of industry that once blazed on Praso’s shores.

We’ll be posting frequent updates and musings here throughout the 2022 season. And keep an eye out for our Photo of the Day series, back by popular demand from 2021.

January 7, 2022January 7, 2022

BEARS 2022 AIA presentation

Since there was a technical kerfuffle in the playing of the BEARS presentation in the AIA proceedings, resulting in something of an unfortunate nonsense confusing blarggg of a video playback, I have posted the video on YouTube for those who would like to see what we actually had to report from our two recent seasons of study and fieldwork. Happy watching. – BEARS management

January 4, 2022January 5, 2022

BEARS & BEARS team members on the program at the 2022 AIAs

Greetings BEARS fans! It’s been an exhausting and weird end to 2021, with professional responsibilities and pressing tasks allowing little spare time for blogging lately, but just when you needed it most, here comes the beautifully titled year of 2022, the double deuce, the year of the tiger! Surely it will bring great archaeological survey finds, if nothing else? Little known fact – my high school sports jersey number was 22 AND our mascot was a tiger, so I feel a lot of good vibes already. Will be extra much so when we make it to 2222, so stay tuned about 200 years for the real triumphs!

As always for Greek archaeologists, the first big event of the New Year is the Archaeological Institute of America conference. This year the event is taking place online. It contains a little bit of content about BEARS and even more exciting research being presented by BEARS team members. Below are the dates and times of the relevant presentations. The BEARS lecture has been pre-recorded, so if you are a blog reader and don’t feel like registering for the conference, the video (an .mp4 file, about 18 minutes) can be shared directly upon request. Note that all times listed below are Pacific standard time, since the (now all virtual) meeting is “based” in San Francisco.

1. BEARS 2020 and 2021 field report

THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 8:00-10:30 AM, session 1A: New Fieldwork In Aegean Prehistory

The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey 2020–2021: New Evidence for Settlement, Exchange, and Craft Production from Porto Rafti, Greece (20 minutes, 4th talk in the session)
Sarah C. Murray, University of Toronto, Catherine E. Pratt, Western University, Melanie Godsey, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Joseph Frankl, University of Michigan, Bartłomiej Lis, Polish Academy of Sciences, Grace Erny, Stanford University, Robert Stephan, University of Arizona, Maeve McHugh, University of Birmingham, and Philip Sapirstein, University of Toronto

2. Mel Godsey presents on her dissertation research about the site of Koroni!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM, session 2B: Sanctuaries And Public Space In The Hellenistic Period

Ptolemaic Trade Routes and the Garrison at Koroni (15 minutes, 5th/last talk in the session)
Melanie Godsey, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

3. A whole session on Archaic and Classical Crete organized by Grace Erny and friend of BEARS Dominic Pollard!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 8:00-10:30 AM, session 4D: Bridging The “Gap”: Interdisciplinary Approaches To The Cretan Polis In The Archaic And Classical Periods (Joint AIA/SCS Colloquium)

ORGANIZER(S): Jesse Obert, University of California, Berkeley, Dominic Pollard, University College London, and Grace Erny, Stanford University

DISCUSSANTS: Dominic Pollard, University College London and Grace Erny, Stanford University

4. Phil Sapirstein discusses rooftiles from Archaic Didyma!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 8:00-10:30 AM, session 4E: Geometric And Archaic Architecture

Archaic Architectural Terracottas from Didyma (20 minutes, first talk in the session)
Philip Sapirstein, University of Toronto

5. Mel Godsey (in tandem with a WARP colleague Machal Gradoz) provides an analysis of connectivity as evidenced by survey pottery from the western Argolid!

SESSION BLOCK 7: SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 8:00-11:00 AM, session 7H: Ancient Greek Pottery: Processes Of Production And Analysis

Regional Connectivity and Ceramic Consumption: Pottery of the Western Argolid (20 minutes, 5th talk in the session)
Machal E Gradoz, University of Michigan and Melanie Godsey, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Overall there looks to be tons of great content in this year’s conference, so if you haven’t registered already and need something to entertain you this weekend, head on over to the AIA website and sign up for the fun. Too bad we won’t be able to all hang out in person and catch up with old friends around the conference hallways yet again this year, but we look forward to interacting with any interested friends and colleagues online in the coming days.

October 15, 2021October 15, 2021

A BEARS 2021 Accounting

It is hard to believe that the calendar has waded well into October! It’s been a real BEAR of a semester up here in Toronto thus far, with real in person meetings and classes reminding us how much extra time it takes outta the day to get dressed in real clothes and walk somewhere; not a grand pile of zoom events and conferences rivalling our Praso tile piles in size!

Amidst the chaos we’ve managed to at least send off our report for the 2021 BEARS season for peer review, which is a nice way to mark the start of proper fall. To mark the occasion, here are some fun stats from the 2021 season for all you numbers fans and accountants out there.

On the island of Praso we surveyed 107 grid squares with the following results:

3,524 sherds, 266 lithics, and 320 ‘others’ collected

23,831 tiles counted & weighed!

(of which 26, representing 4 fabrics, were collected)

On Koroni and parts nearby we surveyed 57 units and encountered at least 23,831 hostile bushes and plants, collecting none.

Not bad for a season that almost wasn’t! Stay tuned for more winter updates, stray thoughts, and events as the dark season approaches.