I 💗 the French

 

I have to express an un-American thought.

I like the French.

There was a time when I didn’t but, at that time, I only knew Paris and the people of Paris can be, well, tense. There was the high prices thing of course but that was my own fault. If you’re not morally and psychologically prepared to pay 8 euro for a cup of tea then you don’t belong in Paris in the first place. Once I discovered the Paris McDonald’s things ran more smoothly.

The people of France outside Paris are a completely different kettle of fish, if that’s the image I want.   And I was to blame for that regrettable incident in Carpentras when I was yelled at by a French hooker. I had innocently wandered into the local Hall of Justice carrying a large tourist-type camera under the impression that it was a visitor’s information office. There were all these well-dressed young ladies standing around waiting to have their legal affairs tended to and it looked like I was pushing to the head of the line. The confusion was soon straightened out but not before one of them shouted at me: 'Mon vieux! Ce n’est pas le Bureau des Informations Touristiques!!' (‘Hey Pops, this isn’t the Office of Tourist Affairs!’) in what I thought was an unfortunately strident manner. 

Mon vieux, indeed!

Aside from that one incident, though, all the people that we met in France were like people you’d meet anywhere in the Mediterranean. They were understanding, polite, helpful, and very hospitable. We might have been in Spain or Greece.

At first I refused to believe it. I told S. that these nice people weren’t French at all. ‘They just can’t be. It’s well-known’, I said, ‘that the French government imports Romanians during the high season to work with tourists.’

‘Romanians?’  S. said that she hadn’t heard that. 

‘Well, maybe not Romanians. It could have been Lithuanians. The point is that these people that we’ve been encountering are not really French. The government cannot entrust the multi-billion dollar tourist industry to the French people; there would be too many risks.’

‘What sorts of risks?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Think about it. Everyone knows that the French go on vacation for twelve weeks during the summer. What would happen if the hotel you were staying in just suddenly closed so that the proprietor could go running off to St. Tropez with his girlfriend (sa petite amie, copine)?’ And they strike at the drop of a hat. What if you were stuck on top of the Eiffel tower while the lift operators went on strike (se mettre en grève)? You wouldn’t like that, would you?’

‘N..no’, said S., a trifle uncertainly.

‘Well then. And you know how bureaucratic they are. Would you like to have to buy a safe-swimming license (permis de baignade sécuritaire) every time you wanted to use the hotel pool, and with a three-day wait (trois jours d'attente)? No, of course not.  That’s why the government treats the tourist industry like the agriculture industry. They bring in foreign workers.’

‘I think you’re crazy’, said S., ‘these people are as French as Brie and Champagne (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée)!’

I shook my head sadly at her naiveté and our conversation passed on to other topics.

Later, though, I found out the shocking truth.

Eiffel Tower seen from the Trocadero.  March, 2012.

We were in Vaison-la-Romaine where we had reservations for three nights. ‘I’ll show you that I’m right’, I said to S. I had purchased a Romanian phrase-book in Arles just the day before.

When our hotel door was opened by the landlady I said in my most polite Romanian, ‘Buna! Suntem turiști din America. Avem rezerve. (Hello!  We are tourists from America.  We have reservations.)

‘Bonjour’, she replied slowly with a puzzled air.

‘They have to stay in character’, I whispered to S. ‘They’re sort of like historical re-enactors.’

‘I will get my husband (Je vais chercher mon mari).',  she said in very good re-enactor French.

Soon our host appeared drying his hands on a dish towel and welcoming us to Vaison-la-Romaine. But it appeared that there had been a mixup. They were expecting us the following week. A check of e-mails followed and he said to his wife ‘Ils ont raison (They’re right)’. A flurry of apologies followed. We were assured that we would have the accommodations that we wished but they would be in different rooms from those we had reserved.

‘You have been inconvenienced’, said our host, ‘.. and the reputation of our hotel is paramount; your stay will be on us, free!’

Free? This was a saving of more than 300 euro. I was triumphant. It was a perfect example of the Romanian hospitality that I’d been talking about. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to reach out to this foreign gentleman and let him know how much I appreciated his kindness and generosity.

‘Multumesc! (Thank-you)’, I said, with a broad wink to let him know that I was in on the deception.

‘What?’ said our host.

‘Multumesc,’ which I followed with what I hoped sounded polite, ‘Cum va numiti? (What is your name?)’.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying; are you perhaps from .. Romania?’, said the host.

‘No’, said the ever-helpful S. to the host, ‘He thinks that you're all Romanians.’

‘Romanians!? Us!?’ shouted our host. He and his wife laughed for five minutes. Wiping the tears from their eyes they made a shocking confession.

‘Every year we have to go to the immense trouble of spreading the rumor that all the workers in the French tourist industry are Romanians – ‘

‘Lithuanians’, corrected his wife.

‘Lithuanians, Romanians, Pomeranians!  It doesn’t matter. We even have to take out ‘help-wanted’ ads in Romanian in the tourist-trade magazines; all phony of course.’

I was staggered. ‘But..but, why?’ I managed to say.

‘We just can’t let it get out that the French tourist industry is actually staffed and run by the French. If we did that no Americans would ever come to France.’

‘Really’, said his wife, ‘Americans have the most terrible ideas about us. They think that we’re always on strike…’

‘…that we’re too bureaucratic…’, said her husband.

‘…and that we’re unfriendly, lazy and always on vacation!’, she continued.

