The concept of citation-readiness and Mycenaean Atlas Project

 A URL  is a 'universal resource locator': it refers to a web site, e.g. pleiades.stoa.org.  A URI is a 'universal resource identifier': it refers to a specific item sheltered under the URL.  So, in the pleiades scheme, 579885 is a URI that refers to Athens.  And the link (URL + URI): pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885 is the pointer to 'Athens' in their database and which will be returned by Pleiades.   This is a very friendly form and easy for the user to remember.

The actual address of the Pleiades Athens page would not be friendly at all.  It's more likely to look something like this:

{a} https://www.pleiades.org/stoa/locator-page-constructor?place=579885

My example here is made-up but Pleiades' genuine locator is going to be very much like it and an awful lot for the user to remember.  Much easier to allow the user to write:

{b}  pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885

Now, to be clear, form {b} is for the user's convenience.  The server running at pleiades cannot use this string directly.  It has to convert this string into form {a} before the server can task the right resource.  A rewrite rule is what allows the server to do this.  The result is convenience for the user but correctness for the server.  Win-win.

Well, what one group can do another can also.  I created some rewrite rules for helladic.info so that, if you know the location key for a BA site you can just use that without  remembering the long pathname to the actual program.  So from now on you will be able to type and/or embed a simplified form.  E.g., such as here for the stadium at Argos:

{b}  www.helladic.info/C4480               

instead of the real full path:

{a}  https://www.helladic.info/MAPC/pkey_report_wparam.php?place=C4880

The rewrite rule itself is just this:

RewriteRule  ^(C[0-9]+)$  /MAPC/pkey_report_wparam.php?place=$1  [L,R]

... and the result looks like this:

In one of his foggier statements about Pleiades URLs (he clearly doesn't understand the technology), Tom Elliott has this to say about enhancing citation practice.

“On the world-wide-web, the identifiers necessary for citation should be front-and- center: they are the strings of characters that you put into the location bar of your browser in order to retrieve a web page.  They are the essential magic in a hyperlink.  Their technical name is “Uniform Resource Identifier,” a phrase usually abbreviated with  the acronym URI.  URIs (or yoo-ahr-ees, as they’re sometimes pronounced) are cool.  They’re cool because, if you construct them sensibly and connect them to interesting information and take care of them so they don’t rot into uselessness, they make citation happen.  In throwing off the normalizing tyranny of a single map view to embrace the radical equality of all places, Pleiades was born citation-ready.  Because Sean Gillies and others present at the creation payed attention to emerging best practice and cared about scholarly communication, Pleiades was born citation-ready.”[1]

(I removed Elliott's footnotes 17 and 18).

Elliott suggests that this practice makes pleiades 'citation-ready'.  'Citation-ready' in this sense requires, however, no special 'magic' (the word is Elliott's and it's one which he should avoid) because every server supports rewrite rules that will convert some simple address that you type into the URL box (here pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885) into the more complex 'actual' address where that resource resides.  As usual Elliott is erecting a cathedral on a postage stamp - overselling a normal web function.  If all it takes is a rewrite rule to make pleiades 'citation-ready' then helladic.info is now also 'citation-ready' ...

or something.

But is a simple rewrite-rule enough to create citation-readiness?  I'm not convinced.  We all could benefit from a discussion which tries to clear up the idea of scholarly citation in the context of on-line resources.  Maybe next time.

Notes

1. Elliott [2018] 45-6.
2. A guide to rewrite rules is here and a handy cheat sheet for regular expressions (RAs) is here.

Biblio

Elliott [2018]:  Elliott, Tom, 'The Pleiadic Gaze: Looking at Archaeology from the Perspective of a Digital Gazetteer',  Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World; Classical Archaeology in the Digital Age – The AIAC Presidential Panel 12.1 (51), 43-51.  Kristian Göransson ed., 2018.  Online here.

It seems to me that this paper was actually written at least a decade ago but I can find no earlier reference to it.  Is it just me?  Does anyone else know better?

Do Not Use the Pleiades Data Set

 

The river Quartaccio is a brook (described as 'fossa') just near Marina di San Nicola on the Lazio coast of Italy. This brook diverges from the Statua (another brook) at 41.9298 N, 12.135 E and flows N towards the town of Quartaccio and Valcanneto. Along this brook at about 41.9356 N, 12.1381 E a modern road crosses it. This is approximately the position of a Roman bridge which is given no name. This bridge is marked at this place in the Barrington Atlas (Map 43, A2, no. 2).   Here's what it looks like in Google Earth:

All in all it took me about half an hour to trace down the right Quartaccio (there are several) and take a stab at the position of the bridge based on the Barrington Atlas.

In Pleiades this bridge is no. 426578 and its position is given by Pleiades as 41.875 N, 12.125 E which is in the Tyrrhenian some 3.69 km. from the nearest land and 6.83 km from the putative bridge.  See it at the bottom of the next photo:

Now these gross errors of placement in the Pleiades data are nothing new. I looked at five examples last time and I attributed them to careless digitization and the complete lack of any quality control.   I did notice that Pleiades puts their accuracy estimate for the Quartaccio Bridge as 'Rough'. I thought, 'Aha!',  if I can see what 'Rough' means to the Pleiades group then maybe I can see  how far the  problem goes.   I got the 'Rough' points out of the database that I made from Pleiades' data and plotted that on Google Earth. There are about 5000 points labelled 'Rough' in the Pleiades DB. I used a select to retrieve the first 3000 of these (about 1/10 of the entire Pleiades DB). Here's the result of plotting these 3000:

This is shocking.  

