T E I R E S I A S

A Review and Bibliography of Boiotian Studies

Volume 41, 2011 (Part 2A)

ISSN 1206-5730
Compiled by A. Schachter
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CONTENTS

Work in Progress:

(A) 1-25: 112.0.01 J. Bintliff and others, “The Leiden-Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia
Project 2011 Report”
(B) 26-38: 112.0.02 B. Burke and others, “Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project 2011:
Excavations at Ancient Eleon”
(B) 39-42: 112.0.03 Y. Kalliontzis, “Les catalogues synoptiques des inscriptions des Musées
de Thèbes et de Chéronée”
(B) 42-44: 112.0.04 N. Papazarkadas, “The Epigraphy and History of Boeotia: New Finds,
New Developments”

Bibliography:

(B) 44-46: 1: Historical

(B) 46-49: 2: Literary
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WORK IN PROGRESS

112.0.01 THE LEIDEN-LJUBLJANA ANCIENT CITIES OF BOEOTIA PROJECT 2011

REPORT

1) Koroneia - John Bintliff

In the summer of 2011 the Leiden team with the assistance of an international group of
staff and students, and directed by John Bintliff with Assistant Directors Athanasios Vionis and
Vladimir Stissi, completed the surface ceramic survey of this ancient city (Figures 1-2). Leon
Theelen was the Finds Laboratory Manager. The GIS recording was taken care of by Bart Noor-
dervliet and Janneke van Zwienen. Ceramic analysis was the responsibility of Kalliope Sarri,
Gry Nymo, Vladimir Stissi, Mark van der Enden, Jeroen Poblome, Philip Bes, Rinse Willet and
Athanasios Vionis. Epigraphy is in the care of Albert Schachter and Fabienne Marchand. The
finds database is managed by Emeri Farinetti. The total area covered by the ceramic survey runs
now to some 900 units of average 400 sq metres, although some parts of the city hill were left
unsurveyed owing to precipitous slopes or dense scrub vegetation (left blank in the preceding
two figures). Some units were overgrown sufficiently to disallow the counting of surface artefact

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density, but still with care we could collect samples of ceramics (Figure 3). Our main aim this
summer was to fill in all accessible areas not so far surveyed and to clarify the edges of the built-
up town as well as extramural activity zones.
A series of major discoveries this year, added to key elements of previous years from the
start of the urban survey in 2006, allows us with some confidence to identify critical evidence for
the maximum boundaries and functional differentiation in and around the ancient city (Figure 4).
Particular importance can be attached to further discoveries of stamped tiles with the city of
Koroneia’s monogram after those noted for 2010, and which we had suggested belonged to the
Classical Greek city wall. Apart from examples found to the extreme northeast at the foot of the
city hill and clearly in an extramural cemetery zone, and a new example by the earlier discovered
Classical cemetery somewhat to the south of this near a rock-cut tomb, more spectacular finds of
this artefact were revealed by a new agricultural bulldozing in the northwest high up on the steep
edge of the city hill. Here the creation of small steep terraces for cultivation had cut through
thick slopewash and archaeological deposits, revealing a significant sequence which could be
interpreted by our geomorphologist Dr. Keith Wilkinson. A line of Classical city wall, including
a square tower, was exposed, associated with a whole series of well-preserved stamped city-wall
tiles. One of the clearest examples of the 2011 series is shown in Figure 5. The monogram com-
bines the archaic form of ‘K’ for Koroneia (the Koppa, ϙ) and then a Delta and an Alpha for
Damos or ‘The People’ of Koroneia. In Figure 6 we can see the outer face of a wall tower.
Dr. Wilkinson’s study of the hill sediments in this locality showed that the wall had been
built atop a steep slope, which was subsequently coated with hillwash parallel to that slope and
containing urban waste. Over this series came a horizontal thick layer of almost sterile recent soil
now cut through by the modern terrace creation.
Evidence of a different kind but equally decisive for our final understanding of the plan
of Koroneia came from the discovery of a new industrial quarter in the south of the city hill,
close to a Classical and Roman cemetery, south of the earlier discovered potters’quarter on the
eastern lower slopes of the city hill.. This clearly allowed us to confine the borders of the town
on the southeast, and made it clear that the southernmost sectors of our survey, covered in earlier
seasons, although showing domestic activity and agricultural installations, must now be assigned
to extramural and indeed rural settlement. This was supported by a tombstone in the southwest of
the town near to a large sloping sector we had proposed as extramural cemetery in earlier sea-
sons.
We are now able to define the maximum extent of the ancient city through combining
wall indications (physical foundations and wall tiles), cemeteries, and what seem now clearly to
have been immediately extramural industrial quarters on the east and southeast. The town was
clearly even at its most expansive much smaller than previously envisaged, little more than 30
hectares. The uneven spread of the urban plan reflects today the very steep and unusable western
hill edge and the more gentle slopes to the north, east and south, a distinction Dr. Wilkinson has
shown this season due completely to a contrasted bedrock geology.
Another feature of the August season was the detailed planning of several built structures
surviving on the surface of the site. This was carried out within the framework of a one-week
European training school, the staff responsible being Hanna Stoeger and Eric Dullaart, working
with Total Stations. Just outside the city to the northeast is a small hillock crowned by one face
of a Crusader tower, around which giant fragments lie from its collapsed internal vaulting. Plan-
ning this monument adds an additional piece of evidence to our much older work on similar tow-
ers in Boeotia (Lock 1986). Inside the city itself this team planned two important ruins, both of

