The Lambaina Quarry (C131) found again.

In Messenia, near a town called Lambaina, there is a site that was identified by the MME researchers as a quarry/cem/habitation.  First let's look at it in the context of Messenia:

Lambaina sits on the W side of the Pamisos valley just before the Ithome foothills.  

And here's a close-up of the Lambaina area:

In this map N is to the top.  The main N-S highway runs through the center of the picture past a woodworking yard and former quarry.

The first description of this site known to me appeared in an article by McDonald and Simpson in 1964 where we read this:

“77B. Tourkokivouro (Lambaina)

On the E side of the Messini-Meligala highway and near the fork to Lambaina village (which is above and W of the highway) is a tile factory belonging to Ioannis Michalopoulos.  Immediately E of the factory is a great clay quarry which has cut into and perhaps largely destroyed a prehistoric cemetery.  The owner states that he retrieved from here and conveyed to the museum in Kalamata the two Mycenaean vases (a pilgrim flask and the bowl of a kylix) which are labeled as originating in Lambaina.”  [1]

In a follow-up article from 1969 McDonald and Simpson wrote this:

“77B. Tourkokivouro (Lambaina)

…

The ephorate investigated the site reported by us … Three pits were dug to rock on the E side of the clay pit and factory.  Pottery was more or less stratified in the sequence EH-LH-G.  The only structure encountered was an empty slab grave, probably EH.  The pottery was taken to the Kalamata Museum.  Mr. Papathanasopoulos suggests that this is a habitation site, rather than (as we thought) a cemetery.”  [2]

Finally, what does Simpson say in his gazetteer?

“F120  Lambaina: Tourkokivouro

(MME No. 122)

EH II   LH III(A2-B) G

...

About a kilometre east-southeast of Lambaina, on the east side of the Messini-Valyra road, stratified EH, Mycenaean, and Geometric layers were found on the east edge of a clay quarry. …”  [3]

Well, since the tile factory has disappeared the site is now effectively lost.  Can we find it?  What do we have to go on?  

a. near the fork to Lambaina village.
b. E side of the main N-S highway in this area
c. about 1 km. E-SE of Lambaina
d. Tile factory

Let's take another look at the general area:

The fork to Lambaina village is at 37.142447°, 21.969534°. 

Lambaina village itself is at 37.147274°, 21.967193°. 

One km. to S of Lambaina brings us to 37.138490°, 21.969614° which, as will appear, is an overestimate.

The tile factory.  Fortunately Google Street View exists for this part of Messenia so we are able to cruise up and down the main highway looking for it.  It doesn’t take long to establish that there is no longer a tile factory in this area.  What I discovered is a wood-working shop/factory with the name of ξυλεια Οικονομου or ‘Economy Wood Products’.

  This must have been the tile factory back in the 1960’s and has since been converted to wood products, or so I hoped.  On that basis I put the marker on the ground in back of this shop.  I plotted a point (C131) at 37.143516°  N, 21.97205° E.  

Now a correspondent of mine has visited this place and suggested a correction.  This is what he says:

~~~

“I have managed to pass the Lambaina quarry (or wood yard) several times and finally found the yard open with the owner in attendance. I asked him about the excavations and what he knew of it all.  He said he was rather younger when all this was going on and his father (not there) was the one who might remember more detail.  However he walked with me to the back of the yard where the quarry was originally located.  He confirmed that ceramics were made there before the yard became a saw mill.   It seems the ceramics were mostly tiles rather than pots or other utensils. That obviously made a quick survey rather difficult as the remains of the tile production had been dumped in the quarry when the yard was cleared for lumber storage.   In fact I picked up some of the more "interesting" ceramic pieces and wondered how anyone could tell by sight alone if they were ancient or modern.   The owner said there had been some excavations in the 80's but that they had not found too much and decided it was more likely a habitation of some sort - maybe even an ancient ceramic production centre using the same clay source.   His impression was that the excavators did not think it was a cemetery - certainly not one of any size.   However he was only a young interested person at the time and may have not understood all/any details.  He did say they became interested in something further to the east in another field (maybe the tumulus reported) but he didn't know anything about it.   I noticed a number of low mounds/small hillocks in the area to the east of the old quarry but did not investigate further at this time. 

   The upshot of all this is that your original presumptions are mostly correct (it was that yard and it had had a change of use from ceramics to wood).   However you might like to adjust the position of the site to something about 50m west of the current location (which is definitely outside the original quarry area).   My GoogleEarth  co-ordinates for the quarry area are:  37° 8.605'N ,  21° 58.284'E.

   The quarry was mostly worked on the southern side into the low hill. Indeed there is a semicircular area a little further to the west that one might suppose was formed by excavation. Unfortunately after the official excavation the site was filled and the debris from the old ceramic shops was dumped in the area with little regard for ‘contamination’.”