Even if the location of these sites was not known (most of them are known as I will show) Pleiades has made no effort to place them even approximately.  These points are simply dumped off at the nearest half-degree or quarter-degree vertex.  Nothing else could make such a pattern.

And most of these points are not singles.  They are multiples of 5 to 10 distinct locations which are simply dumped on top of each other. All these sites have simply been rounded to the nearest degree or half-degree. And most of these points are easily locatable. When I was criticizing P. for errors I truly believed that the number was, perhaps, about 100 points. Now I see that it is thousands of points that could be known but which are simply dumped off at the nearest vertex.

Greece looks like this:

I've said that many of these points are just carelessly dumped in a pile even though the locations they denote are easily locatable.  Here's an example.  In the Corinthian Gulf Pleiades has overlain six points at 38.25 N, 22.25 E.

I've drawn red lines from the vertex where they were dumped to their real locations.  The line drawn to Phocis is drawn to the nearest point of land in Phocis.  The lines from the  rivers are drawn from the mouths of the respective rivers.  The Styx is the modern Mavronero above Solos.  The village of Solos is marked.  Every point was easily locatable and the average error is 13.9 km.  

In Pleiades-world four rivers, an entire province, and a gulf are all in exactly the same location.   All of their 'rough' points are exactly the same.

I can think of no toponymical practice that can explain this pattern.  What's absolutely clear is that the Pleiades data set has no conceivable use for any scholarly purpose.   

The Pleiades data set is approaching twenty years of existence.  In that time the P. team had plenty of time to fix these gross errors.  I concluded long ago that Pleiades never had any interest in creating a scholarly (or even a reliable) map of the ancient world.  Soon I will dedicate one of these posts to discussing what I think their real interest is.

The Pleiades data is unsuitable as a reference.  

It is unsuitable for study of the Ancient World.  

It is unusable as a basis for developing further geographic tools.

Pleiades owes the scholarly community an explanation of why their data so bad and what they intend to do to rectify this very poor database.

A Draft of a talk to the Ancient MakerSpaces Conference in January 2022

 

I am very happy to have been invited to give a talk in January to the Ancient MakerSpaces conference in San Francisco. This is a workshop session of the AIA-SCS (American Institute of Archaeology and the Society for Classical Studies) and it provides a forum for individuals or groups who have been pioneering digital applications in several fields of the humanities.[1]

My talk, devoted to the Mycenaean Atlas Project, is only ten minutes and so affords just about enough time to state the goals of the M.A.P. , show some representative slides, and talk about lessons learned. And yet I took this opportunity to write a longer report about the M.A.P. which explains some of my positions in more detail. Those who would like to learn more about this project than is available in a 10-minute talk can refer to this short paper.

The Mycenaean Atlas Project

A Table of Contents for the Greek Bronze Age

'He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

And Priam's neighbors.'

Robinson

The Mycenaean Atlas Project is a relational data base that is devoted to accurate locations for find sites of the Bronze Age in Greece. Currently it consists of 4400+ sites, 6400+ features, and nearly 4000 three-dimensional landscape models. More than six years of daily effort has gone into this project. Early on the decision was taken to make the database free and public and, to that end, the online site Helladic.info was created. This effort was undertaken because, to my knowledge, there was no previous effort to digitally map the entirety of the Mycenaean world.

There are now a number of digital products that try to map the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome in whole or in part.   Some of them are:

• The excellent Aristeia Project which covers the Geometric and the Archaic for Greece.  It is  conducted under the leadership of Dr. Mazarakis-Ainian; it has some problems of accuracy but on the whole is an excellent effort.  It would be even better if it were to show signs of continuing curatorship.  No project, and definitely not my own, is error-free and so the commitment to upkeep and correction is vital. 

• There is the Ancient Ports - Ports Antiques site which is designed and implemented by Arthur de Graauw who is an engineer specializing in harbor construction.  It is relentlessly accurate and Mr. de Graauw allows the download of his entire DB in the form of a flat-file or spreadsheet. This enables the user to convert it into a relational DB or read it into a GIS for further analysis.

• There is the ArchaeoCosmos initiative of the Capodistria University of Athens.  This seems to be an umbrella site for housing disparate and non-integrated projects related to the geography of ancient Greece but this site appears to be still in its beginning stages. I wasn't able to reach anything useful through their online interface.

• There is the specialized site called Topostext under the leadership of my friend Brady Kiesling.  Topostext successfully marries the landscape of Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Greece with thousands of site names mentioned in the ancient literature; invaluable for any readers of those texts.

• The Barrington Atlas is the basis for the Pleiades project which covers the Archaic through Roman periods.  I have some questions about their attempt to repurpose the Barrington Atlas data.

• A very useful survey of digital projects relating to the Northern Aegean (and Greece generally) can be found in the paper by Despoina Tsiafaki and Natasa Michailidou, 'Ways to Cope with the Scientific ARENA: Taking the Results of Archaeological Research a Step Further', which came out of the Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (CHNT) no. 23, 2018.  The paper is online here.  This paper reflects the approach of the ARENA digital project which is dedicated to making information available about a large number of find-spots in Macedonia and Thrace (8th to 1st centuries BC).  Their site is here.

• The Luwian Studies site, directed by Dr. Eberhard Zangger, is an excellent and highly accurate, source of information about western Anatolia and I have leaned on it heavily as it covers an area with which I have little familiarity.

• The Innovative Geophysical Approaches for the Study of Early Agricultural Villages of Neolithic Thessaly site proved invaluable for locating certain sites in that region even though it formally confines itself to the Neolithic.

