Ιστορία της Αθήνας

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.

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.