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:

Subregion support for Helladic.Info

Until now the Mycenaean Atlas has not consistently supported the idea of subregions.  This situation arose from not thinking clearly about the problem from the beginning.  The general concept of regions (e.g. Crete, Dodecanese, Messenia, Argolid, etc.) has always been a part of the database.  Smaller divisions, however, have been mostly skipped.  

It would, for example, be desirable to be able to look at individual islands in the several groups on an island by island basis.  Up until now one could look at ‘Cyclades’ but not ‘Naxos’ or any other of the individual islands in that chain.  With the 1.002 DB release, however, this has changed.  Several of the major regions have been divided into fully supported subregions.  You can now look not just at ‘Crete’ but at its individual subregions such as ‘Kissamos’, ‘Ierapetra’, ‘Khydonia’, etc.

You can choose these subregions on the ‘Region’ drop-down.  Here is a picture of what the region choice drop down for Crete looks like now:

The new Controls Page with subregions listed.  Here for Crete.

As you can see the term ‘Crete’ (which functions as it always did by encompassing the whole) is followed by combined  choices for the individual subregions of the island: ‘Crete: Amari’, ‘Crete: Apokoronas’, etc.

Island chains are now handled in a similar manner.  You can now isolate the main islands in the following island chains:

Cyclades
Dodecanese
Ionian Islands
North-east Aegean (Lemnos, etc.)
Saronic Gulf (Aigina, Salamis, etc.)
Sporades (Skyros, etc.)

Aigina treated as a subregion and mapped by itself and (below)
in its own Chrono Report.

 The concept of named regions is somewhat problematic.  We really don't know the region names for the Greek mainland as they were known in the Bronze Age and their use (we start knowing actual region names from the time of Homer) fluctuates even in historical times.  Of the mainland regions only Anatolia has been divided into subregions on this website.

The benefit of this subregion support is that you can now prepare reports (elevation, chrono, etc.) for more tightly focused regions and I sincerely hope that this will be a benefit.


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Some remarks on the Mycenaean Atlas Project database:

Many researchers in the social sciences 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.

Finding Tsoukka (C1922)

I have been reading the very interesting dissertation by Dr. Catherine Parker about bronze age Arcadia and checking her list of sites against mine.  In the course of this I came across her discussion of the site of Tsoukka (C1922) which is in Arcadia's Pheneos valley.  Tsoukka is an MH site.  I positioned it somewhat informally at the small country crossroads here: 37.889404° N 22.293383° E, basing this on the large-scale map in Zavadil [2006], with an accuracy parameter of 'Unknown' and I confess that I didn't think too much more about it.  Then I came across Dr. Parker's discussion which tells us that the discovery of Tsoukka included apsidal houses.  Because I don't have access to the original discoverer's articles (Erath [1999] and Erath [2000]) I had not known about the houses.  

Apsidal houses always get my attention.   I have certain ... er ... hypotheses about such structures and this was too good to let go.  It became my number one priority to identify exactly where these houses are located.   The only clue I had was a photograph taken by Dr. Parker.  I reproduce it here:

Courtesy of Dr. Catherine Parker.  All rights reserved to creator.

Can we work with what we have?  I think so.  We're looking for a road or a footpath which is flanked by two poles.  Behind the poles is a tree.  The apsidal house (or its entrance) is in the foreground and marked by the several stones.

It's not much to go on.  Can we find such a combination of features?   Here's what the territory actually looks like:

In the above aerial photo from Google Earth we see the east end of the hill of Tsoukka along with the little rise at its foot (center with the feature marker).  The apsidal  houses are somewhere on this map among this interlace of country roads.

I began by assuming that the 'path' in Parker's photograph was really one of these roads and, thank heaven!, Google Street View is available for nearly all these roads.  I traversed the road coming in from the north: nothing.  I then tried the road running NE to SW.  This road is lined by a single file of telephone poles except for one place.  Here it is:

Can these be the same two poles that we see in Dr. Parker's photograph?  I tried to reproduce her view in Google Earth:

In the foreground of this picture we see some stones which look quite like those in Dr. Parker's photo .... and here's a better view of the famous tree behind the poles:

When we look back from the double poles in the direction from which Dr. Parker's picture was taken we see this:

The terrace on which the apsidal houses are located is here:

Here's what it looks like from directly above:

The 'x' marks the place from which Dr. Parker's picture was taken.

And another view:

In this picture I tried to recreate the exact angle of Dr. Parker's photograph with the blue line.  The place from which the  picture was taken would be at the tip of the white arrow by the apsidal houses.


