Skyros Mines

Back from fieldwork in Greece, and eager to share some ideas. One site of research was the Island of Skyros, where I traced the footsteps of the painter Georg von Peschke. Back in Athens, I was passing through the American School and I ran into Betsey Robinson, who introduced me to Ruth Siddall, the geoarchaeologist from University College, London. Over a glass of wine at Omorfo, Ruth told me about the amazing project of urban geology that she is conducting in London. Among the buildings Ruth has studied is Westminster Cathedral, the premier Neo-Byzantine church in the U.K. that contains no less than 126 different marbles, many of them from Greece. An important figure linking Greek marbles with England was William Brindley, who traveled to Greece in the 1880s and discovered a number of forgotten sources. I thank Ruth for adding a geological dimension to the on-going research on the Byzantine Research Fund at the British School that Amalia Kakissis has initiated with last year's London conference on Byzantium and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

One stunning comment that Ruth Siddall made, however, had to do with the Gennadeion Library, whose architect I have been studying. It seems to Ruth that the interior of the library might be clad with Skyros marble. 

Kountouriotika Refugee Settlement: 1923 Red Cross Films

How is it possible that the first organized humanitarian action by the Greek immigrants in the U.S. could disappear from the annals of history? Although I have not quite verified this by any primary sources, Greek-Americans raised funds in 1923 to build the earliest refugee settlement in Athens. The settlement was known as Emirikon or, more commonly, as Kountouriotika, after Greek Admira (and later President) Paul Kountouriotis, who managed the distribution of the Greek diaspora relief funds. Kountouriotika is a unique settlement. It preceded the refugee housing built by the Refugee Settlement Commission (1923-1930) and the housing blocks built by the Greek government in the 1930s. The most famous of these, the Alexandras Avenue Apartments designed by the Le Corbusier trained Kimon Lascaris (1933-1935), has so dominated the architectural discourse over public housing, that it has eclipsed any interest on its American project across the street. 

The corner of Alexandras and Vasilisis Sofias Avenue has a layered history. It houses Greece's oldest continuously used stadium (for ther Panathenaic Soccer Team) and was inaugurated the same year as the refugee crisis. The Greek American diaspora invested in this corner a second time, paying for the field's light electrification in 1938. The corner is also the site of the infamous Averof Prisons, where political prisoners were held during the Fascist Regime of Metaxas (1937-40) and the colonel junta (1967-74). Like the Kountouriotika settlement, Averof Prisons were torn down in the 1970s.

Although I'm certain there is some Greek scholarship on Kountoriotika, I am surprised that it has not received greater attention. I am grateful to conversations with Jack Davies, who has explored this settlement even further in his archival work and with Alexander Kitroeff, the expert on the Panathenaikos Stadium. The limelight of Kountouriotika is 1923, when it was presented as a model project for humanitarian aid. It was quickly superseded with other projects, such as the refugee settlement at Pangrati, named Vyronas in 1924 (at the centennial of Lord Byron's death). 

My first photographic discovery of Kountouriotika was in the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. During his journey through Greece in 1923, Carpenter took photographed the refugee crisis. In the photo below, he notes: "A refugee city that was built by Greek Americans--A model of cleanliness and order."

This weekend, I became aware of another visual source for the Kountouriotika refugee settlement, thanks to the Greek Red Cross and Stephanie Larson. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has digitized its audiovisual collection and made it available to the public online. The collection includes seven reels documenting the 1923 refugee crisis in Greece. 

The reels offer invaluable evidence for the archaeology of humanitarian relief and, specifically, on the construction of Kountouriotika. The reels were recorded in 1923 by Rodolphe de Reding Biberegg, the ICRC delegate in Greece. De Reding took over the delegation in 1922 after the abdication of King George (Queen Sophia had been the president of the Greek Red Cross and, naturally, resigned). De Reding's activities in Greece are best documented in a recent article by David Rodogno, “The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Humanitarian Politics and Policies in Asia Minor and Greece (1922-1923),” First World War Studies 5:1 (2014), pp. 83-99. De Reding's first accomplishments was to convert the abandoned Stringos light bulb factory into a shelter for 2,500 refugees and to organize numerous soup kitchens. An even greater accomplishment was to manage the construction of Kountouriotika and herald it as a model refugee settlement. It is for this precise paradigmatic reason that the reels were filmed. Rodogno argues that "the construction of this showcase village was supposed to demonstrate to both Greek authorities and international donors that it was possible to find a permanent solution to the settlement of the refugees." (94)

The ICRC film is perhaps the most thorough documentation of this experiment. The settlement included a textile factory, a school, kitchens, a hospital, and a church. The film also shows working textile workers. It also shows the construction of yet another refugee settlement, which I have not yet identified. It is constructed by wood rather than brick. This is the German (Γερμανικά) type of housing, which took its name from the wood that the German government gave to Greece as part of its World War I reparations. Most architectural historians concur that no wooden structure of this type survives today, but I am hopeful that we might have simply not looked hard enough.

I have only began to scratch the surface on the archaeological value of these ICRC films entitled "The Greek-Turkish War: Greece 1923." But first, I provide here a general overview and links of the seven digitized films. Each film has a reference number and a link to its source. The most relevant reels for Kountouriotika are numbers 7, 8, 9, and the end of 10. The description is quoted directly from the ICRC Audiovisual Archive.

