Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

4/4/12: Isthmia, Nemea, and Asine

Today was the first part of a three day excursion to the Argolid. We left early in the morning, in order to get to the Isthmia site by 9:30. This site was a sanctuary to Posideon in antiquity, but during the 5th century C.E., the temple was completely disassembled, including the foundations, to incorporate into a fortification wall. Very little is left, but what is there is quite interesting. We were privileged to be shown around the museum and site by Dr. Elizabeth Gebhard, one of the lead researchers. Because this site is in such poor shape, and archaeology is a destructive process, it was really interesting to have her explain the site to us, because she had information about the excavation, such as where artifacts were found in relation to structures. For instance, there were several sacrificial pits, in which ash and scorched animal bones, along with pottery, were found. However, looking at them now, fully excavated, they look like simple pits.


Another interesting feature of the site were the starting gates. Isthmia was one site of the Panhellenic games, an athletic and oratory competition that took place every four years. There are four different sites that hosted these games: Isthmia, Nemea, Delphi, and Olypmia (hence today's Olympic games). Today, all that is left of the stadium track is the starting gate, which seems to have had a mechanism to drop eight gates simultaneously, since there were no sound-makers loud enough to ensure a fair start. How exactly this worked, though, is unclear, as all that is left is the holes for posts and the rope cuts carved into the rock.

After doing a team assignment at Isthmia, we got back on the bus and traveled to Nemea. According to Greek legend, this was the site where Herakles (known more commonly today by his Roman name, Hercules) completed his first task, slaying the Nemean lion. Like Isthmia, this was the site of both a sanctuary (this time to Zeus) and a Panhellenic games. Around the sanctuary were hotels, for visitors, structures for the small staff of the sanctuary to live in, and several treasuries, for votive offerings of wealthy families or towns. It was also, however, the site of a later Christian basilica, a type of church, several centuries later. This is pretty common: if a site is considered holy at one time by one culture, more often than not that site will remain holy, even as the culture and religion change.


We didn't spend long at Nemea, before heading off to Asine. Unlike most of the sites we'd been to previously, this isn't a sanctuary to a god, or at least not primarily. Supposedly, this was the site of a tribe of non-Greeks, who were pirates on the population of the Argolid. This is based mainly on literary sources; the material culture of the area, in general, is consistent with the surrounding area. There are only a few nit-picky things, such as differences in burial practices and slight differences in the pottery, to suggest that this site was home to a different culture. There's very little physical evidence to be seen on the site, and so we didn't spend too long talking here; instead, we climbed to the top of the hill.


After Asine, we still had one last site to visit. This one wasn't an Archaic site, however; it was the Palamidi Fortress, a Turkish fortification from when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire. It's a really neat structure, build on top of the highest hill near Nafplio. The fortress consists of 9 separate buildings, connected by fortification walls. It looks like an impervious fortress. However, if you can't go over the walls, you can go under. That's exactly what happened here, when enemy forces tunneled under the walls, filled the tunnel with explosives, and broke the defenses that way.

Finally, after exploring these four sites, we checked into the hotel at Nafplio, had a lovely dinner paid for by the program, and prepared for the tomorrow, when we'll be exploring some really cool sites around the Argolid.

4/14/2012 Comments PERMALINK

The Population Exchange

During the day off (April 2nd), I went to the Benaki Museum, which Professor Hall had pointed out on the Lakivatos morning trip. It's a nice little museum, encompassing Greek history from the Classical and Roman periods, to the Byzantine period, and through to today. On the third floor, there was a temporary exhibit, titled "Expulsion and Exchange of Populations (Turkey -Greece 1922-1924)". In it were a series of photographs, from the end of the first World War through to the end of the population exchange, along with snippets of text walking visitors through the events of those two years.

The images alone were powerful, but even more so when combined with the objects I'd seen in the rest of the museum. In Turkey and the Near East, Greek Orthodox families had been powerful, and rich. However, during and after the Greco-Turkish war, these families were uprooted, broken apart, and forced from a stable, comfortable life. "Greek" men in Turkey were gathered up and sent to labor camps, from which few returned. Others, along with women and children, were sent on death marches. Refugees from Smyrna and other Turkish towns flooded Thessaloniki, Athens, and other Greece cities, even before the war ended and the population exchange was initiated. The estimate presented in the exhibit was that over 1,000,000 refugees tried to find new homes at this point. Then, at the end of the war, another 200,000 or so Greek Orthodox Christians were ejected from Turkey, while a similar number of Muslims were moved from Greek to Turkey. On both sides, the new immigrants were treated with suspicion and contempt, and were kept as outsiders.