~~~

What's interesting about this narrative is a) no one seems to have visited it since the 1980's, b) When the changeover to wood products was carried out the debris from tile making seems to have been dumped into the quarry, c) the owner's son seems to have heard that the consensus of the archaeologists was that it was a habitation or, perhaps, a place of tile or vase manufacture and d) the archaeologists were later interested in a mound found further E (Tourkokivouro, C132). [4]

My correspondent also sends along some pictures that he took there and which I reproduce here:

First a Google map that shows how photos 1 and 3 were taken:

The next photo, Photo 1, is facing Mount Ithome and shows the clay pit/quarry to the left:

Some of the debris and plant-life found in the quarry.

Photo 2 is a close-up shot of the overgrown quarry.

Next, photo 3 is a shot of one of the piles of rock debris that lie around the site.   Here we're facing W (towards Ithome, visible)  and the back of the workshop:

And, finally, we have a spectacular panorama of the entire quarry and back of the lot:

In this last picture we're facing N.  The red lines indicate the angular scope of the panorama.  Certain things visible in the pano such as the telephone pole and the pine trees are indicated on the diagram.

So that's it then, quarry found again thanks to a valuable correspondent!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my last post I discussed the issue of Google starting to charge for its maps and how that affects Helladica.info.

In response to Google's change I have redelivered the Place Key report and the Feature Key report pages - re-written to use maps from Open Street Maps and ESRI.  This conversion work will be ongoing.

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Notes

1. Messenia II:  "77B Tourkokivouro (Lambaina)", 235.

2. Messenia III:  "77B. Tourkokivouro", 157.

3. Simpson [1981]: "F 120 Lambaina Quarry", 129.

 4. Tourkokivouro described in Simpson [1981]  129, 'F 120 Lambaina Quarry'.

Biblio

Messenia II:   McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson, 'Further Exploration in Southwestern Peloponnese: 1962-1963'.  American Journal of Archaeology. (68:3). (Jul., 1964), pp. 229-245.

Messenia III:   McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson, Further Explorations in Southwestern Peloponnese: 1964-1968.  American Journal of Archaeology. (73:2).

 (Apr., 1969), pp. 123-177.

Simpson and Dickinson [1979]:   Simpson, Richard Hope and O.T.P.K. Dickinson, A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilization in the Bronze Age, Vol. I: The Mainland and the 

Islands, Paul Åströms Förlag, Goteborg. 1979.,  "D 122 Lambaina: Tourkokivouro", 159.

Simpson [1981]:   Simpson, Richard Hope, Mycenaean Greece. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1981.

A Possible CEM associated with the HAB at C397

In my last post I suggested that the correct position for C397 (UMME 139) was at 37.085266° N,  22.055458° E

In the same paragraph from Simpson which I quoted earlier we read this:

"About 500 m. to SW and considerably below the site just described, we noted prehistoric sherds about 2.50 m. down from the surface in the sides of a sunken track that leads up in a cleft between two hills to the convent of the Panayia.  The spot is only about 250 m. E of the outskirts of Thouria village.  There is a new concrete cistern about 30 m. to E, with a sluggish spring slightly higher to NE.  Among the most distinctive sherds are a flat ribbon handle of fine pink clay, a horizontal pinched handle of soft reddish brown fabric, and some plain rims and bases of darkish clay.  Several large pieces of thick pithoi might indicate that this was a cemetery.  The pottery seems to belong mainly to MH, but some may be LH.
  The material collected on the habitation site is not closely datable but confirms its use in prehistoric times.  It could have been associated with the "cemetery" below it."[1]

Also in Simpson and Dickinson [1979] this:

"... About 500 m. SW, some MH sherds and others which may be LH were noted about 2.5 m. down from the surface in the sides of a sunken track between two hills on the way to the Panayia convent.  Some large pithos fragments suggest that the track may have cut through a prehistoric cemetery."[2]

So.  From the previously located site move 500 m. to SW (225°) and we should be in the vicinity of the CEM.  Let's look at the map.