• The site Digitizing Early Farming Cultures is another that covers the Neolithic but can provide valuable information about certain site locations.

• The Digital Crete project seems, regrettably, defunct. When it was online it provided very good information about sites on Crete. I hope that the FORTH Institute for Mediterranean Studies will resurrect it.

• The Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire seems comprehensive and well-intentioned but rather pedestrian as it tells the user little of what he or she would like to know.

• The finest site I know of that marries specific kinds of information (Levantine ceramics) with an atlas is the Levantine Ceramics Project whose home page is here. The history of the development of this project is here. This site is proof that a committee can, on occasion, design something splendid. It provides multiple entry points to its data and a nearly faultless search system. Let me give an example: I started by searching for 'Mycenaean' and then learned that that was a synonym for 'Philistine Monochrome'. I clicked on that name and got a page describing Philistine Monochrome ware and its dates. On that page was a list of sites where such ware was found. I then clicked 'View on Map' and was taken to a leaflet map plate on which the area where such ware is found was outlined. The map page also listed the find sites for this ware. When the 'vessels of this ware were found' check box was checked a list of a dozen or so places was displayed. Then I clicked on one of those (K.6.162a) a close-up map of the site was displayed with further buttons to look at individual items.  Here is what that page looks like:

In the center, and surrounding the site is a spiral of paddle images.  Each one is clickable and supplies more information about the items found there.  This web site is a perfect marriage of function and information with an atlas.

• The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land, or DAAHL, is the interface to a DB that records on the order of 100,000 find sites in the Levant and Egypt.  I do not see an institutional sponsor; I believe that it is solely the work of the consortium of scholars who are listed under 'Contributors'.  It is a very valuable repository of information about the Levant but it gives distinct signs of being unloved.  Broken links and links that go nowhere, software errors, confused usability issues - all these make the experience more frustrating than it needs to be.  I hope that this resource can find the curatorship that it deserves.  This site has the potential to be as good as the Levantine Ceramics Project but right now - it isn't.

There are also many partial gazetteers of the ancient world in articles and books. A good example of this is Goodison and Guarita which covers the Mesara in Crete.  Such sources can be found in the database bibliography and scattered throughout the site itself.  The M.A.P. coverage of some forty of the most prominent can be examined directly from the Control Page of the M.A.P. itself.

What is required to identify a site?

Computer people like to think in -tuples - the smallest set of things required to accomplish a task.  Doubles, triples, and so forth.  In this case the question is what is the smallest number of elements required to uniquely identify a site?  I maintain that this is a quadruple because site identification requires four things. 

• The first is a unique identifier that must be more than just a simple number.  It  must be unambiguous, applied to only one site, and the same denomination rule must apply to all sites.  It cannot be sub-classed; its role is not to explain but to identify.  

• The second item is a latitude/longitude pair.  It doesn't matter what system.   UTM/WGS84/GGRS87 and even What 3 Words are all interconvertible without loss of accuracy. 

• The third item is a rating that expresses the degree of confidence in your location.  Many sites in this field are not precisely locatable and that raises the problem of reliability.  A subjective measure of accuracy goes some way to increasing confidence in placement. 

• The fourth and last item is actually the most important.  That is a bibliography of the site by which one may demonstrate that everyone is talking about the same thing.  This reduces, although it does not eliminate, the problem of thinking that two distinct sites are one, or of promoting one site into two based only on significantly different descriptions.  Without a bibliography these are errors that are all too easy to commit.

Notice one thing here.  The concept of a name, a string of characters or digits, uniquely designating the site is missing.  The Greek name-space is sparse and the result is a great deal of repetition.  The concept of the 'name' of a site is not essential to identifying it.  The question here is 'what can we dispense with in uniquely identifying a site?'  The name-string is one of those things that we can dispense with.

Accuracy

Why is accuracy important?  There are two reasons.

The first is that accuracy makes it possible to ask and answer important questions. My very strong feeling is that, in the field, and no matter what you find, whether it’s a worn, barely recognizable sherd or a palace complex, Datum One is where the object was found, exactly.    Why is accuracy of location so important when generations of archaeologists have supposed it to be unimportant?  Accuracy of location is important because only that can relate your specific find to everything else.  For example,

• how far is it on the average from a BA habitation to a water source?  
• What’s the standard deviation of that distance?  
• What’s the average elevation of a BA settlement, tholos, chamber tomb?  
• Is the average habitation above or below the average BA cemetery?  
• What’s the average distance from a habitation to its associated cemetery (when such an association can be determined)?  
• How many BA habitations do we know that were within 100 m of the ocean?  500 m?  1000 m?  
• Did the Mycenaeans live in the mountains?
• In the LH IIIC settlements were often moved to higher elevations for safety. This is probably true. Can we prove it?
• What proportion of BA habitations were obviously maritime in orientation or were not so oriented?  
• How many habitations with a LH IIIB2 or LH IIIC burn layer are there and how are they distributed, exactly?   

How about some accurate and useful maps of all those variables?

Second, accuracy is crucial because on that rests the potential to perform an almost unending array of analyses using already available databases.  Without accuracy of place there is no accurate elevation data, no accurate slope or site aspect analysis, no usable 3D modelling, no intervisibility analysis, no accurate positioning in relationship to water sources or geological setting.  There are a number of databases about Greece which are online which could be fruitfully integrated to a Bronze Age database such as the M.A.P. but which rely on accurate locations in order to be useful.   Garbage-in, garbage-out is the inflexible rule. 