Well, to wrap it all up, the Mycenaean Atlas Project DB now has a new location for Tsoukkas (C1922).  It is here:

     Decimal:   37.888726° N          22.290945° E
     DMS:       37° 53' 19.414" N     22° 17' 27.402" E     
     W3W: geared.braces.squarely
     UTM:       34 S   613515 m E   4194254 m N

     GGRS87:    349568 m E    4194558 m N


It will be a couple of days before I update the DB.  However, it should be corrected by 8/23/2018.

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

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

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

Some remarks on the Mycenaean Atlas Project database:

Many researchers in the social sciences 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.

BIBLIO

Erath [2000]:  Gabriel Erath, "Neolithische und bronzezeitliche Keramik aus dem Becken von Pheneos in Arkadien", in F. BLAKOLMER (ed.), Österreichische Forschungen zur Ägäischen Bronzezeit 1998. Akten der Tagung am Institut für Klassische Archäologie der Universität Wien, 2.-3. Mai 1998 (2000), p. 111-118, esp. 114, fig. 6. 

Erath [1999]:  Gabriel Erath, "Archäologische Funde im Becken von Pheneos", in K. TAUSEND (ed.), Pheneos und Lousoi.  Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Topographie Nordostarkadiens (1999), p. 199-237, Taf. 4, 5

Mazarakis-Ainian [2009]:  Alexander Mazarakis-Ainian, From Ruler's Dwellings to Temples; Architecture, Religion and Society in Early Iron Age Greece (1100-700 B.C.).  Paul Åströms Förlag. Jonsered, Sweden.  1997.

Parker [2008]: Catherine Parker, 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.

Philippa-Touchais et al. [2006]: Mesohelladika; La Grèce continentale au Bronze Moyen.  Actes du colloque international organisé par L'École Française d'Athènes en collaboration avec l'American School of Classical Studies at Athens et le Netherlands Institute in Athens, Athènes, 8-12 mars 2006.  Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique Supplement no. 52.

Zavadil [2006]:   Michaela Zavadil, The Peloponnese in the Middle Bronze Age: An Overview', in Philippa-Touchais et al. [2006], pp. 151-163. 2006., p. 161.

The new Chronological Report Page on Helladic.info

The helladic.info site is pleased to announce support for chronological table creation and chronological ordering of sites in the DB.  A new database (Rev. 0.064) and new software has been delivered to implement this addition to the functionality.

The new Chrono report generates a table of occupation times based on your choices from the selection control on the Controls page. The control page allows you to select a combination of Region, Ceramic Horizon, or Type. After making your selection click on the 'Report' button. This brings you to the main report page. That page now has a 'Chrono' button. When you click on that button you will be given a chronological table on which your selection sites will be plotted with 'x's in the appropriate time span columns. Let's look at an example.

From the controls page I select 'Building' under the type label. Then press 'Report'. You'll be taken to the main report page:

You'll see the new 'Chrono Report' button. When you press that you'll be taken to the new Chrono page:

In the left-hand column are the unique place key identifiers for all the places in your selection set. They are clickable. When you click on one you'll be taken to the specific Place Key Report page for that site.

The second column is the place name. The names in this column are mouseable. When you run the mouse over them the region name will pop up in a tool-tip.

Succeeding columns, 'EH', 'EH I', 'EH II' etc., are the ceramic horizon columns. If there is evidence for your site having existed, been used, etc. during any specific ceramic horizon then there will be an 'x' in the box for that ceramic horizon. Here we can see that C1164, Troullos on Kea, existed in the LH I and the LH II.

The column headers with the ceramic horizon names are mouseable. When you do mouse over them the approximate year range will pop up in a tool tip.

It must be emphasized that these ranges are very approximate and scholars differ over what the proper year ranges should be for any specific ceramic horizon. Please keep this in mind. As I learn better ranges for specific ceramic horizons then I will probably change these tool tips.

The 'x' characters in the table boxes are also mouseable. When you do pass the mouse over them then the ceramic horizon label will pop up. This is intended to make it easier to work with the table when the column headers are out of sight.

When creating this table I faced the choice of making the table pageable (column headers never out of sight) or sortable. I chose sortable as probably the more useful alternative. When you click on the column heads the table will be re-sorted to put your criterion at the top. Because spaces in the cells sort before the character 'x' by default you'll probably have to click twice on any specific column head to get the effect that you want.

Also keep in mind that there are really two chrono pages, one in the helladic name style: 'EH', 'MH', 'LH' etc. and one in the Minoan name style 'EM', 'MM', 'LM', etc. These pages function differently. If your chosen data set has sites from Crete then the default or initial chrono page will show few or no 'x' characters in the table.

In order to see a meaningful chart you will switch to the 'Minoan Scale' page. Probably the most disorienting thing that a user can do is to make some region choice such as 'Crete' and then be faced with an empty chart and not know why. Remember to switch scales. The button to do this is at the upper right of the page and labelled 'Minoan Scale'.