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Late Antique date, at least in their final form. One is a series of rooms immediately inside the
present entrance track in the far south of the acropolis. Speculation that this was a church has
now been replaced, after clearance of concealing vegetation, by a series of interlocked rooms and
spaces that either represents small houses or shops/workshops (Figure 7). The small rooms are
built of varied materials, including recycled pillars, an altar or monument base, recycled fine cut
blocks, small stones, tiles and mortar, and show more than one phase. Traces of similar ‘scruffy
houses’ can be seen in the northern acropolis, also utilising spolia pillars.
The other major planning project on the acropolis was to try and make more sense of the
extensive and complex, collapsed Late Roman structure almost at the summit of the acropolis
and in its northern sector. Dr. Inge Uytterhoeven had already dated this structure to the 6th cen-
tury AD from the massive tiles inset into its vaults, and informed us that earlier suggestions of a
bathhouse (hence the local name for the acropolis ‘Loutro’) must be rejected. Vegetation clear-
ance revealed a much larger building than was earlier apparent (Figure 8), although almost all
the visible walls are in fact giant multiple collapsed vaults, probably from the building’s ground
floor. The new plans, and the discovery that the largest standing section preserved a confluence
of three vault lines, as well as evidence that some sections of vaults are in situ, should we hope
allow Dr. Uytterhoeven to suggest the form of the building. Current theories are either an epis-
copal palace or the residence of the governor of the late antique town.
We currently propose that the Late Roman town was smaller not only than the Classical
Greek but also the Early Roman city, and was largely focussed on the acropolis and an extramu-
ral suburb in and around the Forum/ Agora, which lay on a lower plateau below and east of the
acropolis. The acropolis itself was rewalled, to judge from two exposures, whilst inside, the for-
mer public zones appear to have been given over to unpretentious domestic settlement (including
agricultural processing from several finds of large receptacules and a large press base), and the
impressive multi-storeyed central public building. It would then compare well to the class of
Kastra which dominate the archaeological record of nucleated settlements in the Late Antique
Balkans (Liebeschuetz 2007).
Ceramic analysis of the city grids has only begun, and we still await evidence for a clear
focus for the dispersed finds of prehistoric ceramics and lithics, whilst the same goes for the in-
terval after the Late Roman activity on the acropolis and nearby, the so-called Early Byzantine
Dark Ages of the 7th-9 th centuries AD. We might suggest that occupation could have continued
within the Kastro, for which a parallel has been identified by our project at the fortified hilltop
village of Aghios Konstantinos near ancient Tanagra in Eastern Boeotia. However this season
did fill another gap in the occupational sequence of Koroneia, that which preceded and paralleled
the Crusader tower in the northeast of the site. Immediately below this in the first flat ground of
the northern Koroneia plain, amidst a Classical and Roman cemetery, we discovered a settlement
of the Middle and Late Byzantine period. The existence of this village was already presupposed
from the placing of a Crusader tower at the site, as these monuments are usually placed to exploit
a pre-existing local village.

(2) Hyettos - John Bintliff

The Leiden team completed the mapping of surface architecture remains at this ancient
city, covering in all 38.68 hectares of ground on the Acropolis and in the Lower Town and
around it. More than 500 locations were identified and mapped where significant pieces of an-
cient architecture survive on the surface (Figure 9), a remarkable count when we consider that
the city lies along a major route to the coast from northeast Boeotia, and also lies within view of

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the modern village of Loutsi and not far from a second larger village, Pavlo. These pieces will be
studied by Dr. Uytterhoeven. They include a capital which seems to belong to an urban sanctu-
ary, whose plentiful finds of high quality Classical fineware and figurines were noted in the
original surface survey of the city in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Figure 10). At the same
time Janneke van Zwienen began to make a more refined surface topographic map of the city site
with a differential gps device, since the existing 1:5000 map shows little detail in the rather flat
lower town. The next illustration fits the vertical air photographs to our original survey grid and
a first version of the new digital elevation model (Figure 11).

