Aetos Paliokastro (C168): A Report from Barking Pete

An associate of mine in Greece, Barking Pete, sends me an email about the real position of Aetos Paliokastro and, because of its interest, I thought that I should share part of it with my readers.  He and a friend who calls himself 'Aristomenes' after the famous Messenian hero recently re-visited the town of Aetos in order to definitely establish the former castle at the top of Paliokastro hill as well as get some more information and photos of the cyclopean wall in the town of Aetos itself.

Now I had the position of Paliokastro (C168) at 37.244601° N, 21.838944° E with an error radius of 50 m.  This was quite wrong; Pete establishes the actual position on a small neighboring hill just to the E at 37.243872° N,  21.842411° E.  The distance between them is more than 300 m.  The atlas has now been corrected for C168.

On the ground it looks like this:

Pete and Aristomenes took a number of pictures while they were there.  

This next is of the small hill that Paliokastro sits on:

... and here is a portion of the outer wall on the W side of Paliokastro:

Of his experience at Paliokastro Pete says:

"After a bumpy ride up a rutted track, we arrived at the small hillock that defines the Franksh/Byzantine castle. It's a small affair and in a somewhat ruined state. There are visible traces of the walls, some higher, some collapsed. The Frankish walls and towers constructed with mortar are best preserved to a height of a metre or so. The stones are large 'brick-sized' or bigger but able to be placed easily by one person. There is a  central "keep" with an underground cistern - so it must have had a roof to collect the rainwater. 

However there are a number of peripheral walls, mostly collapsed and constructed without mortar from much larger stones as well as some smaller stuff. This could have been the peripheral wall of the prehistoric acropolis. Unfortunately, the undergrowth was dense in many places and we could not easily navigate the whole site. ...

There were many ceramic sherds on the site. Our findings agree with Simpson et al when they note that most sherds are found on the hill to the east and north east of the access track. We also found a lot of pottery fragments above the track  - but that put them on the west/northwest side of the hill itself. The ceramics were less evident on the east side of the hill, if only because that was the steeper side and they may have been washed down to a greater extent over time. As the east side of the hill was very overgrown further down we did not venture far there."

Pete's reference to Simpson is Simpson [1981] 'F 215 Aetos: Palaiokastro', pg. 138.

I want to thank Pete and Aristomenes for their efforts here and for these valuable photos.

Biblio

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

'Section Ro' of the Cyclopean Wall

 Oscar Broneer, in an article of 1966, reports a section of 'cyclopean wall' which he calls 'Ro'.  He says:

"Section Ro (Fig. 2, 4), on the property of Panagiota Roussi, ca. 120 m. to the west of St, is only 8.40 m. long, but this retains the interesting feature of a tower like projection, 2.80 m. wide and jutting out 0.63 m. from the face. This miniature tower, the stones of which project into the interior, is the first of several found in the wall. The setback on the north face of section St may have been made to serve the same purpose as these small towers. The few pottery sherds found in contact  with section Ro were undatable."[1]

In addition to this Broneer provides a drawing of this segment:[2]

Segment Ro, Broneer [1966] 350, Fig. 2, no. 4.

The drawing provides an orientation line from which we may deduce that the line of the wall is on an azimuth of ~102.25° (or ESE).  The question is 'where is Ro'?  In my opinion no one presently knows.  Broneer says it is 'on the property of Panagiota Roussi'.  In doing this he perpetuates a practice that cannot be sufficiently condemned - the naming of archaeological sites after the names of the people who own the property (looking at you, Emilia Kanta).  In the nearly 70 years since this segment was discovered 'Panagiota Roussi' has, presumably, been translated into a brighter and more glorious sphere and it's anyone's guess who owns the property now.  I suppose that this practice is thought of as a kind of 'site security' but it is really a practice of scholarly deviousness.  Obscuring the locations of sites in scholarly writings is not necessary for site security.  To see that just regard the work of Yannis Lolos, the eminent archaeologist of the Corinthia.  In his Land of Sikyon he not only gives exact lat/long pairs for every one of his many discoveries, he often gives the exact coordinates of each corner of the field in which the discovery was made.  Taking an example at random from Lolos [2011] we have HS-139, a set of ashlars for which all four coordinate pairs for the corners of the field in which it was discovered are given.[3]

As a result of the irresponsible practice of not giving adequate location information it now appears that no one knows where segment Ro actually is.[4]

Do we know anything at all about where Ro is?  Sort of.

