Ancient Electric Lights

Obviously, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not have electric lights and light fixtures. If you happened to be a neoclassical architect in the early 20th-century, you were confronted with a new design problem. I have been looking at a number of neoclassical light fixtures admiring the ingenuity of their solutions. One example is the light fixture at Lancaster's Railroad Station, designed in 1929 (above), which plays with the ornamental motifs of the railing. Two lines that float like waves, bow out and intersect symmetrically, producing shapes that resemble the infinity symbol, the figure eight, or a curvy "x". The oscillating wave motif reminds us both of the marine inspirations of the classical vocabulary, but it also mimics the magnetic wavelengths of magnetism and electricity. This double reading collapse antiquity into modernity. See similar observations in my Train Wave posting.

Another light fixture that utilizes this motif was found in the reading room of the Shadek-Fackenthal Library at Franklin & Marshall (William Lee, 1937). The fixtures were removed during the 1980s renovations, but Christopher Raab at F&M Special Collections has shown me photos.

During the "Liturgy and Migration" conference at Yale, I got to spend some quality time at the Yale Divinity School, which was designed by Delano & Aldrich, the industrious neoclassical firm. The exterior is modeled on Thomas Jefferson's UVA campus, but it has a highly surreal sensibility. The exterior walkways that connect the pavilions are lit by a beautiful light fixture that takes the intersecting wave motif and lets it circulate freely around a cylinder. For readers of this blog affiliated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, consider the following connection. Charles Spector and Joseph Shelley, architecture fellows at the American School in 1931, worked for Delano & Aldrich.

Louis Kahn in Corinth

Michael J. Lewis has published a fascinating little article on Louis Kahn's 1932 entry for a Lenin Memorial. The competition is largely unknown from Kahn's corpus because he intentionally expunged it from his resume in order to save himself from future political embarrassment. Although Michael Lewis had studied a verbal description of the monument (donated to the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives), it wasn't until 2006 when a photo of the project appeared at an auction. Lewis' article also intrigued me for its reference to another Soviet competition entry by an American. In 1932, the sculptor William Zorach proposed a statue for Lenin. He built a 3-ft model of the piece and sent it to Leningrad. My interest in Zorach has peaked this last year because the Phillips Museum at Franklin and Marshall is preparing a Zorach exhibition. Michael Lewis article can be found in the most recent Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, see Michael J. Lewis, "Louis I. Kahn and His Lenin Memorial," JSAH 69 (2010) pp. 7-11. This is a great issue of the JSAH, it includes an essay by Diane Favro in reconstructing Roman funerary processions, an essay on Melchior Lorich's famous panorama of Constantinople, an essay on Bruneleschi's dome, and an essay on Walter Gropius' letters to his daughter Manon.

Louis Kahn's Lenin Memorial features two red glass-brick skyscrapers that made me think of the bright red used in his watercolor of the Temple of Apollo in Corinth. The drawing was done in 1951, when Kahn was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Lewis' article reminded me of another European trip that Kahn took as a student in 1929, right before the Lenin competition. I must do some further research on the details of this trip (that included a visit to Le Corbusier's office, where Kahn's childhood friend Norman Rice worked). I wonder, for example, if he made it to Greece in 1929. If he did, I wonder if he intersected with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and architecture fellows like Richard Stillwell.

This morning, I decided to visit William Whitaker, director of the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives that includes the Louis I. Kahn Collection. Whitaker is a fountain of knowledge about Kahn and the architectural culture of Philadelphia in the 1920s. We had a wonderful conversation, and I'm grateful that he let me barge in to his office without preparation. He agreed that, unlike the American Academy in Rome, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens is invisible from the architectural literature despite its Architectural Fellows program. Whitaker showed me some amazing photographs showing Louis Kahn visiting Corinth, standing in front of the Temple of Apollo in 1951. Louis Kahn's visit to Greece must definitely become a chapter in my larger research project of Corinth's relationship to the avant-garde. The best study of Kahn's travel sketches is Eugene Johnson and Michael J. Lewis, Drawn from the Source: The Travel Sketches of Louis I. Kahn (Cambridge, 1996) that accompanied an exhibition at Williams College.

One of my objectives for the summer is to explore the archive of Richard Stillwell, particularly his architectural work in France (restoring Gothic ruins after World War I) and his architectural fellowship at Corinth. Stillwell and Kahn have an indirect connection, which might turn into yet another chapter of research. Robert Venturi (who was Kahn's student and teaching assistant) also studied with Stillwell at Princeton. This summer, I hope to study Stillwell's personal notebooks, especially his 1921 diary from the Architectural Restoration in France project. Stillwell seems to have been one of Georg von Peschke's closest admirer and friend in the 1920s and 30s. Stillwell's son (also Richard) will be a great source of information; in fact, he remembers meeting Peschke as a young kid in Acrocorinth. I hope to interview Richard Stillwell, Jr. this summer and visit his great collection of Peschkes. William Whitaker encouraged me to interview Robert Venturi, as well, stressing that Venturi is extremely generous with scholars.

Stella: Athenian Agora

Last year, I learned that one could watch Greek movies and old televion shows online. And I poured over Το μινόρε της αυγής (The minor key of dawn), the 1983 TV series whose soundtrack I had loved for many years. Then, I moved on to classic b/w movies and came across Stella (1955), directed by Michalis Kakoyannis and staring Melina Merkouri. Filmed in Athens, the urban scenes include powerful references to historical topography and archaeology. I have watched the film a couple of times and made a mental note to do some research on the monuments and urban vistas. I thought I might be the only one paying attention to those subtle details until my copy of the last Journal of Modern Greek Studies arrived in my mail. The October 2009 issue is devoted to the Marshall Plan, but it includes Artemis Leontis's review of Yannis Hamilakis' celebrated Nation and Its Ruins and Argyro Loulaki's Living Ruins, Living Conflicts. Leontis' essay is titled "Archaeology in the Neighborhood: Views of the Ancient Agora and Other Ruins from Outside the Gate" (JMGA 27, 2009, 417-432) and it includes the first scholarly citation of this blog (THANK YOU!!!)

I was thrilled to discover in "Archaeology in the Neighborhood" that I wasn't the only person to have noted Stella's importance as a mid-century text. Leontis points out the contextual role that archaeology plays in the movie. This is simply a brilliant set of observations. For better or for worse, Melina Merkouri was made famous through Never on Sunday (1960). Jules Dassin, director and Merkouri's husband, plays a naive American philhelene "Homer Thrace from Middletown, Connecticut" (where Dassin was born) who tries to reform a prostitute from Piraeus. For the longest time, I have wondered whether Dassin or Merkourci knew of Homer Thompson, who was excavating the Athenian Agora through the 50s and 60s. Dassin's Homer, I suspect, might not only refer to the ancient bard, but also to Homer Thompson. Two years later, Dassin directed another movie with Merkouri, Phaedra (1962), which strikes a clear archaeological chord. Merkouri plays the wife of an Onassis-character who falls in love with her son-in-law (played by Anthony Perkins). Perkins and Mercouris first meet at the British Museum in front of the Elgin marbles. It's a beautiful movie (soundtrack by Mikis Theodorakis) that never reached the popularity of Never on Sunday. But Stella is truly the intellectual forefather of all these films, and it introduces the archaeological motif. As Leontis shows, the American excavations of the Athenian Agora bear witness to the films' plot. For those readers that are either archaeologists or modern Greek specialists, I urge you to see Stella immediately and look out for the ancient monuments (the Theseion), the Byzantine churches (Saint George; Holy Apostles) and the excavations (Agora). You can see the movie here (with subtitles). But before seeing the movie, you must read Leontis' observations:

