The Lambaina Quarry (C131) found again.

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

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

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

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

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

“77B. Tourkokivouro (Lambaina)

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

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

“77B. Tourkokivouro (Lambaina)

…

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

Finally, what does Simpson say in his gazetteer?

“F120  Lambaina: Tourkokivouro

(MME No. 122)

EH II   LH III(A2-B) G

...

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

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

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

Let's take another look at the general area:

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

Lambaina village itself is at 37.147274°, 21.967193°. 

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

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

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

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

~~~

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

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

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

~~~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

Biblio

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

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

 (Apr., 1969), pp. 123-177.

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

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

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

Migrating away from Google Maps (Wonkish)

Google has decided to begin charging for the downloading of its maps by websites although they claim that the first 100,000 downloads per month on any website are free.  helladic.info uses Google maps throughout and it is very unlikely that helladic.info would ever experience 100,000 map downloads and so this new policy would not seem to concern us.

However Google wants my payment information anyway (something it has never done before) even though helladic.info would fall into the 98% of sites that will not be affected by this policy.  The payment information is the sticking point .. along with some controversy about what 100,000 downloads really means.  I don’t wish to be exposed to this risk.

Therefore I have decided to move away from Google maps and reprogram the map pages to use Open Street Map and ESRI maps.  Indeed the first two rewrites (Place Key Report and Feature Key Report) pages are already delivered.

The new maps have more feature layers - you can try it out yourself – and they function just like the old pages did.  I don’t anticipate any impact on the way the site is used by making this change.  There is, however, significant rewriting still to do and I’m not certain that I can complete this by June 11 which is the cutoff date.

I’ll try to let you all know in advance if things change or if features are broken.  You can help me by reporting problems that you may experience during this time of refit.  

Maps on the Internet are a constantly changing and improving scene and, as I find new appropriate functionality, I will try to incorporate changes that I think useful.

Thanks for your understanding.

A minor (but frustrating) error in a Cretan gazetteer

“They said they were hair-dressers but … kind of hard to believe.”

Play It Again Sam

Woody Allen

I’m currently taking Mycenaean and Minoan sites from Crete and putting them into the Mycenaean Atlas Project database.  Today I was spotting sites in the very valuable gazetteer article:  Goodison and Guarita [2005].  Everything was going fine until I reached this:

“31. KHRONI KALYVI/ GANGALES

…

Location: After turning off the Ayii  Deka-Heraklion road towards Gangales,  140m on (just after the river) pass tiny chapel on left of road. 30m further on, cut across fields to the right (180m). The tomb is a few metres NW of a barn.” (1)

This tomb, possibly Early Minoan, is a circular tomb and mound of about 11 m. in diameter.  It was robbed in antiquity and, I suspect, of no really great importance or significance in itself beyond helping to fill out the picture of the extent of circular tombs in the Mesara during the EM.  Therefore the most important thing about it would be its exact position and that's what I want to establish.  There are a number of ambiguities in the directions to this tomb so I decided to take this down to the ground and provide a full description of what our authors are trying to tell us.

The main north-south road through the center of Crete runs from Heraklion to a junction with a major east-west road and very near to the town of Aghii Deka. (just a few km. further on one comes to Gortyn.)   And what our authors are saying is that if one turns towards Gangales (away from Ayii Deka to the east) then, after 140 m. one comes to a small chapel and then a road to the right which will lead to this tomb.

I tried every possible way to move 140 m. to the E from the N-S road to the main E-W road but nothing worked.  Actually 140 m. hardly gets you out of Ayii Deka.  There is a river in Ayii Deka and everything almost fit but didn’t quite.  Especially vexing was my inability to spot any tiny chapel on the edge of Ayii Deka. 

I spent a couple of hours on this and finally I just tried a guess.  Perhaps 140 was a mistype for 1400 (or something).  I started again tracing a 1400 m. route from the easiest turn-off from the N-S road to the east (another guess).  At the end of the 1400 m. trace I discovered everything together, the river, the chapel, the barn … everything.   And the ‘tiny chapel’ really was very tiny indeed; in Greece such a thing is known as a kandylakia – a roadside shrine/contribution box shaped like a full-size church.  And standing next to it was another even smaller and even more elaborate kandylakia.   The people of Greece sometimes erect these kandylakia at a place where a traffic death has occurred.  They form a kind of small refuge where a person might stop and pray during the day or light a candle or give a donation.

I don’t know what these kandylakia are called in Crete but ours look like this:

 

Chapel on L, kandylakia on R.

What about the route itself?

In this aerial photo the 1400 m. route is shown in light brown.  The river which Goodison & Guarita mention is in blue.  

Since our authors don't precisely say here is a close-up of the actual exit that Goodison et al. are referring to when they reference the start of this 1400 m. route.  Here's an aerial photo of it:

The route marked in red is the main highway from Herakleion to Ayii Deka.   The outskirts of Ayii Deka are shown on the left (W).  The turn that you make is labelled 'To the Tomb'.

If you're driving towards Ayii Deka then that turn is shown in the next photo from Google Street View.

Time for a close-up of the route's end and a tentative location for the tomb being sought.