A good example of this (nearly mis-fired) promise is given in an article by Wong  [2020] which demonstrates the types of analysis possible - in this case for the island of Naxos.  Naxos was explored very early in the twentieth century by, among others, Stephanos.  He discovered a number of cemeteries whose locations were not always adequately recorded.  Despite the best efforts of later researchers, notably Doumas and Renfrew, there is still a great deal of imprecision concerning the exact locations of some of these sites.   Consequent to the surveys of the Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project (SNAP) Wong wrote a series of invaluable articles describing the various types of analysis that were available along with very suggestive results.  Unfortunately many of Wong's sites were incorrectly placed (this was not his fault) and so his analysis was somewhat weakened.  Nonetheless I strongly recommend these articles for their valuable array of analytical techniques.

The great advantage of the digital approach is that errors (inevitable) can be corrected rapidly and cheaply.  The cost gradient for digital work is so low and the work  time so rapid that it seems obvious that the day of the printed book or article (along with their infuriating pay-walls) is finished.  Already researchers have more rapid access to a far greater array of material online than they would have even in all of our research libraries with, perhaps, the exception of the very greatest.

As fine as the prospect of powerful analysis may be the plain fact is that BA and other historical studies are imperceptibly moving from the data-gathering phase into the data input phase.  This will last for another half century at least.   I emphasize that this is my personal opinion only.

Goals

In light of this the Mycenaean Atlas Project is dedicated to carrying out a Baby Step. 

• The goal of the MAP is simply to specify, as accurately as possible, the location of as many Bronze Age sites as are discoverable.  The emphasis is on the culture of the Mycenaeans but the actual extent of the Atlas is further than that.
• To provide additional material to illustrate why each of the sites was included.  To that end nearly all sites have additional information that tries to say what they were or how they were used as well as the period of time in which they were built or used. 
• To provide analysis tools that allows further investigation of the sites in context.
• To make all of this information available to whoever might wish to use it or refer to it.  To that end the MAP takes the form of a relational database of BA sites.  It has online presence because it was wrapped in PHP software.  From a usability point of view this makes it exactly the same as the vast majority of sites on the internet. 

Downloadable

The entire DB is now available to anyone who wants it either in .sql form or through the online interface.  Its URL is www.helladic.info or www.mycenaeanatlas.com

Given that this goal of inclusive and accurate placement can be achieved it is crucial to try to show what kinds of analysis can be carried out on such a database. 

First what is the granularity at which these sites can be examined?  Sites may be analyzed and examined singly or in groups.  Single sites are identified by their place key which takes the form Cnnn or Cnnnn.  Typing the  place key into the search box (on any page) will take you to the Place Key Report page for that site.

ANALYSIS OF SINGLE SITES

<More about single site analysis: Types of analysis available are intervisibility, site aspect, nearest neighbors, and three-dimensional models>

• Intervisibility shows what sites are visible from your chosen single site within circle of 13 km in diameter. It returns a map with your central site in blue and intervisible sites in green.
• Site Aspect allows the examination of the slope and aspect of the ground around any site. It computes the slope at 150 and 300 m. from the site in the four cardinal directions. Based on these eight measurements it identifies the aspect of the site (which way it faces).
• Nearest Neighbors is a multi-way display of the distance and bearing from any site to its neighbors within a 1.5 km radius. This returns a map with the nearest neighbors in a circle of 3 km. radius. It provides graphs of distance and direction
• Three-dimensional models are available for about three-quarters of the sites. I was assisted in this by Xavier Fischer of elevationapi.com. He created the models which are hosted on sketchfab.com. And although this is a different site the model experience is seamless to the user.

ANALYSIS OF GROUPS

The Mycenaean Atlas Project controls page allows the user to define groups of sites in order to analyze them as a group.   The simplest means of defining a group  is by region; you may, for example,  be interested in all the sites on Aegina or in Messenia.  You may do that from the Control Page either by pull-down menus or by using the thumbnail maps at the bottom of the page.  When you click on the thumbnail it expands into a page-size map from which you can choose your region of interest.

You can also choose groups of sites by Ceramic Horizon (Period) or by type or by some combination of the three criteria (Region,  Period, Type).

Once selected you can choose to get a map of these sites or a series of detailed reports.

There are five different reports available for each group search:

• Aspect and Slope -This page provides an analysis of all the slopes and aspects of the sites in your group
• Gazetteer - Simple but useful.  An alphabetical list of the sites in your group complete with  links to the sites.
• Elevation - This provides charts and analyses of the elevations of the sites in your chosen group.
• Chronology - This is a chart which shows all the ceramic horizons attested for your site groups
• Bibliography - This consists of a bibliography of all the works used in investigating the sites in your chosen group.

Lessons Learned

• There are many databases online that cover important topics such as hydrography and geology.  These can be integrated into a product like the Mycenaean Atlas Project in the same way that the API for elevations was integrated (elevationapi.com).  It is good to plan for this from the beginning.

• It might be time to redevelop this product to use  a robust GIS such as ArcGIS or QGIS.  The M.A.P. was developed using a rudimentary GIS which consisted of Google Earth  Professional along with database support in the form of MySQL.

The Greek toponymical name space is relatively sparse.  The ancient Greeks were the sort of  people who took along a whole 'culture package' when they migrated to new areas.  This resulted in their naming new features with old names that had been applied to similar things. 

Counter to this re-use of names each site has a long history of renaming, duplications, abandonments, and resettlements consequent to dialectical development, conquest, reconquest, population movement, and changes of language.  Much archaeology in this world was done a long time ago and as a result obsolete names are often embedded in the archaeological literature.  This constitutes a problem of its own.

And yet it is this that gives BA toponymy its subtlety and charm.

