The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey
An archaeological project centred on the bay of Porto Rafti
Each year the British School at Athens publishes a rundown of significant archaeological results from the previous year of work all around Greece. Short summaries of the BEARS survey results have appeared in previous issues. A fun tidbit that may titillate blog readers is that some of our fun figurines from the 2022 survey grace the cover of the current issue, volume 69. Check out the full report here, or just get in touch if you don’t have a subscription and need the pdf.
With 2024 knocking at the door, it’s almost time for the annual early-January, conference of the Archaeological Institute of America, which will take place in breezy Chicago this year. BEARS team members are well-represented in the program – those interested in the project’s research will be especially excited to see a full colloquium session devoted to papers about our finds from Porto Rafti, which is scheduled for Saturday morning, January 6. A full roundup of BEARS team members and their papers/roles in sundry sessions is listed below.
Friday January 5
Session 1F: The Mycenaean Koine in Context: Disentangling Material Uniformities in the Aegean Late Bronze Age (Colloquium)
Discussants: Carl Knappett, University of Toronto, and Sarah Murray, University of Toronto
Session 2F: Minoan Crete
A Liminal Approach to Cultural Interaction and Maritime Exchange at Two Late Bronze Age Aegean Harbors. Elliott J. Fuller, University of Toronto
Saturday January 6
Session 4B: The Archaeology of Aegean Islands and Coasts: A View from Porto Rafti, Greece based on the Results of the BEARS Survey (Colloquium)
Organizer: Catherine Pratt, University of Texas at Austin
Implementing Survey in a Suburban Coastal Context: Reflections from the BEARS Project. Grace Erny, University of California, Berkeley, and Maeve McHugh, University of Birmingham
Chipped Stone Tools from the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) .Aikaterini Psoma, University of Illinois at Chicago
LH IIIC Pottery in the Bay of Porto Rafti: Insights into Production, Consumption, and Exchange . Bartłomiej Lis, Polish Academy of Sciences
Koroni and Porto Rafti in the Greek Historical Period. Miriam Clinton, Rhodes College, and Melanie Godsey, Texas Tech University
Roman Period Porto Rafti: Results of the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey, 2019-2022. Joseph Frankl, University of Michigan
Session 5C: Temples and Sacred Space in the Greek World
Cultic Topographies in the Neda Borderlands. Shannon M. Dunn, Bryn Mawr College
The Archaic Temple of Athena Hippolaitis in Southwestern Mani . Philip Sapirstein, University of Toronto
Session 5K: Peer Review: Present Tensions, Future Directions (Joint AIA-SCS Workshop)
Panelists: Ellen Bauerle, University of Michigan Press, Emma Blake, University of Arizona & AJA, Sam Huskey, University of Oklahoma, Sarah Murray, University of Toronto & JMA, Sarah Nooter, University of Chicago & CP, Jennifer Sacher, ASCSA & Hesperia, Colin Whiting, Dumbarton Oaks & DOP, and Lin Foxhall, University of Liverpool & JHS
Last academic year chewed me up with the gnashing, saliva-speckled jaws of our project mascot. Most tragically, its many travails left zero spare time units with which to while away a few leisurely hours designing a BEARS 2022 season t-shirt, which I only got around to in April of 2023. Fortunately this year has brought the welcome relief of a research and study leave, so the BEARS 2023 shirt is arriving in the regularly scheduled early fall time slot. Despite my general distaste for all matters Imperial Roman, it features the dear old Raftis statue. It is also a little goofy. It is probably fair to say that is pretty consistent with the vibe of the project. Have also started developing a related line of Porto Rafti themed beachwear, surely will be big hits in the market stalls of Plaka and Monastiraki as of summer 2024.
Once the project’s groundstone catalogue passed the 365 artifact mark, the team’s attention turned to the obvious next stage of work: assigning each team member (or anyway those whose birthdays I know from their personnel forms) a personal “spirit” groundstone based on which day of the year they were born.
The results, of the utmost scientific interest!, are as follows:
The most common artifact in the catalogue, by a wide margin is “andesite grinding slab”. A grinding slab is the lower, stationary part of grinding toolkits, working as a pair with a handheld tool for pulverizing a variety of substances, such as grains, acorns, spices, minerals, pigments etc., or to produce other artefacts. Andesite is a volcanic stone of intermediate silica content with plagioclase crystals. It does not occur naturally in the Porto Rafti area, but was probably sourced relatively close by in the Saronic gulf. Aegean andesite ranges in color from light or dark grey to pleasantly pink.
The official BEARS groundstone mascot, “andesite grinding slab” accurately captures the normative, sturdy, and utterly reliable characters it represents: Izzy Brewer, Miriam Clinton, Grace Erny, Rob Stephan, Joey Frankl, Elliott Fuller, Matthias Kalisch, and Dom Pollard.
Shannon Dunn and Taylor Stark are both “metamorphic hammerstones”. A hammer stone is a type of active percussion tool, any handheld tool used with strokes to remove material from another surface. They are further categorized based on the force of the stroke and morphology of their use faces. Metamorphic stones are local to east Attica.
Being a metamorphic hammer stone seems “very metal”.
Phil Sapirstein is a “pink andesite pestle”. Pestles are handheld tools of a relatively elongated shape used with one or both ends for pounding, grinding and mixing a variety of substances, often used in conjunction with mortars.