"Evidence of the Agora excavations' uninviting feeling for Greeks who witnessed them appears unexpectedly in another Greek source: Michael Cacoyannis's classic film Stella, released in 1955. In it, the Agora is the backdrop, and Stella's apartment, the scene of extramarital drama, sits alongside the excavation site on the Plaka's western edge. At the time of the filming, the American School's 'big dig' was at the point of completion, having removed, along with all the extant homes, 250,000 tons of dirt and debris from post-classical remains. The reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos was in progress, but barely visible, as it had just reached ground level. A vast expanse of mounds and trenches loomed darkly behind Stella's apartment. The site makes several cameo appearances from different angles, the most important of which comes at the film's turning point, about 52 minutes from the opening credits, when Stella's abandoned boyfriend Alekos retraces his steps from his asphyxiating upper-class home home in Kolonaki (Lykavitos's Church of St. George can be discerned behind him as he descends) to the Roman Agora. Passing the Gate of Athena Archegetes, he follows a narrow street, opposite the Church of the Holy Apostles, then turns into Stella's alley and heads up her steps. When Stella does not answer the door, he walks to the other side of the building and calls up to her windows. Stella pushes her lover Miltos away and peeks through the blinds, watching as Alekos steps back blindly into the road, with the excavation site spread out behind him like a vast grave. Both Stella and the excavations become mute witnesses to Aleko's accidental death by a passing car." (p. 420)

Thinking about the Athenian Agora, Nikki Sakka's, "The Excavation of the Ancient Agora of Athens: The Politics of Commissioning and Managing the Project" (in Singular Antiquity) and Craig Mauzy's, Agora Excavations, 1931-2006: A Pictorial History (2003) are great essential prerequisites.

Movies like Stella invite revisiting. On the one hand, they offer fantastic historical evidence of an older more beautiful Athens before its unchecked concrete expansion. On the other hand, they reveal central motifs of self-presentation and domestic anxieties. Overshadowed by Italian neorealism, the golden age of Greek cinema is both lightweight and provocative. In addition to the archaeological subtexts, Stella has an extraordinary sophistication in its set design, directed by painter Yannis Tsarouchis. One day, I would love to read/write a comparative study of the exterior urban scenography and the interior rooms. Tsarouchis uses a technique that is evident in his paintings, aligning the characters with objects of great poetic depth. Watching Stella, note for example the role that interior lights play, how they align with characters. Note the role of doors opening and closing, especially doors that also carry mirrors. One could write an essay about electrification, light projection, Greek domestic space, and the technicalities of film. The film would have originally been projected by a bright light source from the back of a movie theater. Keep that in mind as bare light bulbs illuminate the interior spaces of the nocturnal scenes. This reminds us of the bare lightbulbs of Tsarouchis' interiors. From a psychoanalytical perspective, the Tsarouchis' bare lightbulbs are the technical shame-inducing machines of homosexual desire. With Manos Hadjidakis' soundtrack, and Iakovos Kambanelli's original screen-play, we are in the company of high aesthetics. I would love to know how Tsarouchis, Kakoyannis and Hadjidakis may have interacted with the Agora excavations. Unfortunately, Melina Merkouri, in all her admirable Elgin-marble activist, has left us with a very superficial scenario over the conflicts of foreign archaeology.

My mother, my uncle and aunts grew up in Plaka, all born around the time that the Americans began the Agora excavations. I once asked them how the excavations affected the life of the neighborhood. My uncle pointed out how grateful the neighborhood was for the employment that the excavations offered, especially after World War II when much of Athens starved. My mother, who was a little younger, remembers using the excavations as a playground, literally climbing in and out of pythoi. Having just seen Anne McCabe's paper "A Middle Byzantine Neighborhood in Athens: Recent Excavations in the Agora" (see 2010 AIA annual conference), I suddenly visualized the 1930s excavations as a playground of subterranean wells and storage jars. And suddenly remembered Luigi Pirandello story "The Jar," beautifully dramatized in the Tavianni brothers' Kaos (1984).

All these thoughts and allusions bring us back to Yannis Hamilakis and his discussion of pre-modern archaeology (in Nation and Its Ruins, and in Singular Antiquity), to Gregory Jusdanis' "Farewell to the Classical: Excavations in Modernism," Modernism/Modernity 11:1 (2004), pp. 37-53 and to Hamilakis' response. William Caraher is working on an essay on dream archaeology, namely the use of dreams in predicting site locations (see here). Dimitris Plantzos is also working on non-archaeologists' archaeology (see "Displaying Modernity," and other postings in (pre)texts). Between Hamilakis, Leontis, Jusdanis, Caraher and Plantzos, I sense a thrilling new vibe. I'm staying tuned for the fruits of these insightful observations that are derailing archaeology into meta-positivist directions.

Vanderpool House at Pikermi

I have been thinking about writing an essay called "The House that Archaeology Built" that reviews architectural patronage by foreign archaeologists in Greece. From Heinrich Schliemann's house in Athens to Fred Cooper's house in Neohori, archaeologist houses present a fascinating type of home-making. The architecture of foreign archaeologists illustrate a physical, spiritual and scholarly connection with their newly adopted home. Construction proceeds from the ground to the roof in reverse order from the process of excavation. Some of the most interesting archaeologist houses, therefore, address the paradoxical relationship between the past (the very reason to come to Greece), the present (the home that shelters research) and the future (the masonry that will outlive its occupant). The archaeologists of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) have used different strategies to deal with the paradox of building-dwelling-thinking. One unique example is the house of Eugene Vanderpool at Pikermi, Attica, 12 miles outside of Athens.

Antiquated Vagaries (April 3, May 14, May 22, 2009) has posted a great oral history project, the interview of Pierre MacKay on the ASCSA of 1959-60. Discussing Eugene Vanderpool, MacKay echoes a comment that I have heard repeated by other Vanderpool students: "The Vanderpools had a place at Pikermi. They kept themselves to themselves, very much outside the world of the school. I've never seen the place out in Pikermi, one or two special students of Vanderpool have, but basically he and she [Mr. and Mrs. Vanderpool] wanted to have two separate lives and this was respected." I have asked dozens of ASCSA members of that generation about the Pikermi house but no one had seen it. A good source might be John Camp and, of course, Cathy Vanderpool. In an earlier posting, Art Deco Beauty (Dec. 2, 2007), I discussed the rich cultural life of Joan Bush Vanderpool, inspired by seeing her 1929 portrait by Tamara de Lempicka. Since then, I've been collecting more information about Joan Vanderpool's friendships with contemporary Greek intellectuals. I thank Artemis Leontis for sharing with me her research on the friendship between Mrs. Vanderpool and Eva Palmer Sikelianos. Letters from the 1930s also refer to a house in Xylokastro, Corinthia, where some of the ASCSA students met the Vanderpools (Alison Frantz correspondence).