• As more databases  with differing time  periods are integrated the problem of mutations of names becomes more acute.  It is not be enough any more to content ourselves with a simple name or ID mapping to a lat/lon pair.  We need a more dynamic toponymical model that is suitable for historians as well as geographers.  This should be a model that links 'places' diachronically and not just in space.  It might be better to think of replacing Greek toponymical names with an accompanying story of name change (if I could think of a way to represent this).  This in turn starts with a completely redesigned database required to support such a presentation style.

For the Future

• The future will undoubtedly see the further integration of databases that are now separate.  In order to facilitate this task the international community should define a standard relational database format to which individual contributors can adhere.

• Compendia of site and  place locations will be of little use unless each of the sites is curated.  Databases that match site name with a lat/lon  pair will never be of much use.

... and a warning:

Thanks go to:

The primary contributor to the Mycenaean Atlas Project besides myself is Dr. Sarah Murray of the University of Toronto in Canada.    Several years ago I read her article (Murray [2014]) and learned that she had gathered a database of some 4000 LB and early IA sites.  She generously agreed to share this data with me.  From that data I culled about 2900 sites and from these was able to enrich those I already had as well as add about 1600 more that I did not yet have.

I have very generous friends and collaborators in Greece who have been kind enough to send me pictures and current observations  of several sites.  Among these I must mention 'Pete'  for working with me enthusiastically and selflessly for the last five years.  He has been instrumental in correcting errors and enhancing my understanding of a number of places in Messenia.  This product would be much poorer without his involvement.  Also Dr. Hajo Becker from Germany who has contributed photographs and whose numerous trips to Greece as well as thoughtful observations have helped me to precisely place several sites.

Dr. Michael Boyd (Oxford) kindly shared photographs and information about Kopanaki in Messenia.

Dr. Alex Knodell (Carleton College) worked with me on finding specific locations for many sites in Sterea Ellada.  I thank him warmly for affording me this opportunity.

Dr. Raphael Orgeolet (Aix-Marseille University) generously contributed location corrections for Kouophovouno (C988).

Dr. Dimitri Nakassis (University of Colorado at Boulder) contributed corrections for C6679, Chosti on Naxos.

Mr. Brady Kiessling of Topostext.org who encouraged me and who has provided invaluable information.

Many scholars have been kind enough to provide copies of their papers.  Among these is Dr. Rainer Felsch who  kindly provided his paper, ‘'Das Kastro Souvalas bei Kalapodi'’, which allowed me to correct the position of C6887 (when I had no other means of doing so).

I would be very remiss in not thanking Dr. Daniel Libatique and the professionals of the Ancient MakerSpaces organization who afforded me the opportunity to describe this project.

And, of course, special thanks to Michael P. Speidel, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii at Manoa who, all those years ago, set my feet on 'the right path.'

Any  errors that remain in these pages are mine. Any opinions that I state here or in the M.A.P. are also mine and mine alone and cannot be attributed to any of the people that I have named.

Footnotes

[1] The SCS website is here. The AIA website is here. The Ancient MakerSpaces page for the 2022 session in San Francisco is here.

Bibliography

Felsch, Rainer [2018]:  Felsch, Rainer , 'Das Kastro Souvalas bei Kalapodi' in Papakonstantinou et al. [2018] 73-82.  Online here.

Goodison and Guarita [2005]:  Goodison, Lucy and Carlos Guarita. ‘A New Catalogue of the Mesara-Type Tombs’,  Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici [47], pp. 171-212, 2005.  Online here.

Murray [2014]:  Murray, Sarah, "Qualitative Data, Hypothesis Testing and Archaeological Narratives: Was there ever a Greek Dark Age?" in C. Papadopoulos, E. Paliou, A. Chrysanthi, E. Kotoula, and A. Sarris (eds.) Archaeological Research in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. Greek Chapter (CAA-GR), Rethymno, Crete, 6-8 March 2014. (IMS-FORTH): 64–69. Online here.

Papakonstantinou et al. [2018]:  Papakonstantinou, Maria-Foteni and Charalampos Kritzas, Ioannes P. Touratsoglou (editors). Πύρρα Melétes gia tin archaiología stin Kentrikí Elláda pros timín tis Fanourías Dakorónia. Athens, SEMA Ekdotike.

Wong [2020]:    Wong, Todd.  'GIS Summary of SNAP 2019 (Part 3): Analyzing Extracted Results', esri Canada, Centres of Excellence.  Published in 2020 in the  'McMaster Blog'.  This article (part 3) is online here. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 4 is here.

The Geography of Partheni Bay on Leros

 

The island of Leros, in the Dodecanese, lies between Patmos and Kalymnos. 

Leros is situated between Patmos and Kalymnos

 Simpson and Dickinson tell of an early Bronze Age site discovered on the edge of Partheni Bay which is in the north of Leros as shown on the next map.  

Partheni Bay on Leros

  Simpson and Dickinson characterize the site like this:

"The easternmost of three promontories (collectively named "Ta Poundaria") on the S shore of Partheni Bay in the N of the island was an EB settlement.  The site is only 80 m. NNW-SSE by 40 m., but may have been partly eroded by the sea.  The  sherds found are from jars and pithoi of EB I type.  ... "[1]

Where exactly is this site?

Partheni Bay on Leros with ta Poundaria labelled.

On this map we see the three promontories called 'ta Poundaria'. They are the easternmost on the south coast of Partheni Bay. The one furthest E I have arbitrarily labelled "Poundaria 1". Its neighbors,Ta Poundaria 2 and 3, lie just to its W.