We are told that Ro is about 120 m. to the west of segment St.  Where is St?  Well, St, according to Broneer [1966] is located next to the W side of the main road that travels to Kenchreai.[5]  If that's true then St would be about here: 37.913586 N, 23.003973 E.  Broneer goes on to say: "In the northeast corner, close to the modern road, some of the interior fill of small stones was exposed, ... " [6].  The northeast corner of the site could not be close to the modern road unless the bulk of St was on the western side of the road.  Fine.  Let's place it there momentarily and work forward to Segment Ro which, we'll remember, was 120 m. (about) to the W of St.  Where would that put Ro?  Let's look at the map:

In this photo we're looking roughly SW at the main road between Isthmia and Kenchreai.  North is to the lower right.  Segment St is  placed near the main road on the W side per Broneer.  A circle of 120 m radius is drawn centered on St.  Using that circle as a guide we see that segment Ro is somewhere on top of the ridge near where the Hexamilion wall begins its turn to the S.  Putting Ro here gets it in line for the next segment, Pe, which is some 600 m. further along.

An expert on the Hexamilion wall, Timothy Gregory, gives us a detailed look at the entire extent of that wall and, just where we're guessed a placement for Ro is the same place where the Hexamilion wall turns towards the S.  Gregory describes this area at the turning of the Hexamilion like this: "Just past 0+6,500 m. the Hexamilion reaches the end of the plateau and turns sharply to the south. At this point another tower (S-13) formed a lookout over the level ground to the east and north (Pl. 12:c). In this area, from 0+6,300 m. to beyond 0+6,500 m., the Hexamilion follows a line suggested by Oscar Broneer for a section of his Cyclopean wall across the Isthmus. According to Broneer, the wall ran along the north edge of the plateau, until the turning at Tower S-13, at which point the Cyclopean wall continued its course eastward on a nearly direct line to the Saronic Gulf. Section Ro of Broneer's wall seems to be located at the bottom of the hill on this line. The wall may be the one that Leake saw ..., as he speaks of two walls descending towards the sea, apparently from this point (S-13). ..."[7]  Emphasis is mine.

Gregory then discusses the possibility that the Hexamilion wall itself branched into two walls at this point (one going south and one east) and, if so, that " ... would explain the situation described by Leake in 1806. There can, however, be no question that in its original phase there was only one wall and that it turned southward at Tower S-13."[8]

If we follow Gregory and assume that Ro is on the foot of the ridge then that pushes St to the eastern side of the main highway.  Here I show a hypothetical position for Ro at the foot of the ridge.  The circle is 120 m in radius and is centered on our hypothetical Ro.  Do you see where it puts St?

Yes.   It puts St on the other or eastern side of the main road which contradicts Broneer.

So, if we follow Broneer, Ro is at the top of the ridge.  If we follow Gregory then Ro is at the foot of the ridge.  And this is what gives rise to my suspicion that the location of this little segment of wall is simply not now known to anyone.

Is there a potential solution that brings all these observations together?  Maybe.  It depends on whether we're willing to accept the old frontage road as the former main road that joins Kenchreae to Isthmia.  Here's what that would look like:

Broneer's diagram suggests that the orientation of the wall at Ro (wherever it is) is on an azimuth of 102.25 degrees.  I added 180 degrees to that and drew a reverse azimuth of 282.25 degrees from Sk (which position is known).  That is the green line on the map.

