The ashlars of Kamena Vourla

 Historically Epiknemidian Locris has been defined relative to Mount Knemis which is located at  38.748057° N ,  22.805831° E.  In actuality this is merely the highest point (about 945 m) in a small <i>massif</i> which faces the northern tip of the island of Euboea.   It projects northward to form a small peninsula bordered on the west by the town of Kamena Vourla and, on the east, by Hagios Konstantinos.  The main highway from Athens runs around the northern base of Knemis and a secondary road runs all the way around the northern edge of Lake Vromolimni.

In the last couple of decades a Spanish-Greek team of scholars (led by Jose Pascual and Maria-Foteini Papakonstantinou) has been doing an intensive survey of Epiknemidian Locris and I have been going through their reports in an attempt to up my game with respect to Locris.  

In their final report [1] the team mentions a group of ashlars that can be seen on the beach just north of Kamena Vourla.  This is what they say:

"Passing Lake Vromolimni on the road from Agios Konstantinos, between kilometric points 172 and 173 some ashlars can be observed that have been semi-submerged by the sea on the western side of the Gouvali and are largely covered by the present highway. These ashlars are black, hence the name Mavrolithia or Mavralitharia by which the area is known, have an isodomic appearance and could perhaps form part of an ancient quay or some kind of building."

Well, not very significant.  A building or a quay, undatable, lying just off the road (or under the road).  At best I might be able to add a new feature to my atlas and give it a reference back to this paper by Pascual et al.  But I was intrigued anyway.  Could they be found?

O.k. so Gouvali (or Vouvali) is the northern spur of Mount Knemis.  In my atlas I have marked it as F7507 and located it at  38.771792° N, 22.811342° E.  This northern spur of land is, really, the foot of Gouvali.  

Since they're on the ocean I started by searching the water's edge and I could see right away where the ashlars had to be.  Check it out in the photograph here.

The ashlars as seen in Google Street View.

This is the only place on the coast between Cape Knemis and Kamena Vourla where any rocks can be seen.  It's highly probable that this is what I'm looking for.

The ashlars relative to Cape Knemis.

We can even see them in close-up - more or less.

So there are probably my ashlars.  Can I prove it?  

These ashlars are required to be between kilometer signs 172 and 173.  If I can find the kilometer signs I can nail this down.  Now I have an unfortunate history with kilometer markers.[2]   And to any budding archeologists please, and as we're about to see, don't EVER use kilometer markers to indicate the position of anything.   Always nail down your site with decimal latitude and longitude.  Everyone will understand what you mean, you can be as precise as you like, and they'll NEVER change!  After all, God wouldn't have made the world round if he didn't want us to use WGS84.

Is there even a marker visible along this stretch of road?  It turns out that km sign 172 was easy to find.  Here it is:

So far, so good!  Here's where it is relative to the ashlars:

O.k!  Great!  Now I have to confirm which  way the numbers run and confirm that the sign for km. 173 is on the OTHER side of the ashlars.  I measured off a kilometer from sign 172 and used Google Street View to go up and down along that stretch looking for kilometer sign 173.  Nothing.  Here's what it looks like where a km. sign SHOULD be.

Overgrown roadside where km sign should be.

See the problem?  Most road margins are overgrown and only intermittently maintained.  There may very well be a km sign in there but you'd have to beat the bushes looking for it.  We still don't know whether we're on the km 171 side or the km 173 side of the km 172 sign.

Well, I'm not easily discouraged.  I'll go to the opposite side of km. 172 and see what that km marker says.  All we need to know is which direction the numbers are running.  So I went 1 km. to the N and W of km marker 172 and I did find a km marker sign and it looked like this.

This turned out to be the sign for kilometer 171.

Nice, huh?  Here the sign is bent back so we can't tell whether it's km 171 or km 173.  The position of this sign is 38.783034 N, 22.828181 E.  So not only can signs be overgrown they can be vandalized or otherwise damaged so that they can be found but not read.

The sign for km. 170 (1 km. further on) was missing.  I had to go back to km sign 169 which I did find as seen here:

The kilometer 169 marker.

The position of this marker is 38.769179 N, 22.842868 E.  Now I know which way the numbering system runs and that my supposed ashlars are between km. 172 and km. 173, for sure.  So the whole scene looks like this:

The Knemis promontory with the km signs marked.

Well, I located the ashlars although I don't have a good picture of them.   I did become very familiar with the kilometer markers.  So, folks, remember the poor gazetteer maker.  Don't use kilometer markers to describe your finds and always use WGS84.  

Until next time.

Footnotes

[1] Pascual and Papakonstantinou [2013] 9.

[2] A rare successful example is here.

Bibliography

Pascual and Papakonstantinou [2013] : Pascual, Jose and Maria-Foteini Papakonstantinou, 'The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Fourteenth Ephorate Epicnemidian Locris Project FINAL REPORT', Teiresias (43:1) [2013].  pp. 1-14.  2013.  Online here.