Finding Old Sikyon’, 2015 a Preliminary Report
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‘Finding Old Sikyon’, 2015 A preliminary report RUNE FREDERIKSEN, KONSTANTINOS KISSAS, JAMIESON DONATI, GIORGOS GIANNAKOPOU! LOS, SILKE MÜTH, VASSILIOS PAPATHANASIOU, WOLFGANG RABBEL, HARALD STÜMPEL, KATHA! RINA RUSCH & KRISTINA WINTHER!JACOBSEN In memory of Anastasios Orlandos that a major Archaic and Classical polis was given up at a and Serapheim Charitonidis clearly dened date and never built over aerwards, either by later ancient or larger medieval or modern selements. e project ‘Finding Old Sikyon’ is a cooperation be- Old Sikyon will thus – as one of the rare examples in tween the Ephorate of Antiquities of Corinth, the Na- the Greek motherland – allow us to study in detail the tional Museum of Denmark, the Danish Institute at genesis and processes of development of an important Athens and the Institute of Geoscience of the Christian city between natural growth and systematic planning. Albrechts University of Kiel. It is planned as a ve-year Moreover, the archaeological investigation of Old Sikyon project, the actual running permit covering the rst two will allow us to mirror the accounts of the wrien sources years. e project was conceived by former Director of on this very active centre of art in seizable archaeological the Danish Institute at Athens Rune Frederiksen with remains and thus to evaluate their reliability. Finally, it the aim of identifying the exact location and major fea- will inform us about the structure and organization of a tures of the city, prior to its relocation in ! ! BC to the famous centre of art and culture in comparison with other plateau of Vasiliko by Demetrios Poliorketes. e project such centres like Corinth and Athens. studies the topography of the pre-Hellenistic city and its e ve-week eld season during the summer of surrounding landscape, hoping to identify the course of was directed by Dr. Rune Frederiksen (now Ny Carlsberg the city walls, the location of the harbour, major public Glyptotek, Copenhagen). With the assistance of Giorgos spaces, monumental architecture and dwelling quarters Giannakopoulos, Dr. Kristina Winther-Jacobsen (now with houses, streets etc. Rescue excavations of the Archae- Director of the Danish Institute at Athens) directed the ological Service and the Archaeological Society at Athens intensive systematic survey with the participation of have already brought signicant evidence to light, and twenty students from the Universities of Copenhagen, the project intends to conduct a systematic search for the Aarhus and Southern Denmark, as well as two students city in order to understand its main elements, material, from the National and Kapodistrian University of Ath- size, form and topography. is, however, is intended to ens. Vasilis Oikonomou directed the nds registration. serve the greater purpose of answering general questions Geophysical survey was carried out by the research team of Archaic and Classical urbanism, as it is a very rare case ‘Archeo-Geophysics’ of the Institute of Geoscience, e project obtained authorization for and " with a Ministerial Decree (ΥΠΟΠΑΙΘ/ΓΔΑΠΚ/ΔΙΠΚΑ/ΤΕΕΑΕΙ/"5"55/!67/7. ". ). e synergasia is directed by Dr. Konstantinos Kissas, Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Corinth and Dr. Silke Müth of the National Muse- um, Denmark. 305 PROCEEDINGS OF THE DANISH INSTITUTE AT ATHENS ∙ VOL UME VIII Fig. GIS map of the research area with the rivers and plateau. Christian Albrechts University of Kiel under the direc- Classical Studies excavated major parts of the theatre be- tion of Prof. Wolfgang Rabbel, and Eastern Atlas GmbH tween and , and during the th century excava- & Co, Berlin under the direction of Burkart Ullrich. Dr. tions conducted by the Archaeological Society at Athens Jamieson Donati of the Institute for Mediterranean Stud- brought additional monumental structures to light, i.e. ies applied remote sensing methods to the project area. the temple, the gymnasium-palaistra, the long stoa and e area under examination is located in the marine parts of the theatre’s koilon. From until a plain of Kiato and is dened by the Asopos river towards survey took place on the Hellenistic plateau under the the south, the Helisson river towards the north, the east cooperation of the Ephorate of Antiquities, the University slopes of the plateau of Hellenistic Sikyon towards the of essaly, the Institute for Mediterranean Studies at west and the sea towards the east (Fig. ). Several archae- Rethymnon and the University of York. ological sites identied since the s are located within e mission of the Archaeological Service in the area the project area, such as Ayios Konstantinos, Ayios Niko- goes back to the s, producing important knowledge laos, Moulki, Syriona, Chtiri, Palaiochori, Dragatsoula for the topography of pre-Hellenistic Sikyon. During the and Merkouri (Fig. ). emergency excavations for the suburban railway ( -) In Yannis Lolos published his synthesizing study and the national highway Corinth-Patras (since ), of Sikyonia in Hesperia Supplements, but systematic ar- residential structures, workshops, cemeteries and ancient chaeological research in Sikyon has up to now focused roads have come to light. mainly on the Hellenistic city. e American School of ΦΕΚ /Β/. ., YA /. .. Brownson & Young , Earle a; b; ; Fiechter ; Fossum %; Krystalli-Votsi ; ; a; b; McMurtry ; Orlandos ; ; %; ; ; ; ; ; ; %; %; %%; %; Petrakos ; Philadelpheus . 