‘That’s a scandal’, said S. ‘who would think such a thing?’

‘Who indeed?’, I asked innocently.

The host was still chuckling. He said to us, ‘Our new American friends; welcome to our hotel. Can I offer you a small brunch of Brie and Champagne (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée)?’

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

Postscript to The Honorable Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic of France: 

Just kidding, mon vieux.

Mavrospelaies, C7724

 There's a site in the Corinthia called Mavrospelaies (Black Cave, C7724).  Now, wherever it was (and we're going to talk about that), a single grave was found nearby.  This find was the result of plowing during which the sarcophagus cover was ripped off.  Inside three vases were found: an amphora and two aryballoi. [1]

Let's look at the general area under discussion:

Mavrospilies is not the most important find in the Corinthia but there has been some confusion about its precise location.

Lawrence herself gave the location as in "the field of Michael Roumeliotis near (east of) Mavrospelaies, about a three minute walk above (i.e., south of) the road which leads west from the Roman Villa".  Let's parse this.  The Roman Villa is 'Shear's Villa' which is F7371 and is located at 37.908442° N, 22.864786° E.  There is a road that continues on west from there.  Somewhere on that road we turn S and walk for three minues to M. Roumeliotis' property.  It looks something like this:

Here the yellow line is the road that Lawrence is talking about, anchored on the right (E) by Shear's Villa.  We do not yet know where on the yellow line it is that we're supposed to turn S.

James Wiseman uses Lawrence as a source.  He describes the site as 'not far from Aetopetra' and 'The grave was found in a field belonging to Michalis Roumelites.'[2]

The location of the BA settlement (C915) on the ridge of Aetopetra is firmly established at 37.905633° N, 22.838495° E.  The ridge itself looked like this recently. [3]

As photographed by Blegen a century ago: [4]

From Carl Blegen, 'Corinth in Prehistoric Times', 4, fig. 2.  1920.

I am, once again, going to take the opportunity to condemn the lazy practice of identifying a site with a specific landowner. In this respect some archaeologists are worse than others (looking at you, E. Kanta) but it is to be condemned wherever encountered. Goodness knows that I wish Mr. Roumeliotis long life but 59 years after Lawrence's report the land is very likely to belong to someone else whose identity, at this late date, would be very difficult to discover. More than that Mr. Roumeliotis might very well have owned widely separated plots - a common practice and one which, now, would make the site almost impossible to locate. It is remarkable that prehistorians should be so committed to the ephemeral when they, of all people, are aware of the profound changes associated with the passage of time.

Well, if Mavrospelies is 'near' Aetopetra let's see where Aetopetra is located on a map.  In this first map I have related Aetopetra to the road leading W from Shear's Roman Villa.

In this second map from Google Earth we are looking approximately SW with the ridge of Aetopetra in the foreground.

The Aristeia Project (Mazarakis-Ainian [2015], they reference Lawrence's article) describes the site as being between the North Cemetery (C7280) and the Potter's Quarter (F7661). [5] But Mavrospelaies and Aetopetra are far to the W of these two.  It looks like this:

Here the Potter's Quarter and the North Cemetery are on the right of the map.  Aetopetra Ridge is on the left.  The white line which connects these two areas is about 2.7 km. long.

Morgan  gives us the best orientation by describing the site as 'immediately west of ... Aetopetra'. [6] I have followed her lead by choosing a more or less plausible location just to the west of the ridge of Aetopetra (C915) whose location is firmly established.  It looks like this:

Here we're looking at the western end of the 'orange' road that goes back to Shear's villa on the east.  The purple line extends along a tributary road 3 minutes (260 m) to the S of the orange road.  I have marked 'Mavrospilies' at the S end of the purple mark.  The blue circle is centered on Mavrospilies and is 100 m in radius.  The actual site should be somewhere in that circle.

I'm still somewhat discomfited by the tendency, on the part of some, to place Mavrospilies somewhere back towards ancient Corinth but, given Morgan's  precision, I think that this is the best I can do for the moment.

Footnotes

[1] Lawrence [1964] 89.

[2] Wiseman [1978] 100.  ''Not far from Aetópetra and in the ravine of Mavrospeliés ... ''.

[3] Google Street View.  Heavily post-processed by me for clarity.

[4] Blegen [1920] 4, fig. 2.  Heavily post-processed by me for clarity.

[5] Mazarakis-Ainian [2015]:  'Maurospelaies', here.  Additionally the Aristeia Project says of Mavrospelaies that 'The grave belongs to a group of 5 graves.'  It doesn't.  It is a single grave which Lawrence grouped in with four other widely-separated grave complexes.

[6] Morgan [1999] 470,  '9 Mavrospelies'.

Bibliography

Blegen [1920] : Blegen, Carl W.,  'Corinth in Prehistoric Times', <i>American Journal of Archaeology</i> [24:1] pp. 1-13. 1920.  Online here.

Lawrence [1964]:  Lawrence, Patricia. ‘Five Grave Groups from the Corinthia’, <i>Hesperia</i> (33:2), pp. 89-107, 'Grave at Mavrospelaies', pg. 89. Online here.

Mazarakis-Ainian ed. [2015]:  Mazarakis Ainian, Alexander . Η Κοινωνική Αρχαιολογία του Ελληνικού Κόσμου κατά την Πρώιμη Εποχή του Σιδήρου και την Πρώιμη Αρχαϊκή περίοδο (The Aristeia Project: The Social Archeology of the Greek World during the Early Iron Age and the Early Archaic period), 'Maurospelaies', Online here.