V-F-CR-H-00001-5
Individual portraits of all members of the International Commission for the Exchange of Turkish and Greek Civilian and Military Prisoners in front of the ICRC delegation in Athens. Established by the agreement of January 30, 1923 between Greece and Turkey on the exchange of prisoner of war, the commission works from February 27, 1923 (first report) to September 15, 1923 (departure of the ICRC delegate in Smyrna, dr Schatmann). Members: President Colonel Eduard Wildbolz (Swiss RC); Dr. Page (Swiss CR); Dr. Lindsjöe (Swedish CR); Commander J. Cottakis (Greek Gov.); Ali Muzaffer Bey (Turkish Govt) and Paul Schazmann (Intermediate at Smyrna from February to September 1923, made two fact-finding missions to Turkish prisoners of war in Greece in January 1922 and January 1923).

V-F-CR-H-00001-6
The first plans show the embarkation of Turkish refugees on a liner. A second sequence shows a refugee camp at the seaside in which many Turks wait to be embarked. The latest plans show the International Commission for the Exchange of Turkish and Greek Civilian and Military Prisoners in its entirety on the wharf and in front of the ICRC delegation in Athens (same plan as in V F CR-H-00001-5). Members: President Colonel Eduard Wildbolz (Swiss RC); Dr. Page (Swiss CR); Dr. Lindsjöe (Swedish CR); Commander J. Cottakis (Greek Gov.); Ali Muzaffer Bey (Turkish Government) and Paul Schazmann (Intermediary at Smyrna, Feb. 1923, who made two fact-finding missions to Turkish prisoners of war in Greece in January 1922 and January 1923). 

V-F-CR-H-00001-7
The film presents the different stages of the construction of the village "Embirikon" built thanks to the support of the mission of Reding and the subsidies sent by the Greeks of America to permanently lodge part of the refugees in brick houses. The construction of this village by the Greek refugees is the subject of this film .. It shows the work of the various workers (masons, carpenters, carpenters, etc. ..)

V-F-CR-H-00001-8
The film shows several weaving and sewing workshops where girls work. The images also contain two scenes of children's meals. The emblem of the International Union of Help to Children appears in most plans. A map shows children entering one of the brick houses that are being built in V F CR-H-00001-7. 

V-F-CR-H-00001-9
The first plans show the installation of families in the village "Embirikon". We see Rodolphe de Reding. The following plans show the construction of a camp of ten white tents. The latest plans show the construction of a wooden barracks camp, a gift from the Imperial war fund.

V-F-CR-H-00001-10
The film shows King George II and Queen Mary of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in front of the ICRC and International Children's Relief Union delegations in Athens. Following a ceremony of awards ceremony in which the king participates in an amphitheater; hard to know what exactly it is. Finally, the royal couple visit the village "Embirikon"

V-F-CR-H-00001-11
The film shows food coming and going in the Save the Children Fund depot and a visit by two Save the Children Fund delegates from a children's school (or orphanage). The Save the Children Fund sign appears three times in these images.

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Remote Ethnography

Working on vernacular architecture, I've engaged in various loose forms of ethnography. Truth be told, I have become an architectural historian and archaeologist because I prefer working with the stillness and remoteness of mute rocks than the complexities of inner subjectivities that come with people. For years now, I have conducted interviews that fit the category of "salvage ethnography," whose objective is to collect information that is threatened to disappear. I capture audio from informers who are typically the last ones to possess factual and semi-factual knowledge about historical events, experiences, occurrences, and craft practices. Having worked with social worker and historian Bret Weber in the man camps of North Dakota, I know that my ethnography is sloppy. Yet, I continue recording conversations and place my energy in transcribing (rather than theorizing about them). Another laborious part of this process is translating, since many of the interviews are in Greek or at least bilingual. 

I have started to take my ethnography a little more serious as I read more and more anthropological fieldwork on migrant camps, and am study the classic Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd ed., 2011). With methodological issues in the back of my mind, I also embark on an exciting new blog-ethnography.

I use my blog to publish short and preliminary thoughts on fieldwork. The instant and public availability of those posts generate new online conversations with people that encounter me first as a blogger. Consider my post on the Lidoriki Pillbox two weeks ago. This and other posts on the archaeology of Lidoriki have made me a frequent click on folks Googling Lidoriki history. Along with Facebook's social network, the word gets out to people that have information they want to share with me. After contacting each other by email, I interview those informers by phone or Skype.

Just this last week, I have come into contact with two wonderful individuals of the Lidoriki diaspora. One lives in Chicago, the other lives in Denmark. Over two short preliminary conversations, I have collected raw material that would not be available to me in the site of Lidoriki. For instance, I learned that the pillbox was not built during World War II but during the Civil War. "There were dozens of these bunkers in the village that were torn down. This one was in private property. It was in someone's field and continued to be used for chickens and goats after the war for 30-40 years. The others were in public space and were torn down. People took the material and reused it." Now this information about a village in Greece, was collected by me on a telephone in Philadelphia, from someone on a cellphone while riding a bus in Copenhagen. 

Social immersion and access to "thick descriptions" is the ethnographer's goal. This cannot be the case with the archaeologist, who must spend his limited resources in silence documenting buildings, walls, objects, landscapes. Globalization has thrown a wrench into the ideals of anthropological fieldwork. The difficulty of the anthropologist's immersion into social groups who are themselves in motion is most evident in refugee fieldwork, see Gregory Feldman "nonlocal ethnography," in Migration Apparatus (Stanford, 2012, pp. 180-198). Equally interesting is Dan Miller's new project on the anthropology of Global Social Media.

