It's been a very long day. We left from the apartments at 8 am, meaning I was up much earlier than I normally like to be. I also, unfortunately, seem to have a carsickness problem if I wake up too early and don't eat and ride in a bus. So, that wasn't fun. And my camera batteries decided to be dead, so I apologize for the poor quality of these photos; I had to take them all on my cell phone. But, prefaces aside, my day ended up being quite awesome.
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| An excited professor in front of the alter |
Our first site of the day was the site of the Amphiareion at Oropos, on the border between Attica and Boreas. It was the sanctuary of Amphiaros, a Greek hero. He was one of the sons of Oedipus, who squabbled over the territory after his father blinded himself and exiled himself to atone for his sins. If you don't know the story of Oedipus, go look it up... it's the most dysfunctional family in all of Greek tragedy. Anyway, at one point, Zeus zapped the ground with his lightning bolt, and Amphiaros fell into the resulting chasm. Somehow, some time later, he emerged from the ground again, at the site where the sanctuary was built. Additionally, he was reputed to be a seer. Thus, visitors to the temple came for visions of the future... for a fee. They would pay the cost of 9 okos (about twice the daily wage), sacrifice a few animals, and then sleep on the skin of their sacrificed ram (women in one building, men in another), hoping for a vision of Amphiaros telling them their future or what they needed to do to solve some health or economic trouble. The architecture reflects this reconstruction of the sanctuary. It is an interesting one, as it continues right through the Dark Ages, which is not true of many other sanctuaries. It also has an unusual construction. Instead of being at the end of the temple, the central statue of the hero-god was in the center, with a secret room in the back that was likely a treasury. The alter, too, is unusual, as instead of being lengthwise along the end of the temple, where the statue could watch the sacrifices, it runs in the same direction as the temple. This may have been due to the landscape: the sanctuary sits into a steep hill, and so the terracing costs would have been high, both monetarily and labor-wise. Additionally, this long alter setup would have allowed more people to watch the sacrifices, a spectacle popular at the time. It was a neat site, and provides a lot of information about the way one of these remote sanctuaries would have operated in the 4th century BCE.
After spending an hour and a half at this site, we moved on to catch a ferry to the island of Euboia, which was quite pretty. We then went to the museum of Eretria and Lefkandi. These two sites are the outliers of the "Dark Ages", a period of time where Mycenean civilization declined out of existance, and the land area of Greece seems to lose much of it's population. Connections and trade routes to the outside world seem to fail, and the whole quality of life seems to drop dramatically, from the year 1200 to around 800 BCE. However, in Lefkandi and Euboia, while it is not Mycenean culture, there do still seem to be far-flung connections to as far as Cyprus and Egypt, and there are elaborate burials, of several different varieties. There are cremations in urns, children burials in pots, and all sorts of artifacts put into the graves. It was really a neat museum, but even cooler was the House of the Mosaics, a wealthy house preserved, with Greek mosaics in the dining rooms.
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| Greek Mosaics |
After that, we did a group project on houses in Eretria, a site that was built up several times, with only the foundations remaining. This exercise made it very clear just how challenging archaeology can be in these areas, as one has to sort of what buildings existed contemporaneously, what those buildings look like, and how did they function. From there, we went to the site of Lefkandi, specifically a building that we have no idea the purpose of. In the center of the structure was a set of two pits, one with four sacrificed horses, and the other with a double burial, with a cremated man and an inhumed woman. Both appear to have been very wealthy, but their relationship to each other, and, in particular, the fate of the woman, are quite mysterious. He is thought to have been a warrior-chieftan; she may have been his wife. She was buried in elaborate dress, including a gold breast-plate and gold hair pins and a glass necklace. She also had a knife next to her head. Was she a ritual suicide? Was she a sacrifice? At this point, it is impossible to tell. The house, too, is enigmatic. It is by far the largest building of the period, squarely in the middle of the Dark Ages. However, the floor seems to have not been packed, suggesting it was gently to not at all used. It was purposely buried, by the people, yet the pottery shards in the mound and on the floor of the building, suggest that it was built and buried at the same time. It's quite odd, and two theories exist. One is that the warrior built this house, but died shortly after it's completion, and he and the woman were buried in it after their funeral. Another is that the house was built afterwards, after the deaths. Yet, both situations pose issues, and this site remains a unique site, with nothing even kind of analogous yet found.
After finishing up at that site, it was time for lunch and to return to Athens. It was a day full of history and archaeology, which has resulted in quite a long blog post. Tomorrow is another museum visit, this time to the Acropolis Museum. Hopefully, I'll be able to find camera batteries before then, so will have better photos then. Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to it. I've been in Athens for a week now, and so only have 9 more to go. If this pace keeps up, I'll be leaving well before I'm ready to. Still, very excited for what other places I will see and learn during the rest of my time here.
καλή νύχτα!