But what about the house at Pikermi? As it turns out, the house was not a secret, but treated like a celebrity house in the Greek architectural press. I came across the first reference to the house in Demetris Philippides, Athens Suburbs and Countryside in the 1930s (Athens, 2006), p. 92. This is a great book documenting the development of suburbs like Psychiko and Philothei and their innovative architectural expressions. The Pikermi house is unique because it was built around an abandoned monastery. In 1956, the Vanderpools converted a 16th-century monastery into a house. I find this to be a fantastic proposition, especially in relationship to Rhys Carpenter's Folly at Ancient Corinth (see, Hesperia article). No other archaeologist house incorporates so fundamentally the sensibilities of living in ruins. The house at Pikermi also belongs to a distinctively American preoccupation regarding restoration, renovation, cloisters and the medieval past.

The Vanderpools were one of the most influential figures in the history of the ASCSA both in terms of the School's academic and extracurricular cultural life. Unlike many other faculty, they maintained a healthy separation between family and academic life. Although they guarded their private life in Pikermi, they were not guarded about the building itself. In 1958, Greece's leading architecture journal featured an article on the house, by Associated Press correspondant Vasos Mingos, "Ένα σπίτι 400 ετών υιοθετείται από Αμερικανική οικογένεια (A 400-Year Old House in Attika is Adopted by an American Family)" Αρχιτεκτονική 7 (1958), pp. 16-21. The article includes a sketch map drawn by Eugene Vanderpool himself, showing the exact location of the house, and an architectural plan (above). The original 16th-c building, the "cloister" is stippled and the additions are shaded in the plan (above). Some 18 photographs show interiors and exteriors, along with Mrs. Vanderpool and her young daughter Ann, "a Bryn Mawr student." The article summarizes the building's history, architectural features (including Mr. Vanderpool's research for comperanda) and Spanish furnishing. The visual juxtaposition of Spanish antiques within a medieval Greek space illustrates a dominant 30s aesthetic of a Mediterranean style. Objects such as a sculpture of Catherine of Aragon were acquired by Mrs. Vanderpool's father, through the American ambassador of Spain. The Spanish interior is also interesting considering the ASCSA's interests in Crusader Greece, including the Catalan and Aragonese towers of Attica.

I do not know what has happened to the Vanderpool house. It would be easy to learn about its state of ownership and preservation. In my mind, it is an architectural landmark. Its publication in Αρχιτεκτονική marks it as a celebrity house. Unlike Greek architecture journals today, the bilingual Αρχιτεκτονική (1957-67) was widely read internationally. Greek modernist were in the forefront of architectural debates (CIAM, Athens Charter, Doxiadis, etc.) Most good architecture libraries subscribed to it, including 70 libraries in the U.S. -- I first read the journal at Clemson University's Art and Architecture library, for example. The house in Pikermi was an internationally celebrated domestic space that marks a timely intersection between archaeology and design.

There are many houses connected to the lives of ASCSA luminaries, and each one offers unique notions. The list of great houses would include Schliemann's house in Athens (designed by Ernst Ziller, 1878), Villia Ilissia (designed by Kleanthes, 1838, for Philadelphia philhelene, now Byzantine Museum), the first American School Building (1878, by W. R. Ware) and Loring Hall (1929), the Duncan House at Kopanos (1903), a series of houses designed by Piet de Jong in Macedonia (1917, built 1930, I have oral histories for a specific home in Herakleia), the Rhys Carpenter folly in Corinth (1930), Oakley House in Corinth designed by Richard Stillwell (1920s), Hill House in Corinth designed by Charles Williams (1972, after original burned down, along with Mr. Williams' dissertation manuscript), the Shear House in Corinth, the Broneer House in Corinth (1950s, currently James Herbst and Ioulia Tzonou Herbst house), the Sanders house in Corinth (1990s, on-going restoration project), the Hill-Blegen House in Athens (Ploutarchou 8), the Alison Frantz/Lucy Tacott apartment in Athens, Hill House in Athens (1920s), James Merrill's House in Athens (donated to the ASCSA and now John Camp's house), Frederick Cooper's experimental house in Neohori (1960s), the Kalligas House in Monemvasia (1980s). I'm sure there are plenty more archaeologist houses of interest and I would love to hear about them. A collective study of all these works, would also need to consider the architecture of the foreign schools more broadly, from

A model for innovative domestic scholarship that combines architecture and social history is Alice Friedman's, Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History (New York, 1998).

The Scottish fustanella

While researching America's relationship with Greece in the 1930s, it dawned on me that Greece occupied a parallel place in the American imagination as Ireland and Scotland. In other words, the American discovery of folk Greece happened at exactly the same time as the discovery of the Irish, Celtic and other less modernized regions of the United Kingdom. Similarities in constructing the Irish and Greek modern nation-states is well known. The revival of dead languages (Gaelic and Katharevousa) and scholarly exploitations of folk culture were common strategies in nation-building. Eric Hobsbawn has addressed modern Greece, Ireland and Israel in his classic, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1990).

I have always wondered what thoughts may have gone through an American's mind when first seeing the Greek "national" costume, the white kilt known as fustanella. A 1934 American film promoting Mediterranean tourism makes the connection between Scottish kilts and the Greek fustanella quite direct. Narrator James A. Fitzpatrick claims direct descent. This circuitous genealogy, no doubt, reflects popular notions of the 1930s. The film, "Citadels of the Mediterranean" (click here or here), starts in Andalusia and ends in Athens. Segments 6:06-6:50 mins. shows Greek soldiers perform a dance in the Olympic Stadium. The narrator's voice explains:

"As a matter of individuality, no army has ever excelled that of Greece in costuming its soldiers. And no army or navy has yet developed a dance like the one that was staged for us by the president's bodyguard regiment of the Greek army. The origin of this unique costume goes back to the highlands of Albania and it is preserved in Athens today almost exclusively by the presidential guard. The early Roman soldiers copied it from the Greeks and during their conquest of the British Isles it was adopted and modified by the Scottish highlanders."

During the 1930s, British and American archaeologists occasionally put on fustanellas on special celebrations. American expats like George Cram Cook, co-founder of the Provincetown Players, gave up western fashions entirely and embraced the fustanella. Cook's photo above was published in a biography written by his widow, Susan Glaspell, The Road to the Temple (New York, 1927). Humfrey Payne, director of the British School in Athens (1929-1936), was another such figure "going native" for special occasions, the local festivals in Perachora. See photos in his biography, also written by his widow, Dilys Powell, The Traveller's Journey is Done (London, 1943). The American School's photographic archive contains many images of American archaeologists sporting Greek costumes. At first glance, such cross-dressing may be interpreted as a form of orientalism. But the story seems more complicated. By wearing a Greek fustannella, British or American archaeologists also evoked their own national traditions via Scotland. For some others, wearing folk costumes was an act of rebellion, sharing with the avant-garde (such as Isadora Duncan's dressing rebellion).

The Scottish relationship with Greece is also evident in the development of particularly Presbyterian attitudes. Peter Brown first pointed this out to me in a casual conversation. Presbyterians (Church of Scotland) had a different relationship with classical Greece than Anglicans (Church of England). Classicists from Presbyterian colleges, like Princeton, had specific denominational agendas.

Kopanos: A Blog Challenge Fulfilled

This entire last weekend, I was physically in Washington, D.C. but mentally in the Peloponnesos. Dumbarton Oaks' annual symposium on Byzantine Studies was devoted to "Morea: The Land and Its People in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade." This was by far the most intellectually fulfilling symposium I have ever attended, brilliantly crafted by Sharon Gerstel (but more about that later). The session was attended by many colleagues associated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Maria Georgopoulou, Diana Wright, Pierre MacKay, Timothy Gregory, Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Glenn Bugh, Sharon Gerstel, Mary Lee Coulson, etc.), all friends who transported me to Greece. In the meantime, another member of the American School was searching the city of Athens for a blog challenge, the search for Isadora Duncan's house at Kopanos.