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

Wiseman [1978]:  Wiseman, James. The Land of the Ancient Corinthians. Paul Aströms Förlag, Göteborg, Sweden, 1978.

Dr. Kelder and the Null Hypothesis

There's an old joke about historians which says historians start out by looking backwards and they end up by thinking backwards.  

And yet I've never found this to be true.  Most historians carefully lay out the evidence and give a detailed demonstration showing how the data supports some hypothesis. It's true that almost every historical argument is probabilistic in nature (an induction) and, as a result, arguments may be well or poorly supported. Nevertheless, almost all historical reasoning proceeds methodically from data to conclusion.

A case in point is Dr. Jorrit Kelder of Oxford who maintains the position that the people of Mycenaean Greece lived in a single state. I have called this the Unified Mycenaean State (UMS) hypothesis.[1]

Dr. Kelder’s hypothesis has three parts:

A. The Mycenaean civilization was a single and united political unit

B. This political unit was a monarchy

C. The central place in this political unit was Mycenae.

And that’s it.  Three parts, a united monarchy centered in Mycenae.[1]

To support this thesis Kelder has piled up a series of barely related observations hoping, I suppose, that if the pile of facts can be made high enough scholars will ultimately be compelled to accept his conclusion.  But, logically, this method can never succeed.  This argument can never be made more than a probabilistic one (i.e. cannot be made deductive) and the facts as they stand are very far from supporting his conclusion.  Speaking in general, the risk of proceeding in such a way is to expose the advocate to confirmation bias.[2]  In order to avoid this it is necessary to proceed in a very different way. That way, in a nutshell, is to form the logical opposite of the desired hypothesis and do one's best to support this null hypothesis. If the null hypothesis can be shown to be probable then, fine, we can reject the original hypothesis and be on our way. If the null hypothesis cannot be supported and is shown to be less probable or even improbable then that supports the original hypothesis (note: it does not prove the original hypothesis). What happens when we try this with Kelder's thesis? Let's find out.

We have stated Kelder's actual thesis above; how do we form its opposite? Let's start by expressing the three parts (A, B, and C) of his thesis (H0) in logical notation:

H0: A ∧ B ∧ C;             where '∧' indicates logical 'AND'.

It’s easier to negate if we change the AND operators to ORs.  This kind of transformation is done all the time in formal logic, circuit design, etc.  We do it like this:

H0:      ~(~A ∨ ~B ∨ ~C);     where '∨' indicates logical 'OR'.

This is the exact logical equivalent of H0.  Its negation is straight-forward; we simply remove the outer negation sign with its parens.  The result looks like this:

~H0:      ~A ∨ ~B ∨ ~C

... or stating it in words:

~H0:       “The Mycenaean civilization was NOT a single and united political unit OR it was NOT a monarchy OR it was NOT centered at Mycenae”

This is the negation of the original thesis.  If we can make ~H0 fail then that lends support to H0.  But if we cannot reject ~H0 then H0 is not supported and, perhaps, even rendered less tenable. 

Of course, if we look at what we’ve done we notice that some of these clauses are of less worth than the others.  The original hypothesis is really overdetermined.  

The idea that Mycenae was a significant political center of some sort is, actually, overwhelmingly probable given what we know about it.  And we know that the monarchical form was common enough in the BA so that positing a king for our hypothetical state is not improbable.  So that this hypothesis wants to join two ideas which are highly probable to a third idea (that the Mycenaeans lived in one united state) which is highly controversial.  No doubt this is to give the UMS hypothesis logical cover.

It would be a good idea to examine the UMS hypothesis on its own and separate from the other two.  For example, if Mycenaean civilization did NOT form a united state then it hardly matters what the governance of this non-existent state was or where it was headquartered.   If the Mycenaean polities were truly independent of each other then it wouldn’t matter whether they were governed by a Sun King or the United Agricultural Worker’s Council of the Argolid, local 38.    Nor would it matter if this non-existent state was headquartered at Mycenae or in a rowboat in the Saronic.  The gravamen of Kelder’s thesis is that the Mycenaean people were united in a single polity of whatever form and wherever headquartered.

I propose, then, that we can restate Kelder’s thesis as simply:  The Mycenaean people were united in a single state.  H0 now becomes H0’.  And this is just

H0’:      A             ; the Mycenaean  people were united in one state

And the negation is:

~H0’:      ~A            ; the Mycenaean people were NOT united in one state.

Now our approach is to support ~H0’.   If we can do this then H0 is weakened or even rejected.  But if we must reject ~H0' then H0' will be supported and we can go on to discuss style of leadership and location of its headquarters which are really separate questions and for which different types of arguments will be appropriate.

What would it take to support ~H0’?

1. Well, we could suggest that, among the many Mycenaean projects that we can identify, there is no sign that they were dictated by the concerns of the political center.  In other words we could say that, while there are some similarities (due primarily to karstic geography), there is no unifying vision.
2. We could point to the natural behavior and tendency of equipotent (or nearly equipotent) states to refuse voluntary unification.
3. We might point to the likely infeasability of such a project of unification of governance by showing that the landscape involved posed severe geographic obstacles to a program of political/military unification.
4. We might show that the different divisions of the Mycenaean world were often at war and that great schemes of defence are everywhere visible.
5. We might demonstrate the difficulty of picking any specific Mycenaean statelet as having a clear resource advantage over the others.  We would be trying to show that the various statelets were equipotent, or nearly so.
6. We could point out that none of the Mycenaean statelets had any clear technological advantage over the others.
7. We could say that the historical record suggests that nearly matched states who go to war over unification typically wage those wars over long periods of time, even centuries.  It took Rome more than a century to unite itself to the Samnites.