I am still torn between the tensions of material versus oral culture. The tension is becoming more vivid as I delve deeper into the archaeology of diaspora and the archaeology of refugee camps. I am envious of more theoretically-minded archaeologists, who have done a more complete turn towards ethnography. But they have sacrificed material documentation. Surveying publications over the archaeology of the contemporary world, one is struck by the great volume of theorizing and experiential describing versus a shortage of data. Although I must sharpen my ethnographic skills, I can make greater contributions in mapping or spatial documentation. I guess, my ethnography is subservient to my spatial documentation. And it's important to understand that shortcoming. Yet the question remains. What will I do with all these hours of interviews and transcriptions?


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Wool and Rubble Walls: Domestic Archaeology in the Medieval Peloponnese

Back in March 26, 2015, I participated in a conference on Byzantine textiles at Dumbarton Oaks, "Liminal Fabrics: Furnishing Textiles in Byzantium and Early Islam." I made the argument that piles of rubble walls and ceramics from archaeological survey tell a much better story about medieval textiles (through production) than the few surviving pieces in museum collections (through artistic analysis). 

I have just finished writing up the essay and submitted it for review in the conference publication, edited by Gudrun Bühl, director of the Dumbarton Oaks Museum. I celebrate International Open Access Week by posting my draft.

Wool and Rubble Walls: Domestic Archaeology in the Medieval Peloponnese by Kostis Kourelis on Scribd

This is the first paper that I have written entirely on iCloud's Pages, integrating laptop, tablet, and smart phone in one process. The paper was never printed out in hard copy or read as a Word document.

Velouchovo Cave

In 2014, the Lidoriki Project concentrated on the survey of the acropolis of Ancient Kallion which housed the medieval fortified settlement of Velouchovo. The site was surveyed by Petros Themelis in the 1970s during the salvage excavations of the Mornos Reservoir, which ultimately submerged the modern village. In the 1980s, the Dutch Aetolian survey carried out a pedestrian surface survey (Bommeljé et al. 1987) and Joanita Vroom published the definitive study of the medieval occupation, where she identified Velouchovo as the medieval location of Lidoriki (Vroom 1993). Our job in 2014 was to create a detailed architectural study of the medieval kastro with aerial photogrammetry and measured survey. We produced a high resolution 3D-model of the site, seen above (Brenningmeyer, Kourelis and Katsaros 2015).

Although we did not conduct an artifact survey (as the Dutch had done in 1988-1991), we made close topographical studies. On the southwest slopes of the citadel, we identified the mouth of a cave. And right in front of the cave, we found two bullet casings. The initials "SMI" belong to Societa Metallurgica Italiana, the ammunitions company that armed Mussolini's invasion and occupation of Greece. After the Italian surrender in September 1943, the Greek partisans acquired a large number of weapons from the retreating Italians. This assemblage might, therefore, be interpreted as a site of partisan resistance. I would not want to make too many conclusions, but it helps us reconstruct the modern topography of the region. 

We photographed the two Italian bullets on graph paper (1/4 in grid).

Not far from the cave of Velouchovo, the British soldiers Chris Woodhouse and Eddy Myers were parachuted on September 28, 1942 to join the resistance. One of the caves in which they lived (near village Stromi) is now a national monument to the Greek resistance, commemorated every summer on July 6. 

Myers give detailed descriptions of the material culture of their precarious camps from the "wigwams," shelters built out of broken fir branches to the caves that were regularly used to store supplies and ammunition. Myers describes two caves.

"We had spent the previous night in pouring rain, huddled inside our parachute-rigged tent. We had the greatest difficulty in keeping this improvised structure intact, and one of it was blown away. The parachutes were poor protection against the rain, which soon seeped through and dripped on us whenever we were lying. We decided therefore to move into the cave and make it not only our store but or home as well. It was a funny home. I felt just like an animal wriggling my way in and out of it. But once inside, it was comparatively comfortable, even though it was poorly lit by the narrow beam of light which came through its tortuous entrance." (Myers 1955, p. 44).

"Our new cave had a wide entrance which let in plenty of daylight. It was far more congenial than the dark cavern-like one of the high stony plateau of Prophet Elias. Nearly an hour's climb from Stromi it was situated on a wooded mountain-side at the foot of a rocky escarpment about fifty feet high. It opened on the small patch of ground, around which closely packed fir trees obscured it from the opposite side of the valley. (Myers 1955, p. 49)

Caves need not be associated strictly with partisan activity. As in many mountainous regions in Greece, caves served the first line of shelter at times of danger. We know from our interviews at Lidoriki that during the burning of the village by the Nazis, the entire population withdrew to caves as far as 13 miles away. A more famous retreat into caves is found in the narratives of Nicholas Cage's Eleni (1985).

Although there is plenty of narratives on the German Occupation and the Civil War in Greece, there is little archaeology. One is hard-pressed to find a systematic or intentional fieldwork on war sites from the Greek War of Independence to the present.  A couple of new publications suggest the blossoming of a new discipline. I am grateful to a circle of socially active archaeologists for sharing exciting new work coming out of Greece. Here are four projects.

1.    In the field of pedestrian survey archaeology, the Antikythera Survey Project discusses a military assemblage found on the coast of the island (Bevan and Connely 2013, p. 78, and fig. 17). 