In my posting, Jogging Empowerment: Kopanos (Apr. 25, 2009), I challenged Antiquated Vagaries to find the house that Isadora Duncan built in 1903. The house is an amazing document of bohemian domesticity, a work of art in its own right, based on the house of Agamemnon. The challenge was met over the weekend. This is incredible. We can all now travel through space and time and share Katie's discovery. The narrative of discovery is just as interesting as the object of discovery. Don't waste your time with my words and immediately go to Success (Antiquated Vagaries, May 3, 2009).

I apologize in advance for the lull in my blog production. Between now and mid-May, I am overwhelmed with lectures, workshops, travel, exams, grading and most importantly planning for my new job, architectural historian at the College of Franklin and Marshall.

Jogging Empowerment: Kopanos

This posting is a test in transnational academic connectivity. It is the kind of challenge one might encounter in an episode of the Amazing Race, the popular CBS reality show going on its 14th season. I set the challenge for Antiquated Vagaries, a terrific blog documenting the experiences of Katie, an American graduate fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). Antiquated Vagaries has been posting on ASCSA history from research trips to the basement of the Archives, Loring Hall and from oral histories, see Dudes: Stay Out! (Feb. 2), Dinner Table Art (Feb. 20), School Art 2: Edward Lear (Mar. 12), and Happy Anniversary (Apr. 3).

Antiquated Vagaries has also been posting on jogging, see Jogging in Athens #1: The Olympic Stadium (Apr 22). Athens is a rough city for joggers, let alone pedestrians (who are killed by cars and motorcycles on a daily basis). Posting on jogging routes is, thus, extremely helpful to other joggers (I speak from personal experience, having been attacked by dogs on Lykavittos). But from an intellectual point of view, it extends a venerable tradition of Athenian topography. Direct engagement with the modern city has been central to ASCSA's curriculum since the 19th century. Ask any 60-something American archaeologist about Athens, and they will immediately bring up Eugene Vanderpool, the peripatetic master who discovered countless sites through his hikes with students. Moreover, there is a tradition of women archaeologists whose liberation took the form of walking through Greece--without chaperons or native guides, relying solely on their physical endurance, and on their linguistic and cartographic skills. The diaries of Lucy Shoe, Agnes Newhall, Virginia Grace, Allison Frantz, or Eugene Bush Vanderpool are testament to this peripatetic empowerment from the 1920s.

Antiquated Vagaries is the 21st century version of such diaries. Although Athens is a safe city, women are still confronted by patriarchical obstacles, quite literally ... the exposed phallus. Katie describes an empowering incident by fellow Fellows: "... a few weeks ago a teenager chased after two Associate Members with his junx hanging out. To his dismay, one of those girls turned around, chased him down the hill, grabbed him by the hair, and beat the shit out of him until he cried ... a story with a happy ending! All in all, though, jogging in Greece is a pretty safe endeavor, so don't let the creepo's get you down." Truth be told, that unlike the 1920s, it's only a minority of ASCSA fellows that have enough curiosity about the modern city to venture out of the ASCSA buble today. Kudos to Katie and others for confronting Greek realities face to face and striking a post-colonial victory.

Here is my challenge for Antiquated Vagaries. It's an experiment that hopes to bridge past and present, the U.S. and Greece. In Jogging in Athens #2: The University Run (Apr 23), Katie shows a photograph from the top of Mount Hymmetos. As soon as I saw the photo, I realized that Katie wasn't standing far from Kopanos Hill, where Isadora Duncan, the famous American dancer (above), built a house in 1903. In My Life (New York, 1995, pp. 93), Duncan writes, "The barren hillock, on the same level as the Acropolis, known since ancient times as Kopanos, now belonged to the Clan Duncan. The next step was to secure paper and architectural instruments and make the plans for a house. Raymond found the exact model desired in the plan of the Palace of Agamemnon. He scorned the help of architects, and himself engaged the workmen and the stone carriers." Find My Life on Google books here

So, my challenge for Antiquated Vagaries is to find the house through jogging. I am not sure if the house survives. Athenian topographer Leta Costakis has told me that the house still exists. The only clues I have for Katie are a few published photographs below. Mind you, I am writing this challenge from Middletown, Connecticut, so I cannot join the search. But perhaps this is the beginning of a new game, an ASCSA version of Geocaching. If you have never heard of the game, here is a clue: "Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment."

Spring has arrived, and the human body reclaims the city through exercise. The human mind also reclaims the past. The Kopanos clues below are images from, D. Duncan, C. Pratl and C. Splatt eds., Life into Art: Isadora Duncan and Her World (New York, 1993), pp. 53, 54, 110.

Church Logos

Back in December, I began a blog theme called Airport Chapels. Since then, I've been trying to visit as many of them as my journeys have made possible. The Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) is a place I used to know very well from a commuter marriage from Clemson. But only during a recent connecting flight did I note the airport's multiple chapels . In addition to a permanent room and an ephemeral Sunday space, I found the first graphic sign for chapel. The icon depicts an abstract figure in a kneeling pose. I took a picture of the illuminated airport directory (above), but you can also see it on the official airport website. Charlotte's airport chapel is located just outside the terminal. At the risk of missing my connecting flight, I exited the terminal and visited the sacred space.

The chapel door bears a circular stained glass window depicting an appropriately jet-setting icon, the globe (left). Longitudes and latitudes divide the earth into green, blue, yellow and clear zones, while the logo kneels opaquely in front, genuflecting on Antarctica with its head rising from the equator. The image is too rich for words, crossing multiple planes of signification, from the Platonic immateriality of logos and the visual immateriality of glass to the capitalist abstraction of the logo and its legalistic immediacy. Was this logo copyright-ed?

Chapel logos are not limited to the heterotopia (Foucault) of airports . My good friend Kat (aka Little Ethiopia[n]) is all about church shops and church logos, and I thank her for introducing me to the genre. Kat's and the Esquire's infinite hospitality in Los Angeles included driving me to all the architectural monuments my heart desired.

At the top of my list was Rafael Moneo's celebrated Catholic Cathedral (of our Lady of the Angels) completed in 2002. We marveled at the structure's monumental ingenuity, the historical materiality unique to Moneo, the new Catholic art, the speaker funnels, the tapestry, Moses the Ethiopian (of course), and then we visited the church shop. We swung open a glass door (left) with the shop's hours and an iconic distillation of the building, literally mirroring the solid volumes across the open space.

Another Los Angeles church with its own shop and logo is the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Saint Sophia completed in 1952. I've been studying this building in its own right as a pious donation of Charles and Spyros Skouras, the founders of Fox Studios in Hollywood. Spyros Skouras, moreover, was a trustee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the producer of a 1947 documentary for the School. In the collection of essays I have just edited, The Archaeology of Xenitia, Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan has written on the relationship between the Greek-American community (the omogeneia) and the School. The 1947 documentary, Triumph over Time, that Vogeikoff-Brogan discovered has been remastered as a DVD and published along with Vogeikoff-Brogan's insightful commentary.

My own contribution to The Archaeology of Xenitia was an essay on the Orthodox Cathedral of Philadelphia (a church without a logo). The research on Saint George has morphed into another project, a survey of Greek-American architecture, a collaboration with Vasilis Marinis at Queens College. LA's Saint Sophia is a hybrid of Hispanic and Orthodox motifs, appropriate for its locale. The commemorated craftsmen for the building seem to have been Latin American, but according to oral history, they were all brought from Greece. But that could be the subject of another posting altogether.

