Our first stop was Goritsa, which overlooks the town of Volos. We hiked up the hill and talked about the mythology of the region. Jason of Argonauts fame is from nearby Iolkos and Chiron the centaur trained heroes on the looming Mount Pelion. The climbing was fun and just strenuous enough to be challenging. After a brief stop, we rolled down the hill into Volos and the museum there.
The view from Goritsa. There are modern day machine gun pillboxes on the end of the ridge.
The Volos Museum is a pretty strong museum. Most notably, it has excellent bilingual signage for the wonderful collection of inscribed and painted stelae from Demetrias and Pasagae. Claudia presented on the two cities which in their histories both flourished, but at different times. Pasagae was the earlier city and experienced its heyday in the 5th century BCE. Demetrias was founded in 294 by a man of the same name, the son of Antigonus, one of the generals of Alexander the Great. He set it up to help control mainland Greece in an area of constant skirmishing between Hellenistic kingdoms.
The stele discussed below.
Luke presented next on the Neolithic sites of Dimini and Sesklos. The sites have extremely important settlements that have told us a lot about Neolithic presence in Greece. The settlements have walls and evidence of both habitation and production areas, which are not in the same place. Dimini was connected to the Balkans and Central Europe through its shell jewelry production and trade. One custom that is still not fully understood is that Neolithic sites have these odd habitation patterns where houses will just be abandoned with no demolition or letter development. This cabin make for confusing stratigraphy. The museum had a really cool stratigraphic display as well, which made talking about the science more understandable. Luke did an amazing job on his presentation. We really hadn't done a lot of Neolithic stuff until today and I felt quite edified by the presentation.
Haven't seen one of these before. It's a great way to convey what stratigraphy is.
There is also a Mycenaean settlement at Dimini which has raised many questions among scholars. The site does not conform to expectations of palace society. There are two megarons instead of just one, and there is no archive anywhere that we have excavated. This site perhaps shows a more cooperative and less hierarchical society, but the jury is still out.
After the rest of the museum, we went to Dimini and climbed around the Neolithic site for a while. There's even a tholos tomb on site, which provided some interesting exploration. We didn't stay for long though and got back on the road.
Our next stop was food and a beach in sleepy Kavaromilos. We had to walk a ways to get food, but I had an immense quantity of chicken so that was great. On returning to the bus, Luke (not the one who presented) was 20 minutes late and we nearly left him. After some running back and forth though, he was successfully retrieved. All in all, no harm, no foul.
Then it was on to Thermopylae, which is where I gave my second presentation. Of course, silt from the Sperchios River has buried the original battlefield under many meters of mud, so we opted for the hill at Colonus, purportedly the site of the last stand of the Persian War battle. There were hundreds of Persian arrowheads discovered on the site, which shows either a battle or that they were deposited later as votive offerings. I'm not sure which one I agree with to be honest, but I will admit that votive deposit takes a lot more buy in to believe.
Me presenting on the Colonus hill. Picture credits to Melanie Harris.
The other main focus of my presentation were the ancient sources. Both Diodorus and Herodotus record the event and it is believed that Diodorus was working from the account of Ephorus, who lived much closer to the battle. Herodotus is considered more authoritative on the battle than Diodorus, who claims that the Greeks made a night raid on the Persian camp before being surrounded the next day. Both authors, however, appear to be following Homeric pattern in their writing, which means that we must take the exact events of the battle they recorded with a grain of salt.
After the presentation, which generated a lot of discussion, we headed at top speed for Livadeia. We dropped our bags at the hotel and did a quick turnaround, heading to the base of the hill where the Temple of Zeus Basileos is located. Melissa presented there on the history of the town and the famed oracle of Triphonios. Triphonios was a local hero who became an oracle after fleeing a treasure heist gone wrong. Despite not finding the cave or sanctuary of Triphonios, the rites are well attested in ancient sources. We're not really sure how people actually received the oracular answers because there was no priest or priestess in contact with the god like Delphi, but plenty of people still tried the oracle.
After Melissa finished, we walked through Livadeia and grabbed dinner. It's a gorgeous town with an amazing river and I wish we were here for longer. Tomorrow morning though we are climbing the hill to look for the Zeus temple, which should be wonderful. We dine in Athens tomorrow for dinner as the final trip comes to an end.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment