Table Of ContentM
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MIDDLE AND LATE
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HELLADIC LACONIA E
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COMPETING PRINCIPALITIES? D
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Many new results on Middle and Late Bronze Age Laconia are presented in this
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volume, stemming from recent excavations by the Greek Archaeological Service
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as well as ongoing excavations, surveys and material studies by foreign schools N
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and individual scholars. Among discussed settlements are the sites of Pellana, A
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Palaiopyrgi, Geraki, Pavlopetri and Vrysika and also the island Kythera. The newly
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discovered palatial site at Ayios Vasileios is also elaborately discussed in various M
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papers, including discussions of its North Cemetery, early Mycenaean pottery E
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deposits, the West Stoa, and an outline of the habitation history and size of Ayios I
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Vasileios compared to other palatial settlements. G
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More than 25 years have passed since the publication of a paper by Oliver Dickinson I
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in which he wrote about central Late Helladic Laconia that he had an impression of C
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“competing and unstable principalities in the early period and perhaps centrifugal P
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tendencies”. In this volume we explore to what extent this impression is still justified. L
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Especially considering the recent discovery of a palatial site at Ayios Vasileios. I
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Indeed, this volume shows that in the past decades much has happened in Laconia S
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with respect to what we know about the Bronze Age. We are therefore extra pleased
that Oliver Dickinson has agreed to write an Afterword to this volume.
Written by academics and those working in the fields of Bronze Age Greece,
MIDDLE AND LATE
Laconia, ceramic analyses, architecture, survey, and photogrammetry this volume
will be invaluable to students and practitioners with similar interests.
HELLADIC LACONIA
COMPETING PRINCIPALITIES?
VII
edited by
Corien Wiersma & Maria P. Tsouli
ISBN 978-94-6426-062-5
ISBN: 978-94-6426-062-5
PUBLICATIONS OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE
9 789464 260625
NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE AT ATHENS VII NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE AT ATHENS VII
MIDDLE AND LATE
HELLADIC LACONIA
edited by
Corien Wiersma & Maria P. Tsouli
MIDDLE AND LATE
HELLADIC LACONIA
COMPETING PRINCIPALITIES?
edited by
Corien Wiersma & Maria P. Tsouli
PUBLICATIONS OF THE
NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE AT ATHENS VII
© 2022 Individual authors
Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden
www.sidestone.com
Publications of the Netherlands Institute at Athens VII
Published under the auspices of The Netherlands Institute at
Athens and The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports
Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press
Photograph cover: Thomas Fischer Lück
ISBN 978-94-6426-062-5 (softcover)
ISBN 978-94-6426-063-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-94-6426-064-9 (PDF e-book)
Contents
Introduction. Middle and Late Helladic Laconia. 7
Competing principalities?
Corien W. Wiersma & Maria P. Tsouli
PART I: Setting the Scene
The Eurotas valley, Laconia, in the 2nd millenium BC. The area 21
of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi in context
Emilia Banou, Anne P. Chapin & Louise A. Hitchcock
Southern Laconia in the Middle and Earlier Late Bronze Age. 33
Pottery from Pavlopetri and other sites
William Cavanagh, Chrysanthi Gallou, Ilias Spondylis & Jon Henderson
The curious case of an island. A preliminary account on the 47
northern Kythera Bronze Age landscapes
Konstantinos P. Trimmis
The Ayios Vasileios survey project. A preliminary outline of the 57
habitation history and size of Ayios Vasileios compared to other
palatial settlements
Corien W. Wiersma, Wieke de Neef, Sofia Voutsaki
& Adamantia Vasilogamvrou
PART II: Sites
Preliminary remarks on the stratigraphy of the West Stoa from 75
the new Mycenaean palace at Ayios Vasileios, Laconia
Nektarios Karadimas, Adamantia Vasilogamvrou & Elina Kardamaki
A new Mycenaean settlement by the site Vrysika of Xirokambi 87
Maria P. Tsouli, Adriana Kotsi & Dimitris Vlachakos
Geraki in the Middle Helladic and shaft grave periods 105
Stuart MacVeagh Thorne & Mieke Prent
PART III: Pottery
Geraki – from Middle to Late Helladic: ceramic evidence 121
Joost Crouwel
Ceramic evidence on the transition to the Mycenaean Era in 137
Southern Laconia: prehistoric pottery from Passavas near
Gytheion
Emilia Banou, Maria P. Tsouli & George Tsiaggouris
Throwing some light on the early history of the Mycenaean 151
palace at Ayios Vasileios, Laconia. Three Early Mycenaean
pottery deposits from building alpha
Dora Kondyli & Iro Mathioudaki
The relationship between Central and South Laconia during the 167
Early Mycenaean Period: the pottery evidence
Vasco Hachtmann & Sofia Voutsaki
PART IV: Burials
The funerary landscape of Middle Helladic Laconia. The evidence 189
from recent rescue excavations
Maria P. Tsouli, George Tsiaggouris & Aphrodite Maltezou
A new cemetery of the Late Bronze Age at Pellana, in the 205
northern part of the Eurotas valley
Leonidas V. Sοuchleris
The North Cemetery at Ayios Vasileios. Austerity and 217
differentiation in the early Mycenaean period
Sofia Voutsaki, Ioanna Moutafi & Vasco Hachtmann
Construction, destruction, reconstruction: the architecture of 229
the built tomb of the North Cemetery at Ayios Vasileios, Laconia
Yannick de Raaff, Sofia Voutsaki, Theo Verlaan & Gary Nobles
Permanence in becoming. A study into the role of labour 243
investment in processes of social change and the creation of
meaning in the North Cemetery at Ayios Vasileios
Youp van den Beld
Afterword 257
Oliver Dickinson
Introduction. Middle and Late
Helladic Laconia. Competing
principalities?
Corien W. Wiersma & Maria P. Tsouli
The volume before you is born out of the international conference entitled “Middle and
Late Helladic Laconia. Competing principalities?”, which was held in Athens on 12-13
April 2019 and co-organized by the Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA), the Ephorate of
Antiquities of Laconia and the University of Groningen. In various ways, this conference
can be seen as a follow-up of the Round Table Conference on Early Helladic Laconia,
hosted by the NIA in 2010.1 The aim of the current conference was to explore in more
detail developments in Laconia during the Middle Helladic (MH) and Late Helladic
(LH) periods. We wanted to discuss results from recent work carried out in the region,
understand the development of individual sites, reconstruct (inter)dependency of nearby
sites, and to relate events at settlements with events and developments taking place in
their surrounding territories and beyond. In this way, we wanted to explore trajectories
of political and social change at individual sites and within larger areas, and also see
if and how these trajectories may have differed from other regions, such as the well-
explored regions of the Argolid and Messenia. The triggers for this conference have been
the uncovering of the first traces of a Mycenaean palatial settlement at Ayios Vasileios and
various excavations along the newly constructed highways in Laconia. Both have given
a new impetus to discussion of the political organization of Laconia during the LBA, and
are also elaborately discussed in this volume. It is our conviction that, if we want to be
able to say something about the political organization during the LH period, we also need
to take the MH period into account, as it is already during the MH period that, generally
speaking, changes take place in domestic architecture and the mortuary record, which
intensify during MH III-LH I.2 But do these general patterns also apply to Laconia?
In our conference title we have referred to a paper of Oliver Dickinson, published
in 1992.3 In this paper, he wrote about central LH Laconia that he had an impression
of ‘competing and unstable principalities in the early period and perhaps centrifugal
tendencies’.4 In this volume we want to explore to what extent this impression is still
justified. We are therefore particularly pleased that Oliver Dickinson has agreed to write
an Afterword to this volume.
Almost 30 years have passed since the publication of the paper of Dickinson, and
in this period much has happened in Laconia with respect to what we know about
the Bronze Age. In the following we want to provide an outline of significant research
1 Mee & Prent 2011-2012.
2 See for example Philippa-Touchais et al. 2010; Wiersma 2014; Wiersma & Voutsaki 2017; Milka 2019.
3 Dickinson 1992.
4 Dickinson 1992, 112.
in: Wiersma, C. & M.P. Tsouli (eds) 2022. Middle and Late Helladic Laconia.