This is what it looks like when I apply all of Simpson's constraints.  The large yellow circle is centered on C397 and has a radius of 500 m.   The azimuth line of 225° (SW) is included for reference.

Near where the azimuth line meets the circle I noticed two things.  The first is what appears to be a cistern and 30 m. distant to the left (W) is a road.  Simpson et al. clearly state that their finds were at the side of a road in the (visible) strata and about 2.5 m. from the top.

Here I've zoomed in on that location.  The circle is 30 m. in radius and it is centered on what I consider to be a cistern.  Another meter or two and we're on the roadside.  I propose this as the approximate location for C5407, our supposed CEM.

All of this fits precisely with Simpson's directions - except for one thing.  Where is the convent of the Panayia and does it fit Simpson's text?  This poses a problem because I can find no religious establishment with that specific name.  The two best candidates might be 1) Ayios Vlasios at 37.079550° N, 22.055526° E and 2) another unnamed church at 37.082563 N, 22.058166 E.  The two candidates can be seen in the next photo:

Ayios Vlasios is to the S and connected to C5407 by a driveable field trail.  But it looks like it might be too small to be more than a simple country church.  Here it is in close-up:

The second church complex looks like this:

In this photo I think we have two things.  One is the church itself and the other seems nothing more than tin-roofed farm buildings.  Truthfully these two church complexes both appear to be simple country chapels.

Nonetheless I slightly prefer the second church, the unnamed one, simply because it is reached through a path between hills.  In the next photo I have exaggerated the vertical by a factor of 2 in order to bring this idea out.

This picture shows the entire area.  Our proposed CEM (C5407) is at the lower left.  Ayios Vlasios is at the lower right.  The large complex right in the center looks to me like a private home.  That leaves 'Church 2' at the upper right as the most likely candidate for the convent but -  I am not sure.  The path in red that I have labelled 'trail' is taken from Topoguide.  It is here to emphasize that it is possible to walk from C5407 to 'Church 2' by means of a trail that goes between two hills.

If anyone has more information about these several structures then I would very much like to hear.   For right now I propose 37.081622° N, 22.052162° E (C5407) as the most likely position for Simpson's MH/LH CEM.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Check out my new icons on the website helladic.info

There is a new database which was delivered on March 21, 2018.  It adds sundry minor corrections as well as nearly fifty new sites in Crete.  The new DB is rev 0055.

If you like these posts then please follow me on Twitter or Google Plus (Robert Consoli).

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If you'd like to have a copy of the Mycenaean Atlas database then e-mail me and tell me what your project involves.  And remember that useful .kml and/or .csv files can be generated directly from all the windows of the website helladic.info

NOTES

[1] Messenia III, p. 160, no 79B. 'Ayios Athanasios (Thouria)'.

[2] Simpson and Dickinson [1979]: 164.

BIBLIO
McDonald and Rapp [1972]: McDonald, William A. and George R. Rapp, Jr., The Minnesota Messenia Expedition: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Regional Environment, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  USA. 1972

Messenia III: McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson. 1969. 'Further Explorations in Southwestern Peloponnese: 1964-1968'.  American Journal of Archaeology. (73:2), pp. 123-177.

Simpson, Richard Hope and O.T.P.K. Dickinson,  A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilization in the Bronze Age, Vol. I: The Mainland and the Islands, Paul Åströms Förlag, Goteborg. 1979.