2.    Demetris Papadopoulos has surveyed the territories in Greece's northern border, the Prespa lake region land (Papadopoulos 2010, 2016)

3.    Although not a field project, Susan Hueck Allen has been mining US government archives for topographical, photographic, and personal information about the American involvement during the resistance. Allen presented her new research at the 2015 MGSA symposium (Allen 2015).

4.   Agni Karademou and Michalis Kontos have been conducting research in caves used by the Greek resistance in Macedonia. They presented their finds in the 2016 Architectural Dialogues conference in Lesvos (Karademou and Kontos 2016).

My sense is that the the archaeology of the contemporary world has caught up in Greece. There are many more studies about memory, historiography, and the intentional suppression of materiality. Yannis Hamilakis's essay on Makronissos opened up a new chapter on the study of Greek national memory a little over a decade ago (Hamilakis 2002). As an archaeological community, we must take up Hamilakis's challenge and see how much we can push the material documentation of this new socially-engaged practice. I feel that some day (maybe not yet) Makronissos might become the subject of an archaeological survey. 

REFERENCES

Allen, Susan Hueck. 2015. "Like Pulling Teeth with EAM," 24th Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium, Atlanta (Oct. 16, 2015)

Bevan, Andrew and James Connolly. 2013. Mediterranean Islands, Fragile Communities and Persistent Landscapes: Antikythera in Long-Term Perspective, Cambridge.

Bommeljé, S. et al. 1987. Aetolia and the Aetolians: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of a Greek Region, Utrecht

Brenningmeyer, Todd, Kostis Kourelis and Miltiadis Katsaros. 2015. “The Lidoriki Project - Low Altitude Aerial Photography, GIS, and Traditional Survey in Rural Greece,” in CAA 2015: Keep the Revolution Going. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, ed. Stefano Campana, Roberto Scopigno, Gabriella Carpentiero, and Marianna Cirillo, pp. 979-988, Oxford.

Cage, Nicholas. 1985. Eleni, New York.

Hamilakis, Yannis. 2002. “The Other ‘Parthenon’: Antiquity and National Memory at Makronissos,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 20:2, pp. 307-338.

Karademou, Agni and Michalis Kontos. 2016. “Αρχαιολογία του Ελληνικού Εμφυλίου Πόλεμου: η περίπτωση των σπηλαίων της Δυτικής Μακεδονίας,” Σύνορα/Όρια. Αρχαιολογικοί Διάλογοι 2016, Mytilene (April 15, 2016).

Myers, E. C. W. 1955. Greek Entanglement, London.

Papadopoulos, Dimitris C. 2010. “Σχηματίζοντας τη λίμνη: Εμπειρία και διαμεσολάβηση του τοπίου στις Πρέσπες,” PhD diss University of the Aegean, Mytilini.

Papadopoulos, Dimitris C. 2016. “Ecologies of Ruin: (Re)bordering, Ruination, and Internal Colonialism in Greek Macedonia, 1913-2013,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 20, pp. 627-640.

Vroom, Joanita. 1993. “The Kastro of Veloukhovo (Kallion): A Note on the Surface Finds,” Pharos 1, pp. 113-138.

Lidoriki Pillbox

One of the main themes in our survey of the deserted village Aigition/Strouza has been the archaeology of destruction in World War II, when the village was burned and its residents shipped to a concentration camp in Athens. As we process the material for publication, I lament the lack of comparative studies (in contrast to Spain, U.K., Norway). In order to add to the discussion, I process the preliminary drawings from the World War II and Civil War pillbox in Lidoriki. 

The WWII pillbox is located on the northern edge of the village; it controls the valley and the main national road towards Karpenisi to the north and Lamia to the northeast (we think this stretch of road was constructed in the 1880s). It sits on the N side of the road as one exits the village, at location Lat/Long N 38°31'44.0, E 22°12'10.06.5" We have driven by this structure every day on our way out of Lidoriki, but finally this summer we stopped to mearure it.

The pillbox is circular (3.50 m. diameter x 2.20 m height). Pillbox typology is well worked out in northern Europe, but I do not know of any Greek study. They are very popular to photograph and comment on but rarely surveyed. Thus, in the spirit of Paul Virilo's 1965 exhibition Bunker Archaeology, at the Pompidou Center, bunkers are objects of sublime photographic response rather than physical documentation.

Lidoriki's pillbox is most interesting in its constructional bilingualism. Only the upper part of the structure fits the typology of reinforced concrete common to pillboxes. The lower part of the structure is built in traditional stone. The upper structure required form-work, steel, and precise measurement, expertise and material beyond the village. The lower structure belongs to a craft tradition practiced by local masons. We have surveyed countless 19th- and 20th-century storage rooms (apothekes) using this technique in the area. In its material stratigraphy, it speaks of an interaction between indigenous and external forces, traditional and modern modes. 

The Lidoriki pillbox needs more work on our part. We haven't yet collected all the local histories to help us define the building's chronological horizon. We do not know whether it was built before or after the village was burned by the Nazis and how it functioned during the Civil War. We also need to study the post-abandonment processes. The pillbox was repurposed after the war. The gun slits were filled with brick (left) and stone (but when?) 

As the photo illustrates above, the Lidoriki pillbox belongs in a rich historical landscape. No doubt, it is a ghostly reminder of military trauma and it provides a philosophical contemplation of modernity (in the spirit of Virilio). At the same time, however, it is a complex physical artifact of this world and warrants the stratigraphic disentanglement that we lavish on ancient ruins. But survey is work. Next summer, we hope to expend some work in mapping the building as an extensive site. 