This photo shows the route that you're driving on in light brown.  The river that you pass is in blue and the arrow A marks the position of the 'tiny chapel' and the kandylakia.  The line in purple is the 180 m. path that you take 'to the right'. 

Here is a close-up of the east end of the route.  The blue line is the river that Goodison et al. call out.  The lat/lon pair is the position of the 'tiny' chapel.  The circle is centered by the kandylakia and is 30 m. in radius.  Not surprisingly that brings us directly to the road 'on the right' which leads south 180 m. to the tomb.  Our authors say: 'Present structure: Barely discernible raised irregular circular mound of stones, overgrown by vegetation.   D: ?c. 11 m.  ...' (2)

In this picture there is some ambiguity because the tomb cannot now be seen.  I supposed that maybe the structure was to the SE and there is a circular feature there.  But it is not large enough.  Its diameter is only about 2.7 m. and we're looking for a feature with a diameter of 11 m. (approx.).  I also want to point out the feature that I've called a 'Burn Circle' at the lower left.  I often see these more or less circular features in the olive orchards of Greece; they are really just circles of ash where the farmers have burnt orchard rubbish.  Wishful thinking often converts these things into tholoi.

Goodison et al. would have done their research before 2005.  I was able to find the 11/16/03 image of this area in Google Earth.  It does appear to show an anomaly about 7.5 m. to the NW of the NW corner of the barn.  No other image that I examined shows anything at all in that position.  I have drawn a circle of 11.0 meters in diameter centered on that spot to suggest where the tomb may have been.  I emphasize that this is supposition based on what our authors have told us.

So, perhaps the best position for our sought-after tomb is  35.056539° N, 24.982953° E.


No one claims that their work is error-free.  Substituting 140 for 1400 is a tiny error in a really fine and useful article.   In the field of computer science this would be labelled as just a bug.  I shudder to think how many of these things there must be in my own work.  It does illustrate, however, one of the real advantages that digital representation has over traditional print venues for scholarly work.  This article is going to be around for a long time and the description for Tomb no. 31 will be misleading people for as long as it exists.   If the information in Goodison et al. [2005]  (and several hundred others that I could name) were in the form of a database then such a flaw could be repaired for free and turned around in seconds.  It's just like software in that respect.  No professional expects software to be completely free of errors.  No moral opprobrium attaches to this.  Software authors recognize better than most other professionals that, when it comes to details, the human mind is basically trash.  As a result a large part of software implementation consists of making provision for keeping flaws under control.

One of those devices is the version numbering system.  As hideous as it may sound to an academic it may be time to start versioning articles and books.  The versioning information goes along with the article/book and would explain what has changed since the last version and why.  Of course this can only happen if these articles/books are online.   A consummation devoutly to be wished.

Of course I also think that articles and books shouldn't be printed at all.  It's outmoded.  Why commit errors to epistemological prison?

Finally, let me express my gratitude to Goodison and Guarita for providing this gazetteer from which I've learned so much.

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

A new database for the Mycenaean Atlas Project (www.helladic.info) was delivered on May 11, 2018.  Approximately 35 new sites were added in the Siteia region of Crete.  The new DB is rev 0059.

Also don't miss my review of Against the Grain by James C. Scott.  It's here: http://mycenaeanatlasproject.blogspot.com/2018/02/some-notes-on-james-c-scott-against.html

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

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

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


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

Notes

(1) Goodison and Guarita [2005],  186.
(2) idem.

Bibliography

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.

Follow the telephone wires to Gargaliano Megas Kambos 1 (C390)

Gargaliani Megas Kambos is a Mycenaean site in Messenia that saw activity in the Late Helladic I-II and in the Late Hellladic IIIA – B.  We know about it  thanks to the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project which surveyed it in, I think, 1994.  The site is located in the extensive plains west of the town of Gargaliani in Messenia and is not very easy to find in all that flatness and in a landscape which is fundamentally nothing more than a carpet of olive trees.  As a result I’ve had it in the wrong position by about 300 m. ever since I added it to my Mycenaean Atlas.

Recently I acquired a copy of Davis and Bennet [2017] which is a retrospective of the PRAP effort and I have been revisiting many of the PRAP sites mentioned in my Mycenaean Atlas in the hope of finding additional information.  Here’s what Davis and Bennet have to say about Megas Kambos:

“The site lies on an elongated rise with a trigonometric point (104 masl) on top, ca. 3 km east of Marathopolis …  The rise is one in a series of knolls on the coastal plain west of the modern town of Gargaliani, and slopes gradually to the north, south, and west, with a more abrupt drop to the northeast.  On the southeastern slope is a bedrock cutting, perhaps a quarry.

Two distinct phases of ceramics are represented at the site: prehistoric, particularly LH I-II and III A-B, and Geometric-Roman.  A shaft-hole hammer-axe is probably of MH I date.”[1]

At the PRAP website there is additional material:

“The top is largely covered with maquis, dissected by goat paths, with some open grassy areas. The N and NW slopes are currently planted with grassy mature olives and there are occasional outcrops of bedrock. Intensive market gardening is being practiced on the E side of the hill. The S knoll has many exposed rock outcrops interspersed with grassy areas; at the bottom of the slope are extensive olive groves. On the SE slope is a bedrock cutting consisting of a vertical face with two short returns (perhaps a quarry)”[2]

So where is it?