My favorite photograph out of the set was of a young refugee girl sitting on the lap of an evzone, the Greek ceremonial guard. The girl was laughing at the camera, a little shyly, while the soldier laughed slightly along with her. In other photos, too, in the awful conditions of the refugee camps, the some of the children were still smiling, and life went on. It made me wonder if there could ever be a tragedy so great that even the kids would be unable to smile and enjoy life. If so, I hope no one ever has to experience them. Things would have to be awful indeed for even the children to lose hope entirely.

The other striking thing about the photographs was just how similar they were to images of much more recent disasters. In China, Japan, Haiti, New Orleans, Iraq, and Sumatra, in just the past decade, we've seen memorable photos of people living in the exact same sort of conditions. The faces and landscapes and disaster stories change, but the degree of human suffering, and human spirit... those are the same. The expressions of hopelessness, pain, and grief visible in pictures from this 1922-24 set are just as clear in the photos taken today. But present, too, are the expressions of defiance, of hope, and of the human will to survive. At the end of the exhibit, along with the photo of the little girl and the soldier, were several family portraits of refugees, who created a new middle class in Greece. Seeing that gives me hope that people will recover from today's disasters as well, and make the world a better place in spite of the hardship they have faced.

4/11/2012 Comments PERMALINK

Concerns about Archaeology

Over the past two weeks, I've visited a lot of archaeological sites: the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, the Temple of Zeus at Nemea, the palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, and more. Nearly everywhere there are ruins of different ancient memorials, sanctuaries, and buildings. Most of them look something like this:



There is certainly some information to be gained from building foundations like this. Certain notches in the stone indicate how the building fit together, or if there was a column or statue in a given spot. If any of the building stones are inscribed, there is a lot more information that can be gathered. And the floor plan can indicate what type of building this was. Yet, I have reservations about just how much information can be gained from these ground-level stone blocks. In most museums, there are model reconstructions of the site, showing elaborate temples with peripteral columns and pediments and all sorts of supporting buildings. Yet, there may only be a few scattered column drums, or a heap of rubble to indicate this. Sometimes, archaeologists are lucky and find a cache of sculpture and statues from a destroyed temple that was buried in a pit, but other times the sites have been pillaged, re-purposed, or eroded away by natural forces. In many cases, it does not appear to me that the archaeological evidence is sufficient to justify the reconstruction.

Another line of evidence is literary records, which helps fill some of the gap, but is still not sufficient. There are some written records of what sanctuaries looked like or were used for, such as those written Pausanias, that were done while these places were still in use. However, for others, the records were written long after the site was disused, or were second- or third-hand accounts. It is difficult to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of these records, and so they are also not enough for me to really trust the reconstructions.

A third justification for some of the models, as well as for what various monuments and temples actually are, is looking at other sites. For instance, at a site near Argos, there's a temple to Apollo, and a second structure, including a round monument, similar to that at Delphi. Thus, it's been suggested that since the round monument at Delphi is dedicated to Artemis, that the one at Argos is the same. This logic is reasonable, and parallels can certainly be drawn, but seems to me like a flimsy argument for either claiming a purpose for unknown ruins or reconstructing them to match the known parallel.

Overall, there is some merit to reconstructing sites. It gives both the historians and the general public a visual sense of the landscape of a world that existed 2000 years ago. And it creates a much more interesting picture than toppled columns and building foundations. Yet, it is something to be cautious about. In this class, it has been very clear that these are the best reconstructions based on what is known from the literary and archaeological sources. If there is really not enough evidence to draw any sort of conclusion, then Professor Hall will simply say that we don't know. However, the books and museums do not seem to make this disclaimer as strongly, and often just present the reconstructions as fact rather than hypothesis. Thus, I feel some reservations about trusting the models or rebuilt sites regularly seen in our travels. The evidence doesn't seem to live up to a rigorous standard, in many cases, and so I wonder how much we actually know, versus how much is mere guesswork.

4/09/2012 Comments PERMALINK

4/2/12: Long Weekend

I wish I could say that I've been really productive and done all sorta of awesome things this weekend. It would make a much better excuse fit not blogging yesterday. But, in all honestly, I haven't done much this weekend. I've been a bit sick, and so ended up sleeping, reading, or watching TV shows for much of the past 48 hours, because I simply didn't feel up to doing anything else.