This pestle suits The King of the Roof Tiles, with his fashionable art historian’s demeanor and penchant for shades of lavender. Would be a good tool for smashing up tiles.
Braden Cordivari is a “figure-of-eight shaped possible weight”, a very useful tool for the metallurgist in training.
Kat Apokatanidis is a “multifunctional andesite pounder used for grinding on one side”. No comment!
Maeve McHugh, known for dwelling in only the most exclusive gated mansions and 5-star resort hotels while visiting Porto Rafti, has a fittingly prestigious groundstone doppelgänger: “gneiss foot from a tripod mortar”.
Tripod mortars are a distinct tool type where the body rests on three feet and a narrow spout might be present on the rim. They date mostly to the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean and are thought to have been used in both utilitarian and ritual contexts. They are considered prestige items, because a great deal of extra effort was required to manufacture the feet and spout.
NICE.
Finally, Melanie Godsey and Sarah Murray are unmodified raw materials that are volcanic – so brought to the survey area from elsewhere – but that don’t have any apparent usewear. Murray is a mere pebble, Godsey a hulking andesite boulder. These two have limitless potential and will never be a tool for “the man”.
BEARS 2023 team member and figurine expert extraordinaire Belisi Gillespie recently shared a great series of photos capturing the arduous life of the groundstone documentation team on Raftis island. In case you missed this gaudy stat in the CIG study season wrap-up blog posted below, Grace and Eleni documented well over 500 total groundstone artifacts between the 2022 and 2023 seasons! And, as you’ll see, they looked mighty cool doing it!
Groundstone documentation – a lot of fun! Well, I am sure it was the first 300 times or so. Fans of grindy poundy friends should keep a (googly) eye out on the blog for more related content, including exciting details of our BEARS groundstone day-by-day calendar and related horoscopes.
An underappreciated perk of directing archaeological projects is getting to design cool swag for the team at the end of each season. Usually, this is a favorite July activity, as there are many quiet, boring days of checking the database and writing up reports following the season that can be spiced up with a little graphic design. Unfortunately, I had to prepare my tenure portfolio in July 2022, and somehow with the chaos of the following academic year I never got ’round to getting BEARS 2022 t-shirts rigged up until late last month.
Better late than never, anyway! With the original “Porto Rafti island” silhouette design inspiration from team member Joseph Frankl as a base, the BEARS 2022 shirts follow a “War of the Worlds” theme, a brilliant suggestion from Grace Erny inspired by our discovery of nearly infinite tripod-type things (stone and ceramic) on Raftis island in 2022. The Raftis survey team is therefore appropriately under siege by a triad of three-legged attackers. To capture the range of environments the teams worked in this year, there are also two other themes – the Koroni squad’s adversaries come in the form of survey/dGPS tripods, and the town survey people are amongst the spindly legs of unfinished concrete country houses with rebar sticking out of the top. For the team members who found these goofy designs to be too silly, we also offered a simple version of Joey’s original design. Hooray for swag!
After five weeks of fieldwork and study in Porto Rafti and Brauron, the BEARS 2022 season officially ended on July 2, as the final lingering team members departed the coast and dissipated to various points on the compass. After three seasons of fieldwork – in 2019, 2021, and 2022 – that means we’re pretty much finished with the survey, although a bit of additional architectural mapping remains to be mopped up in 2023. As the dust settles and everyone gets into a proper July routine, the time has come to get down to the real work: synthesizing and proceeding towards publication of the finds! Project personnel will be getting together a final 2022 report over the next few months, so look out for updates on that here later in the summer!
Meanwhile, we’re really happy with the progress we made (and all of the fun we had) this season: here’s a photo of the team at the final party/publication planning session in late June (absent are Miriam Clinton and Elizabeth Griffin, who had to leave the party a little early, Braden Cordivari, who zipped off to Turkey for additional fieldwork after week 2, our ephorate representative Eleni Chreiazomenou, who was busy with a photo exhibition in Athens, and object specialists Myrto Georgakopoulou, Phil Sapirstein, Margarita Nazou, and Bartek Lis, who have the good sense to stay away from wild-eyed fieldworkers during the evening hours).
Thanks everyone for your hard work – and thanks as always to the blog readers for following our posts.
It’s hard to believe that our fourth week of fieldwork on BEARS 2022 begins tomorrow! In order to fortify the team for this final push, team member Isabella Vesely, an MA student at the University of Toronto and the BEARS artist-in-residence, has written the following recipe for a delightful Raftis-themed meal.
Backpacks are a key tool in survey archaeology. Packs carry artifacts, maps, and tags, not to mention the daily essentials (water, food, sunscreen). Here we’ve gathered a photo selection of BEARS team member packs. They make what you might call an “archaeology” of our survey team with their own styles, production histories, and biographies. Some packs are top loaders, while others are front loaders. Some were purchased two weeks ago, while others have been in use for a decade. All carry the loads of the survey archaeologist!
As spring weather and its attendant morning bird-song has finally arrived in Athens, here are some jaunty birds from the iconographical repertoire of the Perati cemetery to mark the turn of the seasons. Not coincidentally, we are now in the planning phases for the 2022 BEARS season, and we look forward to sharing more project updates soon!