If we could show that these things were true then we would have taken a big step towards supporting ~H0’ and thus weakening support for Kelder’s original thesis (H0').  If these things were false then we could reject ~H0' and, consequently, support H0'.

Unfortunately, we do not end up supporting H0'.

That is because every last one of these proposed criteria are either true or exceedingly probable.  In other words, under these criteria, we cannot reject ~H0'.

Footnotes

[1] For my extended critique of Kelder's position see this, this, and this.   I do not accept Dr. Kelder's thesis but just to be clear: Kelder is an historian for whom I have a profound respect.  He has done a great service to BA studies by maintaining this position on the dominance of Mycenae and he has argued for it as well as anyone could.  I may have given the impression in my other writings that Kelder originated this position.  That is not the case.  In its modern form this hypothesis is at least a century old and has been argued for by Desborough among others.

[2] I'm sure that Kelder has not done this.  

Confirmation bias is not the tendency to 'cherry-pick' the facts.  It is the psychological tendency to notice those facts which support some conclusion and not to notice facts that do not.  It is a subtle problem because it is almost indistinguishable from ordinary scholarly argumentation.  After all, noticing relevant facts is what we do.

Likhas Kastri and Dion

In antiquity the northern part of the island of Euboea was the territory of the Oreiais.  Their chief town, Oreos, (known earlier as 'Histiaia' ?) is the modern Kastro (in Mycenaean Atlas Project and in Topostext). [1]

One of the notable towns in northern Euboea was Dion.  In the Catalog of Ships Homer (Iliad, ii.538) refers to  ' ... the steep citadel of Dios; ... ' [2]   It was a significant town in its time, member of the Delian League, for example.[3]  And yet, despite its relative importance, the location of Dion is not now known with anything like certainty.  Where do scholars think it was?  

Strabo, Geogr. [C446] 5 says "In this Oreian territory are Kenaion and, near to it, Dion and Athenai Diades, an Athenian foundation lying above the crossing of the strait to Kynos." [4]

Hansen and Nielsen describe the alternatives.  I have added letters to their paragraph in order to better address their statements:

"(a) According to Strabo 10.1.5, Dion was situated at Cape Kenaion near Oreos. However, the urban centre has not yet been precisely located. 

(b) Following Ulrichs (1863) 237, see supra 647), Geyer (1903) 99 suggested a location at modern Lichas. 

(c) Sapouna-Sakellaraki (1994-95), followed by Barr., prefers the hill of Kastri on the western shore of the Kenaion peninsula. 

(d) But Homer describes Dion as an αίπύ πτολίεθρον (Hom. Il. 2.538; cf. Nonnus, Dion. 13.161: κραναόν πέδον), and in the Athenian tribute lists the Dians are often specified as Διες από Κεναίο (IGi3 279.1.86). 

(e) The presumption is that Dion was situated somewhere on Mt. Kenaion. Lichas would fit, but autopsy (Reber) revealed nothing but remains of the Byzantine period. 

(f)  An alternative location is Khironisi, whose position fits the information given by Ptol. Geog. 3.15.25 (cf. Reber (2001) 456-60)." [5]

My comments: 

(a) Strabo tells us that Dion was 'near' Cape Kenaion, not 'at' Cape Kenaion and that Dion and Athenae Diades are both 'near' to the Cape:  'In the territory of this Oreus lies, not only Cenaeum, near Oreus, but also, near Cenaeun, Dium and Athenae Diades, (ἔστι δ᾽ ἐν τῷ Ὠρεῷ τούτῳ τό τε Κήναιον πλησίον καὶ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ τὸ Δῖον καὶ Ἀθῆναι αἱ Διάδες, ).   It is a straight line distance of about 26 km. from Oreus to Cape Kenaion so that if Oreus is 'near' Cape Kenaion then any location between them will also be 'near' the Cape.

(b) See (e).

(c) As is also preferred by Sackett [1966], Simpson and Dickenson [1979] and Simpson [2018].  'Barr.' is the Barrington Atlas which does tentatively show Dion by Likhas Kastri. (Map 55, D3).  The equivalence of Lichas Kastri and Dion was (to the best of my  knowledge) first proposed by Papavasileiou in PAE (1912), 140.   Here's what our authors say about Likhas Kastri :

"The site is about 4 km. west of the village of Likhas on the coast south of Cape Vasilenas. It is visible from the sea on both sides of Cape Kenaion as a low hill about 60 m. above the sea, and about 30 m. by 20 m. in area at the top. On the lower slopes are Classical to Roman, higher up are E.H. to Geometric sherds fairly widely scattered." [6]

"A low hill c. 3 km. W of Likhas on the coast. The top area is only c. 30 m. by 20 m. C and H sherds were found on the lower slopes, EH to G widely scattered on higher slopes. The size and position are said to suggest an important settlement, perhaps to be equated with ancient Dion (Iliad II .538). " [7]

Where, then, is Likhas Kastri?  In his summa from 2018 Richard Hope Simpson gives us this description of its location:

"Kastri is a low hill, c. 60 m a.s.l., near the sea, to north of Cape Kenaion and c. 3 km west of Lichas. The flat top of the hill is only c. 30 m by c. 20 m, but the slopes are extensive."[8]

  I tentatively place Likhas Kastri, the hill indicated by Sackett, Simpson, and Dickenson, at 38.855831° N, 22.846081° E   In Google Earth it looks like this (looking from the SE to the NW):

Proposed hill for Likhas Kastri.