The Lidoriki Project is a collaborative teaching laboratory directed by Miltos Katsaros (Athens Polytechnic University), Todd Brenningmeyer (Maryville University) and myself. Every summer, it brings together Greek and American students to collaborate with the local community in the archaeological study of its late modern heritage destroyed by the Mornos Reservoir to water Athens and, more recently, by bauxite mining.

Aegina Orphanage 1829-1834

I argue that we need to embark on a refugee archaeology in order to confront the current crisis head-on, on the one hand, but also to make up for lost ground in having ignored the modern Greek periods as archaeologically valuable. There are three foci for our historical archaeology 1820s/1920s/1940s and the refugee crisis following the nation-states three greatest moments of crisis before the 2000s.

I have been trying to collect a state-of-the-field on these three loci. Focusing on the 1820s, we have the refugee settlement of Pronoia in Nauplion as the best documented by historical sources (Kardamitsi-Adami 1994). As far as I know, there hasn't been a systematic survey of the neighborhood assessing how much of the urban fabric dates to the initial phase. 

Aegina has some prominence, too, but it is not so well documented. We know from Kapodistrias and Samuel G. Howe that the refugees inhabited the islands caves and Mycenaean burials (a topic for a future post). Greek philanthropism is concentrated on Aegina's orphanage, which became a prison. Vasilis Petrakos has just published man primary sources about the archaeology of Kapodistrias and includes the plans below from a 1991 survey of the building (Petrakos 2015, v. 1, pp. 77-78). 

The orphanage of Aegina was Kapodistrias' largest building project constructed in October 1828 and occupied in April 1829 (thus at the same time as Howe's Washingtonia). It was designed by Theodoros Vallianos, a native of Cephalonia who trained in Russia. The decorative treatment of doors, windows, and corners has Baroque sensibilities popular in Europe (and especially the Ionian). The building was designed around a large courtyard, and a central axis aligning the entrance with a chapel. In addition to dormitories, the orphanage housed its own school and craft workshops for carpentry, bookbinding, tanning, and textiles. It also housed the nation's first library, printing press, and archaeological museum (before it moved to what is now known as the Old Museum). 

This ambitious philanthropic agenda did not last. Only five years after opening, the orphans were moved to Nauplio, and the building was converted into a military school. In 1841, it was converted into a quarantine hospital, and in 1860, it was converted into a psychiatric hospital. For three years, 1866-1869, it served refugee again, this time from the Cretan war. The old orphanage is best known for its last and longest phase, 1879-1984, as a prison. During this period, thousands of political dissenters (as well as criminals) were incarcerated here and, in some cases, executed here. Kapodistrias' humanitarianism turned full circle with a most repressive prison in Greek history.

The continuity between institutions of social correction and social punishment is not unusual (no need to read Foucault here), but it raises a number of questions that warrant an archaeological lens.

REFERENCES:

Kardamitsi-Adami, M. 1994. “Πρόνοια, ο πρώτος προσφυγικός συνοικισμός της ελεύθερης Ελλάδος,” Archaiologia 51 pp. 35-46

Petrakos, Vasileios Ch. 2015. Ημερολόγιο αρχαιολογικό. Τα χρόνια του Καποδίστρια 1828-1832, 3 vols., Athens: Vivliotheke tes en Athenais archaiologikes etaireias.

Doxiadis: The Archaeology of WWII Destruction

We have started working on the book manuscript for the deserted village of Aigition/Strouza. This is the site that we have been surveying for the last four years, a village founded around 1850, with many houses built with remittances from the U.S. in the 1910, burned by the Germans in 1943 (its population taken into a concentration camp in Athens), reoccupied and abandoned slowly.

There is very little archaeological work on one of the most important phenomena in the Greek countryside, the burning of 1/4 of all standing Greek villages during World War II (according to the Nuremberg Trials: 1,600 out of 6,500). With all attention place on reconstruction and the scars of the Civil War, this is an archaeological chapter that has staid closed in Greece. One of the important figures in the documentation of destruction was Constantine Doxiadis, director of urban planning in Athens in 1937, and director of the reconstruction. Doxiadis is best known for his ekistics movement and his planning of major cities like Islamabad or, closer to my home, Philadelphia's Eastwick neighborhood.

One of the lesser known activities of Doxiadis are his documentation of villages. During the war, he served in the resistance and published the only underground architectural journal of occupied Greece. After the war, he became director of the Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction, where he sent out architects throughout Greece to collect data on villages and architecture. This led to the publication of a series of pamphlets in English as "Series of Publications from the Undersecratary's Office for Reconstruction" in 1947. These publications coincide with Doxiadis' role as Greek representative at the United Nations International Conference of Housing, Planning and Reconstruction in San Francisco, etc. Reconstruction in Greece, of course, got wrapped up in the Marshall Plan and the Cold War, which gets us into tricky geopolitical waters.

In a 2010 conference "Front to Rear: Architecture during World War II" held at the IFA, Ioanna Theocharopoulou, urged us to reconsider "Constantinos A. Doxiadis: The War and the Archive," (watch the paper here). I love Theocharopoulou's thesis and I have followed up the publications. I would love to visit the Doxiadis archive in Athens in some future point. 

