CAA Todd Brenningmeyer et al. 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.15496/publikation-43156 Unsettled Settlements: Documenting Site Abandonment and Transformation in Modern Unsettled Settlements Greece Todd Brenningmeyer Abstract Maryville University Te Deserted Villages Project is a multidisciplinary study of 19th- and 20th-cen- Saint Louis, MO. U.S.A tury settlements in Greece. Te short period of inhabitation in these settlements [email protected] presents opportunities to document evidence of site formation, decline, and transition using a variety of methodologies. Two case studies will be present- Kostis Kourelis ed. In the mountains of Phocis, villages founded in the mid-19th century and Franklin & Marshall College burned by the Germans during World War II are documented through tradi- Lancaster, PA U.S.A. tional and GPS survey, UAV based aerial photography, close range photogram- [email protected] metry, and the collection of oral histories. On the coast of Macedonia, a Cold War settlement for the Voice of America radio station near Kavala is document- Miltiadis Katsaros ed through terrestrial photography, GIS, and video. Te settlement, occupied National Technical from 1972 to 2006, presents a short-lived example of American domestic archi- University of Athens, tecture transplanted into the landscape of rural Greece. Athens, Greece [email protected] Keywords: GIS, photogrammetry, historical archaeology, architecture Introduction 1994). Susan Sutton (1988) traced the fuctuating de- mographics of rural life from the 16th century to the Te Greek landscape has played a special role in the present, noting that village foundations, demograph- Western imagination as embodying idyllic ideals ic decline, and related population movements were unadulterated by modernity. Created by early travel- frequently associated with changing political reali- ers and archaeologists, this notion is perpetuated by ties and villagers’ participation in local, regional, and tourism, which promotes aspects of Greek culture as global economies. Te modern village of the 16th to unchanging and rooted in the landscape. Te violent the 20th centuries is, therefore, a fragile spatial enti- history of Modern Greece, however, has disrupted ty defned by the mobility of populations and capital lived continuities between the present and the past. rather than a static repository of ancient values. Mi- Beginning in the 1970s, archaeological feld sur- gration and depopulation remain core components veys mapped the nuances of the cultural landscape of life in the Greek countryside. Te settlement pat- through the collection of surface pottery and the tern of Greece became increasingly ephemeral as a modeling of temporal and spatial change. Settlement result of economic bankruptcies (1893, 1929, 2009), patterns have shifed radically in response to global wars with its neighbours (1897, 1912-13), World and local forces. A more dynamic model of the Greek Wars (1919-22, 1940-44), civil war (1946-49), and landscape has been corroborated by ethnoarchaeo- dictatorships (1925-26, 1936-41, 1967-74). Although logical research carried out along with surface collec- escalated during the 20th century, migration within tions (Forbes 2007; Pavlides and Sutton 1995; Sutton and beyond the national borders was a common and CAA Todd Brenningmeyer et al. 2017 Unsettled Settlements years later, the village was abandoned as its residents moved away to Athens or more connected plac- es. Te Voice of America (VOA) station in Kavala, Macedonia was an American army base transmitting propaganda to Eastern Europe. Its civilian staf were housed in a settlement built to replicate an Ameri- can suburb. In 2006, this American settlement was abandoned. Although physically and conceptually unrelated, the two sites were the research subjects of the Deserted Village Project, an undergraduate feld school that brought together Greek and American students. Both Phocis and Macedonia are regions that experienced supermodernity’s extreme unset- tlement. Te studies of Aigition and VOA presented instructive challenges on how to map and interpret the materialities of crises in the recent past grafed on the physical remains of rural settlements. Te fol- lowing sections briefy discuss methods used in the study of Aigition and VOA. Aigition Figure 1. Map showing the location of Aigition, Kavala, and Distomo. Since 2010, an international team of scholars has in- vestigated the diverse natural and man-made land- vital part of this process, producing a landscape of scape surrounding the modern village of Lidoriki in perpetual abandonment and resettlement (Kourelis the prefecture of Phokis, central Greece (Figure 2) and Caraher 2010). (Brenningmeyer, Kourelis, & Katsaros 2016). At Although scholarship has increasingly accepted the center of the study area is the artifcial Mornos this dynamic model of the Greek landscape, little reservoir, which dominates the region’s topography. attention has been placed on how such change has In the early 1970’s the Greek Water Supply Compa- afected the architectural fabric of settlements. Even ny (EEY) created