Now we can proceed if we are able to accept that the frontage road (brownish line labelled 'Old Main Road?') is the main road as it was in 1957 when these segments were discovered.  (The purple line is the modern road.) If so then we can place St roughly just to the west of the Old Road at the paddle labelled 'Hyp. St'.  The red circle there is 25 m in diameter which is the length for St given in Broneer.  On that green paddle I centered a circle of 120 m. radius (the yellow circle).  Where that circle intersects the green azimuth line on the W I placed the paddle for Ro.  It is labelled 'Hyp. Ro'.  That placement of Ro seems to agree with Gregory's idea that Ro might be at the bottom of the ridge.  And just at that point there begins a spur which rises to the top of Mytika ridge at the watchtower that Gregory has labelled 'S-13'.  At or near this hypothetical location for Ro the line of the wall would have to turn slightly to the W in order to mount this spur.

These constructions are hypothetical but, for now, I am using the corresponding positions for Ro and St in my Atlas:

Ro: C7760  37.913490° N, 23.003881° E

St:  C7759  37.913254° N, 23.005230° E

Footnotes

[1] Broneer [1966] 349-351.

[2] Broneer [1966] 350, Fig. 2, no. 4.

[3] Lolos [2011] 507, no. HS-139.

[4] And see this.

[5] Broneer [1966] 349.

[6] Ibid. 349.

[7] Gregory [1993] 49.

[8] Idem.

Bibliography

Broneer [1966] : Broneer, Oscar.  "The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on Late Bronze Age Chronology",  Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (35:4), 346-362.  1966.  Online <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/147564">here</a>.

Gregory [1993] : Timothy, Gregory E., Isthmia V, The Hexamilion and the Fortress. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton, New Jersey, 1993.  ISBN: 0-87661-935-9.

Lolos [2011]: Lolos, Yannis, A., Land of Sikyon: Archaeology and History of a Greek City-State, Hesperia supplements, 39.   Princeton:  American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2011, ISBN 9780876615393.

Some new photographs of Segment Sp in the Isthmian 'Mycenaean' wall

 

An associate, Dr. Hajo Becker, has travelled to Greece just this  month and was kind enough to take some pictures of known segments of the 'Mycenaean' wall. [1]  In this post I wanted to show a couple of his new pictures of segment Sp (C7769 in my Atlas).  First is the image available in Google Earth.  The letters alpha and beta key to the corresponding letters in Becker's photos.  Dr. Becker's photos were post-processed by me in Photoshop.  I will have some more of Dr. Becker's photos in subsequent posts.

Google Earth image.  The letters alpha and beta
correspond to the same stone in Becker's photos, below.

Center of the wall segment Sp.

The work of Dr. Hajo Becker, all rights reserved.

North end of the wall segment Sp.
The work of Dr. Hajo Becker, all rights reserved.

This reminds me of Greece: the cyclamen.

Footnotes

[1] Broneer [1966] 351; Kardara [1971] 85; Morgan [1999] 443.

Bibliography

Broneer [1966]:  Broneer, Oscar. ‘The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on Late Bronze Age Chronology’, Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (35:4), pp. 346-352, 'As we proceed westward the wall ... ', pg. 351. Online here.

Kardara [1971] : Kardara, Chrysoula, “The Isthmian Wall (A retaining wall for a road?),” AAA, 4:1 (1971) 85-89.

Morgan [1999] : Morgan, Catherine.  Isthmia VIII; The Late Bronze Age Settlement and Early Iron Age Sanctuary. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.  Princeton, New Jersey.  USA.  1999.  ISBN: 0-87661-938-3.

Starochorafa on Kefalonia (C588)

The island of Kephalonia lies just off the west coast of Greece and directly facing the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth as is plain from this map. 

One of the best resources for Kephalonia as well as the Ionian islands in general can be found in the books and articles of Dr. Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood.   I've listed some of her writings in the bibliography at the end of this post.   

In this next map we see Kefalonia in close-up as it appears in the Mycenaean Atlas Project.  The blue paddles are specific sites and the red paddles (marked 'F') are modern-day features.