Destruction of Towns and Villages in Greece (Series of Publications from the Undersecratary's Office for Reconstruction No. 11, Athens: 1947) contains invaluable raw data, such as a location map of all destroyed villages, and detailed destruction maps for Attica, Piraeus, Chania, Kalavryta, Larissa, and the Corinth canal. These are ready to be georeferenced in GIS and taken into the field, so that we can initiate a systematic archaeology of crisis. The first thing I'd like to do is tackle Kalavryta, the best known of massacres (after perhaps Distomon).

I am working on an article with a wonderful team of collaborators on locating the refugee settlement of Washingtonia, founded in 1829 by Samuel Gridley Howe. David Pettergrew has published a post on the liberation of Corinth and I have promised to send him Doxiadis' map of the location spots of all the damage on the Corinth canal. He tells me that he already has other reports, and I'm curious if they two are consistent.

Below, I post the map of Kalavryta, in case anyone wants to get a GIS head-start.

Cretan Black Lives Matter

There is an interesting intersection between Black Lives Matter and Greek refugee camps. The exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey after the 1922 Asia Minor disaster, lead into the massive deportation of Greece's African population. Having been brought to Greece as slaves during the Ottoman Empire, many became free and congregated in urban enclaves in Greek cities. One such enclave was "The Black Caves" on the slopes of the Acropolis in Athens. Thanks to Michael Ferguson's research, we know a lot more about the African neighborhood of Chania, Crete. During the 2009 Modern Greek Studies Association Conference in Vancouver, Ferguson presented one of the most interesting papers, “The Subsaharan Africans of Chania Crete in the 19th Century: A Comparative Perspective.” 

The published version of the paper appeared as “Enslaved and Emancipated Africans on Crete,” in Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean, ed. Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno, (Cairo, 2008), pp. 171-195. [I have PDF]

It is from this paper that I take the photo above, which is of an African refugee camp in Chania from ca. 1900. Why would Africans in Crete live in a refugee camp? Documented as late as the 1880s, freed African slaves had established their own quarter in Chania. We know very little about the architecture of this settlement, only that the houses were square and that they had flat roofs (very much like North African adobe houses). After a long series of wars, Greeks liberated Crete from the Ottomans in 1898. Neither Greek nor Ottoman, the freed Africans found themselves in the mercy of ethnic binaries. Their quarters were burned down by Greeks who saw them as Muslim. The picture above, shows the African Greeks as internally displaced peoples within the island that they had once called home, living in tents, around 1900. 

I do not know much about the topography of Chania to figure out where this might be. In the distance, you see the barracks that were taken over by Italians after the Ottomans were expelled.

During the 1922 exchange of population between Greece and Turkey, these Africans were displaced to Turkey (where they had no connection). A very small number defied the deportations and staid in Crete. They were studied by Charidimos Papadakis, The Africans of Crete: Halikoutis (Athens, 2008)

Papadakis reports on the last Afro-Cretan survivor whom he met, Salis Chelidonakis (1884-1967), pictured here. Once again, this is all from Michael Ferguson's research. What I'd like to do is add some archaeological specificity to the photograph above. And I need help from friends with Cretan topographical credentials.

Finding Washingtonia

I have been enjoying the digital conversation following my post on Washingtonia, the first refugee camp in Greece, built by Samuel Howe (shown here, about 30 years after his youthful work in Corinth)

I have this crazy idea that if I digitally pool the ground expertise of Tim Gregory, Guy Sanders, Tom Galant, Bill Caraher, Dave Pettegrew, Richard Rothaus, Hector Williams, Dimitri Nakassis, and James Herbst, we will locate the site of Washingtonia remotely. Toward this digital conversation, I transcribe two documentary details (which Tom has in his file cabinet back in San Diego and not in Athens) from Franklin B. Sanborn (journalist, friend of Emerson, member of the Secret Six) and Laura H. Richards (Howe's daughter). 

The first document was found by Sanborn in the letters between Howe and Horace Mann, and quoted Howe directly:

"Afterwards I applied to the Government, and obtained a large tract of land upon the Isthmus of Corinth, where I founded a colony of exiles. We put up cottages, procured seed, cattle, and tools, and the foundations of a flourishing village were laid. Capo d’Istria had encouraged me in the plan of the colony, and made some promises of help. The Government granted ten thousand stremmata of land to be free from taxes for five years: but they could not give much practical help. I was obliged to do everything, and had only the supplies sent out by the American committees to aid me. The colonists, however, cooperated, and everything went finely. We got cattle and tools, ploughed and prepared the earth, got up a school-house and a church. Everything went on finely, and we extended our domain over to the neighboring port of Cenchraea, where we had cultivated ground and a harbor. This was perhaps the happiest part of my life. I was alone among the colonists, who were all Greeks. They knew I wanted to help them, and they let me have my own way. I had one civilized companion for awhile, David Urquhard, the eccentric Englishman, afterwards M. P. and pamphleteer. I had to journey much to and from Corinth, Napoli, etc. always on horseback, or in boat, and often by night. It was a time and place where law was not; and sometimes we had to defend ourselves against armed and desperate stragglers from the bands of solider now breaking up. We had many ‘scrimmages,’ and I had several narrow escapes with life. In one affair Urquhart showed extraordinary pluck and courage, actually disarming and taking prisoner two robbers, and marching them before him into the village. I labored here day and night, in season and out, and was governor, legislator, clerk, constable, and everything but patriarch; for, though I was young, I took to no maiden, nor ever thought about womankind but once. The Government (or rather, Capo d’Istria, the President) treated the matter liberally—for a Greek—and did what he could to help me." (Sanborn 1891, p. 79-80; Howe 1906, vol. 1, p. 365-366)

The second document is not in Howe's words. Sanborn summarizes some topographical information based on the correspondence between Howe and Kapodistrias, which he saw in 1870.

