Sardis

Spear Won Land: Sardis from the King's Peace to the Peace of Apamea, 2019

– the Acropolis of Platania is part of a complex of fortifications in Paranesti area (Northern Greece, Municipality of Paranesti). Excavations have revealed that it was a habitation area from prehistoric times to the Byzantine period. All Acropolises of the area were once a place of residence or a refuge place that provided safety to the residents. They also played an important military role by being used as check and information transmitting points of the enemy troop movements as well as locations to confront the enemy attacks. The element of fire played an important role as a visual message transmission method at long distances between the acropolises. Parts of vehicular roads that used to connect the Acropolises of the area have been found, and these roads are thought to have served as a main communication axis between Macedonia and Thrace, the East with the West and the Mediterranean to the Balkan hinterland.

2008

It is often considered that when the Balkanic peninsula came to be under Roman dominion, autonomous Greek city states were turned into mere administrative districts of a unified province from now on, and that a change of settlement and land-use patterns occurred. It is a matter of fact necessary to reexamine the countryside’s history by questioning the chronological foundations of the archaeological surveys. Moreover, it is possible as well to pinpoint the city’s pereniality even as far as the Empire’s period. It is the very notion of “Roman Greece”, regarded at the same time as a spatial continuum and as a chronological unity lasting from 200 BC to 200 AD, which is thus challenged.

The paper presents the topographic evolution of the southern part of the acropolis of Istros, as shown by the discovery of several Freek structures, namely one Archaic, two Classical and one Hellenistic buildings, as well as an Archaic pit and a Classical terracing wall.

The urban morphology of Assos in pre-Hellenistic times In the last ten years numerous excavations in the intraurban area of Assos and an intensive topographical and archaeological survey (2010-2012) have provided valuable informations for a better understanding of the site in the Geometric, Archaic, and Classical phases (900– 330/320 B.C.). With the exception of the Athena Temple and graves from the Western Necropolis, and in contrast to the Hellenistic Assos, which is represented in numerous handbooks due to its fortifications and the famous Greek Agora, nearly nothing was known about the pre-Hellenistic settlement. Taking into account topographical, architectural, archaeological as well as historical factors, this presentation provides an overview of the key developments of the city’s pre‐Hellenistic morphology. Even if the archaeological evidence for an absolutly chronological framework remains still sketchy, three major early phases are discussed (1. Iron Age I/II and pre‐Tempel construction phases; 2. Late Archaic and Classical phases; 3. Late Classical period): First, is the evidence for an occupation of the site in the Late Geometric Phase and the establishment of a regional economic center on the acropolis and the adjacent northeast ridge. Second, is a period of prosperity, with a gradual growing of the settlement in the southern and western suburbs, possibly ending with destructions in the late 6th or early 5th century B.C and a decrease of archaeological data for the second and third quarter of the 5th century B.C. Third, is the comprehensive redevelopment and rehabilitation of the city in the course of the 4th century leading up to the Early Hellenistic construction program on the Greek Agora (see Nurettin Arslan’s presentation). The analysis tries to present the archaeological evidence under the focus of individual local characteristics as well as general transregional developments.

Spear-Won Land, Sardis from the King's Peace to the Peace of Apamea, edited by Andrea Berlin and Paul Kosmin, 2019

Working on the Late Roman/Early Byzantine period in Greece was, in the early 1990s, a quite lonely occupation. Since then, an important amount of data has been accumulated which has not been yet totally exploited. Although a significant amount of field work has been done in the last 20 years, the published data remain few. Some of the Late Roman/Early Byzantine urban centers excavated from 1990 up to now will be briefly discussed in order to examine the transformations of the urban landscape and the contribution of the Late Roman/Early Byzantine period to the formation of a new model for cities. The article begins with a brief history of research.

Exploring the neighborhood. The role of ceramics in understanding place in the Hellenistic world. Proceedings of the 3rd Conference of IARPotHP, Kaštela,1st-4th June 2017., 2020

Sardis became a city sometime in the early first millennium BCE, and it remained the largest urban center in Lydia for a period of about 1500 years. Over that time its fortunes and character changed, as did its relationship with its large, fertile, rural surroundings. In this paper I examine this relationship during a span of three to four hundred years, from the 5th/4th through the 2nd/1st centuries BCE. I compare locally produced and imported pottery recovered in excavations at Sardis itself with that found by the Central Lydian Archaeological Survey (CLAS), an intensive field project covering about 350 km2 around the Gygean Lake. There is an odd, counter-intuitive, correlation between the political importance of Sardis and its rural settlement. During the city's years of political stature, survey results show that many people lived out in the hinterland, far from the city. In the second century BCE the pattern switched. After the Seleucid defeat at Magnesia (190 BCE), when Pergamon took control of Sardis and its territory, and the city became just another urban center, its political glory became a thing of the past. At this precise time, according to the CLAS survey data, the countryside emptied out and people moved back into the city. I consider the reasons behind this paradoxical situation, in which political stature and urban prosperity are seemingly at odds with one another.