The MH/LH Site 'Ayios Athanasios' (C397) near modern Thouria

A correspondent recently asked me for more detail about C397 which McDonald and Simpson identified as a potential habitation site near a church of Athanasios near Thouria in Messenia.  This gave me a chance to rethink my placement of this site; it's a good example of the hideous mess that a sketchily written description and slip-shod maps can create.  First let's go to the record:

In Messenia III we read this: "A small round knoll with a little barn on its summit rises about 200 m. NE of the chapel of Ayios Athanasios (bearing from the site to the chapel 225 degrees).  The modern village of Thouria (to be distinguished from ancient Thouria #78), on the main highway about 2 km. S of classical Thouria lies some 700 m. to SW of the site (bearing to the village church 257 degrees).
Obsidian chips and a few sherds of coarse "oatmeal" ware occur on the W terraces below the barn.  The total extent of the settlement was probably not more than 100 m. N-S by 60 m."[1]

In McDonald and Rapp [1972] it appears in Register A as site no. 139: "Thouria: Ayios Athanasios, 800 m E; 200 m NE of chapel of Ayios Athanasios.  Low knoll (barn on summit).  HAB. CEM? Frags. of obsidian; ..."[2]  There's a little more in the notice but that gives the gist of it.

This little 'settlement' reappears in Simpson and Dickinson [1979]: "A small settlement (maximum 100 m. N-S by 60 m.), marked only by obsidian and coarse pottery, on a hill c. 200 m. NE of the chapel of Ayios Athanasios and c. 800 m. E of modern Thouria village."[3]

Lots of good consistent information.  What are we looking for?

a. 200 m. NE (45 degrees) from the chapel of Ayios Athanasios.

b. From the village church of Thouria it is on a bearing of 77 degrees.

c. About 700 m. NE of modern Thouria.

Where is 'Ayios Athanasios' and where is the 'village church' of modern Thouria?  If we knew those things then we could find the site.

We should consult a map at this point in order to see where we are.

Modern Thouria and region.  From Topoguide

Here is the modern town of Thouria which is just a few km. NW of Kalamata in Messenia.  North of the town is a church labelled 'Aghios Athansios' (Arrow A).  This is too far north of Thouria to be the Ayios Athansios referred to by Simpson et al.  The church intended by our authors to be understood as Ayios Athanasios is at arrow B and I'm going to show that that must be the case in just a moment.  I should just say here that I have not been able to find the specific name for that church (B) from any of the sources that I have consulted.

Now let's take a look at the town of Thouria itself.  Perhaps we can identify the other 'village church' that Simpson mentions.  In this image from Google Earth I have marked three  prominent churches in modern Thouria.  The one to the left (C) is Hagiou Athanasiou (yes, another) and the one to the right (A) is Hagioi Theodoroi Thourias.  I have not been able to find the name of the large cemetery church at B.

I list the positions of these churches in tabular form:

A. Hagioi Theodoroi Thourias, 37.084460°,  22.051255°
B. Unnamed, 37.085319°, 22.047446°
C. Hagiou Athanasiou, 37.084310°, 22.047087°

Which of these did Simpson refer to when he talked about the bearing from the MH site being 'to the village church 257 degrees'?

In this next picture I've drawn 77° (257 - 180) azimuths from each of the three churches.

Simpson's 'Ayioi Athanasioi' at B

We know that the site is on one of these azimuth lines.  It must also be 200 m. to the NW of a church called 'Ayios Athanasios'.  The only church structure that fits that 200 m. constraint is at B.  Here is what it looks like when we put it all together:

Here I assemble all the constraints.  The church intended by Simpson et al. to be understood as 'Ayios Athanasios' is at B.  The circle is of 200 m. radius and centered on B.  The straight line from B is on an azimuth of 45° (NW).  These three constraints, the straight line constraint from Hagioi Theodoroi at A, the straight line constraint from the church of 'Ayios Athanasios' at B, and the distance constraint (the circle) centered on B, all come together at C where I've placed the site with high confidence.

How do I know that the church at B is what Simpson and others intended to be understood as 'Ayios Athanasios'? 

I don't. 

But it's the only church that fits the constraints.  Informants tell me that there are at least four churches in the Thouria region that are named for the saint.  Whether the church at B really bears that name is uncertain.  It may actually bear that name (or may have in the 1950's - 60's) or Simpson may have been misinformed about it.  If any of my readers know more about this then I would very much like to hear.  In the meantime that's my story for C397 and I'm sticking to it.