(3) Tanagra - Bozidar Slapsak

The Ljubljana team of the joint Leiden-Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia project car-
ried out field research at the site of ancient Tanagra between October 6 and 27, 2011. The re-
search was directed by Prof. Božidar Slapšak, with Sara Popović, doctoral student at the Univer-
sity of Ljubljana responsible for architectural survey, and Rok Plesničar, BA in archaeology, for
geophysical survey.
The goal of the architectural survey was to document surface structures pertaining to the
city wall as known from previous publications. Somewhat less than one third (750 m) of the total
wall outline could be recorded. Cleaning revealed unmistakeably and invariably Late Roman
building techniques - mixed (limestone and sandstone blocks, stone and brick in-between), with
ample use of spolia (including blocks arguably from an earlier, Classical city wall), and regular
use of mortar. All structural remains recorded are precisely georeferenced and integrated into the
CAD and GIS database so we can now integrate the wall line properly into our base document
(magnetometry map).
This city wall, previously published by Roller (1974) as Late Classical and now clearly in
its current form defined as Late Roman, cuts off parts of the regular urban planning grid of the
Classical city dated to the 4th century BC. In 2005, magnetometry survey revealed that situation
in the North-West part of the town, and the goal of this year’s survey was to check areas to the
North-East and East of the present wall as well. In all parts surveyed (see Figure 12), the grid
continues, so currently we estimate the extent of the Classical city to over 60 ha as compared to
under 30 ha of the Late Roman walled city. However, at one point at least, the grid appears also
to cross the assumed line of the walled Classical city in the East, so we must be cautious there
and permit the possibility that we have the urbanized area or some suburbs descending all the
way down to the Asopos river. Besides the stretch of the Classical city wall identified in the
North-West in 2005, we found another stretch this year on the Acropolis, beyond the line of the
Late Roman wall, and can arguably trace a separate Acropolis wall both outside and within the
Late Roman city wall precinct.
The 2011 results call for continuation of fieldwork on Ancient Tanagra: we know now
that the urban structure is detectable by geophysics also beyond the Late Roman wall where in-
tensive land use caused much destruction during the last half century, and we expect to have just
from this survey precious new data on urban dynamics. The acropolis plateau should be one of
the privileged areas to survey fully because, while until now, we thought it comprised a minis-
cule area on the top of the hill, it is clear now that we have a considerable surface there, which
may hide some of the most important religious buildings of Tanagra. On the other hand, further
architectural survey is needed to complete the outline of the Late Roman wall, and to record the
key functional areas not yet documented.