Let's look at Ta Poundaria 1 in closeup:

Does this satisfy the criteria set out by our authors? Here's what Simpson and Lazenby said about it earlier:

" ... a very low and very small promontory ... with the remains of an L-shaped mole at its north-west tip. The promontory, which is about 80 m. long by 40 m. wide, is the easternmost of the three (named collectively 'Ta Poundaria') in the middle of the south shore of Partheni Bay (the central promontory is even smaller, and the westernmost is the peninsula discussed by Benson where both Ross and Burchner reported tholaria)."(52)[2]

Here Simpson and Lazenby are, confusingly, giving the size of the peninsula as 40 x 80 m. when, in fact, it's the site that's 40 x 80 m.[3] The hypothesized size of the site is thus 3200 m. The actual area of this peninsula is about 29,700 sq. m.

In order to give an idea of the size of the site relative to the peninsula I have drawn a circle with an area of 3200 m. (about 32 m. radius) against a photo of Ta Poundaria 1. I show this circle in the next photo:

Ta Poundaria 1 with a circle sized to approximately the dimensions of the site.

I have identified this site in the Mycenaean Atlas Project as C7111 and I suppose that we're no more than twenty or so meters away from wherever it was that these Early Bronze sherds were discovered.

A Second Site, C7112

Simpson and Dickinson [1979] 367 suggest the presence of another site in this area:

"Similar fragments of pithoi found on a hillock c. 1 km. to SW may  represent  a cemetery area connected with the settlement.'"[4]

Where is this 'hillock'?  

The hillock in question sits just to the SW of the Leros airport runway.  At its highest point it is 11 m. above the surrounding plain.  On its peak sit the ruins of a tower about 8m square, presumably Hellenistic, and about which there has been some debate.  Early investigators supposed it to be the site of the often-mentioned Temple to Artemis (Parthenos Iokallis).  The virgin Iokallis has been thought to be a local semi-deity whose cult was assimilated to that of Artemis.  In 1905 Dawkins and Wace established that this platform was really just a tower.[5]  Bean and Cook reaffirmed this in 1957.[6]  And even though no other location for the temple has been suggested, this remains the consensus of scholars today.  But the idea that Artemis' temple is located on this hill hasn't quite died.   (Including the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports which still has this claim on their website here. )  In fact, Benson gives reasons why the tower base may have originally been the location of a small temple.  

Here's a photo of the entire top of the hill with some superimposed drawings of what can be made of the structures currently remaining.

The green cylinders (T1, ... ) are trees: a crude if effective way of representing them.  S1 and S2 are structures whose purpose I cannot determine.  The structure labelled 'Platform' is the proposed tower base.  The orange structure labelled 'Nave' is the location of the church of H. Eirene. I marked one structure, in yellow, with a question mark.  It is not clear whether or not this is part of H. Eirene.

Following is a photograph of the same area from directly above:

At some point in the Christian era the stones of the tower platform were re-used to build a small chapel to H. Eirene (F6216). [7]   Of H. Eirene Benson says this:

"Parallel and very near the tower on its north side is a small ruined chapel , known locally as Ayia Eirene, built largely with blocks taken from the tower. The small conch - like apse is constructed of brick and concrete , which was covered with plaster on which are traces of wall painting in red, yellow and dark greenish grey paint. The total height of the apse above the present surface is 2.45 m. A clandestine excavation which had taken place recently went down below the obvious level for a floor without revealing any traces of one."[8]

I found some pictures that show what remains of the nave of this chapel.  You should be able to link to them here: 

https://www.lerosinfo.com/media/k2/items/cache/954fb0ebf1d84fb921bfb0b6e045d57f_XL.jpg

This is the same scene from the photograph looking down the 'nave' of H. Eirene facing east.   Next to it on the S (right) is what's left of the tower platform.    On the N (left) of the chapel is a low yellow structure.  Photographs indicate that the slope falls away towards the N and I could not interpret what this structure was.  Take it with a grain of salt.

As for the platform itself there is another user-contributed photo that shows it up close and looking W.  You can find that photo here: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-m/1280/18/7c/ac/ae/view-of-temple-of-artemis.jpg

Here is a reproduction of that photo.  Here the viewer is looking directly W along the apse end of the nave (center).  The platform is to the S (on the left) under the shade of a tree.  

The temple that was thought to be here was famous in antiquity as sacred to Artemis.  The priests kept Guinea hens here which they advertised as Meleager's sisters, the Meleagrides.

In my next post I will devote more space to the myth of Meleager.

Footnotes

[1] Simpson and Dickinson [1979] 367, 'Partheni: Ta Poundaria etc.'.

[2] Simpson and Lazenby [1970] 52, 'Leros; Partheni'

[3] Simpson and Dickinson [1979] ibid.

[4] Idem.

[5] Dawkins and Wace [1905] But see Benson [1963] 16,  ' ... this may be the site of the Temple of the Parthenos, if it was of modest proportions.' 

[6] Bean and Cook [1957] 134, 'Leros': " ...; and at H. Eirene, between the bay and H. Georgios, is the ruin of a square tower described and illlustrated by Dawkins and Wace."

[7] The name confirmed in Benson [1963] 17 and n. 48.

[8] Benson [1963] 17.



Biblio

Bean and Cook [1957] : G.E. Bean and J.M. Cook, 'The Carian Coast III', Annual of the British School at Athens (52) 'Leros', pp. 58-146. [1957]. Especially 134 ff. It is online here.

Benson [1963]:  Benson Ancient Leros. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina and Eaton Press, Mass., U.S.A. 1963. Online here.