That being said, though, I did go on a couple short adventures, while most of the rest of the group was out partying and island hopping. The first of these, yesterday, me and one roommate went to the Areopagus again, and then tried to figure out if you could walk all the way around the base of the Acropolis (you can't). It was a nice walk, but nothing terribly groundbreaking.

Today, however, we went to a little museum near the National Gardens. They had a temporary exhibit there on the Greek-Turkish population exchange, which took place in 1923. Between war and the exchange, over 1,200,000 "Greeks" (actually just people who followed the Greek Orthodox religion) in Turkey were deported to Greece, and thousands of Muslims were deported from Greece to Turkey. The photos of these refugees, and the conditions they lived in, were extremely powerful. I think my favorite photo, however, was of a little refugee girl, sitting in the lap of a member of the Greek ceremonial guard, just laughing and playing shy with the camera. If there is ever a tragedy so great that not even kids can laugh, I don't think anyone will have hope for the future.

4/02/2012 Comments PERMALINK

3/30/12: Wrapping Up First Week

By my school's way of counting, today was the end of first week. But, because I'm on study abroad and every one week is like 3-4, in order to cram three quarters into one... I have no idea where I'm at, school-calendar-wise. However, I know for sure that I've finished my first week of classes, and gotten into a rhythm here in Athens... which will promptly be ruined by the fact that I have next Monday off entirely, next Tuesday morning off, and then leave on Wednesday for a three-day trip to the Argolid. Also, as a head's up, I have no clue what my Internet capabilities, or my time to blog, will be like during that trip, so you may not hear from me between Tuesday and Friday. I promise I won't be dead... but if you don't see a huge post from me by Sunday after the trip, start making inquiries into my livelihood.

Anyway, today was the first of two trips to the Acropolis Museum, which has to be one of the most gorgeous museums I've ever been to (and I have been to a lot of museums; I'd list them for you, but then you'll get bored and leave). There was no photography inside the museum, so I can't show you much, but the outside looked like this:


The top level of the building is at an angle to the rest for more than just architecturally looking cool. It's actually set up so that the artifacts inside perfectly line up with their orientation in situ on the Parthenon, which the top level is aligned with. On the lower levels, they're set up to line up with their respective other buildings on the Acropolis. It's really very, very well thought out.
And, even cooler, is this:


This museum is actually built over an neighborhood of ancient Athens, which is really, really neat. There are glass panels in the floor so that you can look down and see the site below you, as you explore the artifacts found around the Acropolis. The range of ages, too, is amazing. Even after just a week, I started to get into a mindset of "There's super old stuff (ruins), then there's sort of old stuff (old churches), then there's new stuff (anything modern)". But it isn't that simple: there's a good 3000 years or so of history on the Acropolis, which can be divided up into couple hundred year or less chunks of time. Intellectually, I know that's true: I mean, that's what we talk about in lecture, is each of these bits of time and their significance individually and in a larger whole, but that doesn't tend to stick with me very well. I'm used to thinking of time on a much larger scale, millions and billions of years rather than hundreds and thousands, so without anything concrete, it just blurs together. Seeing it concrete like this, however, and being able to see the distinctions that allow historians and archaeologists to break up the time, just like geologists break up time by changes in the climate or landscape or fossil record, makes it so much more real. Seeing these sites and artifacts in the round allows me break out of the mindset of "new, old, and ancient."

3/30/2012 Comments PERMALINK

3/29/12: Euboia

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.

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.


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!

3/29/2012 Comments PERMALINK

3/26/12: Overviews

While out and about over the past through days, one of the most prominent features of the landscape has been this:


This morning, we climbed that hill, which is around 900 feet tall. That being said, though, it wasn't a terrible climb. It was steep, but paved, and switch-backed such that I could walk fairly normally the whole way up. And once I made it to the top, I entirely forgot my weariness, between walking up a small mountain and waking up at 7:30 in the morning, because of this view:
Facing North
Facing South
It was hazy, so the view wasn't as good as it could have been, but that being said, it was still amazing how much of the Attika plane was visible. We could see the three tallest mountains in the area: Mount Parnitha, Mount Penteli, and Mount Egaleo. Mouth Penteli was particularly interesting to me, as that is the mountain from which much of the marble used in Athens came from. I would love to go there to hike, and see the marble outcrops myself. In the past, the tallest two of these mountains had giant statues of the gods at the summit, of Athena and Zeus, if I remember correctly. We could also see nearly all of the Attika plane, including Athens and the surrounding towns and municipalities. Nearly all the temples were visible: the temple of Olympian Zeus, the Parthenon, the Temple of Hephaestus, the Monument of the Muses, and Panathinaiko Stadium. It was very cool to be able to see these all in relation to one another, and it certainly makes the myths about Athens make much more sense. Having this sort of context makes much more sense than just looking at a map and trying to understand the relations of these places from that. The photographs, mental and digital, that I took while standing on top of Lakavitos will be a major resource I will use during the duration of the course, as we explore historical sites from prehistory through today.