It is not an implausible candidate for the site of Dion as its configuration and the finds of sherds from the Classical Period suggest.

(d) αίπύ πτολίεθρον means 'steep fortress' and κραναός πέδον means 'rugged ground'.  This may or may not fit the proposed Likhas Kastri location.

(e) Mt. Kenaion (the town Lichas sits on its western slopes) is the same as Mt. Lichadas (now, apparently, also called 'Profitis Ilias').  It is about 675 m in elevation and the peak is here: 38.860556 N, 22.878864 E.  The solutions of Pleiades (and D.A.R.E. and Trismegistos) and Topostext  accept that ancient Dion was located somewhere on the slopes of Mt. Kenaion/Lichadas.   The Topostext solution (followed by deGraauw) is actually the location of the ruined Venetian tower (In Mycenaean Atlas Project F7552).  I see little justification for the Pleiades solution (also followed by Trismegistos and D.A.R.E.) as it meets only one of the criteria, that of being 'near Cape Kenaion'.  In the next picture I show the Topostext and  Pleiades solutions.  The yellow line is for scale; it is 1 km. in length

(f) Khironisi: Hansen/Nielsen seem to slightly prefer this solution.  Their reasoning seems to be that this, at least, is a place where there are found remains of a settlement seemingly significant enough to pay the contributions mentioned in the Athenian contribution lists.  It appears to have three serviceable harbors right in a row. And although it appears to be a long way from Cape Kenaion it is the same distance from Athenai Dhiadhes to Kenaion as it is from Khironisi (about 13.7 km.).  And Strabo says that they are both 'near' to the Cape: (see above).  They are certainly well within the territory of Oreus which is about 26 km. distant from the Cape.

Here is a picture of the Khironisi area:

... and a close-up of the Khironisi peninsula:

The area around the Khironisi Peninsula

The steep hill (about 121 m.) just behind the harbor sounds like the epithet 'rough ground' and also like Homer's 'steep citadel'.

The last alternative for Dion is Simpson [2018] who proposes that Gialtra Kastelli might be a suitable location for Dion.[9]

 And a final picture to show all the alternatives.  The white arrows for the various Dions are labeled using the lettering system from above:

C : Kastri Likhas

E1 : Pleiades, DARE, Trismegistos

E2 : Topostext

F : Khironisi

Simpson [2018]

As it is not  possible to resolve the question in the Mycenaean Atlas I have left the marker for Dion (C1250) at Likhas Kastri.  The next most likely location, in my view, is the Khironisi Peninsula and that because of its several harbors.

Till next time ...

Notes

[1] The history of naming in this area is in Roller [2018] 579-581.  For Cape Kenaion see 581, Section 10.1..5.

[2]  ' ... τ᾽ ἔφαλον Δίου τ᾽ αἰπὺ πτολίεθρον, ... '

[3] In Lauffer [1999] 195, s.v. 'Dịon'.

[4] In Roller [2014] 436.  Kenaion is Cape Kenaion (F1728).  Athenai Diades is, probably, Yialtra Kastelli (C1246) in Sackett et al. [1966] 37, no. 3.  And see Roller [2018] 581: "10.1.5.  ... Dion and Athenai Diades are in the vicinity of the cape: the former is probably to the north near modern Lichas, and the latter west near Gialtra (Hope Simpson and Lazenby, Catalogue 53). Its name, effectively Dionian Athens, reflects its foundation by the Athenians, at a uncertain date before 477 BC ... ".

[5] Hansen and Nielsen [2004] 650, no. 368, 'Dion'.

[6] Sackett et al. [1966] 37, no. 2. 'Likhas: Kastri'.  Also see Plate 9a.

[7] SImpson and Dickenson [1979] 266, 'G 84 Likhas: Kastri'.

[8] Simpson [2018] 246, '1. Kastri ... '

[9] Simpson [2018] 247: 'This could be the site of the Homeric Dion.'

Bibliography

Hankey [1952]:  Hankey, V.. ‘Late Helladic Tombs at Khalkis’, The Annual of the British School at Athens, (47), pp. 49-95. 1952.

Hansen and Nielsen [2004] : Hansen, Mogens Herman and Thomas Heine Nielsen', An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, 'Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford. 2004.

Lauffer [1999] : Lauffer, Siegfried (ed), Griechenland; Lexikon der historischen Stätten; von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Bechtermünz Verlag. 1999. ISBN 3-8289-4144-3.

Phialon [2011]:  Phialon, Laetitia. L'Émergence de la Civilisation Mycénienne en Grèce Centrale. Peeters, Leuven - Liege. Belgium. 2011., 'I.3.1.11. La côte nord de l'Eubée', pg. 127.

Roller [2014] : Roller, Duane W., The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge University Press. 2014.