the reservoir to meet the growing less attention has been given to the archaeology of water needs of the city of Athens (Ananiadou-Tzi- Greece’s most recent past. Te blossoming feld of an mopoulou and Nana 2015: 76; Kaika 2005: 136). Its archaeology of the contemporary world has used the construction fooded archaeological sites and cut of notion of supermodernity to characterize the height- historic transportation and communication routes ened destruction occurring globally between World that once connected small villages in the surround- War I and the present (González‐Ruibal 2008: 247). ing countryside. Ancient Kallion (Kallipolis) was Two case studies in Central and Northern Greece among the most important ancient sites impacted by provide a fertile arena to investigate the efects of the fooding; rescue operations were carried out by supermodernity through the archaeological study of an international team of archaeologists who record- domestic architecture (Figure 1). Te village of Aigi- ed the site before its inundation (Herbert and Kase tion, Phocis is a traditional Greek village founded in 1977; Lafneur 1977; Lafneur 1978; Lafneur 1979; the mid-19th century and sustained by remittances Lafneur 1980; Temelis 1979). Modern houses and sent back from the United States in the early 20th settlements located along the Mornos valley were century. In 1943, the village was burned by the Axis likewise submerged within the lake. Communities Powers and its residents were interned in a concen- located in the mountains surrounding the lake found tration camp in Athens. At the end of World War II, themselves isolated by the reservoir’s construction. the population resettled in Aigition’s ruins. Tirty Te village of Aigition, located on a mountain ridge 324 02 Todd Brenningmeyer et al. CAA Unsettled Settlements 2017 Figure 2. Map of the project area surrounding the Mornos reservoir. west of Lidoriki, was among the settlements impact- passed to Greek owners (Frangakis-Syrett and Wag- ed. Te process of decline and abandonment that be- staf 1992). Aigition likely developed through the gan in the 1940s solidifed in the 1960s as residents gradual nucleation of small pastoral settlements be- migrated to villages closer to primary transportation fore formally establishing itself as a village through routes. Aigition has been a focus of our investiga- the dedication of the church. Work by the Archae- tions from the beginning of the project. ological Survey School of Holland (1989: 239) un- Te history of Aigition can be traced to the 19th derscored the historic importance of pastoral econo- century when the village was known by the name mies in the area surrounding the village, noting that Strouza. Tis name has been identifed in Ottoman signifcant environmental changes took place in this registers from the late 15th and 16th centuries, but area during the 19th century as woodlands were de- there is no evidence of structures built before mid- forested and converted into shrubbed pasture lands. 19th century (Doorn 2009: 200). Te notion of an Te history of Aigition afer its foundation fol- earlier village located at Palaiokastro survives in the lows many of the patterns noted elsewhere in Greece. oral histories. Te physical evidence at Aigition sug- Te village, along with the rest of the region, experi- gests that the foundation of the settlement is contem- enced a demographic boom in the 1870s (Asdrachas porary with the dedication of the village church in 1979). By 1893, a phase of slow decline brought on by 1852 (marked by an inscription on the church’s east Greece’s fnancial collapse led to emigration. Mem- apse). Tis date corresponds with the period of gen- bers of the village were among the quarter million eral agricultural prosperity that followed the estab- Greeks that immigrated to the United States. Local lishment of the Modern Greek state in 1832, when informants identifed houses in Aigition that were fertile lands belonging to Ottoman feudal lords were constructed using remittances sent from the United 02 325 CAA Todd Brenningmeyer et al. 2017 Unsettled Settlements States. Two donor inscriptions on a house (1915) and the school (1909) mark immigrant donors that can be traced-through the records of Ellis Island-to Mad- ison, Wisconsin. A sizeable diaspora community from Aigition settled in Chicago. Te Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II further transformed the village. Te most dramatic episode occurred on July 23, 1943, when the German army burned the village and sent its residents to a concentration camp in Athens. Te central village of Lidoriki was also burned on August 29, 1944. Further east, the mass execution and burning of Distomo (Figure 1) received international attention (Life 1944). Te Figure 3. Project team conducting interviews in Aigition. residents of Aigition returned afer the war and re- settled the ruined village. In 1950, some of the resi- and was the earliest to identify Aigition’s position dents moved to the new village of Pentapolis located on regional transportation networks. More recent in the plains along modern roads and infrastructure.