GREECE
Dr. Archie Dunn: Thisve-Kastorion: Town, Territorium and Loci of Maritime Traffic (report on fieldwork conducted in 2007)
The third season of the archaeological survey of Ancient Thisve and Byzantino-Frankish Kastorion, at modern Thisve in the Koinotita of Domvraina, lasted for 4 weeks, from August 15th to September 11th. It has become a collaboration between the British School (represented by Birmingham University) and the new 23rd Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, directed by Dr E.Gerousi, in succession to the 1st E.B.A.....[continued]
Dr. Anne McCabe, American School of Classical Studies at Athens Excavations carried out by the American School of Classical Studies in June-August in Section BH of the Athenian Agora continued to reveal domestic buildings of the 10th/11th century, built over the NE end of the Classical stoa identified as the Stoa Poikile. The Middle Byzantine walls preserve the orientation of the Classical building. Beneath them, earlier walls (probably of Late Antique date) incorporate the orthostate blocks of the Stoa's back wall and a column of the interior colonnade. See our website, www.agathe.gr
Professor J. Crow, Dr. S. Turner, Dr. Athanasios Vionis
Characterizing the historic landscapes of Naxos
From October 2006-September 2007 the first two authors held an AHRC award as part of the Landscapes and Society Programme. The research focused on a relatively new kind of landscape archaeology devised in Britain and applied for the first time in the eastern Mediterranean. Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) is a method for mapping the entire landscape with reference to its historic development. For our project we chose to analyse two contrasting Mediterranean landscapes: the Aegean island of Naxos (Greece), and the country around the small town of Silivri in Trakya (Turkey) (see second report).....[continued]
ISRAEL
Ken Dark: Nazareth Archaeology Project 2007
This project, directed by Ken Dark (University of Reading) and funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund, Late Antiquity Research Group, and the University of Reading, was established in 2004 to investigate Roman-period and Byzantine (fifth- to seventh-century AD) Nazareth and its hinterland (previously reported in BBBS 31-33). Previous seasons involved an intensive field-walking and surface survey of the landscape between Nazareth and the Roman-period and Byzantine town of Sepphoris (Zippori) to its north, and archaeological recording at the Sisters of Nazareth convent next to the Church of the Annunciation in the centre of Nazareth.
Work in 2007 concentrated on recording a complex of rock-cut features in the countryside north of Nazareth, first identified in 2005 and preserved amid agricultural fields, and at the Sisters of Nazareth convent site in central Nazareth.
At the former, a Total Station survey of the whole site recorded all the visible rock-cut features. These include what may be structural evidence, spatially associated with hundreds of sherds of Roman-period and Byzantine domestic pottery, and what may be evidence of quarrying activities. Quarrying has been identified in conjunction with settlements of this date elsewhere in the Nazareth area, and this may be understood in terms of that wider association. The possibility that other Roman-period and Byzantine sites identified in the landscape around Nazareth may have combined quarrying and agricultural elements in their economies is to be investigated further in 2008.
Survey at the Sisters of Nazareth convent in 2007 continued to record the well preserved, but hitherto unpublished, features at the site. As reported in BBBS 33, these include what may be a – once mosaic-decorated – Byzantine-cave church with associated cisterns and a well, at least two – probably three – Roman-period Jewish tombs and an early Roman-period domestic structure (or structures). The latter probably dates to the first-century AD and, if so, is the only surface-constructed building of this date so far identified in Nazareth. In 2007, further evidence for all of these phases was recorded, including additional walls of the early Roman-period structure(s) and what may be Byzantine-period vaulting, in addition to Crusader walling and vaulting. 400 finds were drawn to 1/1 scale, and examination of the surviving artefacts recognised evidence of shell-working, probably for inlays, including a small cross of a form suggesting a Byzantine date for this activity.
Further analysis of earlier, unpublished, records has contributed additional evidence that a large Byzantine church stood over the cave-church complex. This church was more architecturally complex and elaborately decorated than was realised in 2006, and may have resembled – in general terms – in plan the Early Byzantine church at Ayia Trias on Cyprus. The building in Nazareth was floored with polychrome mosaic, and a small fragment of mosaic floor is preserved in the convent museum. There were also polychrome wall mosaics, and fragments of a white marble chancel screen still exist. The same records indicate further mosaic-floored Byzantine buildings to the south of the church, along the edge of a wadi between these structures and the Byzantine Church of the Annunciation.