The island of Kephalonia

I've been reading an  article by her, ''Interpreting the Bronze Age Landscape of Kephalonia. A (Preliminary) View from the Livatho Valley Survey' in which she mentions a site near Argostoli, called Starochorafa.[1]  Starochorafa is mentioned in Simpson [1981] 156 as 'a locality named Starochorafa, three walls of a Mycenaean house were uncovered ... '. And ' ... only a few Mycenaean sherds were found, together with coarse ware, also presumably Mycenaean.'   It turns out that Starochorafa is one of the few places in the Ionian islands where true Mycenaean finds can be found and it has a little history.  It was originally  discovered by Marinatos (published 1932, AE [1932] 14, 42 n. 2) and then 'lost' until the Livatha Valley Survey Project stumbled across it again in 2007.

So where is Starochorafa?   I actually included this site in the Mycenaean Atlas long ago as site C588, based purely on Simpson who gives few clues as to its actual whereabouts.  Originally I put it here: 38.160442° N, 20.534861° E.  But now I have been able to glean some new information and I have learned that its real location is about 800 m distant to the SW.  It's actually here:  38.158419° N, 20.526261° E.

How was this more accurate location determined?

In the article mentioned above Dr. Souyoudzoglou-Haywood presents a photograph which I never noticed before of two archaeological field workers collecting surface sherds at Starochorafa[2].  I reproduce it here:

Where is this open field?  Which way  are we facing?  What is the ridge in the background?  We are not told.  Let's see whether we can figure this out by trying to reproduce it somehow in Google Earth.  Is there even a starting point?  I used Dr. Souyoudzoglou-Haywood's map of the survey area which I reproduce here:[3]

This map shows twenty-six Bronze Age find spots discovered by the LSV survey project.  I  plotted each of these on Google Earth.  The result was this:

The points closest to my original Starochorafa were points 10-13.  I blow them up here.  [Keph_Overlay_Detail.jpg]

Could these be the 'real' Starochorafa.  I zoomed in on this area on Google Earth and almost immediately hit paydirt.  Here's what this area looks like in close-up:

I found the grassy field between points 10 and 12 a real possibility for place from which the photograph was taken.  I zoomed into that field and tried to reproduce the same view.  The result is this:

And here, again, is the original  photo of Dr. Souyoudzoglou-Haywood so that you can compare it:

When we put these two pictures together we see that they are entirely consistent with each other.  Examination of the skyline shows that the positions are very likely to be the same.  It was here that I placed the marker.  It turns out that Starochorafa is more complex and extended.  Dr. S.-H. has put four different markers, placed closely together which encompass various components of Starochorafa.  But this picture at least gets us started and it's a huge improvement on what I had before.  I'll be releasing a new database soon and it will have the corrected position on it.

As usual I want everyone to stay safe.  COVID-19 is not the flu.  It is a dangerous viral infection - but you don't need to be told that by now.  Social distance and use masks when you go out of your homes.  I need all the readers I can get.

And ... friends don't let friends use Facebook.

NOTES

[1] Souyoudzoglou-Haywood [2008] 241.  "‘Starochorafa’ ... is largely a one period site of Mycenaean date (LH III, most likely LHIIIC only). It is one of the two small settlements mentioned above which were excavated by Marinatos ... The toponym fell into disuse over time, and the site was only identified anew during the 2007 fieldwork season.  Marinatos ... only excavated part of one house (6.80m x 4.20m), and reported that, having been prevented from continuing the excavation in a neighbouring field, he covered up the exposed remains of the site at the end of his brief campaign."

[2] Souyoudzoglou-Haywood [2008] 243, fig. 4.

[3] Souyoudzoglou-Haywood [2008] 240, fig. 2.

BIBLIO

Haywood [2018]:  Haywood, Christina.  'Archaeology and the Search for Homeric Ithaca: The Case of Mycenaean Kephalonia', Acta Archaeologica [89:1] 145-158.  2018.  Abstract is online here.