Roller [2018] :  Roller, Duane R., A Historical and Topographical Guide to the Geography of Strabo, Cambridge, 2018.   ISBN: 978-1-107-18065-9

Sackett et al. [1966] : Sackett, L.H. with V. Sankey, R.J. Howell, T.W. Jacobsen and M.R. Popham, 'Prehistoric Euboea: Contributions toward a Survey', Annual of the British School at Athens (61) 33-112.  1966.  Online here.

Simpson and Dickinson [1979] : Simpson, R. Hope and O.T.P.K. Dickinson, A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilisation in the Bronze Age, Vol. I, The Mainland and the Islands. Goteborg, Paul Astroms Forlag. 1979.  ISBN 91 85058 81 5.

Simpson and Lazenby [1970] : Simpson, R. H. and J. F. Lazenby.  The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer&apos;s Iliad, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1970.

Simpson [2018] : Simpson, Richard Hope, Mycenaean Greece and the Homeric Tradition, published online under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. 2018.  Online <a href="https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/24425/Mycenaean-Greece-and-Homeric-Tradition-1533665278._print.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y, 1192">here</a>.

The ashlars of Kamena Vourla

 Historically Epiknemidian Locris has been defined relative to Mount Knemis which is located at  38.748057° N ,  22.805831° E.  In actuality this is merely the highest point (about 945 m) in a small <i>massif</i> which faces the northern tip of the island of Euboea.   It projects northward to form a small peninsula bordered on the west by the town of Kamena Vourla and, on the east, by Hagios Konstantinos.  The main highway from Athens runs around the northern base of Knemis and a secondary road runs all the way around the northern edge of Lake Vromolimni.

In the last couple of decades a Spanish-Greek team of scholars (led by Jose Pascual and Maria-Foteini Papakonstantinou) has been doing an intensive survey of Epiknemidian Locris and I have been going through their reports in an attempt to up my game with respect to Locris.  

In their final report [1] the team mentions a group of ashlars that can be seen on the beach just north of Kamena Vourla.  This is what they say:

"Passing Lake Vromolimni on the road from Agios Konstantinos, between kilometric points 172 and 173 some ashlars can be observed that have been semi-submerged by the sea on the western side of the Gouvali and are largely covered by the present highway. These ashlars are black, hence the name Mavrolithia or Mavralitharia by which the area is known, have an isodomic appearance and could perhaps form part of an ancient quay or some kind of building."

Well, not very significant.  A building or a quay, undatable, lying just off the road (or under the road).  At best I might be able to add a new feature to my atlas and give it a reference back to this paper by Pascual et al.  But I was intrigued anyway.  Could they be found?

O.k. so Gouvali (or Vouvali) is the northern spur of Mount Knemis.  In my atlas I have marked it as F7507 and located it at  38.771792° N, 22.811342° E.  This northern spur of land is, really, the foot of Gouvali.  

Since they're on the ocean I started by searching the water's edge and I could see right away where the ashlars had to be.  Check it out in the photograph here.

The ashlars as seen in Google Street View.

This is the only place on the coast between Cape Knemis and Kamena Vourla where any rocks can be seen.  It's highly probable that this is what I'm looking for.

The ashlars relative to Cape Knemis.

We can even see them in close-up - more or less.

So there are probably my ashlars.  Can I prove it?  

These ashlars are required to be between kilometer signs 172 and 173.  If I can find the kilometer signs I can nail this down.  Now I have an unfortunate history with kilometer markers.[2]   And to any budding archeologists please, and as we're about to see, don't EVER use kilometer markers to indicate the position of anything.   Always nail down your site with decimal latitude and longitude.  Everyone will understand what you mean, you can be as precise as you like, and they'll NEVER change!  After all, God wouldn't have made the world round if he didn't want us to use WGS84.

Is there even a marker visible along this stretch of road?  It turns out that km sign 172 was easy to find.  Here it is:

So far, so good!  Here's where it is relative to the ashlars:

O.k!  Great!  Now I have to confirm which  way the numbers run and confirm that the sign for km. 173 is on the OTHER side of the ashlars.  I measured off a kilometer from sign 172 and used Google Street View to go up and down along that stretch looking for kilometer sign 173.  Nothing.  Here's what it looks like where a km. sign SHOULD be.

Overgrown roadside where km sign should be.

See the problem?  Most road margins are overgrown and only intermittently maintained.  There may very well be a km sign in there but you'd have to beat the bushes looking for it.  We still don't know whether we're on the km 171 side or the km 173 side of the km 172 sign.

Well, I'm not easily discouraged.  I'll go to the opposite side of km. 172 and see what that km marker says.  All we need to know is which direction the numbers are running.  So I went 1 km. to the N and W of km marker 172 and I did find a km marker sign and it looked like this.

This turned out to be the sign for kilometer 171.

Nice, huh?  Here the sign is bent back so we can't tell whether it's km 171 or km 173.  The position of this sign is 38.783034 N, 22.828181 E.  So not only can signs be overgrown they can be vandalized or otherwise damaged so that they can be found but not read.

The sign for km. 170 (1 km. further on) was missing.  I had to go back to km sign 169 which I did find as seen here:

The kilometer 169 marker.

The position of this marker is 38.769179 N, 22.842868 E.  Now I know which way the numbering system runs and that my supposed ashlars are between km. 172 and km. 173, for sure.  So the whole scene looks like this:

The Knemis promontory with the km signs marked.

Well, I located the ashlars although I don't have a good picture of them.   I did become very familiar with the kilometer markers.  So, folks, remember the poor gazetteer maker.  Don't use kilometer markers to describe your finds and always use WGS84.  