306 Lolos et al. ; . FREDERIKSEN ET AL. ∙ ‘FINDING OLD SIKYON’, 2015 Systematic Intensive Survey revealed the in situ remains of Classical habitation (Ayios e aim of the systematic intensive survey is to under- Konstantinos, Kamaratiza and Syriona, see also below). stand the selement paern in the plain of Kiato from a However, due to the complications of the thick sedimen- diachronic perspective. e survey area – approximately tation and poor visibility in general we chose to prioritize square km – occupies the western part of the Vocha survey units with high visibility within the entire survey marine plain, which spreads from Corinth to Kiato and area. Consequently, the survey results give a patchy image, consists of three marine terraces with only minor altitude but we have managed to sample all the zones during the variations between them. e highest altitude of m is rst season. found on the eastern slopes of the Hellenistic plateau. Generally, the landscape appears homogeneous except for the hills of Palaiochori and Tragana. Methodology Apart from Asopos and Helisson, the two rivers con- e systematic intensive methodology and research stra- stituting the southern and northern boundaries of the tegy was adapted for the conditions in the Plain of Kia- project’s area, the landscape is highly hydrogenous due to by Kristina Winther-Jacobsen, based on experiences to many streams, as well as arti cial channels for watering from e Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey the elds. e northeast of the area is occupied by the Project , e Dzarylgac Survey Project , and the Where East town of Kiato and the northwest by the modern sele- meets West project. Four teams carried out the eldwork ment of Moulki, with secondary selements at Palaio- and the daily processing of the nds, supervised by Vasilis chori and Tragana. e area is intensely cultivated, the Oikonomou. Each team worked as an individual unit of crops consisting mainly of apricot trees, citrus trees and four people supervised by a team leader. vineyards, as well as olive trees and vegetables. Initially the aim was only to survey ploughed or har- Very few structures are recorded in situ on the surface rowed elds with !-" visibility. However, visibility in the area included in the permit, and recent as well as proved to be the great challenge, because more elds than current emergency excavations at the railroad and the expected were covered with thick vegetation. Visibility national highway have demonstrated that part of the sur- was recorded in ranges of ". Visibilities over !" were vey area is covered with a layer of alluvial sedimentation recorded in #!" of the units surveyed. up to . m thick. is sedimentation complicates the Field boundaries were used to delimit the survey interpretation of the results of both the side-by-side and units, and the research area is characterized by elds of the geophysical survey. e remote sensing survey also greatly varying sizes. In order to achieve su$cient spatial documents the strong morphological forces at work in resolution the survey units were never larger than % x the survey area (see below). m, but the majority of elds were much smaller. When e survey area was subdivided into zones according elds were larger than % x m, they were subdivided to existing toponyms: Ayios Konstantinos, Ayios Niko- into multiple units. In fact, the mean size of the survey laos, Kamaratiza, Moulki, Syriona, Merkouri, Chtiri, units is approximately % m . e m limit was deter- Zogeri, Dragatsoula, Palaiochori, Tragana-Dourvationa, mined by the size of the team and the spacing of the eld Lakkos, Valtos and Ayios Ioannis (Fig. ). Supported by walkers (see below). When elds where shorter than local knowledge, natural and cultural features, such as m, a smaller area was surveyed with fewer people, with changing elevations and roads, were used to de ne the # eld walkers along a # m line and so on (Fig. ). boundaries of the zones. Initially, the ambition of the campaign was focused on the area immediately north Two approaches to the surveying were employed: of Asopos and east of the plateau of Hellenistic