NEWSLETTER OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS ákoueákoueSpring 2011, No. 64 2010–11 Students descend from the Great Meteora during the third trip of the Academic Program. Photo: M.M. Miles IN THIS ISSUE: Corinth Excavations Report 3 Managing Committee Appointments 3 Development News 4 Blegen Library News 5 Mycenaean Wall-Painting Conference 5 Publications News 6 ASCSA-Affiliated Excavations 7 Archives News 7 Plakias Survey 15 Wiener Laboratory: When Neanderthals Met Moderns 16 2010 Summer Sessions 17 John Camp Honored 17 INSERT: Greek Cartography Exhbition, Lecture G1 New Acquisitions G1 Library Acquires Lost Musical Scores G2 Events in Review G3 Leventis Grant Funds Summer Session G3 Clean Monday Celebration G4 Philoi G4 Farewell to Old Friends The past year came to a close with no small 37 years, and the Blegen Library will not measure of holiday cheer and a large dose be the same without her. of nostalgia. In mid-December Shari and I Earlier in the fall Andreas Sideris retired hosted 60 School members at our house for from duty in the Gennadius Library after a holiday reception and Christmas carols 25 years of service as Assistant Librarian. — this after a lovely Hanukkah gathering For the time being he is still helping out the previous week that was organized by in the library while Maria Georgopoulou is Whitehead Professor Nancy Felson and on leave this year. But the staff reception ákoue! several students. offered an appropriate occasion for us to Soon after was the staff Christmas re- recognize his contributions too. ception, where it has been the custom for After 36 years with the School, Maria many, many years for the Director and his Pilali also retired at the end of December. wife to give small gifts to each employee Maria was hired as the Director’s secretary of the School. That’s a lot of gifts! We held by Jim McCredie in 1975. Many of us recall the staff party in the afternoon, so that the her adept handling, already as a teenager maximum number could attend; it is one (!), of the busy social and administrative of the few times in the year when nearly all calendar of the Director, as well as the in- of us come together. It is also an occasion valuable assistance she gave to students and when we recognize the contributions of scholars seeking permits for research and employees who are leaving us after many excavations. Although the staff would have good years of service. liked to pay tribute to Maria at a retirement This past year we said goodbye to As- party, Maria made it clear that she did not sociate Librarian Liz Gignoli (or as many want any public ceremony. Nevertheless, of us still think of her, Liz Mitsou). It is many among the School community ex- difficult not to be emotional on this subject. pressed their appreciation for her years of I remember very well the kindnesses that service and their good wishes for the future. Liz showed me when I first arrived at the School as a student in 1974. Later, in 1975, she helped me to bind the first books I ever purchased in Greece! Liz had been with us Jack L. Davis longer than any other employee, in fact for Director, ASCSA AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS 54 Souidias Street, GR-106 76 Athens, Greece 6–8 Charlton Street, Princeton, NJ 08540-5232 ákoue, the newsletter of the ASCSA Spring 2011 No. 64 Executive Editor Irene Bald Romano Editor Sally Fay Design & Production Mary Jane Gavenda ákoue is published semiannually by the ASCSA under the inspiration of Doreen C. Spitzer. Please address all correspondence and inquiries to the News letter Editor, ASCSA U.S. Office, 6–8 Charlton Street, Princeton, NJ 08540-5232. Tel: (609) 683- 0800; Fax: (609) 924-0578; E-mail: ascsa@ ascsa.org; Website: www.ascsa.edu.gr. ÁKOUE IN COLOR ON THE WEB. The staff Christmas party marked the retirement of long-time School staff members See this issue in color on the School’s Andreas Sideris (left) and Elisavet Mitsou-Gignoli (second from right), here with website at: http://www.ascsa.edu. School Director Jack Davis and wife Shari Stocker. Photo: M. Tourna gr/index.php/publications/Akoue/. 