Surveying the Greek Chora. The Black Sea Region in a Comparative Perspective. Aarhus 2006 (original) (raw)
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This paper examines the ways in which the study of oral history sources can help re-evaluate results of past archaeological surveys and help plan future ones. The case for this study is the surveys done at and around Komana, a multi-layered site situated in the central Black Sea region in Turkey. Specifically, the sites identified as Byzantine are taken into account in the light of oral history records created following two important events in recent history. These two events are nineteenth-century economically driven migration of Christians into the region around Komana and the dislocation/perishing of Armenian and Greek inhabitants of the region during and following World War I. While the former prompted a "rediscovery" of many abandoned medieval sites, the collective trauma of the latter resulted in the creation of two extremely rich sources for the study of local history/topography: Armenian memory books and Greek Oral Tradition Archive, now preserved in Athens. The paper will attempt to bring together oral history and archaeology, identify possible settlement types and locations in relation to descriptions of the rural landscape in these historical sources and create a guide for surveyors while re-visiting previously detected sites or predicting the locations of new ones.
istros the case of istros may well provide a good example concerning the problem of the territories of the greek cities. 1 Founded by miletos in the mid 7th century BC or soon thereafter, 2 istros was settled on the gulf that later became the lagoon of razelm-Sinoe, after geomorphologic transformations changed the ancient landscape. 3 at the time of its foundation, istros probably had very little territory, since the emergence of a proper chora, according to the present archaeological testimony, seems to first have occurred two or three generations later. 4 The coming of the Greeks: the archaeological evidence Before the coming of the milesian colonists, the region between the Danube and the Black Sea (Dobruja) belonged to the diffusion area of the third phase of a middle hallstatt culture, named after the eponymous site, the Babadag culture. 5 archaeological research has revealed the fortified sites of Babadag and Beidaud as well as a number of unfortified settlements on both sides of the Danube, which belonged to this culture (Fig. 1). none of these settlements , however, were truly located on the coast. it is known that the end of the Babadag culture was violent, even if we are still ignorant of the circumstances and the exact date (perhaps the end of the 8th or more probably the beginning of the 7th century BC). accordingly, these sites, whether fortified or not, were destroyed. this destruction, however, seems not to have been related to the coming of the milesians, since, on the one hand, these settlements were not in the region which came to be included in the chora of istros and, on the other hand, nothing was found among these settlements which should be ascribed to the greeks. taking this preliminary result into account, the map of the rural sites which are to be assigned to the milesian colonisation after c. 600 BC is more than remarkable (Fig. 2). two archaic settlements are situated some 4-5 km from the city of istros. at histria-Pod, except for the horizon of the 4th century BC (on which more later), a layer quite rich in material belonging to the second half of the 6th century BC as well as a level from the end of the archaic period were revealed. 6 it is difficult to ascertain the character of this site. the same
Journal of Archaeological Research, 2022
In this paper, we describe the development and state of archaeological surface survey in the Mediterranean. We focus especially on surface survey as a means of documenting long-term settlement patterns at various scales, as an approach to the archaeology of regions, and as a pathway to the interpretation of past land- scapes. Over the last decades, the literature on Mediterranean survey has increasingly emphasized a distinct set of practices, viewed both favorably and critically by regional archaeologists in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. We show that Mediterranean survey in fact comprises several discrete regional traditions. In general, these traditions have much to offer to wider dialogs in world archaeology, particularly concerning sampling and research design, the interpretation of surface assemblages, and the integration of complex, multidisciplinary datasets. More specifically, survey investigations of Mediterranean landscapes provide comparative data and potential research strategies of relevance to many issues of global significance, including human ecology, demography, urban–rural dynamics, and various types of polity formation, colonialism, and imperialism.