Livatha Survey Project:  The homepage of the Kephalonia - Livatho Valley Survey project is here.

Morgan [2007]:   Morgan, Catherine. Archaeological Reports (54) p. 46,  'Livatho Valley Survey'.   2007-2008.  Online here.

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

Simpson [2018]: Simpson, Richard Hope.  Mycenaean Greece and the Homeric Tradition.  This book may be downloaded from here.

Souyoudzoglou-Haywood, Christina.  'A Corner of the Landscape: The Kefalonia  Project 2001-02.  A Preliminary Account', on JSTOR here.

Souyoudzoglou-Haywood [2008]:   Cristina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood, 'Interpreting the Bronze Age Landscape of Kephalonia. A (Preliminary) View from the Livatho Valley Survey'. 

In: C. Gallou, Georgiadis, and Muskett (edd.), Dioskouroi: Studies Presented to W.G. Cavanagh and C.B. Mee on the Anniversary of their 30-year Joint Contribution to Aegean Archaeology (BAR IS-1889) Oxford: Archaeopress, 237-251.  The paper is online here.

Customized Bibliographies in the Mycenaean Atlas Project

The Mycenaean Atlas Project is happy to announce the delivery of software that can support customized bibliographies.

The bibliography for the Mycenaean Atlas Project now numbers more than 1000 items.  For a long time I have wanted to be able to present the bibliography online in a focused and analytical fashion.

From the beginning it was possible to create a map that showed every location documented by specific scholars.  It was possible to create, for example, a map of the Mycenaean world which showed just those sites for which Simpson’s Mycenaean Greece was one of the sources.  At the present time one can draw such a map for any one of 40 different scholars.

This is useful for tracking the actual coverage that the Mycenaean Atlas gives to any one of these prominent writers and these maps change as more and more of their sites are put into the Atlas.  Here, for example, is a map based on Emilia Banou's Beitrag zum Studium Lakoniens in der mykenischen Zeit from 1996.   These are all the sites for which her work is at least one of the supporting citations in the Mycenaean Atlas.

There is more in the Bibliography than just those forty authors.  At a minimum it should be possible to produce customized bibliographies.  If a user chooses just to look at sites from Arcadia then it should be possible to produce a bibliography of just those writers who are cited in locations from Arcadia.   In other words, to produce a customized bibliography of Arcadia in the Mycenaean period.  And that goes for any other combination of choices.  A customized bibliography for ‘tholos’ and ‘LH’; or a customized bibliography just for ‘Forts’,  etc.

This is now  possible with new software delivered to helladic.info.  In addition to the other reports that are generated from the report page such as ‘Chrono’ or ‘Elevation’ it is now possible to generate a bibliographic report limited to just those categories the user actually chose.

If the user chose ‘Boeotia’ and ‘EHII’ from the control page then, on the report page, pressing ‘Biblio Report’ on the main report page will produce a new page that contains a bibliography of just those authors and sources in the DB who are cited in support of every Boeotian site of the EH II.

A dedicated bibliography for 'Boeotia' in the 'EH II' looks like this:

Your choices are listed in the parameter box at the top left.  Here the PERIOD: is EHII and the REGION: is Boeotia.

The primary feature of this new page is the bibliography table.  This table has four columns, 'Author', 'Citation', 'Comment', and 'ISBN'.

Author: This column displays the author name, if known.  If there is a link associated with the author's name then clicking that link will bring up a map with just the sites in 'Boeotia' in the 'EHII' that use that author as a supporting citation.

Citation: This column displays the title and publisher (or journal information) of the work being cited.  If there is a link in this column then clicking that link will bring the user to the actual text of the work (.pdf or other doc) being cited.

Comment: The comment field displays extra information, if any, about the work being cited.

ISBN: This displays the ISBN number (or ASIN or DOI) of the work being cited.  This is included, when known, to prevent ambiguity.  The ISBN is still the best way to identify the exact edition of a book being cited.