Until next time.

Footnotes

[1] Pascual and Papakonstantinou [2013] 9.

[2] A rare successful example is here.

Bibliography

Pascual and Papakonstantinou [2013] : Pascual, Jose and Maria-Foteini Papakonstantinou, 'The Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Fourteenth Ephorate Epicnemidian Locris Project FINAL REPORT', Teiresias (43:1) [2013].  pp. 1-14.  2013.  Online here.

How to create a gazetteer - what I've learned

I recently completed the seventh year of continual work on the Mycenaean Atlas Project. In that time a great deal has been done but that's not what I want to write about now. I want to write about what I've learned during this work - and one thing in particular. 

 When creating a gazetteer or Atlas of the world of antiquity you must tell the user a story about each site. 

A gazetteer is not simply a matching list of feature names with latitude/longitude pairs. No usable gazetteer of antiquity can be written in this fashion.  Why not?  Because there are too many sites whose positions we do not know for certain.   So when choosing a lat/lon pair it almost always is a judgment - an approximation or a guess.   The user has to be told what went into that judgment.  In that case, it is crucial to give the user some hints about how to proceed in the face of uncertainty. At the very least the user must be given in full the references that you used (and with internet links if possible). 

Full disclosure is important when articles and/or books are not available to the gazetteer creator. For example, the ancient city of Iton in Phthiotis poses a number of geographical puzzles concerning not only Iton but the nearby sites of Zerelia, Karatsadagli, and Marmara. These sites form a little conceptual cluster which may or may not have something to do with a temple (the Barrington Atlas shows Iton and Marmara as cult sites). The gazetteer writer has to sort the sites out, locate them, evaluate their significance, and in particular, discuss the problem of whether there was or was not a cult of Athena Itonia in that area (as Strabo claims).  In my Commentary on Pleiades I went all the way back to the original investigators but I wasn't really able to seal the deal - to remove the last bit of ambiguity. The reason? I have no access to Lalonde's Athena Itonia: Geography and Meaning of an Ancient Greek War Goddess from just three years ago. Brill wants $195.00 for it and Amazon wants $143.00. Impractical either way. This isn't really a complaint. For one reason or another, this happens a lot and to just about everybody. How did I handle this? This is the message I put at the end of my comments for Pleiades 540935 which deals with Marmara. 

"Most of these questions should now be resolved in Lalonde [2019].  Regrettably, Lalonde's book was not available to me at the time of writing." 

Pleiades Commentary on Marmara (Pl. no. 540935)

 Now that the user is warned he or she might be able to get their hands on a copy of Lalonde and figure out the ambiguous parts. 

- Room has to be given to scholarly disagreements.  In the case of Iton which I mentioned above both Stählin [1924] and Philippson [1950] think that there was a temple there.  Roller [2018] thinks not.  The user needs to be told.

 - There are puzzles of transliteration to work through. The user has to be told what these are if they are material. 

 - Bibliography, bibliography, bibliography.  The user needs to know what research the position is based on.  Gazetteers are not just a circular citation game where gA cites gB and gB cites gC and gC cites gA. The user needs to be grounded at least as well as the gazetteer maker himself or herself was grounded. 

 - Misleading descriptions by the primary investigators. Investigators routinely get directions wrong, distances wrong, etc. Investigators are human. We get it. But when these problems are identified then the resolution (if there is one) must be explained to the user.   Here's an example: of a site in Euboea Sackett says 

" ..., Kherronisi, is a rocky headland immediately south of the island church Ayios Nikolaos. It is about 25 m. above the sea ... "[1] 

But Kherronisi isn't south of the Ayios Nikolaos - it's to the NE.  And the elevation of Kherronisi is not 25 m. - it is no more than 15 m.  I nearly made a serious error here but I finally convinced myself, in the teeth of Sackett's description, that Topostext was right in their placement and so I followed Brady Kiesling's solution.[2]

Pleiades Commentary on Helleniki (Pl. 540809)

Status of the commentary on Pleiades:  As of 12/11/22 I have completed some 400+ corrections/annotations to the Pleiades dataset.  These corrections complete the repair of the  rounded coordinates for mainland Greece as far north as Thessaly, the Cyclades, Crete, the Dodecanese, and some of the islands of the Aegean NE.  I have made the data table of these corrections and supplemental notes available to Pleiades. Perhaps they'll be interested.

Because there are about 5000 potentially correctible sites I won't ever be able to finish this.  But already Pleiades, for the Greek worlds and as seen through my Digital Atlas, has a much bouncier and usable feel.  It starts to be what it should be - a product that pays attention to correctness and usefulness and, as a result, gives the user confidence in the result.  And using the Digital Atlas you can also easily compare  Pleiades' solutions with the solutions of the Vici, DARE, and Trismegistos data sets as well as to the Topostext gazetteer and to de Graauw's Harbors.  

The Digital Atlas is now a working prototype of a full-up gazetteer of Antiquity.

And, as always, this is a useful reminder.

Footnotes

[1] Sackett et al. [1966] 42, #11.  'Elliniko'.

[2] Topostext is here, Pleiades is here, and my own solution is here.

Bibliography

Sackett et al. [1966] : Sackett, L.H. with V. Sankey, R.J. Howell, T.W. Jacobsen and M.R. Popham, 'Prehistoric Euboea: Contributions toward a Survey', Annual of the British School at Athens (61) 33-112.  1966.  Online here.

The Commentary on Pleiades

 The Mycenaean Atlas Project is more than just a Bronze Age gazetteer.  It is an accessible viewer for the entire ancient world - and at every period. It accomplishes this goal by integrating several very different data sets.  Here's an example:

The city of Aigion in Achaea as displayed in the Digital Atlas

One of those data sets is Pleiades.  But how do you handle or display a dataset with as many serious defects as Pleiades?  Its deficiencies are of three kinds.  Of Pleiades' approximately 39,000 records about 7,000 have no lat/lon coordinates at all.   As a result, these points cannot be displayed at all and  why they are in the dataset in the first place is a mystery.

Pleiades next problem is the 5,000 or so sites for which the lat/lon pairs are rounded to the nearest quarter degree.  This indefensible practice (and never corrected during the entire 20-year existence of this DB) puts these sites off by about 12 km. on average.  Even worse, it creates about 400 or so 'stacks' in each of which some 10 to 20 sites have exactly the same rounded coordinates and cannot be disambiguated.  (See the example of Boreion, below.)

The remainder 26,000 sites are simply inaccurate.  They are off by about 900 m. on average because this part of the DB was intended for the Barrington Atlas - a printed product in which accuracy, at the given scales, could never be better than a km. or so.  Accuracy is expensive and you never pay for more than you need.  This practice was fine for a printed product but a disaster when moved to the digital world in which representable locations are accurate to less than a meter.  The need to develop precise and accurate data for the digital world is far more urgent than it is for the world of the printed atlas.

When showing Pleiades data in a gazetteer viewer such as the Mycenaean Atlas Project the overwhelming temptation is to correct these numerous errors by adding additional information to the Pleiades data. Providing accurate lat/lon pairs is a chief priority.  The design problem is, somehow, to add that information in a way that new versions of the Pleiades database don't write over what people external to Pleiades, such as myself, have added.  How do we best add and store supplemental and updated information for Pleiades sites and how should this new data be displayed?

What is required is a Commentary on Pleiades.

      To support this Commentary I created a new DB table that would hold any additional information or corrected lat/lon pairs.  A table that is independent of the Pleiades database would not be overwritten by new versions of the Pleiades database.  It would exist alongside the Pleiades DB. And yet the new data in this table could still be connected to the old Pleiades database through the Pleiades id no.  That way if there was an entry in the new table for any specific Pleiades site record my browser would display THAT corrected/additional data instead of the incorrect Pleiades data.  This required that I accompany my new DB table with a new browser page in .html.  This will be the new Commentary on Pleiades page which stands between my viewer and Pleiades itself.  In addition to corrected information this new page maps the Pleiades places to their correct location on a new map instead of to the incorrect rounded quarter-degree locations where they are now displayed.

Design of old and new interaction with Pleiades.

The upper half of this diagram shows the current situation; the Mycenaean Atlas Project takes information from the unmodified local copy of the Pleiades database and displays it.  That display has a button that, when clicked, takes the user back to the original Pleiades page for more information.

The lower half of the diagram shows the new design.  In addition to the local copy of the Pleiades database as before (orange), there is a brand-new table that contains my own contributed material.  On the browser map, when the user clicks the Pleiades icon for more info they don't go to the Pleiades page as before but to the new Pleiades Commentary page that shows the corrected lat/lon pair along with more info and a browser map that shows the icon in its corrected position.  A link on that supplemental commentary page will send the user to the original Pleiades page (dashed line).

This whole process is transparent to the user who will only see the new commentary page when he or she clicks on a Pleiades place for which I have created commentary. 

The new Pleiades Commentary page will look like this (annotations in red):

The new Commentary on Pleiades page (here for Belminatis, Pleiades 570152).

Now I'd like to show a situation in which this commentary is invaluable.

Mt. Boreion in Arcadia is Pleiades 570158.  Pleiades gives its position rounded to the nearest quarter degree like this: 37.25, 22.25.  This is exactly the same position as seventeen other Pleiades sites.  I list them here:

Pleiades grouping 18 sites at the very same location: 37.25 N, 22.25 E.

This sort of practice is common in Pleiades and it must be corrected.  Even a casual user does not deserve to have all these sites shown in the identical location.

I corrected the rounded position of Boreion (37.25 N, 22.25 E) to  37.429300°,  22.342900°.  On the next map I compare my position, Topostext's position, and  Pleiades position:

Placement of Mount Boreion (Attica) in Pleiades, Topostext, and Mycenaean Atlas Project.

I have not adopted Topostext's position here but the rounded Pleiades position (at the bottom of the map) is 21 km. from my proposed location and almost 19 km. distant from Topostext's. 

My Commentary to Pleiades will change all this. If you search for 570158 or 'Boreion' and display it on the digital atlas you will be shown this next page (Be sure to select 'Pleiades' layer from the (not shown) map layer selector on the top right):

Mt. Boreion (Pleiades 570158) displayed in correct position.

The top link in the info box ("Pleiades (S) 570158") will not bring the user to the main Pleiades page for 'Boreion'.  Instead the new Pleiades Commentary screen will be displayed:

Commentary on Pleiades - supplemental information page

My goal for the future is to correct all the locations whose lat/lon coordinates have been rounded.  For the Peloponnese alone this amounts to about 160 such rounded markers.  Presently there are about 150 corrected Pleiades sites (primarily for the Peloponnese) and the work of adding corrections to Pleiades will be ongoing.