Also keep in mind that some sites, particularly in the islands, have ceramic horizons in both styles. You will need to look at such sites under both scales. If you are on the Minoan Scale page there is also a button, in the same place, for switching back to Helladic.

I have not yet implemented a page for the Cycladic time scale.

There are buttons on the chrono pages that allow you to go to the elevation report page or the gazetteer report page. Those pages now also support buttons that allow you to go to the Chrono page. This should make multivariate analysis more convenient.

The tables, like any .html table, can be selected with the mouse, in whole or in part, and dropped directly onto an Excel spreadsheet. Here is an example of a table from the chrono page dropped onto Excel:

After you have dropped this table into Excel you can change the formatting or delete it completely as you choose.   But that's another topic.

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With a correspondent I've been discussing the question of whether putting exact locational information online is a good thing or a bad thing.  I'd like to hear from my readers on this question - do you have qualms about putting this kind of information online?  You can respond to this post or use my e-mail which is bobconsoli at gmail dot com.

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

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

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.

Using the Mycenaean Atlas Project (MAP)

The Mycenaean Atlas Project is a database which accurately maps more than 1600 Mycenaean find spots.  Because there are lat/lon pairs for every geographical point the data in this database can be displayed with map products such as Google Earth or GIS products like Carto and others. 

Querying the MAP database:
Select pk, pn, lat,lon from site where region = 'Laconia';

This MAP database is a relational database.  The data is stored in several different tables which are linked or connected through a primary key.  Since the fundamental data concept in this database is Mycenaean find spots it makes sense that each Mycenaean find spot has its own unchanging primary key value.  Any table in the database that has information about a Mycenaean find spot is accessed through the find spot primary key. 

FIELDS in the 'Site' TABLE

The fundamental table in this database is the ‘site’ table.  There is one unique record in the ‘site’ table for each find spot.  The record contains the following fields:

pk: the unique primary key designating this site

pn: (‘place name’) An alpha-numeric string with a pronounceable name for the site, e.g., ‘Mycenae’, ‘Tiryns’, ‘Nestor’s Palace’, ‘Pallantion’.

Lat: the latitude field is a floating-point number with at least six digits in the fractional part.  In the DB it is defined as ‘DOUBLE’.

Lon: the longitude field is a floating-point number with at least six digits in the fractional part.  In the DB it is defined as ‘DOUBLE’.

Acc: ‘Accuracy’.  This is a value that expresses the degree of confidence in the lat/lon pair.  See this for a full explanation.

Alt: Altitude in meters.  These altitudes in meters were derived from Google Earth.

Type: A single word identifier that gives a general characterization for the site.  The most common types are: ‘Hab’, ‘Cem’, and ‘Ceramics’.

Comment:  A character field that can be used for information that clarifies the site record.  Ordinarily this field is null.

Region: This is a character field of up to 45 characters.  It is used to designate the general geographic area in which the site is located.  It holds such values as ‘Laconia’, ‘Attica’, ‘Argolid’, ‘Messenia’, etc.

SAMPLE QUERIES

These nine fields are all that is required to generally characterize a find-spot.  With just this table it is already possible to write queries such as:

1.select * from site;              // returns all info in the table

2. select pk, pn, lat, lon from site;            // returns a file or all sites and which is suitable for importing into Google Earth

3. select pk, pn, lat, lon from site where region = ‘Laconia’;       // returns a file, suitable for importing into Google Earth which shows all Mycenaean sites in Laconia.

4. select pk, pn, lat, lon from site where alt < 50;   // returns a file showing Mycenaean sites close to a sea shore. 

Habitations close to the shore.  Query is:
select pk, pn, lat, lon from site where alt < 50;

5. select avg(alt) from site where type = ‘Hab’;      // returns the average altitude of a Mycenaean habitation.

Is the average burial above or below the average habitation?  Use query 6  along with query 5:

6. select avg(alt) from site where type = ‘Cem’;

The following illustration shows those sites which range from 20 m. below to 20 m. above the average altitude of 191 m.

Mycenaean sites at about the average elevation of 191.4 m:
Query: select pk, pn, lat, lon from site where alt > 171.4 and alt < 211.4;

7. select count(*), region from site group by region;    // This query will return a table with the number of Mycenaean find spots in each region.  When you execute this query the first few rows will look like this:

318, Messenia

189, Argolid

137, Boeotia

105, Dodecanese

94, Achaea

81, Laconia

61, Attica

60, Ionian Islands

The other tables in the database support the 'site' table.  By adding those tables we can write much more sophisticated queries.  I will describe those tables and their potential interactions in follow-on posts.

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 to any of my posts.  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.

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