"I found at Athens, in 1870, the correspondence between Capo d’Istria and Dr. Howe on this subject printed in the great volumes of the unfortunate President’s correspondence which his brother edited long afterwards. The colony was near the present railway station of Hexamilia, on the way from the new town of Corinth to Argos. It extended southeast from Hexamilia towards Cenchraea, and was nearer to the Isthmian sanctuary than to New Corinth, which was only founded in 1858. Old Corinth lay on the northwest side of Acro-Corinth, from Dr. Howe’s village." (Sanborn 1891, p. 79-80; Howe 1906, vol. 1, p. 365-366)

So, if we were to search for the site of Washingtonia, we need to start from the Hexamilia train station. My sense is that the houses of this camp were huts made out of wood. But knowing that a church and a school house were also built increases the chances of visible masonry remains above ground. I zoom into Google Maps and find myself at 37°53'57.16"N , 22°54'28.45"E where the railroad crosses the main street. The area is industrial. Here I leave my Corinthian topographers to take over.

These sources reveal a couple of additional characters in the story. First is the Scottish politician David Urquhart who assisted Howe in the operations of the camp (there might be some further clues in his papers at Baillol College). Second is an unnamed local woman with whom Howe had a relationship. I am reading the new biography of Howe's wife, by Elaine Showalter, where I learned about the relationship with the Corinthian woman. "Although he was repelled by the Greek tribal women, whom he found coarse, illiterate, and ugly (moreover, he wrote primly, they did not wear stays [corsets]), Howe probably had his first sexual experiences in Greece. He occasionally admitted in his journal that he had been aroused by seeing the body of a young camp follower, “ a most elegant young creature,” and even confessed to getting involved with a woman while he was doing relief work in Corinth, although the Greek government, unsurprisingly, ‘treated the matter liberally.” (Showalter 2016, p. 29).

REFERENCES

Howe, Samuel Gridley. 1906. Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, ed. Laura E. Richards, Boston: Dana Estes and Company.

Sanborn, Franklin. 1891. Dr. S. G. Howe: The Philanthropist, New York: Funk and Wagnalls.

Showalter, Elaine. 2016. The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe: A Biography, New York: Simon Schuster.

Migrant and Refugee Camp Catalog, Mainland, Greece

Archaeologists of the Greek landscape can deploy their analytical tools in studying settlements to document current migrant and refugee camps. Consider what Adrian Meyers did with the archaeology of Guantanamo Bay (World Archaeology 2010). The UNHCR has just made this easier through a cartographic portal (here and here) that also includes individual camp reports (not all current). Since the data is difficult to sort through, I have created a working list of locations for 56 current sites in Central Greece. I am interested in the mainland sites as planned constructed places (different from the emergency sites of Lesvos and the Aegean Islands).

I don't know if this is useful to anyone, but here is what I plan to do with all entries. Take the Lat/Lon coordinates (simply copy/paste) into Google Earth. This will give aerial view of the camp at varying resolution. Depending on when the last satellite image of that particular region had been taken, one may or may not yet see the camp. The precise location provides a starting point for further remote sensing and for the beginnings of an analysis of each camp's spatial particularities. For instance, we can see (in most cases) the development of the site since about 2004. With street view (if camp is located on central road) one can even monitor the current situation three-dimensionally. This is not easy. It will take lots and lots of cartographic analysis. But we must start somewhere. The numbers below are as follows. Site number, Site name (using UNCHR naming to avoid confusion), GPS Latitude, GPS Longitude, Capacity of inhabitants, Current number of inhabitants, Date that camp opened, and Province. The UNCHR makes it clear that these are numbers provided by the Greek government and have not been independently verified. The UNCHR keeps track of the population figures. The numbers in my list are from the mid-September update. 