2 Corinth Excavations Yield Hellenistic Pottery, Byzantine Tiles Excavation in 2010 continued south of the South Stoa where Professor Henry Robinson began excavations in 1965. We completed the excavation of the Byzantine house under investigation in 2008 and 2009, which has now been uncovered as far as its construction phase. Outside the house to the north was a significant fall of Byzantine roof tiles dating to the elev- enth century. These have been mended up to give several complete profiles of cover (0.71 × 0.30 to 0.34 m) and pan tiles (0.53 × 0.15 to 0.17 m), the first of this period re- covered at Corinth, which can now be com- pared with Late Roman and Frankish size modules. The construction of the house can now be placed sometime in the middle of the eleventh century. Finds from earlier seasons indicate that a number of activi- Inscribed kantharos. ties took place during its occupation and that several modifications were made to its form over the course of the next 250 years. preserved in Room H and the neighbor- third century B.C.E. and another fill, of the Some of the activities are purely domestic ing baths in the South Stoa. The building mid third century, contained sherds of a but others are commercial—for instance, was abandoned sometime in the seventh one-piece kantharos with four lines of an catering, crafts, and sales—and some are century, and parts of its walls were robbed inscription inside. A preliminary reading certainly agricultural. All the old material in the eighth century. This late phase of identifies: recovered in the 1960s excavations has now activity is accompanied by the burial of an been reexamined, drawn, described, and infant in an amphora found in 1965 and IA[...] photographed and study of the new finds scraps of pottery found in 1963 to the west. [Μ]ΗΝ[Μ]ΣΚΟΝΤ[...] (such as bone, seed, and ceramics) is in an In places we excavated to the collu- ΠΙΝΑ[Κ]ΑΗΡΩ[Ι][...] advanced state. vium eroded off Acrocorinth, which, like ΛΙΒΑΝΟΝΕΡΣΕ[...] Part of the house reused cement and the colluviums in the Panayia Field, con- [name of dedicant] rubble walls of the Late Roman period. tained quantities of Late Neolithic and crescent-shaped [offering and] No plan for this phase can yet be restored, Early Bronze Age and Hellenistic pottery, plaque to the hero [and] but a fragmentary opus sectile floor was thus dating this neogene geological phase frankincense fresh reused in the Byzantine phase. This Late to the third millennium B.C. A Hellenistic Roman building was probably built in the cellar dug into the colluviums contained a — Guy D.R. Sanders sixth century and relates to the later walls dumped fill of pottery dating to the early Director, Corinth Excavations New Appointments from Managing Committee Staff appointments and ratification of new versity of Texas at Austin) as the Elizabeth Forest College; Brenda Longfellow (School Managing Committee members headed the A. Whitehead Professors for 2011–2012. of Art and Art History), to replace Mary agenda at the annual January meeting of Also approved at the January meeting Depew as the voting member from the Uni- the ASCSA Managing Committee, held in was the appointment of the following new versity of Iowa in its consortial member- January 2011 in San Antonio, Texas. Managing Committee members: Angelos ship along with the University of Illinois Actions taken at the meeting advanced Chaniotis (Institute for Advanced Study), at Champaign-Urbana (Mary Depew will the reappointment of John McK. Camp II as a voting member to replace Glen Bow- continue as a non-voting member of the as Director of the Agora Excavations for a ersock and Heinrich von Staden, who are Managing Committee); Brian Madigan (De- five-year term beginning July 1, 2012. A retiring; Erika Zimmerman Damer (Depart- partment of Art and Art History), as the unanimous recommendation for reappoint- ment of Classical Studies), as a third voting voting member from Wayne State Univer- ment was received by the Managing Com- member from the University of Richmond; sity, replacing Sarah Bassett (who is now a mittee, approved at the January meeting, Fred K. Drogula (Department of History), voting member from Indiana University); and ratified by institutional vote in Febru- as a second voting member from Provi- Barbara Olsen (Department of Classics), to ary. In addition, the Managing Committee dence College; Richard Fisher (Department be the voting member representing Vassar approved the appointments of Joseph Day of Modern Languages), replacing Louis College; and, as the three voting members (Wabash College) and Glenn A. Peers (Uni- Lombardi as the voting member from Lake continued on page 16 3 Development News The ASCSA Capital Campaign has sur- passed its halfway mark, having secured more than $25 million of its $50 million goal to date. Most notable in the past few months was a $400,000 pledge from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation to be used for a capital project, and a ma- jor pledge from the Cohen family. These gifts have put the School closer to break- ing ground for renovations to Loring Hall, identified as the most pressing project. Planned renovations to the residential facility, which will cost approximately $4 million, would increase the number of beds available at the School and bring the facil- ity’s antiquated infrastructural systems up to date.