Documenting chapel logos throughout the U.S. illustrates a well-studied phenomenon, the intrusion of corporate culture into religious space. Most research, however, has focused on the phenomena of televangelism and megachurches. The more modest evidence from Charlotte's chapel, from the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels and from Saint Sophia point attention to different processes of image-making and meaning.

The Intimacy of Measurement

Much discussion has developed in the last few years on the epistemological nature of archaeology. Developments in stratigraphic rigor (Wheeler, etc. 1920s), New Archaeology (Clark, etc. 1960s), surface surveys (Minnesota Messenia Expedition, etc. 1970s) have bumped the discipline a step further away from traditional Humanism into the realms of science--both natural and social. Scientific measurement, as the foundation of archaeological knowledge, has placed archaeology under the radar of post-colonial theory, see Bruce Trigger, "Alternative Archaeologists: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist, Man (1984), pp. 355-370. Yannis Hamilakis has argued that we need to move beyond Bruce Trigger's tripartite classification, see ch. 3, The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford, 2007), pp. 57-123; "Decolonizing Greek Archaeology: Indigenous Archaeologies, Modernist Archaeology and the Post-Colonial Critique," in A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Idenity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos (Athens, 2008), pp. 273-286. For Hamilakis, European (and American) archaeology brought a homogeneous and totalizing archaeology to Greece, whose positivism displaced alternative, less rationalistic relationships to the past. My friend Bill Caraher, has explored the repercussions of such indigenous and subjective relationships in his explorations of dream archaeology.

I would like to explore a different tactic here, to illustrate some fissures in the positivist paradigm in as far as the scientific method of measuring is concerned. Despite the dominant project of an enlightened archaeology (built on rational proof, the scientific method, and documentation), one may note a gray zone of subjectivity. I have become particularly interested in those gray zones while studying the methods of archaoelogical survey. I am interested, for example, in personalities like Georg von Peshcke, who was project architect for the Corinth excavations in the 1930s but also a member of the artistic avant-garde. Looking through the testimonials available in archaeological notebooks, diaries and field drawings, one sees a fuller picture of scientific documentation. Specifically, one sees great latitudes in the human processes of measurement. The published state-plan, stratigraphic section, profile drawing or perspectival rendering are undeniably the "truthful" objective of these practitioners. Surrounding the rational document (which serves as faithful proxy to the artifact) are subjective methods.

On an earlier posting, I have discussed the practice of producing silhouette portraits, an artistic pass time in the excavations in Corinth, see 1930s Facebook. These shadow drawings survive in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and, we now know, were produced by Peschke in the 1930s. Such drawings were on the one hand objective (a true outline of a person's face) but also a source of entertainment in their production. Peschke, the artist, caressed the profile of his colleagues by tracing their shadows. More recently, artist Kara Walker has given a critical edge to this 18th-century tradition of silhouettes (see Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, Whitney Museum, Oct. 11, 2007-Feb. 3, 2008)

The physical and subjectively emotive process of documentation was not limited to the archaeologists' leisure activities. Bert Hodge Hill's explorations of Peirene Spring in Corinth provides an excellent example. This is the subject of Betsey Robinson's dissertation (and book manuscript). I thank Betsey for the fascinating discussions of her project. The archaeological exploration of the springs involved stripping down to bathing suits and descending into the cavernous darkness of the water channels. Betsey has read all the testimonials carefully and has noted how the chief archaeologists relished in the dirty, muddy procedure. Tackling homoeroticism from a different point of view, Robert Pounder is studying the peculiar co-habitation of Hill, Blegen and their wives. Hill's and Blegen's muddy descends into the crevices of Corinth fit nicely into Julia Kristeva's notion of the Abject that Michael Shanks has analyzed from an archaeological perspective.

With Betsey Robinson and Bob Pounder in mind, I recently revisited Hill's publication, Corinth I.VI: The Springs: Peirene, Sacred Spring, Glauke (Princeton, 1964). Although published in 1964, the manuscript had been completed in the 1930s. The following passage from Hill's forward places archaeological measurement into the realm of subjective corporeality, pleasure, amusement and heroism.

"Amusing incidents were not lacking in the clearing of Peirene. One ingenious member of the staff, who, partially immersed in water, was obliged to crawl on his stomach over the slimy mud in an exceptionally low stretch of a tunnel, invented a new unit of measurement. Finding it virtually impossible to use a tape or even a meter stick in his awkward position, he advanced by heaving himself forward in short convulsions, which he counted and recorded as 'belly paces,' sometimes translated into 'knee paces' in polite circles." (p. vi)

Hill then proceeds to enumerate "some of the unsung heroes who participated effectively in these subterranean researches," and concludes with the achievement of two women. "Report has it that Mrs. Agnes Stillwell and Miss Lucy Shoe on at least one occasion also penetrated to the far ends of the tunnels." (p. vi)

It is difficult not to see both the humor and the intended sexualization of the investigation and measurement of the earth's bowls. By taking the archaeological document at a positivist face-value, the post-colonialist scholar misses the nuances of actual documentation. A study of surveying methods, their instruments, social practices and habits places them into a different corporeal context. When the body itself becomes a surveying instrument, the zones between subjective and objective experience are difficult to keep separated. All of us that are involved with surveying full appreciate the difference between applied and pure science.

My second example of measurement as a sociological process comes from a century earlier, from Sir William Gell 1804 trip to the Peloponnese, one of the earliest documentation campaigns in Greece. While surveying Tragoge (near Ancient Phigaleia), Gell's surveying instruments were imbued with supernatural power. I quote the passage in full from Gell's, Narrative of a Journey to the Morea (London, 1823), pp. 107-108.

"Having finished my sketch, observing that it was very near mid-day, while the air was so still as not in any way to ruffle the surface of the water, which by chance lay before me, collected in a little cavity of the rock, I took the opportunity of ascertaining the latitude, and setting a common watch by a double altitude of the sun. The sight of the brass case of the small pocket sextant, which, with other necessary instruments, I always carried about me, seemed to produce an uncommon sensation among the people, five or six of whom came nearer, and, from a louder whisper than usual, I collected that they had taken the case for a snuff-box of gold, and did not scruple to express the wish to possess it. As they did not appear to be armed, I continued and concluded my observations; by recollecting that it was not impossible they might, on some other occasion, return in greater numbers, and find us ill or worse prepared for resistance, I called to the savage who stood nearest, and, setting the instrument on purpose, shewed him through it the house of the aga of Tragoge, seemingly placed among the ruins of the citadel of Paulitza. The man was so alarmed, that it was with difficulty I prevented my sextant from falling out of his hands, and persuaded him to remain while I took out two of the glasses of a little telescope, the increasing length of which filled him with dismay, and placing it on a rock, for it was impossible to prevail upon him to touch it, shewed him through it the inverted image of an old woman, who was washing before her door at Lower Tragoge; the first glimpse was sufficient, and he fled to his companions, crying out that the Franks were devils, and that poor Kokōna Anna was dead. We had some difficulty in persuading them that we had only set the old lady on her head by way of joke; that we had taken so much care not to hurt her, that she was unconscious of the fact; in proof of which they needed only to observe that she was continuing her occupation. We added, by way of precaution, that we never hurt any one who did not come with evil intentions; and they retired, tolerably satisfied, behind the ruins of the chapel, either thinking the devil had no power there, or for fear of being set on their heads if they remained in sight."