Dawkins and Wace [1905] : Dawkins, R.M. and Alan J.B. Wace, 'Notes from the Sporades, Astypalaea, Telos, Nisyros, Leros', Annual of the British School at Athens (12) 151-174, [1905-06]. esp. Section '4 - Leros', which starts on 172.  They include a photo of the base of the tower taken facing approx. W. It is online here:

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., 'Partheni: Ta Poundaria etc.', pg. 367. Online here :

Simpson and Lazenby [1970] : Simpson, R. Hope and J.F. Lazenby. 'Notes from the Dodecanese II', The Annual of the British School at Athens (65). pp. 47-77. 1970. Online here:

Metsiphi (C6878)

The area of Euboea south of Styra is a wild forested country of zig-zagging ridges.  It was not densely populated at any period in antiquity and it remains sparsely populated today.    I've been adding find sites in this area to the Mycenaean Atlas by integrating Fachard [2012] and this brought me to an habitation site called Metsiphi.

The site of Metsiphi (no. 4 on the next map) consists of a six-room building and a boundary stone marking the border between the demes of Eretria and Styra.  It may be a construction of either the Archaic or the Classical period.

Where is it?

I was able to locate two sets of directions to this site.  The map above should help you in following them.  And, in order to make better sense out of the geography I include some place name definitions (marked with an asterisk in this text, thus Kiapha Pass*) in a glossary appended to this post.

Fachard [2012] gives these directions to Metsiphi:

“From the Kiapha* pass, located some 300 m north of the gate of the Venetian castle of Larmena*, you can follow an (ancient?) path towards the valley of Aghios Ioannis. About 1 km east of the pass, there is an old building and a rock monument, both discovered by N. K. Moutsopoulos.”(1)

The town of Styra, in southern Euboea, lies just to the north of a long mountainous ridge (Kliosi*) that runs north-east to south-west across the entire length of the island. There is a classical period fort (sometimes referred to as the Acropolis of Styra*, F5701) on this ridge and immediately to its east the Venetian castle of Larmena*(Armena*, F5654).   That would put the pass (col) at F5694 where there does indeed appear to be a saddle over the ridge of Haghios Nikolaos. In Google Earth I drew a circle of 1000 m. radius and centered it on this pass.  But without any specific thing to look for the chances of seeing an overgrown ruin in GE are basically zero. And, as for the toponym of 'Haghios Ioannis', it is undiscoverable on any map to which I have access.

What to do?

I found another source which gives directions to Metsiphi. In Reber [2002] we read the following:

"In antiquity, two different routes led from Styra to Karystos. One corresponded roughly to the course of today's road, the other led first from Styra to the east and then followed the gentle slope of the northern slope of the Kliosi*. Via a saddle east of the fortifications one first came into a gorge and from there via a low saddle into the wide valley of Stoupaioi. From Stoupaioi, the path led through the mountains to the south, where it merged with the first path behind the village of Vatisi."(2)

Then he remarks:

"If you follow the path to Stoupaioi, which is partly paved with ancient retaining walls, you will find the ruins of an ancient building, which was uncovered by N.K. Moutsopoulos, below the saddle at Metsiphi." (3)

Karystos itself is at the south end of Euboea (F5697).  Kliosi* is another name for the ridge on which stands the Acropolis of Styra* (F5654).  Stoupaioi is at F5695 and Vatisi is further south at F5696.  And yet we still have no definite narrowing for the location of Metsiphi.  

But as Reber does not specify the starting point these directions do not help. Are we starting from Styra again? From the col (Sattel)?  Just as Reder promised to get specific he starts referring generally to ‘the path to Stoupaioi’. This path is a long one and through wild country; it will not help us to find Metsiphi.

What to do?

Well, it turns out that Reber does provide a photograph of the Metsiphi house in question. Perhaps it’s possible to duplicate that view in Google Earth. Here’s the picture: (4)

The house at Metsiphi.  But which direction are we facing?

I looked at this for a while and I decided that if it were possible to identify the mountain in the background it might be possible to draw a line back from that mountain to the site of Metsiphi.  At this point I really had no hope of locating Metsiphi exactly.

Could this view be replicated in Google Earth?  On my first attempt I came up with this:

It was gratifying to come so close on the first attempt.  It turns out that the  background mountain in this picture is Peristeri (F5693).   But it was clear that I hadn't yet succeeded in finding Metsiphi.  In Reber's original there is a ridge in the right center which is of lighter color than its surroundings.  That ridge does not appear in my reconstruction.  I continued to rotate the image in Google Earth until I had this:

In this view 1  indicates the pale colored slope which appears also in Reber's picture.  2 is the Peristeri peak. 3 indicates the slope down from the left which is also in Reber's picture.

We're obviously very close to Metsiphi at this point.  Can we find it by searching around this point?  Not likely, but first let's see what we're looking for.  Here's the floor plan of this building as supplied by Reber:

Floor plan of Metsiphi house from Reber [2002] 46, Abb. 3.

I started to search in this area and in no time I found this:

And zooming in:

In this version I did a find-edges in Photoshop and then multiplied it against the picture layer.  To say that I was astonished when I saw that grid shape is an understatement.  This is a difficult country.  I'd been looking for an entire day with absolutely no expectation of finding the exact site but suddenly there it was.

And one last mystery to clear up:  What or where is the valley of Aghios Ioannis?

The valley of Aghios Ioannis is just the light-colored ridge which appears at the right center of Reber's original photograph.  It is just to the south and west of Metsiphi.  Here is a view of it from the air (N at the top):

Google marks a church here which it calls Haghios Ioannis (F5698).  The area to the left was probably cultivated in ancient times.  

