Old Lands; a Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese; First Edition
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OLD LANDS Old Lands takes readers on an epic journey through the legion spaces and times of the Eastern Peloponnese, trailing in the footsteps of a Roman periegete,an Ottoman traveler, antiquarians, and anonymous agrarians. Following waters in search of rest through the lens of Lucretian poetics, Christopher Witmore reconstitutes an untimely mode of ambulatory writing, chorography, mindful of the challenges we all face in these precarious times. Turning on pressing concerns that arise out of object-oriented encounters, Old Lands ponders the disappearance of an agrarian world rooted in the Neolithic, the transition to urban styles of living, and changes in communication, move ment, and metabolism, while opening fresh perspectives on long-term inhabit ation, changing mobilities, and appropriation through pollution. Carefully composed with those objects encountered along its varied paths, this book offers an original and wonderous account of a region in twenty-seven segments, and fulfills a longstanding ambition within archaeology to generate a polychronic narrative that stands as a complement and alternative to diachronic history. Old Lands will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and scholars of the Eastern Peloponnese. Those interested in the long-term changes in society, technology, and culture in this region will find this book captivating. Christopher Witmore is professor of archaeology and classics at Texas Tech University. He is co-author of Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012, with B. Olsen, M. Shanks, and T. Webmoor). Routledge published his co-edited Archaeology in the Making in 2013 (paperback 2017, with W. Rathje and M. Shanks). He is also co editor of the Routledge series Archaeological Orientations (with G. Lucas). OLD LANDS A Chorography of the Eastern Peloponnese Christopher Witmore First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Christopher Witmore The right of Christopher Witmore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-6343-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-8153-6344-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-10943-7 (ebk) Typeset in Perpetua by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK For Liz, Eli, and Liam CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Author’s note xii Preface xiii Prologue: the measure of the Morea? 1 1 Lines in stone: roads, canals, walls, faults, and marine terraces 18 2 Ancient Corinth: descent into memory, ascent into oblivion 37 3 Acrocorinth: from gate to summit 58 4 Along the A7 (Moréas), by car 74 5 Kleonai to Nemea 86 6 Nemea: a transect 109 7 An erstwhile aqueduct: Lucretian flow 123 8 To Mykenes Station, by train 137 9 About Mycenae, history and archaeology 149 10 A path to the Heraion 166 11 Through groves of citrus to Argos 191 vii CONTENTS 12 Argos, a democratic polis, and Plutarch’s Pyrrhus, a synkrisis (comparison) 214 13 Modern spectacle through an ancient theatre 230 14 Argos to Anapli on the hoof, with a stop at Tiryns 245 15 A stroll through Nafplion 261 16 The road to Epidaurus: Frazer and Pausanias 285 17 Paleolithic to Bronze Age amid Venetian: a museum 305 18 To Asine: legal objects 316 19 To Vivari, by boat 328 20 Into the Bedheni Valley 348 21 Through the Southern Argolid 371 22 Ermioni/Hermion/Kastri: a topology 397 23 Looking southwest, to what has become of an ancient oikos 412 24 Across the Adheres, iterations 425 25 Troizen, verdant and in ruin 441 26 To Methana 455 27 Into the Saronic Gulf 473 Epilogue: on chorography 485 Maps (by Caleb Lightfoot) 499 Collated bibliography 512 Index 552 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the fifteen-year course of researching and writing this book I have accumu lated a lifetime of debts. My gratitude has not abated. I am deeply beholden to those whom kindly set aside precious time to accompany me on various paths, many now less taken. To John Cherry, Elissa Faro, Alex Knodell, Thomas Lep pard, and Bradley Sekedat, archaeologists, friends, and knowledgeable compan ions, whom I joined in the course of regional work between Nemea and Nafplion. To Lena Zgouleta and Zoe Zgouleta, my friends and guides to many sites and places throughout the Peloponnese. To Georgia Ivou, for her unabated generosity with a wealth of archaeological detail related to Asine, Epidaurus, and everything in between. To Yorgos Agathos, Sigi Ebeling Agathos, Iosif Ganossis, and the late Yiannis Gogonas, for their friendship and kindness in Naf plion, Ermioni, and Tolo. To Evangelia Pappi and other personnel from the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Argolis, for