Competing principalities?, Leiden (Sidestone Press) pp. 7-18. 7
projects and publications on Bronze Age Laconia from Maritime Research and the University of Nottingham
the 1990s onwards, followed by an overview of various under a British School of Archaeology at Athens permit
(rescue) excavation projects of Middle and Late Helladic began a five-year collaborative project to outline the
remains by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia. This is history and development of the submerged ancient town
by no means an exhaustive overview of everything that of Pavlopetri. A survey was carried out in 2009 and 2010
has been published lately on Bronze Age Laconia, but it and excavations in 2011-2013.13
does give a good impression of growing interest in the Hefty publications came to light in the past decade
prehistoric remains of this region. on excavations carried out in much earlier years. The
coastal site of Ayios Stephanos was published in 2008,14 and
Research on Bronze Age Laconia in the Hector Catling, who had also been involved in the Laconia
past decades Survey, published the volume on the Bronze Age remains
An extensive survey of Mycenaean Laconia was carried of the Menelaion.15 Another hefty publication is that on the
out by Emilia Banou between 1990-1994.5 She visited and large conference on the MH period, organized in 2006 and
mapped various known sites, but also identified various published a few years later.16 Three contributions deal with
settlements and cemeteries so far not known. Several of Laconia: one on MH Geraki,17 the second on various MH and
these sites were further studied by her.6 Somewhat earlier, early Mycenaean finds from Sparta and Laconia,18 among
between 1983 and 1989, the Laconia Survey was carried which a number of new sites identified and investigated
out by a joint team from the British School at Athens and by the archaeologists of the 5th Ephorate of Prehistoric and
the Universities of Amsterdam and Nottingham. Their Classical Antiquities, and the third introduced a new project
intensive survey covered an area of 70 km2. across the to be carried out at and around Vapheio.19 The latter is still
Eurotas River to the east of the ancient site of Sparta. The running and consists among other things of the identification
results of this survey were published in 1996 and 2002,7 and of the Bronze Age quarry and a survey of the area around
culminated in several new projects in Laconia, initiated by Vapheio.20 Results of the excavations at Pellana, which has
the various researchers involved in the Laconia survey. A also been indicated as a possible palatial site, were published
new survey project was set up by Bill Canvanagh, Chris in three volumes by Spyropoulos in 2013.21
Mee and Peter James and carried out in 1993 and 1994: the Moreover, three conferences on Laconia or Sparta were
Laconia Rural Site Project,8 which aimed to research more organized and published in the past decade. The coverage
fully small rural sites. Various site-specific projects were of the Bronze Age in these proceedings increased: in the
also set up. Systematic excavations were carried out at the proceedings of the conference Sparta in Laconia, organized in
site of Geraki from 1995 onwards, under the direction of 1995, only a single paragraph in one article briefly discusses
Joost Crouwel,9 and investigations are ongoing up to today, Bronze Age settlement patterns.22 In the proceedings of the
though now under the direction of Mieke Prent. Cavanagh conference on Sparta and Laconia, organized in 2005, nine
and Mee continued their research in Laconia, and started papers discussed prehistoric remains. A special issue of
investigations and excavations at the site of Kouphovouno the journal Pharos of the Netherlands Institute in Athens
from 1999 onwards together with Josette Renard.10 The first is entirely devoted to the EH period with papers presented
Linear B tablets were recovered at Ayios Vasileios in 2008 during the 2010 Round Table meeting.23 But while the EH II
by the archaeologists of the 5th Ephorate of Prehistoric and and Mycenaean period tend to be well represented in
Classical Antiquities, under the Direction of Adamantia such publications, what is noticeable is the little data on
Vasilogamvrou.11 This was followed by a Research the EH III, MH and LH I periods. But times are a-changing,
Program under the auspices of the Archaiologike Etaireia especially thanks to extensive research projects undertaken
of Athens, including geophysical research, excavations in Laconia by the Ephorate of Antiquities.
of a major administrative center with palatial buildings,
and excavations of the North Cemetery.12 Further south, 13 See for more details and video footage the project website: https://
at the coast, the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of www.nottingham.ac.uk/pavlopetri/index.aspx, as well as the
the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Centre for contribution in this volume.
14 Taylour & Janko 2008.
15 Catling 1977; 2009.
5 Banou 1996. 16 Philippa-Touchais et al. 2010.
6 Banou 1999; 2000; 2006; 2009. 17 Crouwel 2010.
7 Cavanagh et al. 1996; Cavanagh et al. 2002. 18 Zavvou 2010.
8 Mee & Cavanagh 1998; Cavanagh et al. 2005. 19 Hitchcock & Chapin 2010.
9 See for preliminary reports Pharos, the journal of the NIA, as well 20 Chapin et al. 2014; Hitchcock et al. 2016; Banou & Hitchcock 2005.
as the contributions in this volume. See also the contributions of Banou et al. this volume.
10 E.g. Cavanagh et al. 2004. 21 Spyropoulos 2013.
11 Vasilogamvrou 2010a, 66. 22 Cavanagh & Walker 1998.
12 See for more details the various contributions in this volume. 23 Mee & Prent 2011-2012.
8 MIDDLE AND LATE HELLADIC LACONIA