There is one photograph in that book which, if it could be reproduced in Google Earth, would pinpoint the location of Megas Kambos.  Here’s the photograph:

Figure 1  Megas Kambos hill seen from the NE.   (Courtesy of The Department of Classics University of Cincinnati)

I’m using the color version which I found online.[3]   I encourage my readers to compare this post-processed photo with the original online.  One of my blog themes is that there is a lot of life left in these academic photos – but they need to be post-processed in order to bring out their full  potential.

Here is what the general area looks like in Google Earth:

Figure 2 Megas Kambos is somewhere in the center of this mono-cropped olive landscape.

The intersection of the two roads in the center of the picture is at 37.062327° N, 21.609643° E

Megas Kambos is in this picture – but where?  We are told that it is on a low hill; the ASL marker at the top is at 104 m. elevation.  But such a small hill is difficult to see in this landscape which has been terraformed for olive mono-cropping.

The key, believe it or not, is to locate in this landscape the telephone/electricity wires which are visible in Figure 1.  If you look carefully you’ll see that there is a near-by pole on the right and that it connects to two more poles that can be seen diminishing to the left (south).  The near pole is on a road and in my post-processed photo it’s clearer that this pole stands at an intersection of two field roads.  Can we find that pole/road/wire combination in this landscape?

Yes.   It turns out that we can.  If you look carefully at the clearest versions of these Google images (I’m using the Google Earth image from 11/28/2013) you’ll see a slight grey streak that turns out to be a telephone/electrical line.  Here’s the center of Figure 2 blown up with the lines indicated by arrows:

Figure 3 Wires at A.  They attach to a pole at B.

I traced every visible wire in this area to see whether I could create something recognizable.  Here’s the result:

Figure 4 Telephone wires marked in blue.  Poles marked and numbered at the vertices.

Here the wires are traced in blue.  The telephone poles at each vertice are marked.  The wire east of Pole 4 appears to end at a structure a few meters on.  The wire does continue past pole 3 to the south but I cannot trace it in Google Earth.  The wires to the north of pole 5 go back to the main grid.

The pole that appears to the right in Figure 1 is at position 1 here.  The two poles that are visible to the left in that photo are poles 2 and 3.  The wires in Figure 1 clearly connect 1,2, and 3 just as they do in Google Earth.   

Now I have to admit that I’m simply presenting the conclusion here and omitting all of my false starts; during this whole process I traced half the wires in northern Messenia.  But is this really the right solution?  If it is then it should now be possible to recreate the Figure 1 in Google Earth.  Here it is:

Figure 5 Megas Kambos Hill

Figure 1 reproduced for comparison

This is about as close as I can come in Google Earth to reproducing the photo in Figure 1.  I drew in the  poles using Photoshop.  The only real difference between this picture and Figure 1 is the wires that run from pole 1 to pole 4.  They show up in Google Earth but I can’t see them at all in Figure 1.  It’s possible that this line (to a single structure) was put up sometime in the quarter century since Figure 1 was taken.  I have no other explanation for that omission.

Well, time to wrap it all up with a map that shows everything in its place.  In the next photograph north is to the left.

Figure 6  White arrow marks photo position.  Megas Kambos is at the right.

In this photo the wires are as they were.  Megas Kambos hill is at the lower right.  The ‘low hill’ mentioned by Davis and Bennet is in the center.  It was from the lower slope of that hill (white arrow) that the photo of Megas Kambos was made.  The direction of the photo was to the south-west (and not to the north-east as Davis and Bennet would have it.[4]

The interested reader can safely download a .kml of this demonstration from Google Drive here. 

I still need to correct this in Helladic.info  Right now C390 is still in the wrong position and will be until I deliver a new database in the next couple of days.

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

A new database for the Mycenaean Atlas Project (www.helladic.info) was delivered on April 23, 2018.  Approximately 73 new sites were added (based largely on Hood, Warren, Cadogan, Travels in Crete, 1962. BSA (59), pp. 50-99, 1964.  The new DB is rev 0058.

Also don't miss my review of the (overrated) Against the Grain by James C. Scott.  It's here: http://mycenaeanatlasproject.blogspot.com/2018/02/some-notes-on-james-c-scott-against.html

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

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

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

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

NOTES

[1] Davis and Bennet [2017] 30, ‘D2 Gargaliani Megas Kambos (1)'

[2] http://classics.uc.edu/prap/db/sitedetail.php?site=D02

[3] http://classics.uc.edu/prap/db/imagedetail.php?SR=090.18   In Davis and Bennet [2017] this is Figure 17 on p. 30.

[4] Davis and Bennet [2017] 30, caption for Figure 17. This is stated correctly  on the web site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davis and Bennet [2017]: Davis, Jack L. and John Bennet, edd.   The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2017.

A Possible CEM associated with the HAB at C397

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

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

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

Also in Simpson and Dickinson [1979] this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The second church complex looks like this:

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

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

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

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

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NOTES

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

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

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

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

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