First Out: Late Levels at Early Sites

The Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest Group (IG) of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) was formed in 2005 with the purpose of fostering collaboration, organizing panels and advocating for post-classical archaeology. The IG has organized sessions at the AIA, “The Abandoned Countryside: (Re)Settlement in the Archaeological Narrative of the Post-Classical Mediterranean” (San Diego, 2007), and “The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material Culture (Chicago, 2008). The former is under review as a special issue of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and the latter has just come out in The New Griffon 10 (2008). We have also organized a session on “Cyprus: Archaeology, Architecture and History” at the Byzantine Studies Conference (Toronto, 2007) and a session on “City, Village, Monastery: The Archaeology of Modern Greek Landscapes” for the Modern Greek Studies Association (Vancouver, 2009, under review). We are delighted that we can continue the tradition of organizing colloquia with special attention in publication and availability to the scholarly public.

Yesterday, March 16, 2009, was the deadline for submissions for the 2010 AIA Annual Meetings in Anaheim, Ca. Sharon Gerstel and I have put together a panel idea dealing with new Post-Classical research on old Classical sites. We submitted the panel yesterday and must now wait for six months to hear if it was accepted. It is interesting to note that an additional ten panels have been submitted: The Circus in Roman Culture, Empire and the Everyday, Where no God Has Gone Before: Greek Deities in the North, Moving Marble, Bricks, and Mortar: Supplying Roman Buildings, Interactions with the Ancient Landscape, From Pots to People: Approaches to the Study of Ceramics, A Body Corporate and Politic: The Mission of the AIA, Digital Research and Development in Collaborative Work, Subculture in Roman Social Life, the Art of Art History in the Bronze Age Near East. It will be interesting to see how the academic economy will affect the annual meetings. The choice of Anaheim seems to have also angered some people, but I hope this does not affect attendance.

FIRST OUT: LATE LEVELS AT EARLY SITES

Colloquium Session Proposal, 2010 Annual Meeting, Archaeological Institute of America, Anaheim, CA.

Sharon E. J. Gerstel (University of California, Los Angeles)

Kostis Kourelis (Connecticut College)

COLLOQUIUM OVERVIEW STATEMENT

The archaeology of the Classical world sprung out of the humanist tradition that bestowed great privilege to the texts of Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, or Plato. Sites made famous by great texts received early and continuous archaeological focus during the 19th and early 20th centuries. While the development of a scientific archaeological discipline benefited our understanding of the ancient world, it brought about a calamitous side effect, the veritable destruction of “lower” material culture from “higher” stratigraphic levels. Late Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval, Ottoman, and Early Modern phases were irretrievably destroyed by the classicist’s spade. Archaeological ethics in the 1920s and diachronic methodologies in the 1960s, however, brought about a slow but concerted critique against this collateral damage. Our panel hopes to highlight the positive contributions that have emerged in the last few years in documenting the late periods of Classical sites. We focus on the excavations of Pylos, Troy, the Athenian Agora, Chersonesos, Corinth, and surface surveys in Boeotia and the Corinthia. Each case study reveals a unique confrontation between old traditions of scholarship and new methodologies. The papers raise questions about shifting approaches to later levels, ones that demand an understanding of new sets of texts, building traditions, and settlement patterns. Together with a change in modern approaches to the understanding of stratigraphy and artifact density is the investigation of how and why later cultures utilized earlier sites and whether layered deposits represent the intentional and continuous presence or the expeditious rebuilding on older levels. These questions become particularly acute when ancient sites of central importance find themselves on the periphery of later empires.

PAPERS

1. Jack L. Davis (University of Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens) and Sharon R. Stocker (University of Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens), Prioritizing the Past: A Byzantine Deposit from the Palace of Nestor at Englianos

2. Kathleen M. Quinn (Northern Kentucky University), Drowned in the Depths of Obscurity: How Archaeology both Marginalized and Revitalized Our Understanding of Late Byzantine Troy

3. Anne McCabe (Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents), A Middle Byzantine Neighborhood in Athens: Recent Excavations in the Agora

4. Adam Rabinowitz (University of Texas at Austin) and Larissa Sedikova (National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos), First but not Out: The Byzantine Levels at Chersonesos in Historical and Archaeological Context

5. William R. Caraher (University of North Dakota) and Timothy E. Gregory (Ohio State University), New Views on Old Data: Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results After 30 Years

6. Guy D. R. Sanders (American School of Classical Studies at Athens), Late Ottoman and Early Modern Levels from New Excavations in Ancient Corinth

ABSTRACTS

Prioritizing the Past: A Byzantine Deposit from the Palace of Nestor at Englianos

Jack L. Davis, University of Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Sharon R. Stocker, University of Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens

In 1958 and 1959, in the area of the northeast gate in the Early Mycenaean fortifications surrounding the citadel of the Palace of Nestor, a deposit of pottery, glass, and tile of the 11th or early 12th century C.E. was found associated with a floor crudely paved with stones and fragments of broken tiles laid flat. The remains are more likely to belong to a single collapsed structure than a village. Because of the prehistoric focus of the publication plan for the Palace of Nestor excavations, the finds were published briefly though not extensively discussed. In the archives, however, they are recorded according to the same standards applied to Bronze Age levels of the site. Carl W. Blegen had a deep interest in medieval Greek archaeology and history. The artifacts, however limited in number and restricted in spatial distribution, thus offer a detailed glimpse at an historical period poorly known in western Messenia, although churches of that date are known elsewhere in the province and its larger cities are mentioned in ecclesiastical literature. Surface surveys in the Peloponnesos point to the Middle Byzantine period as a time of remarkable expansion of settlement in the countryside. Work of the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project suggests, however, that the Englianos area may have been thinly settled in the 11th and 12th century, as it certainly was in early modern times, prior to the Greek Revolution of 1821.

Drowned in the Depths of Obscurity: How Archaeology both Marginalized and Revitalized Our Understanding of Late Byzantine Troy

Kathleen M. Quinn, Northern Kentucky University

This paper examines the treatment of Byzantine material culture excavated at the historic site of Troy in northwestern Turkey. Consideration is given to how the methodologies and research agendas employed by three generations of archaeologists have impacted the understanding of the area’s history during the post-classical period. The paper begins with a brief overview of the contributions of Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld to our knowledge of Byzantine history at Troy, but the bulk of the previously unpublished evidence for this paper comes from the excavations of the University of Cincinnati archaeologists led by Carl W. Blegen. In keeping with the intellectual climate of the age, the research agendas of both of these early teams of archaeologists marginalized the study of Byzantine remains and often left little in the way of contextualized or detailed stratified deposits. In the case of the Blegen excavations, the Byzantine material survives today as tantalizing tidbits in old manuscripts, handwritten field journals, and card files of artifact and photographic inventories. When coupled with the finds from the more recent excavations of the Troia Archaeological Project (1988-present), however, this so-called “first out” material tells the tale of a small, yet prosperous Late Byzantine settlement. Now known as Troy X, this Byzantine “level” of the famous Bronze Age citadel consists of small houses and agricultural buildings, cemeteries, and a qanat-style water supply system dating to the 13th and 14th centuries C.E.

