Of an Ancient Greek City: Evidence from the Olynthos Project
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The Annual of the British School at Athens, , , pp. – © The Council, British School at Athens, doi:./S CONSTRUCTING THE ‘URBAN PROFILE’ OF AN ANCIENT GREEK CITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE OLYNTHOS PROJECT by Lisa C. Nevett, E. Bettina Tsigarida, Zosia H. Archibald, David L. Stone, Bradley A. Ault, Nikos Akamatis, Elena Cuijpers, Jamieson C. Donati, Juan José García-Granero, Britt Hartenberger, Timothy Horsley, Carla Lancelotti, Evi Margaritis, Jonas Alcaina-Mateos, Stratos Nanoglou, Anna Panti, Nikos Papadopoulos, Alessandra Pecci, Elina Salminen, Apostolos Sarris, Susan M. Stallibrass, Chavdar Tzochev and Chiara Valdambrini University of Michigan Greek Archaeological Service University of Liverpool University at Buffalo, State University of New York International Hellenic University Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn IMS-FORTH IMF-CISC, Barcelona and University of Oxford Western Michigan University Northern Illinois University Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona STARC, The Cyprus Institute ERAAUB, University of Barcelona University of California, Santa Barbara IMS-FORTH and University of Cyprus British School at Athens Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma, Grosseto This article argues that a holistic approach to documenting and understanding the physical evidence for individual cities would enhance our ability to address major questions about urbanisation, urbanism, cultural identities and economic processes. At the same time we suggest that providing more comprehensive data-sets concerning Greek cities would represent an important contribution to cross-cultural studies of urban development and urbanism, which have often overlooked relevant evidence from Classical Greece. As an example of the approach we are advocating, we offer detailed discussion of data from the Archaic and Classical city of Olynthos, in the Halkidiki. Six seasons of fieldwork here by the Olynthos Project, together with legacy data from earlier projects by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and by the Greek Archaeological Service, combine to make this one of the best-documented urban centres surviving from the Greek world. We suggest that the material from the site offers the potential to build up a detailed ‘urban profile’, consisting of an overview of the early development of the community as well as an in-depth picture of the organisation of the Classical settlement. Some aspects of the urban infrastructure can also be quantified, allowing a new assessment of (for example) its demography. This article offers a sample of the kinds of data available and the sorts of questions that can be addressed in constructing such a profile, based on a brief summary of the interim results of fieldwork and data analysis carried out by the Olynthos Project, with a focus on research undertaken during the , and seasons. INTRODUCTION (LCN) The linked phenomena of cities and urban life have been an important focus for generations of archaeologists studying the ancient Greek world. Extensive and prolonged campaigns Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 08 Oct 2021 at 16:00:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245420000118 NEVETT ET AL. of fieldwork have yielded detailed information about civic and religious buildings from a range of sites, along with insights into other aspects of urban infrastructure, such as street plans, open spaces and city walls. Such work has generally documented restricted areas of urban centres, with discussion focusing on the location, the range of forms and the architectural design of civic buildings. On occasion some of the houses of the inhabitants have also been revealed. Both historians and scholars working with archaeological data have sometimes demonstrated a desire to construct complete and detailed pictures of individual Greek cities. Such discussions continue to be cited extensively long after their initial publication, suggesting that there is a widespread and enduring demand for such information. Yet our current pictures of most Classical Greek cities typically lack the fundamental details that would be necessary for full and accurate reconstructions. These include: the extent of an entire settlement at different times in its history; the relative proportions of space devoted to civic, religious, residential, agricultural and other uses; the amount of variability in the density of settlement in different districts at different times; and the nature of the divisions between urban, suburban and rural spaces. Perhaps partly as a consequence, although classicists have sometimes asserted the value of the Greek world as a laboratory through which to examine processes such as urbanisation (e.g. De Polignac ), cities of the Classical Greek world have often been excluded from comparative studies and from collected essays on urbanism (e.g. M.L. Smith ; M.E. Smith ). Such a state of affairs is disappointing, given that Greek cities are often well-preserved, and some, at least, are well-understood in terms of their political and social systems, so that they could potentially play an important role in modelling various processes involved in the creation, development and even the disappearance of urban communities. In this paper we therefore suggest that there is a need for a more comprehensive approach to reconstructing Greek cities which charts their growth through time and encapsulates their entire urban landscape, supporting the creation of detailed ‘urban profiles’. As conceived here such profiling constitutes a deliberate attempt to gather data in a systematic and somewhat standardised manner, aimed at providing a basic, factual overview of the settlement. It involves charting the phases in a city’s physical development as well as documenting its extent and urban structure during different phases. Thus, the location and dimensions of areas with different uses are established; the boundaries of different neighbourhoods are defined; and variation in the type and density of housing is investigated across those neighbourhoods. We argue that formulating such profiles will provide a more solid understanding of the linked phenomena of urbanisation and urbanism in the Greek context, as well as a firmer basis upon which to reconstruct important aspects of urban life such as population size and the nature of the economy. At the same time, we think that such profiles could serve as a basis for more easily incorporating Greek cities into a broader, comparative framework. We make our argument with reference to the On the Greek mainland this is, of course, most notable with respect to excavations at a range of locations in Athens (for example Excavations in the Athenian Agora; see also a recent summary of some of the major evidence across the city from the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods: Dimitriadou ). Other excavated examples include Thasos (Études Thasiennes), Halieis (The Excavations at Ancient Halieis and, e.g., Boyd and Jameson ) and Delos (Exploration Archéologique de Délos). Other cities have been investigated most extensively using remote sensing techniques, including, for instance, Plataia (Konecˇny et al. ), Elis and Mantinea (Donati and Sarris ). Beyond the boundaries of the modern Greek state, the evidence is sometimes more extensive, for example at Priene (Wiegand and Schraeder ; and Raeck for more recent questions and research) or Megara Hyblaia (Mégara Hyblaea). As, for example, at Eretria: see Ducrey, Metzger and Reber and Reber . For example Hansen and Nielsen ; the well-known reconstructions by Hoepfner and Schwandner () were preceded by other similar attempts such as Nicholls’ reconstruction of Archaic Smyrna: Cook –, . Even Hoepfner and Schwandner’s reconstructions rely to a significant extent on extrapolating the plan of a small excavated area or areas, in an effort to reconstruct the extent and layout of entire cities (Hoepfner and Schwandner ). Although their volume continues to be widely cited more than a quarter of a century later, it has not been superseded. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Athens, on 08 Oct 2021 at 16:00:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068245420000118 CONSTRUCTING THE ‘URBAN PROFILE’ OF AN ANCIENT GREEK CITY recent work of the Olynthos Project, which offers the prospect of creating a uniquely detailed urban profile by combining a variety of different data-sets at different scales. The city of Olynthos is mentioned briefly in ancient historical sources, but – as is the case for most ancient cities – the texts provide virtually no information about the development and physical characteristics of its urban centre. Archaeological evidence is therefore of crucial importance. Early excavation by David Robinson uncovered a substantial area of housing on the North Hill (Fig. ) and provided some evidence for the character of the urban centre, identifying an orthogonal street grid, an open area (subsequently understood as an agora), a stoa, a building interpreted as a bouleuterion, and a fountain house. On the South Hill, Robinson located streets, an Archaic ‘Civic Center’ (which seemed to have been destroyed by the start of the Classical period), as well as two further monumental buildings (identified as arsenals) and additional houses. In the course of further excavation, cleaning, and restoration work by the Greek Archaeological Service