C397 is placed at 37.085266° N,  22.055458° E
Church at B, 'Ayioi Athanasioi', is at 37.084185° N, 22.053902° E


I haven't updated my on-line database to reflect this new information since March 21 so the online description of C397 won't agree with this post quite yet.  I won't update the DB for another couple of days.

Simpson and others have thought also to identify a cemetery nearby.  I'll deal with that next time.

~~~~~~~~

Check out my new icons on the website helladic.info

There is a new database which was delivered on March 21, 2018.  It adds sundry minor corrections as well as nearly fifty new sites in Crete.  The new DB is rev 0055.

If you like these posts then please follow me on Twitter or Google Plus (Robert Consoli).

You can e-mail me (and I hope you will) at  bobconsoli   at   gmail.com

And please remember - Friends don't let friends use Facebook.

If you'd like to have a copy of the Mycenaean Atlas database then e-mail me and tell me what your project involves.  And remember that useful .kml and/or .csv files can be generated directly from all the windows of the website helladic.info



NOTES

[1] Messenia III, p. 160, no 79B. 'Ayios Athanasios (Thouria)'.

[2] McDonald and Rapp [1972], p. 288. This is Register A, UMME no. 139.

[3] Simpson and Dickinson [1979], 163, no. D 139 'Thouria: Ayios Athanasios'.

BIBLIO
McDonald and Rapp [1972]: McDonald, William A. and George R. Rapp, Jr., The Minnesota Messenia Expedition: Reconstructing a Bronze Age Regional Environment, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  USA. 1972

Messenia III: McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson. 1969. 'Further Explorations in Southwestern Peloponnese: 1964-1968'.  American Journal of Archaeology. (73:2), pp. 123-177.

Simpson, Richard Hope and O.T.P.K. Dickinson,  A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilization in the Bronze Age, Vol. I: The Mainland and the Islands, Paul Åströms Förlag, Goteborg. 1979.

The Missing Tholos of Mandhra (C124)

PHILLY:  …for when I was a young lad there was a graveyard 

beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs 

as long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I'm telling you, 

and there was many a fine Sunday I'd put him together for 

fun, and he with shiny bones, you wouldn't meet the like 

of these days in the cities of the world.

Playboy of the Western World

J.M. Synge

1907

One can appreciate Philly’s enthusiasm for osteoarchaeology but not all of us are fortunate enough to have our graves ready to hand.  A case in point is the tholos tomb in the town of Mandhra which, though visible in the 1950’s, has now gone missing.

Mandhra is a semi-isolated village on the very west edge of the Stenyklaros plain; itself an extension to the north of Messenia’s Pamisos valley.

It appears that sometime in the late 1920’s Natan Valman discovered two domed tombs in the vicinity of this town and this was reported in the RE[1].

In the late 1950’s it seems that one of these domed tombs (C124) was located by Simpson and McDonald about 20 m. to the SW of the church of Ayios Yeoryios in Mandhra.  They reported their find in the first of a series of articles on prehistoric sites in Messenia.[2]  This is what they said.

"A collapsed tholos tomb in the hamlet of Mandhra which is ca. 1 km. N-NE of Elektra village.  The whole area was formerly called Gliata.  There are two springs in the larger village.  The tomb is located ca. 20 m. S-W of the church of Ayios Georgios.  The circle of stones is clear, as is also the line of the dromos which faces 85°.  The diameter is ca. 13 m. and the length of the dromos is 11 m.  A large well was built nearby with stones from the tomb, but there was apparently no attempt to penetrate very deeply.

  

This is probably one of the two "Kuppelgrabe bei Gliata" which Karo (RE Suppl. VI, 607) lists as a notification by letter from Valmin.  Villagers say ancient walls were discovered when digging foundations for a house ca. 20 m. north of the spring called Krounovrisi in Elektra village.  Quite possibly there was a habitation site in this area."

So.  In the late 1950’s the circle of the stone tomb was visible along with its dromos whose orientation was still discoverable.

Just a few years later they revisited the site of Mandhra.  This time their attention was on a putative habitation about 100 m. south of the tholos.  At this time they do not say anything more about the condition of the tholos itself.[3]