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(4) Recording and 3D reconstruction of Byzantine – Early Modern monuments in Boeotia -
Chiara Piccoli and Athanasios Vionis
A separate architectural project on a number of standing Byzantine – Early Modern
monuments in the regions of Tanagra – Aghios Thomas and Haliartos was undertaken within the
framework of the Leiden-Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project in late August 2011 by
Athanasios Vionis (University of Cyprus) and Chiara Piccoli (University of Leiden). A permit
was issued to Dr Vionis by the General Directorate of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Antiquities
of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the architectural recording and study of six
monuments in Boeotia: Aghios Thomas Oinophyton (1 km SE of the ancient city of Tanagra),
Aghios Polykarpos (500 m NW of ancient Tanagra), Aghia Aikaterini (2 km SW of ancient
Tanagra), Aghios Dimitrios (outside the contemporary village of Aghios Thomas – Liatani), the
chapel of Zoodochos Pigi at Mazi (between the contemporary village of Mazi and the deserted
village-site of Palaiomazi in the wider upland region of Haliartos town), and the Frankish tower
of Haliartos (at the entrance of the contemporary town of Haliartos on the way to Livadeia). The
recording of the first five monuments was completed between the 26th and 30th August 2011.
The recording team consisted of A. Vionis, Ch. Piccoli, L. Theelen, and a number of students
from the Universities of Leiden and Cyprus.
The aforementioned monuments were chosen because each one of them forms the most
substantial part of deserted village- and hamlet-sites identified through intensive surface survey
by (a) the “Leiden-Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project” in the region of ancient Tanagra
in 2000-2005 (i.e. the Byzantine-Medieval sites of Aghios Thomas, Aghios Polykarpos, Aghia
Aikaterini, and Aghios Dimitrios) and (b) the “Durham-Cambridge Boeotia Project” in 1979-
1997 (i.e. the Ottoman deserted village of Dushia around the chapel of Zoodochos Pigi at Mazi,
and the Frankish site around the tower of Haliartos). Apart from the immense and most vital con-
tribution of archaeological surface field-survey to the study of post-Classical Greece, another
way of examining traces of past human activity remains the standing building evidence (Vionis
2008). Remaining medieval and post-medieval monuments in Boeotia, still providing evidence
from above (rather than below) ground, however, are primary sources of information to be com-
bined with textual/historical or other references. Thus, the aim of this architectural project was
(a) to produce detailed and accurate plans of the monuments (as a means of recording their state
of preservation and making them available to the local community and other researchers in the
field of Byzantine-Medieval rural architecture) and (b) to visualise in a 3D environment each
monument in order to understand and interpret its interior use and movement within it.
For the recording of the standing structures we used a Reflectorless Total Station (Ro-
botic Total Station), while the data was (and is still being) processed through AutoCAD, a CAD
software application for 2D and 3D design and drafting. Although this is a precise method of
producing the desired plans and 3D reconstructions, it is a time-consuming process, especially
when it comes to the processing of the measurements with the aid of the computer software. So
far, the 3D reconstruction of four of the churches (Figures 13-16), and the plans of all five of
them have been produced (Figure 17).
This is not the first time that the Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project and its predecessor
Durham-Cambridge Boeotia Project have shown interest in the post-Roman monuments and
housing of the Boeotian countryside. The British historian Dr. P. Lock (1986), for instance, stud-
ied the surviving feudal towers of Boeotia and Euboea, and dated them in the 13th–15th centu-
ries; similarly, N. Stedman (1996), Prof. F. Aalen (Aalen et al. 1999) and Dr. E. Sigalos (2004)
examined standing examples of the traditional long-house in most regions of Boeotia. Recently,

5
more advanced recording techniques were employed for recording and studying traditional hous-
ing in Boeotian villages. Joep Verweij (former student at Leiden University) recorded in 2007
two surviving longhouses in the village of Aghios Georgios through stereographic photographing
and produced an AutoCAD 3D model of these structures (Bintliff et al. 2009, 37-42). Addition-
ally, Chiara Piccoli (Ph.D. researcher at Leiden University) further developed this approach by
using a Robotic Total Station for recording in 2009 ten traditional houses in the villages of Mazi
and Evangelistria (Piccoli forthcoming).
The church of Aghios Thomas (dedicated to St. Thomas) is located in the middle of the
hamlet site with the site-code TS5, 1 km SE from the ancient city of Tanagra. It is approximately
1.5 ha in size, while the study of its ceramic assemblage suggests that the site was occupied from
the 11th to the middle of the 14th century, reaching its peak from the middle of the 12th to the
middle of the 13th century. It has been suggested (Simatou and Christodoulopoulou 1993) that
the church was constructed in the mid 12th century and converted into a Frankish feudal tower
with chapel in the 14th century. The church of Aghios Polykarpos (dedicated to St. Polycarp) is
located in the middle of the tiny hamlet-site of TS21 of 0.5 ha in size, 0.6 km NW of the ancient
city. The church is dated to the 12th century, while large ancient square blocks (from ancient
Tanagra?) have been used for the construction of its apse. The church of Aghia Aikaterini (dedi-
cated to St. Catherine) is located in the middle of the large hamlet-site of TS15, 2 km SW of an-
cient Tanagra. The site occupies an area of approximately 2 ha, while surface ceramic finds are
also dated from the 11th to the 14th centuries. The church was rebuilt in Early Modern times,
while architectural observation of the eastern apse has revealed an earlier phase of Aghia Ai-
katerini (Middle Byzantine?). The church of Aghios Dimitrios, rebuilt in Early Modern times, is
located on the top of a gentle hill, in the middle of the large village-site TS30, occupying an area
of 2.3 ha, in the upland Guinosati valley, W of the contemporary village of Aghios Thomas (Vi-
onis 2008, 33). Architectural observation on the north and east wall has revealed that Aghios
Dimitrios was also built on top of an earlier (Middle Byzantine?) church. Finally, Zoodochos
Pigi, between the contemporary village of Mazi and the deserted site of Palaiomazi, is located at
the site of Dushia, an abandoned çiftlik of the late 16th-18th centuries. The church was originally
built in the Ottoman period (probably in the 16th century); the northern and western walls had
collapsed and were rebuilt by local people recently. The southern and eastern walls preserve a
remarkable series of fresco paintings of the Late Ottoman period, depicting Saints (on the south-
ern wall), Church Fathers and the Virgin (on the eastern apse), while the stone-built temple-
screen preserves fresco paintings of Christ enthroned and the Virgin, very good examples of
Post-Byzantine provincial art.