This evidence indicates that Byzantine Nazareth contained two large churches dominating its centre, with other mosaic-floored and colonnaded masonry structures around them. As such, the centre of the settlement was transformed, probably in the fourth or early fifth century, from a small, low-status, Roman-period village with few masonry structures, to a monumentalised Byzantine pilgrimage centre. This has to be set in the context of the evidence for both unusually intensive – but probably low-status – rural settlement during the Roman period in the agriculturally rich valley north of Nazareth and for almost total continuity of that settlement-pattern until the end of the sixth century or beyond, judging from pottery evidence.
It is intended to continue work both in the countryside and at the Sisters of Nazareth site in 2008 if permission is granted.
Acknowledgements
Survey in 2007 was only possible through the kind permission and help of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Sisters of Nazareth convent. The convent has continued to be an exemplary host for an archaeological project. The assistance provided by Dr Eliya Ribak both before and during the survey was invaluable as in previous years. Thanks are also due to the organisations funding the project (mentioned above) and to Chris Entwistle, Sam Moorhead and Edna Stern for their advice and help in recruiting specialist staff.
ITALY
Dr. Vasiliki Tsamakada: The Domitilla-Project
Member of the research team of the START-Project “The Domitilla-Catacomb in Rome”, Institut für Kulturgeschichte der Antike, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Supervisor: Dr. Norbert Zimmermann.
See also: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/antike/institut/arbeitsgruppen/christen/domitilla.html#English
The Domitilla-Catacomb in Rome
Archaeology, Architecture and Art History of a Late Roman Cemetery
The Roman catacomb of Domitilla with 15 km of galleries is not only the largest catacomb of Rome, it also documents all phenomena and degrees of catacomb development, from isolated pagan tombs and the earliest anonymous community burials to the huge 4th -century necropolis and the later pilgrimage sanctuary with its subterranean basilica. Furnished with 77 painted tombs of all its phases of use, it is also one of the most important and interesting catacombs. Even after about 400 years of research it is still not studied nor published in its entirety, but with its abundant bibliography about some special aspects, using the various methods of research developed until now, it represents a typical case of today's status questionis for the catacombs: while the general lines of their history and development are out of doubt, only little is known about the rich individual story of each cemetery since the catacombs are rarely read as entire archaeological monuments. What is mostly lacking until now is a complete documentation offering full access to all kinds of scientific debate on these so good preserved but still so unknown remains in the centre of the Roman Empire.
The goal of the Domitilla project
The goal of the Domitilla project is to do both: to elaborate a complete, high quality documentation of architecture and paintings, based on 3D-Laser-scanner datas for the first time, and to combine all kinds of methodological approaches to a synthetic, equilibrate use of them. The first step will be the long expected repertory of the paintings, partly still unpublished or not present in modern studies. The project will provide not only a new standard of publication and study, but also the art history, iconography and meaning of the paintings as well as the topography and architecture of galleries and rooms, the number, typology and position of the tombs, the inscriptions and the social context will be read in a modern, multi-disciplinary analysis. The micro-history of the Domitilla catacomb reflects the general changes of late ancient Roman society in a direct way. The project will open a new and deeper view of that changes.
TURKEY
Professor J. Crow, Professor D. Mektav, Dr. S. Turner
Survey in Thrace July 2007
This year’s field survey in Thrace combined two distinct projects, both developing from the established programme of work on the late Roman and Byzantine monuments commenced in 1994 (Crow 2007; Crow et al 2008). The first was a new programme, supported by the AHRC (Crow and Turner), concerned to evaluate the potential of remote sensing satellite images and their application for the study of ancient landscapes applying the technique of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) in the region around Silivri (for a discussion of the technique see the outline in Crow, Turner and Vionis on Naxos). The second project, in collaboration with Professor Derya Maktav of ITU and supported by TUBITAK, will apply satellite data and other digital map data to develop further research into the Byzantine water supply system (Çeçen 1996) and to provide an extensive digital terrain model and GIS to document the complex system of Byzantine hydraulic monuments in the region west of Istanbul.....[continued]
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