About Metsiphi Fachard says 'The most probable hypothesis seems to us to be that of a farm exploiting the little valley of Haghios Ioannis."(5)

Here's my final reconstruction of Reber's photo as taken from Metsiphi itself (foreground):

... with Reber's photo again for comparison:

Metsiphi is C6878 in the Mycenaean Atlas.  Its coordinates are 38.147513 N, 24.278 E

And a final map with everything labelled:

1. Styra
2. Haghios Nikolaos (Acropolis of Styra AND Fortress of Larmena/Armena)
2a. Kiapha Pass (col, Sattel)
3. Koryphi peak (682 m)
4. Metsiphi and Haghios Ioannis



The reproduction of landscape views in Google earth is a good technique that I have used successfully many times in the past and I encourage you who are trying to locate sites from photographs to try it.

Glossary of Place Names at Haghios Nikolaos ridge:

I used the following geographic terms in the specific way explained here:

The term 'Haghios Nikolaos' (sometimes 'Diakofti') is reserved in this post for the small plateau at the west end of the Kliosi massif, elev. 648 m ( 38.146118° N,  24.262697° E).  It is right at the ridge-line and overlooks a small pass (called by Fachard [2012] the Kiapha Pass, F5694) just a few meters to the NE.  This plateau takes its name from a nearby chapel cut into the rock just off to the west and named for Haghios Nikolaos.  Do not confuse this chapel with the church dedicated to the Virgin (F5700, another Panaghia?), placed prominently at the center of this plateau.

In this post the name 'Armena' (also 'Larmena' and with numerous alternate names and transliterations; F5654) is reserved for the great 13th century walled stronghold located on Haghios Nikolaos.  This corresponds to Fachard [2012] 229, no. 170, 'Aghios Nikolaos: Château-Fort d'Armena'.

Just to the W of the fortress of Armena, and adjoining it, was located a classical period fortress (in Fachard [2012] 225, no. 169) of which some walls and a famous and often photographed gate are the principal remains.  There is a plan of the remains of this specific fort in Fachard Fig. 190.  Photographs of the gate are in Reber [2002], Taf. 10, nos. 2 and 3.  A very helpful map of both the classical fortress and the Armena fortress is given in Ducrey et al. [2005], 121, fig. 4.  This classical period fortress is often referred to as 'The Acropolis of Styra' (F5701) and I have used that name for convenience but Reber [2002] 44 casts doubt on the idea that it could have had such a purpose given its great distance (~ 2 km.) from that city and therefore this appellation should be used with caution.  Fachard [2012] calls this classical period fortress 'Aghios Nikolaos' (6) but I have reserved that name as the geographic designator of the entire plateau.

The term 'Koryphi' ('Korifi'), alt. 682 m. is reserved for the peak of the Kliosi mountain ridge located about 1700 m to the NW of 'Haghios Nikolaos' at 38.160292° N, 24.279566° E.  Here it is given the feature name  F5699.

The Kliosi range (often referred to as a single mountain) is a long ridge that begins at the north-east of our area and runs to the south-west for about 15 km.  One of its high-points is Koryphi at 682 m asl.  Another is Haghios Nikolaos itself at 648 m asl.

Footnotes

(1) Fachard [2012] 336, no. 171. “Du col de Kiapha, situé à quelque 300 m au nord de la porte du château vénitien de Larmena, on peut suivre un chemin (antique ?) en direction du vallon d’Aghios Ioannis. À environ 1 km à l’est du col, on remarque une construction ancienne et une borne rupestre, toutes deux découvertes par N. K. Moutsopoulos.”

(2) Reber [2002] 45. “Von Styra aus führten in der Antike zwei verschiedene Wege nach Karystos. Der eine entsprach ungefahr dem Verlauf der heutigen Strasse, der andere führte von Styra zuerst nach Osten und folgte danach in leichtem Anstieg dem Nordhang des Kliosi. Uber einen Sattel ostlich der Befestigungsanlage gelangte man zuerst in eine Schlucht und von dort uber einen niedrigen Sattel in das weite Tal von Stoupaioi. Von Stoupaioi führte der Weg durch das Gebirge nach Süden, wo er sich hinter dem Dorf Vatisi mit dem zuerst genannten Weg vereinigte.”

(3) Idem. “Folgt man dem streckenweise mit antiken Stützmauern befestigten Weg nach Stoupaioi, so trifft man unterhalb des Sattels bei der Stelle Metsiphi auf die Ruinen eines antiken Gebaudes, das von N. K. Moutsopoulos freigelegt worden ist.”

(4) In Reber [2002] Plate 11.1

(5) Fachard [2012] 336: "L’hypothèse d’une ferme exploitant le petit vallon d’Aghios Ioannis nous semble la plus vraisemblable." 

(6) Fachard [2012] 169, 'Aghios Nikolaos: Forteresse; 169; ... '.

BIBLIO

Ducrey et al. [2005]:  Ducrey, Pierre and Sylvian Fachard, Thierry Theurillat, 'Les Activités de l'École Suisse d'Archéologie en Grèce 2004',  Antike Kunst (48) 112-123. 2005.   Online here.

Fachard [2012]: Fachard, Sylvian La Défense du Territoire; Étude de la Chôra Érétrienne et de ses Fortifications, École suisse d&apos;archéologie en Grèce, InFolio Editions, CH-Gollion.  2012.  Online here.

Reber [2002]: Reber, Karl 'Die Südgrenze des Territoriums von Eretria (Euböa)' Antike Kunst (45) 40-54. 2002 Online here.