A Middle Byzantine Neighborhood in Athens: Recent Excavations in the Agora

Anne McCabe, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford

Recent seasons of excavation in the Athenian Agora have brought to light the remains of Byzantine houses on the streets leading north from the Panathenaic Way. The neighborhood lay outside the Late Antique city walls and appears to have been developed in the 10th century C.E.; sections of it have been excavated by the ASCSA since the 1930s. These houses provide unspectacular but welcome evidence for secular architecture of the Middle Byzantine period, as well as an architectural context for the many medieval churches which still stand in the city. The houses are provided with wells and with numerous storage vessels whose mouths were at floor level. Also present are beehive-shaped bothroi for the disposal of waste. The only coins found are bronze folleis. Apart from small amounts of imported white ware, pottery excavated consists of brown-glazed red ware, including chafing dishes, columnar lamps, plates, and juglets. Unglazed wares include cooking pots, water jugs, and basins, often with incised decoration. Large quantities of slag and broken murex shell attest to industrial activity nearby. Human remains are also present in the form of neonate burials, probably premature infants, within the area of the houses. The orientation of the houses, as well as much of their building material, is derived from the principal monument of the area, a large Classical building that may be identified as the Stoa Poikile. Late Antique walls between the columns of the stoa show that the interior of the building was divided into smaller areas, perhaps for commercial purposes.

First but not Out: The Byzantine Levels at Chersonesos in Historical and Archaeological Context

Adam Rabinowitz, University of Texas at Austin

Larissa Sedikova, National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos, Ukraine

Byzantine archaeologists working at major Classical sites in the Mediterranean often struggle to reconstruct the record of post-antique remains removed as “overburden” by excavators eager to reach earlier levels. In many cases, the late levels were damaged even before excavation: closest to the surface, they were first to be removed or mined for building material during modern construction. The city of Chersonesos (Byzantine Cherson), located at the southwest tip of Crimea, offers a stark contrast to the Mediterranean situation. Not only did the city largely escape modern construction and spoliation, but -- despite its Greek and Roman remains -- the archaeological work that has been conducted there since 1827 has focused primarily on its Byzantine phases. The city suffered several violent destructions in the 13th and 14th centuries C.E., and as a result a rich record of daily life has been preserved. Furthermore, for visitors and many excavators, the central historical narrative of the site involves the arrival of Orthodox Christianity among the Kyivan Rus’, and that, together with the excellent preservation of the late structures, leaves the Byzantine remains as the dominant element in the presentation of the site. The importance of Chersonesos for Byzantine archaeology, however, has been obscured by both ancient and modern historical factors. This paper discusses the history of excavation at Chersonesos, the site’s relevance to Byzantine archaeology in the Mediterranean, and the results of recent multidisciplinary investigations of a residential block occupied from the 3rd century B.C.E. to the 13th century C.E.

New Views on Old Data: Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results after 30 Years

William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota

Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State University

At the same time that scholars have focused new energies on the recovery of post-Classical periods in excavation, intensive pedestrian surveys across Greece have expanded our understanding of the Greek countryside for the same periods. Over the past 25 years, the publications of numerous intensive survey projects have, in particular, redefined our understanding of a prosperous Late Roman East and revealed post-Classical settlement structures. With these successes in mind, this paper will reexamine the results from several small-scale survey projects conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s in Boeotia and the Corinthia. This paper argues from a series of case studies that early survey projects captured data with yet unrealized significance in the context of recent excavation and survey work. The projects examined in this paper coincided with survey projects like the Cambridge Boeotia Project and the Argolid Exploration Project, but were published earlier and in a less comprehensive way. Returning to the material and quantitative data generated by these projects, in much the same way that archaeologists returned to material produced at major excavations like Athens, Corinth and Troy, represents the coming of age of intensive survey and contributes to more reflexive approaches to survey material and data in general. Re-examining the data collected and these projects’ underlying assumptions increases the transparency of these older efforts, enriches the pool of material available for the comparative study of the Greek countryside, and reclaims fragments of landscapes lost to development, taphonomic influences, and changes in technique, technology, and method.

Late Ottoman and Early Modern Levels from New Excavations in Ancient Corinth

Guy D. R. Sanders, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Although topsoil is the primary medium of archaeological surveyor, excavators seldom pay it much attention probably because Late Antique, Medieval and post-Medieval are anathema to Classical archaeologists. Topsoil often contains the only vestiges of a site’s final phases. At Corinth these belong to the decades before the earthquake of 1858 that resulted in the village’s population moving to a new site next to the sea on the Isthmus. In the Panayia Field at Corinth, topsoil contained the plowed over foundations of eight houses known, from a contemporary map of the village, to have existed ca. 1830 in a canton called Kalamatamahalla and, later, Arapomahalla. The undisturbed layer beneath preserved the lower foundations of the houses and the bottoms of pits containing household occupational debris representing the decades between about 1790 and 1850. Open area excavation in the Panayia Field, with exhaustive recovery strategies, resulted in an almost complete record of an archaeological phase of Corinth known only from travelers’ accounts and the illustrations therein contained. The houses were simple one, two and three roomed, single storey, tile roofed dwellings with white clay floors and wall plaster. None had wells and only two had outside ovens for baking. The household debris included wine bottles, low denomination Ottoman coins, and imported ceramics from China, Britain, France, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. Seriation of the contexts show how patterns of imports changed after the War of Independence. This represents the first and only systematic excavation of this period in the Aegean region

Singular Antiquity 9: Tzortzaki on Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is eye candy capable of seducing even the most serious of academics. Its resemblance to contemporary media (video games, animation, cartoons) makes it useful in teaching heritage to young students. "The Journey through Ancient Miletus" had such pedagogical objectives when displayed in the virtual reality theater of the Foundation of the Hellenic World. This private non-profit cultural organization is funded by Greek businessman Lazaros Efraimoglou, who founded the center in 1993. As its Greek name makes more evident, Κέντρο Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, the organization is committed to the dissemination of a Greater Greece, both chronologically and geographically. Its focus on the Hellenism of Asia Minor, for example, is evident. Given a state monopoly on archaeology, the Foundation of the Hellenic World is idiosyncratic. Virtual reality has been one of its strategic objectives, including the Tholos, an IMAX-type of theater, where a virtual reconstruction of Miletus (in Asia Minor, Turkey) was displayed.

The Foundation's Digital Miletus is the subject of Delia Tzortzaki's essay, The Chronotopes of the Hellenic Past: Virtuality, Edutainment, Ideology," in Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos (Athens, 2008) pp. 141-161. The article situates virtual heritage in theoretical debates over reality, narrative and ideology. Although a little convoluted in its social-scientific vocabulary (diagrams, cognitive concepts, invented vocabularies), the essay lays out all the ramifications of such a project. Unfortunately, the author does not bring into her essay any comparative material outside of Greece. The most direct examples that come to mind are reconstructions by the Getty Museum (Trajan's Forum) and James Packard (Pompey's Theater). These are examples that have scholarly ramifications with the weight of proof and the risk of criticism. What seems to be missing in the Miletus reconstruction is the element of scholarly authorship and accountability. One nice thing about the Foundation of the Hellenic World is that it has given jobs to a large number of unemployed Greek archaeologists. But as employees, I am afraid that they may have receded too much into the background and lost their voice; but you can't cut the hand that feeds you.