their hospitality and care. To Mpam pis Antoniadis, who openly contributed a great deal of information on Nafplion, and the Argive plain, more generally. I am indebted to the many students who have contributed to this project over the years. To Krista Brown, Ryan Hall, Will Hannon, Jenny Lewis, Billy Pierce, Ann Sunbury, Jordin Ward, and Nathan Wolcott, the eight who ven tured into the Bedheni Valley in 2010, my gratitude runs deep. I thank Brandon Baker, Edgar Garcia, Evan Levine, Caleb Lightfoot, Kristine Mallinson, Justin Miller, and Jackson Vaughn for enduring various paths with excitement and enthusiasm. Lively and inspirational engagements with students—Brandon Baker, Kelsey Brunson, Edgar Garcia, Ryan Glidewell, Evan Levine, Ron Orr, Karen Taylor, and Nathan Wolcott—in a graduate seminar in fall of 2013 pro vided occasion to bring further shape to the study. I also want to thank Danielle Bercier, Caleb Lightfoot, and Justin Miller for their comments and feedback on various segments of this chorography; Catherine Zagar for the energy and dedi cation she brought to working through many hours of video from along numer ous paths; Alex Claman for all his hard work with footnotes, references, and indexing; and the undergraduate researchers in the Program in Inquiry and ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Investigation at Texas Tech University for sharing their thoughts around the concerns raised in some of the segments. We are shaped by our conversations. I have learned from those whom I hold in a place of profound admiration: Ben Alberti, Sue Alcock, Doug Bailey, Curtis Bauer, Levi Bryant, Sheila Bonde, Peter Carne, Kurt Caswell, John Cherry, Bruce Clarke, Ewa Domanska, Matt Edgeworth, Sylvan Fachard, Stein Farstad voll, Hamish Forbes, Jen Gates-Foster, Alfredo González-Ruibal, Scott Gremil lion, Donald Haggis, Graham Harman, Callum Hetherington, Richard Hingley, Ian Hodder, Idoia Elola, Georgia Ivou, Michael Jameson, Corby Kelly, Alex Kno dell, David Larmour, Don Lavigne, Tom Leppard, Jeff Love, Gavin Lucas, Robert Macfarlane, Richard Martin, Ian Morris, Laurent Olivier, Bjørnar Olsen, Þóra Pétursdóttir, Josh Piburn, Bill Rathje, Joe Rife, Darrell Rohl, Sydnor Roy, Haun Saussy, Michel Serres, Michael Shanks, Chris Taylor, Christina Unwin, Timothy Webmoor, Lena Zgouleta, and Zoe Zgouleta. Support has come from a number of institutions over the years, beginning with the Department of Classics and Archaeology Center at Stanford University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Joukowsky Institute for Archae ology and the Ancient World at Brown University. This project was sustained by grants from the Competitive Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences fund; the Scholarship Catalyst Program; the College of Arts and Sciences; the Humanities Center; the office of the Vice President for Research; and the Department of Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures at Texas Tech University. Numer ous segments were written at the National Humanities Center (NHC), where I held the Donnelly Family Fellowship in 2014–15. Nurtured within the center’s superb intellectual environment, this book took on new direction and shape. I want to thank Brooke Andrade and Sarah Harris for working miracles in library services, Karen Carroll for copyediting several segments of the book, and Marie Brubaker and Don Solomon for their unwavering scholarly support. I am grateful to a number of fellows from the NHC for their encouragement and intellectual companionship—Mary Elizabeth Berry, Corrine Gartner, Ann Gold, Mark Hansen, Cecily Hilsdale, Noah Heringman, Colin Jones, Jeff Love, Joseph ine McDonagh, Jonathan Sachs, Lizzie Schechter, Anna Sun, Gordon Teskey, and Bonna Wescoat. A fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Oslo opened more space and time for me to write in conjunction with the After Dis course project headed by Bjørnar Olsen. The exceptional group of scholars at CAS, Bjørnar Olsen, Hein Bjerck, Doug Bailey, Mats Burström, Alfredo Gonzá lez-Ruibal, Timothy LeCain, Saphinaz-Amal Naguib, and Þóra Pétursdóttir, proved to be not only supportive, but also inspirational. I recognize the privilege that comes with gaining access to unpublished arch ives, beginning with those of the Argolid Exploration Project thanks to the late Michael Jameson. I thank John Cherry and Chris Cloke for opening the archives of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project; I am grateful to the late Pierre MacKay for sharing translations of Evilya Çelebi’s Seyahatname for both the Argolid and the Corinthia; to Malcolm Wagstaff for details concerning Leake x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and the Second Ottoman Period more generally.