Courses also began today, with an introduction to the Greek alphabet in Modern Greek 1, and a historical overview in my Civilization class. For me, who hasn't really had a formal course on Greece history itself, and hasn't had world history at all in 5 years, this overview was really interesting, and gave me a good framework, which will be filled out much more thoroughly over the next few weeks. The information in the textbooks, too, while a bit dense, gave me a good understanding of what has happened on this peninsula in the Mediterranean in its 400,000 year human history. I look forward to fleshing out the visual and informational overviews I got today over the rest of my time here.

καλή νύχτα!

3/26/2012 Comments PERMALINK

3/24/12: The Center of the City

Γειά σου!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Athens Centre took my whole group out to dinner last night. It was a very pretty restaurant, with pretty good food. I liked it all, though I wasn't as impressed with it as the one the night before. Additionally, so much stuff has happened just today that I don't want to ramble on about food again. Suffice it to say, it was tasty, I had very good conversations with the students I was sitting with, and came to realize why sitting next to both of the photography enthusiasts on the trip was probably a bad idea.

I don't even know what this face is, or why I'm sharing this photo, because it's ridiculous.
Today, we took a walking tour of central Athens, including the National Gardens and the Acropolis. Both are easily within walking distance of the place we are living, which is excellent. We walked past the Temple of Olympian Zeus, though the Gardens, to the Zappeion, which has a neat history. It was commissioned by Evangelis Zappas, and designed by Danish architect Theophil Hansen. It was to be part of the Olympic Games infrastructure, and construction on it started in 1874. It wasn't finished until 1988, by which time Zappas had passed away. His cousin, Konstantinos Zappas, was asked to finish the building. Today, it is mainly used as a conference and exhibition hall, but was used for the Olympics every time they have happened in Greece. It's a cool building.

See? (It isn't actually curved like that... that's just me and my software being bad at panoramas)
After that, we meandered our way towards the Acropolis, passing a hoard of police officers on the way. Tomorrow is Greek Independence Day, and so there was a small parade today, and there will be another one tomorrow. There will also be a lot of things closed for the holiday, but the Acropolis museum will be free, so I may go there. I walked past it today, on our tour of the Acropolis area. It is a bit of a tourist trap, but still a very cool area. There's lots of places to hike, and there's literally another monument or amazing artifact everywhere you look in that area. It's also a fascinating blend of the old and the new, of civilization and of nature. There are street performers and little cafes on one side, and this meadow- and ruin-covered hill leading up to the Parthenon on the other. It's really fantastic. I was able to hike up the hill and little bit, and get an amazing view of the city of Athens and the surrounding towns.

The view from here was really amazing. This picture does not do it justice, by a long shot.
A bit past the Acropolis, the businesses start. There's a whole bunch of little stands where Athenians sell their handmade goods in this little square. Then, past that is Monastiraki, where the Athens flea market is located. This is still a bit of a tourist area, but there were many more Greeks there as well, which was neat. You could buy nearly anything in that area, which was full of small shops, a bit like an open-air outlet store. I didn't end up getting anything, because I don't need much and will wait to get souvenirs for my family and friends, but it was still fun to people watch and window shop in that area. There was also an open square at the end of the flea market, which an amazing example of the layers of history present in this city.

Left to Right: Old Greek Orthodox Church, the Parthenon, and a modern shop
Today was our last day of orientation.Tomorrow is a Sunday, and also a national holiday, so there's nothing scheduled in particular. On Monday, at 9 am, classes start for me, with a walk to (and up) Lycabettus Hill. I'm looking forward to it, and am so glad to be spending the next 10 weeks in this laid-back, historical, eclectic, wonderful city.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

(P.S. There are more photos of the places I went and saw today. Click on the Photo Gallery link to find them. Cheers!)

3/24/2012 Comments PERMALINK