The Foundation of the Hellenic World is currently exhibiting a virtual reconstruction of the Athenian Agora. It would be interesting to hear whether Tzortzaki would disucss Athens differently from Miletus. Unlike Miletus, Athens has been the subject of a long tradition of fantastic reconstructions. Some would argue that modern Athens itself is a virtual reenactment of classical Athens. Leo von Klenze's drawings of the Athenian Agora speak the same language as the virtual reconstruction, except that von Klenze got a chance to materialize Athens (and Munich). Unlike Miletus, Athens has been a phantasmagoric topos. Like Rome and Pompei, Athens enters international dreams (from Neoclassicism to Hollywood). Personally, I find the virtual activities of the Foundation of the Hellenic World slightly unoriginal, mimicking western museums (like the Getty), using expensive computer software (that state organizations cannot afford to pay licenses for) and plugging into visual languages already defined by the discipline of animation (Silicon Valley). The Athenian Agora has been the subject of archaeological investigation by the American School since 1931. John Camp (excavation director) and Richard Anderson (project architect) were consulted in the reconstruction. I would be curious to know about the interface between archaeologist, architect and programmer. But these are issues at the input not the output of virtual reality. Tzortzaki gives us much food for thought for the output.

Digital reconstructions of Miletus or Athens will soon become undermined by the monolith of Google. Just as Google is digitizing every book in the world, it is also venturing into historical reconstructions. Rome is first. For nearly 30 years,
Bernard Frischer (University of Virginia) has been consulting with Google's first historical city. The first version contains 7,000 buildings, 250 of which are extremely detailed (based on 1:1 scale models built at the labs of UCLA). The Rome Reborn project, of course, has its 3D predecessor in the model of Rome at the age of Constantine, housed in the EUR Museum. Unlike digital Miletus and digital Agora, Google's model will be the subject of criticism and improvement. "The great thing about digital technology," said Frischer, is that it can be updated constantly and "supports different opinions." Dissent of opinion about Greece culture does not seem to be the Foundation of the Hellenic World's primary mission. For more information about Google's venture, see Elisabetta Povoledo, "Exploring Old Rome without Air (or Time) to Travel," The New York Times (Nov. 13, 2008), p. C11.

For additional reviews from Singular Antiquity, see here.

Alison Frantz Studies

In the Spring of 2006, I spent three months at Princeton looking through Alison Frantz's Papers. I focused especially on her correspondence because it revealed the intersection between the realms of aesthetics and of scholarly production. This evidence was crucial in my attempts to reconstruct the cultural environment of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) during the critical juncture in the 1920s when Byzantine archaeology was invented as a discipline. Alison Frantz is a fascinating figure. She was more than the ASCSA's resident expert on all things Early Christian and Byzantine. Between 1933 and 1968, she was also the ASCSA's official photographer, especially at the Agora. Very little has been published on Alison Frantz's life. Sadly, the best biographical sketch is her obituary written by her good friend and neighbor James McCredie, "Alison Frantz: 27 September 1903-1 February 1995: Biographical Memoirs," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144 (2000), pp. 214-217. Tragically, Frantz was hit by a truck outside her grocery store at Princeton and did not survive. In the last couple of years, I have been looking at Frantz's excavation notebooks and the Administrative Records of the ASCSA. I have been building a richer and richer portrait of the personage. I will not recount all the amazing things that make up the tremendous figure of Alison Frantz.

Last week, I had the pleasure of a telephone conversation with Alexandra Moschovi, a scholar who has spent a couple of months at Princeton also studying the Frantz Papers. Alexandra Moschovi gave a lecture last year, "Tales of Urbanity in Contemporary Greek Photography" (Hellenic Studies, May 6, 2008), and this year, she holds a Seeger Research Fellowship; her topic is "Redefining Greekness in Photographic Representations of Greece: c. 1920s-1970s." I find Moschovi's preliminary conclusions wonderful and refreshing. Unlike people like me, Moschovi actually specializes in photography and teaches in the Department of Photography, Video, and Digital Imaging at the University of Sunderland. I was also thrilled that Moschovi independently arrived at some similar conclusions that I had drawn. Frantz's photographic production is best known for the spectacular prints that she made for archaeological publications. I believe that after her return to the U.S., Frantz self-fashioned herself as a fine art photographer rather than a field photographer. This makes sense, considering that she stopped taking trench photos in 1968. The two major articles on Frantz's photography reflect this loftier body of work: Amy Papalexandrou and Marie Mauzy, "The Photographs of Alison Frantz: Revealing Antiquity through the Lens," History of Photography 27.2 (2003) pp. 130-143, and Andrew Szegedy-Mazak, "Portrait of a Purist," Archaeology 48.1 (January/February 1995), pp. 58-64. When Papalexandrou was a graduate student at Princeton, she organized Frantz's Papers, so we owe her a great thanks for her work on the invaluable Finding Aid. I feel lucky to have also become friends with Andy Szegedy-Mazak, who is my wife's colleague at Wesleyan University. Although a classical philologist, Andy also works on the early photography of ancient monuments. He has co-edited Antiquity and Photography: Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites (Getty, 2005), and has contributed to Robert McCabe's Greece: Images of an Enchanted Land, 1954-1965 (2006) . His article on Frantz grew out of an exhibition at Princeton.

Interestingly, Frantz's photo archive is split between Athens and Princeton, with Athens having all the fine photos of classical art and architecture. The archive at Princeton is more inclusive. In addition to works of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine subjects, it also contains personal photos, snap shots, travel photos and other such ephemera. Consequently, it offers a wider view of the artist's personality. Moscovi, it seems from our conversation, has been able to trace slight shifts in Frantz's gaze. Moreover, she has been able to reconstruct Frantz's relationship to Greek photographic circles, personalities and organizations. I am simply thrilled that Frantz's archive will receive the attention it deserves from a photographic specialist.

My relationship to Frantz goes back to 1998. A graduate fellowship in her memory is what made it possible for me to spend a year at the ASCSA and the Gennadeion, without which I would have never pursued my research on medieval Greece. And, as a Byzantinist, I have known Frantz's art-historical scholarship quite well (Holy Apostles Church, pottery, manuscript illumination, etc.) When I started studying Frantz as a person, I felt that my interest was idiosyncratic. In the last two years, I have become gleefully aware that I'm not alone; a diverse group of scholars now shares my enthusiasm. I know that Susan Heuck Allen has been studying Frantz's archive (longer than I have), but I'm not aware of her conclusions. Back in 2007, Bob Pounder had a wonderful idea of co-chairing a session (with Allen) on the secret lives of archaeologists at the AIA Meetings in Chicago. The session was not organized. Despoina Lalaki at the New School of Social Research is giving Frantz a fresh look from the point of view of Cold War politics. Now that Alexandra Moschovi has become a Frantz convert, we have grown large enough to organize a conference, or to pull together a memorial volume on her life. In my ideal world, this is how it would look.

Andrew Szegedy-Mazak, on photographing antiquities
Amy Papalexandrou, on Frantz's fine art photos (esp. Byzantine sculpture, spolia, etc.)
Alexandra Moschovi, on Frantz's changing photographic gaze through contacts in Greece
Robert Pounder or James MacCredie, on the life of Alison Frantz, as they knew her in person
Susan Heuck Allen, on Frantz as an excavating woman
Dimitri Gondicas, on acquiring Frantz's archive and her donations to Hellenic Studies
Kostis Kourelis, on Frantz's domestic space and her house excavations
Despoina Lalaki, on Frantz and the Cold War

I am sure I have missed some people. It was therapeutic for me to make the list if only because it shows a sizeable body of work. Two years ago, I couldn't have done it.