As late as the mid-1960’s, then, the tholos was still identifiable along with its dromos.  What remains of it now?  Time to go to the map.  

First up is McDonald and Simpson's own map:

Fig. 1  The map of the upper Pamisos according to Mcdonald and Simpson

This map shows the whole upper Pamisos valley.  I have circled Mandhra and (extra information) I drew arrows to the perennial springs which are otherwise hard to see.  Now let's look at the modern village of Mandhra.  Here is a close-up of the church in question and the supposed location of our domed tomb or tholos.

Fig. 2.  From 2013.  Church of Ayios Yeoryios of Mandhra along with general area of the tholos tomb.

And in this next picture I've tried to reproduce what McDonald and Simpson claim to have seen:

Fig. 3.  An attempt to model what McDonald and Simpson saw.

The yellow circle is of 20 m. radius and is centered on the SW corner of the church at the yellow push pin.  The red circle is 13 m. in diameter; I have shown a dromos of 11 m. in length and oriented at about 85°.  Twenty meters to the SW of this church, and inside my red circle,  you can plainly see a pile of rubble which is obviously the location of our tholos tomb.  

Not so fast, brother.  

First of all this photo was taken in November of 2013.  In a GE photo from 2003, ten years earlier, we can see that there is nothing whatsoever in that corner.

Fig 4. From 2003.  Nothing in the corner 20 m. SW of the church.

 And so that must mean that between the mid-1960's and 2003 whatever was visible to McDonald and Simpson had disappeared.  The picture from 2013 shows a brand new pile of rubble shoved off into that corner.  It is not possible to connect this rubble to any tholos tomb.  In a picture from Google Street View taken in 2011 we can see that very corner occupied by palm fronds from the palm trees which are just to the east and in front of the church.

Fig. 5.  December 2011.  Nothing in the corner but dried-up palm fronds.

In another view also taken at the same time, in 2011, we see a pile of rubble that has been bull-dozed into the N corner of the field.

Fig 6.  The general view of the field in 2011 with mysterious pile of rubble in NW corner.

What does that SE corner of the field (the corner with the palm fronds) look like today?  I was very fortunate to receive this photo, which was taken just a few days ago, from a correspondent in Greece.  According to him there is nothing in that corner except a sandbag.  Here it is:

Fig. 7.  The SE corner of the field with merely a sandbag.  Taken 4/2017.  All rights reserved.

Here's another view, taken at the same time, looking roughly N:

Fig. 8.  Same field looking NNE.
Taken 4/2017.   All rights reserved.

A structure has been added to the W of the church.  In preparing that structure some rubble was bull-dozed into the NW corner of the field.  You can see it in fig. 8.

Let's see if we can come up with a time-line for our tholos:

a. 1959: Tholos and dromos visible in SE corner

b. mid 1960's: Tholos and dromos still visible in SE corner (or, at least, not reported missing.)

c. 2003: Nothing visible in SE corner or anywhere else on the field.

d. 2011: SE corner is swept bare except for some dried palm fronds; a pile of rubble is visible at NW end of the field.

e.  2013: Large pile of stone and rubble visible in the SE corner

f.  2017: SE corner contains a single sandbag; large pile of rubble visible in NW corner of the field near a new structure.

Above, in fig. 3, I tried to model what I thought McDonald and Simpson described.  Perhaps what was originally seen was located somewhere else in that field.  It might have looked more like this:

Fig. 9.  An alternative idea for the former location of C124.

Whatever it looked like it was a major feature and would have dominated that space.  I emphasize that Simpson and McDonald saw both the circle and the dromos clearly enough to measure both.  Too bad it's now lost.  Perhaps fragments from it exist in the new rubble pile at the NW corner of this field which you can see in the background of fig. 8.

Here's a close-up:

Fig. 10.  The 'recent' bulldozed rubble pile at Mandhra.
Taken 4/2017.    All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Status of the Mycenaean Atlas Project

Currently prototyping an alpha online version of the Atlas.  I'm probably about two months away from making it available.