Here's a part of the biblio page for 'Attica':

(You may need to click on this to enlarge it.)  Here there are ISBN numbers for Simpson and Hagel's Mycenaean Fortifications ... and Privitera's Principi, Pelasgi, e Pescatori because those books are not available online.  On the other hand Jeremy Rutter's "Evidence for a Mycenaean Tomb of the Late Helladic IIA period in the Athenian Agora" is online and the page provides a working link to it.  Clicking on that link brings up Dr. Rutter's article.

And what about that first column which is headed 'Author'?  As mentioned above that entry might have a link and, if it does, clicking on that link brings up a new map with sites for which that author/work combination provide bibliographic support.  For example, when you click on Jeremy Rutter's name next to his article 'Evidence for a Mycenaean Tomb of the Late Helladic IIA Period in the Athenian Agora' from Hesperia you are taken to a new map page with just that site on it, in the Atlas, for which Dr. Rutter's article is cited in support.  It looks like this:

Here's the new single citation source page.  Since you clicked on Dr. Rutter's name it brings up the single site in Attica which is in the DB and for which Dr. Rutter is one of the supporting sources.   In this particular case it turns out to be a grave in the Athenian agora (C1835).  In this way you can quickly track those sites for which specific authors/works are cited in support.

At the top of this page the original choice criteria are repeated.  The Criterion Bar says "Source: Rutter [1975]    Number of sites: 1     Region: Attica"

When you mouse over the Source the full citation will pop up.  It looks like this:

Here you can see the black background popup box with the full name of Dr. Rutter's article and its place of publication, namely in Hesperia.

Ceramic Horizon (Period) criteria are handled in a similar fashion.  Here, for example, is a map derived from Simpson's 1959 article on 'Nemesis'.  One selection criterion was 'LH'.  For our search purposes the choice of 'LH' means every subdivision of that period: LHI, LHII, LHIII, etc.  You can see that if you mouse over the 'Ceramic Horizon: LH' string:

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


The Dynamic Bibliography Report is available to be used now.  That software was delivered in the last week.  A new data base to support dynamic bibliographies has also been released.

Your feedback is very valuable to me.  My e-mail address is: bobconsoli 'at' gmail.com

Please follow me on Twitter: @squinchpix

I would ask you to follow me on Google Plus but c'est la guerre.

Friends don't let friends use Facebook and if you are using it please stop.

Useful .kml and/or .csv files can be generated directly from all the windows (including the new reports pages) of the website helladic.info   Try it out!   I'm also willing to generate custom .csv or .kml files from the atlas if you need something specific.

Most researchers in this field use some product like Microsoft's Excel to create a DB.  This is fine; it's what is generally referred to as a 'flat file' - a single table representation of your data of interest.

The Mycenaean Atlas database, on the other hand, is a relational database with several tables.  It was built using MySQL.  I will make dumps of this DB available but you need MySQL (or similar) and a knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) to run it.  (I'm pretty sure that you can interface to my database from ArcGIS or QGIS).  

Otherwise it doesn't make much sense to ask for it.  But If you'd like to have a copy of the Mycenaean Atlas database anyway then e-mail me (bobconsoli 'at' gmail.com) and tell me about your project.  I want to share the Database but just remember that it's a relational SQL DB

Where is Arcadian Dhimitra: Troupes (C484)?

It is said that photographs don't lie but they certainly can mumble.

An example occurs in Syriopoulos' article on 'Windy Enispe'[1] that discusses the important Bronze Age site called 'Dhimitra'.   Syriopoulos tells us about the site and how it was discovered:

“IN 1939, during road construction near the modern village Dimitra in the district of Gortynia in north-western Arcadia, digging works brought to light considerable prehistoric remains from the eastern slope of a small hill called Troupes (= 'holes') about 2 km. north-east of the village of Dimitra.'

 The remains passed unnoticed until 1942, when I chanced to visit the site and collected from the cutting of the hill-slope a considerable number of prehistoric sherds, the most remarkable of which I have briefly mentioned under 'Demetra village' in my (Prehistory of the Peloponnese).  R. Howell quotes the site in his recently published 'Survey of Eastern Arcadia in Prehistory' without adding any more information.