NO	NAME	LAT	LONG	CAPACITY	CURRENT	OPENED	PROVINCE
1	Agios Andreas	38.0627	23.9877	200	176	3/8/16	Attica
2	Elefsina	38.0314	23.491	346	359		Attica
3	Eleonas	37.9841	23.6963	2500	2183	8/16/15	Attica
4	Elliniko I (Hockey)	37.8978	23.7219	1400	941	2/25/16	Attica
5	Elliniko II (West/Olympic Arrivals)	37.8998	23.7263	1400	802	9/28/15	Attica
6	Elliniko III (Baseball Stadium)	37.8974	23.7292	1300	739	2/29/16	Attica
7	Lavrio	37.7031	24.0335	400	320	3/14/16	Attica
8	Lavrio (Accomodation facility)	37.7128	24.0542	600	441		Attica
9	Malaksa	38.2393	23.7945	1500	905	3/8/16	Attica
10	Piraeus Port	37.9398	23.6243	0	0		Attica
11	Rafina	38.0087	23.9952	120	89		Attica
12	Schisto	37.9803	23.5936	2000	950	2/22/16	Attica
13	Skaramangas port	38.0048	23.5891	3200	3450	4/11/16	Attica
14	Victoria Square	37.9932	23.7298	0	0		Attica
15	Oionfyta	38.3236	23.6288	600	680	4/13/16	Central Greece
16	Ritsona	38.3869	23.5046	1000	665	3/13/16	Central Greece
17	Thermopiles	38.7972	22.5432	500	488	3/3/16	Central Greece
18	Koutsochero	39.6148	22.248	1500	0	3/20/26	Thessaly
19	Kipselochori	39.776	22.5129	600	126	6/23/16	Thessaly
20	Trikala (Atlantic)	39.5561	21.7949	360	277	7/28/16	Thessaly
21	Volos-Mosas	39.3816	22.8517	200	135	4/14/16	Thessaly
22	Alexandreia	40.6354	22.454	1200	610	3/25/16	Central Macedonia
23	Cherso	41.0945	22.772	4000	1767	2/28/16	Central Macedonia
24	Derveni (Dion-ABETE)	40.7642	22.9763	400	174	7/25/16	Central Macedonia
25	Derveni - Alexil	40.7244	22.9771	850	791	5/25/16	Central Macedonia
26	Diavata	40.7009	22.8639	2500	949	2/24/16	Central Macedonia
27	Giannitsa	40.7643	22.4467	900	0	3/21/16	Central Macedonia
28	Kalochori - Iliadi	40.6525	22.8527	500	487	5/21/16	Central Macedonia
29	Lagkadikia - UNHCR	40.6291	23.2453		787	3/21/16	Central Macedonia
30	Nea Kavala	40.9906	22.6248	4200	1975	2/28/16	Central Macedonia
31	Oreokastro	40.7009	22.9027	1500	1294	4/28/16	Central Macedonia
32	Pieria (Camping Nireas)	40.178	22.554	400	395	2/25/16	Central Macedonia
33	Pieria (Ktima Iraklis)	40.2559	22.3675	200	49	3/28/16	Central Macedonia
34	Pieria (Petra Olybou)	40.1953	22.3229	1400	1230	4/11/16	Central Macedonia
35	Serres (KEGE)	41.0724	23.5474	600	512	8/5/16	Central Macedonia
36	Sinatex - Kavalari	40.6733	23.0832	500	308	5/27/16	Central Macedonia
37	Sindos - Frakaport	40.6659	22.8337	600	550	5/25/16	Central Macedonia
38	Sindos - Karamanlis building	40.6452	22.8242	600	573	5/21/16	Central Macedonia
39	Softex	40.6701	22.8748	1900	1339	5/25/16	Central Macedonia
40	Thessaloniki Port	40.58	22.8835	0	0	3/17/16	Central Macedonia
41	Vagiohori	40.7131	23.3792	631	210	5/26/16	Central Macedonia
42	Vasilika	40.5016	23.0983	1500	1273	6/14/16	Central Macedonia
43	Veria (Armatolou-Kokkinou)	40.5154	22.2083	440	330	3/26/16	Central Macedonia
44	Chalkero	40.956	24.457	350	281	4/11/16	Eastern Macedonia Thrace
45	Drama	41.1714	24.069	550	200	3/1/16	Eastern Macedonia Thrace
46	Kavala (Perigiali)	40.9469	24.4294	270	119	8/5/16	Eastern Macedonia Thrace
47	Kozani (Leukovrisi Stadium)	40.299	21.794	400	215	2/22/16	Western Macedonia
48	Doliana	39.8985	20.5783	400	205	3/15/16	Epirus
49	Filipiada	39.2244	20.873	700	421	3/18/16	Epirus
50	Katsika Ioanninon	39.6077	20.9023	1500	739	3/16/16	Epirus
51	Katsika Ioanninon (EMAK)	39.6998	20.773	250	239		Epirus
54	Konitsa	40.0494	20.7493	200	167	3/15/16	Epirus
55	Tsepelovo	39.8849	20.8003	200	142	4/16/16	Epirus
56	Andravidas	37.9384	21.2069	300	246	3/31/16	Western Greece

Context: In March 2016, Greece's northern neighbors closed their borders to refugees and migrants. Approximately 57,000 individuals could not reach their intended destinations in Northern Europe and were effectively stuck in a country they did not want to be in, and a country that was not prepared to host them. A situation that had already escalated into a humanitarian crisis took an unusual turn towards long-term settlement rather than temporary passage. The closing of borders, exclusionary foreign policy, and a deal struck between the EU and Turkey on March 18, 2016 changed the spatial character of Greece’s migrants and refugee management. Before March, the humanitarian crisis was concentrated on the islands of the Aegean, where migrants and refugees landed in great number, and where they had to process their initial paperwork. The deal with Turkey gave control of those points of arrival to Frontex, EU’s coast guard. Frontex coordinates and control the Moria reception center in Lesvos and polices the waters between Greek and Turkey. The 57,000 refugees and migrants already trapped in Greece became de facto a Greek internal affair. Initially, the landlocked refugees created ad hoc camps with a large concentration at the rail depot and border control at Eidomeni. The Greek government’s solution to this new phase of the crisis was a strategy of decentralization. Greece’s incapacity to process even the minimum number of asylum seekers in the early 2000s was compounded by the 2009 debt crisis. Without the bureaucratic, logistical, or financial infrastructure to solve the humanitarian crisis in a centralized manner, the Greek government initiated a decentralized plan of dispersing its new migrant population across the provinces in newly erected camps. In March 2016, there were 26 camps, but in August that number had grown to 70.