I've recently added twenty-four locations in the area of the Skourta plain (Farinetti [2009]), some eighty points in and around central Athens (Mountjoy, [2005]), and about forty points in Cyprus (van Wijngaarden [2002]).

Anyone who would like to have a copy of the MAP database can send an e-mail to bobconsoli 'at' gmail.com or leave a comment on any of my posts.  

A large (about 2400 page) .pdf document which describes the entire database is available for the asking.

To run the MAP database requires a SQL server running on your desktop computer.   MySQL is such a server and it is powerful, industry-standard, and free.  

I can and will make .kml or .kmz files, which can be opened directly in Google Earth, available to those who would like them.  

I can also create .csv files for people who would like to import Mycenaean Atlas Project data into Google Earth but would like it in tabular form.

If you like these posts then please follow me on Twitter (Squinchpix) or on Google+   (Robert Consoli)

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Footnotes

[1] Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplemental Volume VI, col. 607. (I cannot find this online and have not consulted it).

[2] McDonald and Simpson [1961], p. 234.   In Boyd[2001] 212.  Ålin speaks of this tholos as 'collapsed', 'eingestürztes' in Ålin [1962] 79.  

In Zavadil [2012] 493-4.   Dr. Zavadil suggests that the stones may have been reused in a nearby well:

"Eine zerstörte Tholos in der Flur Chasna westlich des Dorfes Mandra wurde erstmals 1961 von W. A. McDonald und R. Hope Simpson erwähnt. 1  Das Grab, dessen Dromos sich nach Osten öffnete, lag etwa 20 m südwestlich der dem Ag. Georgios geweihten Kirche. Die unteren Schichten der Tholos dürften damals noch erhalten gewesen sein; einige Steine ihres Mauerwerks hatte man für die Errichtung einer nahegelegenen Brunneneinfassung verwendet."

"A destroyed Tholos in the Chasna region west of Mandra village was first mentioned in 1961 by W. A. McDonald and R. Hope Simpson.   The tomb, whose dromos opened to the east, lay about 20 m southwest of the church dedicated to Ag. Georgios. The lower courses of the Tholos may have been preserved at that time;  some of the masonry (einige Steine ihres Mauerwerks) had been used for the construction of a nearby well surround (Brunneneinfassung)."

There is definitely a new well in the SW corner of the church forecourt (at 37.310126° N, 21.923186° E), only a few meters away from where the tholos would have been.  

Here is a picture from 2017 (an enlargement of fig. 7) that shows the new well in that corner:

Fig.. 11.  The new well.  I blurred this slightly to smooth out some annoying jpeg artifacts.
The new well is plainly visible.
All rights reserved.

But this well dates from after 2011 because figures 5 and 6 (above) from that period do not show it.  I cannot tell from the 2013 photo (fig. 9) from GE if the well existed at that time or not.  Dr. Zavadil's published dissertation is from 2012 - before the well was constructed.  

Perhaps she means some other well?  Her statement is important because she's suggesting that some of the stone used for this well, or some other, is spolia from that tholos.  But I cannot determine exactly why she thinks this.

[3] McDonald and Simpson [1969], p. 142.

Bibliography

Ålin [1962]: Ålin, Per, Das Ende der Mykenischen Fundstätten auf dem Griechischen Festland. Carl Bloms Boktryckeri A.-B., Lund, 1962.

[Boyd 2001]: Boyd, Michael J., Middle Helladic And Early Mycenaean Mortuary Practices In The Southern And Western Peloponnese.  np.  2001.

McDonald and Simpson [1961]: McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson. 1961.  ‘Prehistoric Habitation in Southwestern Peloponnese.’  American Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 1961), pp. 221-260.  Sometimes referred to as ‘Messenia I’.

McDonald and Simpson [1969]: McDonald, William A. and Richard Hope Simpson. 1969. ‘Further Explorations in Southwestern Peloponnese: 1964-1968’.  American Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 73, No. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 123-177.  Sometimes referred to as ‘Messenia III’.

Zavadil [2012]: Zavadil, Michaela. Monumenta: Studien zu mittel- und späthelladischen Gräbern in Messenien.  Wien:Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften. 2012.'