 Unfortunately, I did not manage to publish these finds earlier with a more detailed description and the relevant illustrations. But I have visited the site several times since I942 and collected more sherds and other finds, the most remarkable of which are described below. They all prove, in my opinion, a continuous and intensive inhabitation of the site from Neolithic to L.H. IIIC 2 times, when the settlement was deserted for ever.”

I transliterated his title in parentheses and have suppressed his footnotes except for fn. 1 which I reproduce here:

“1. The area of Dimitra, formerly Divritsa, is described in Frazer, Pausanias iv. 287-90, PW 70-5, GL iii. 276. The road, during whose construction the prehistoric finds came to light, branches off the main carriage road from Tripolis to Olympia at its 83rd kilometre in the village of Stavrodromi and leads through the villages of Tropaia, Vachlia, Dimitra, Kontovazaina, Voutsi, and Monastiraki, towards Koumani village and the carriage road from Pyrgos to Patras via Platanos. It has not yet been completed.”

So.  A significant large settlement that existed throughout the Bronze Age in central Arcadia and situated about 1 km. north of the Ladon River.

Where is it?

The name of the site is 'Troupes' and 'Dhimitra' is the name of the modern town closest to it.  The general position of Dhimitra in Arcadia is shown in this map:

Here we're looking at the NW quadrant of the Peloponnese; the lavender arrow points to Dhimitra.   If we zoom in on this area we can see the road being described by Syriopoulos in his footnote 1 which are indicated more or less roughly in the next map.  (Click on it to enlarge.)

On this map I have labelled the names of the towns in Syriopoulos' footnote.  The sequence begins with Stavrodromi at the lower R and ends with Koumani at the upper L.  The last bit of the road from outside Monastiraki to Koumani is not very good; really a series of dirt roads and this may be the part that Syriopoulos thought was 'not yet ... completed.'.

Now for Dhimitra itself.

The modern town of Dhimitra is positioned at the lower L.  Measuring a path from that town to my proposed location for Troupes is just about 1890 m.  I admit that the starting point for this lavender line was somewhat arbitrarily chosen but Syriopoulos does not tells us where to begin measuring the 2 km. distance from town to site.

In this post I have started with the answer.  With a high degree of confidence it can be said that the site of Troupes is at 37.786502° N, 21.932709° E.  How can this be justified?  

The criteria for this site are as follows:

1. Ca. 2 km. from modern Dhimitra.

2. It is on the road between Stavrodromi and Koumani.

3. It must be on or very close to the side of the road because it was discovered during road-building.

In addition to these vague criteria there are two photographs that show the area around Troupes.  These are from Syriopoulos' article.

The first shows the Ladon river valley taken from ... somewhere.

Here I have labelled the gorge of the Ladon R. (tributary of the Alpheios).  Also I have indicated the facing ridge on the S which is Dariza.  The modern town of Dhimitra cannot really be seen but it's somewhere over the labelled ridge.

In the next picture I reproduce that view in Google Earth:

Being able to reproduce this view leads me to say that the photograph in Syriopoulos was taken from approximately 37.786022° N, 21.947296° E.  In this picture the red line is the road described in Syriopoulos' footnote 1.  The intermittent blue line is the position of the Ladon river itself.

Syriopoulos labels this picture (a) as 'Troupes (or Damari) from north-east.'

But it isn't.  

The photo labels in his article have come adrift.  This caption which says 'Troupes' is actually meant for photograph (c) which is here:

This is the original.  Here is a labelled version of it:

Here we're looking roughly SW down the Ladon river valley in the direction of Dhimitra which we cannot see.  The main highway actually winds around the site of Troupes.  If we could figure out from where this picture was taken we would know where Troupes is located.  Perhaps it's possible to recreate this view in Google Earth?