References:
Aalen, F., J.L. Bintliff, E. Sigalos, P. Spoerry. (1999). I paradosiaki topiki architektoniki tis
Livadeias, in (ed.) Symposio: I Livadeia Chthes, Simera, Avrio. Dimos Levadeon. Livadeia:
Dimos Levadeon: 85-103.
Bintliff, J. L. (1996). The archaeological survey of the Valley of the Muses and its significance
for Boeotian History. La Montagne des Muses. A. Hurst and A. Schachter. Geneva, Librairie
Droz: 193-224.
Bintliff, J., B. Slapsak, B. Noordervliet, J. van Zwienen, J. Verweij (2009). “The Leiden-
Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project, Summer 2007 – Spring 2008.” Pharos 15: 17-42.

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Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. (2007). The Lower Danube region under pressure: from Valens to
Heraclius. The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Danube and Beyond. A. Poulter. Oxford,
Oxford University Press: 101-134.
Lock, P. (1986). “The Frankish towers of central Greece.” Annual of the British School at Athens
81: 101-21.
Piccoli, Ch. (Forthcoming). “ The Recording of Greek Vernacular Architecture” in J. Bintliff, B.
Slapsak, B. Noordervliet, J. van Zwienen, I. Uytterhoeven, K. Sarri, M. van der Enden, R. Shiel,
C. Piccoli “The Leiden-Ljubljana Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project 2009 Season”, Pharos forth-
coming.
Roller, D. W. (1974). “The Date of the Walls at Tanagra.” Hesperia 43: 260-263.

Sigalos, E. (2004). Housing in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. BAR International Series
1291. Oxford, Archaeopress.

Simatou, A.M. & R. Christodoulopoulou (1993). Agios Thomas Tanagras. 13th Symposium of
Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Archaeology and Art. Christianiki Archaiologiki Etaireia. Athens,
Christianiki Archaiologiki Etaireia: 54–55.
Stedman, N. (1996). Land-use and settlement in Post-Medieval central Greece: An interim dis-
cussion. The Archaeology of Medieval Greece. P. Lock and G.D.R. Sanders. Oxford: Oxbow
Books: 179-92.
Vionis, A.K. (2008). “Current archaeological research on settlement and provincial life in the
Byzantine and Ottoman Aegean: A case-study from Boeotia, Greece.” Medieval Settlement Re-
search 23: 28-41.

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Figure 1: Survey units at Koroneia on the 1/5000 topographic map

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Figure 2: Survey units at Koroneia on an air photograph

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Figure 3: Units surveyed, with a distinction between those where density of artefacts could be
measured and pottery collected, and those where vegetation only allowed the collection of ce-
ramic samples.

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Figure 4: Key elements for identifying urban boundaries and urban infrastructure

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Figure 5: One of the 2011 stamped city-wall tiles

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Figure 6: The outer face of a city wall tower on the northwest upper city hill

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Figure 7: The ‘scruffy houses’ of the south acropolis

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Figure 8: One line of collapsed vaulting of the extensive 6th century AD public building near the
summit of the acropolis

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Figure 9: Location of gps-located points where significant surface architectural pieces are pre-
sent at Hyettos

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Figure 10: An ancient capital adjacent to the surface ceramic finds of an ancient intramural
sanctuary, Hyettos lower town.

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Figure 11: A digital elevation model of Hyettos acropolis and lower town with the original sur-
face survey grid overlaid as well as the vertical air photograph.

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Figure12: 2011 extramural geophysical results at Tanagra with provisional suggestions of the
line of the Classical city wall and its Acropolis outside of the standing Late Roman urban fortifi-
cations.

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Figure 13: Zoodochos Pigi: The point cloud captured with the Robotic Total Station (top left),
the CAD model (top right) and the textured model

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Figure 14: The 3D model of Aghia Aikaterini before and after rendering

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Figure 15: The 3D model of Aghios Dimitrios before and after rendering

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Figure 16: Aghios Polikarpos: rendering of exterior and interior

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Figure 17: The plans of the recorded churches

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