After a great deal of huffing and puffing I was able to do exactly that.     Here it is:

Not too convincing?  That's what I mean when I say that photographs can stutter.  O.k., let's zoom in on the ridge in the LC:

Now we have a photo almost identical to Syriopoulos' photo which was taken from about 37.790800° N, 21.932980° E. I suspect that Syriopoulos' original was taken with a moderate telephoto, perhaps 135 mm. focal length.

And there it all is.  That wooded plateau feature in the center is Troupes.  In Syriopoulos' original there are many limestone outcrops visible and those have nearly disappeared in the overgrowth some 45 years later.  But when we look at this ridge from above those limestone features are still plainly visible:

I have drawn yellow arrows that indicate extruding features.  Even though this east side of the ridge is greatly overgrown compared to when Syriopoulos' picture was taken its essential rocky nature is unchanged.

Here's another photo of the site from above:

Here's Syriopoulos' photo of it:

And this is as close as I can get in Google Earth Street View:

I think that Syriopoulos's photo was taken by following the branching road to the left (NW) and photographing the hill by facing more towards the NE.

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A new database (Rev. 65) and updated search files were moved to helladic.info on 08/23/18 at 06:52 PST.  This includes about 71 new sites, many of them on the islands of Karpathos, Saros, and Kasos in the Dodecanese.  And don't forget to try out the new chronological pages on helladic.info.

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

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

Most researchers in this field use some product like Microsoft's Excel to create a 'DB'.  This is fine; it's what is generally referred to as a 'flat file'.  That is, a single table representation of your data of interest.

The Mycenaean Atlas database, on the other hand, is a relational database with several tables that was built using MySQL.  Dumps of this DB are available but you need MySQL (or similar) and a knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) to run it.  Otherwise it doesn't make much sense to ask for it.  But If you'd like to have a copy of the Mycenaean Atlas database anyway then e-mail me and tell me about your project.  

And remember that useful .kml and/or .csv files can be generated directly from all the windows (including the new reports pages) of the website helladic.info   Try it out!   I'm also willing to generate custom .csv or .kml files from the atlas if you need something specific.

Footnotes

1. Syriopoulos [1973] 193.  

   In Howell [1970] p. 98, "During the construction of the public highway near the village of Dhimitra, a cutting was made through a prehistoric settlement."  

   In Simpson [1981] 88, 'D 19 Dhimitra: Troupes', "The small hill called Troupes lies about 2 k. northeast of Dhimitra, on the south slopes of Mt. Aphrodision, above the Ladon river valley.  During road construction a cutting was dug through a prehistoric settlement here, and Syriopoulos ... collected a large quantity of sherds from it, mainly from the eastern slope.  Most of this was Middle Helladic coarse ware, but a few sherds were Mycenaean of provincial type  ...   the LH IIIC claimed is not certain ..."   

   In Simpson and Dickinson [1979] 83, 'B 33 Dhimitra: Troupes': "The small hill called Troupes is c. 2 km. NE of Dhimitra, on the S slopes of Mt. Aphrodision.  During road construction a cutting was made through the prehistoric settlement here and many sherds were collected, ...  Most of this was MH coarse ware and provincial LH.  ..."  

   In Parker [2008] 217: "Finally,  near  the  village  of  Dhimitra  (62)  in  the  northwestern region of Arkadia, a substantial settlement dating from the Neolithic to the LBA was discovered when the current road was built (Syriopoulos 1973)."

Bibliography

Howell [1970]:   Howell, R., 'A Survey of Eastern Arcadia in Prehistory',  The Annual of the British School at Athens (65). November, 1970.  79-127.

Parker [2008]:   Parker, Catherine Ruth, Arkadia in Transition: Exploring Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Human Landscapes. Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the University of Birmingham. Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, School of Historical Studies.  The University of Birmingham, January 2008.

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

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

Syriopoulos [1973]: 'The Homeric 'Windy Enispe': A Prehistoric Settlement in North-Western Arcadia near the River Ladon', The Annual of the British School at Athens (68), pp. 193-205, 1973.