Boeotia III: Some Unboxing Notes

Over the weekend, I spent about 10 hours with John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Anthony Snodgrass’s latest publication from their work in Boeotia from 1978-2001: Boeotia Project, Volume III: Hyettos. The Origins, Florescence and Afterlife of a Small Boeotian City (2025). 

It is massive (700+ pages), dense (in two columns!), and it is also open access! In fact, you can download it here. Funny story: I was so excited to get a copy, that when I saw people buzzing about it on social media, I ordered a paper copy before I knew that I could just download it. Do I regret this. No. 

I had the vague idea that I could spend 10 or so hours with this book and that might be enough for a preliminary review. It turns out that I was mistaken. That said, I think that I have enjoyed the volume enough to do the equivalent of an product “unboxing” where I can offer a few preliminary observations.

1. Modify and Adapt. If I were going to write a formal, published review of this book, the first thing I would do is hyperlink the living daylights out of the it. For example, the best description of sites is in “Chapter 4: The analysis of the Hyettos rural landscape (ii): the CN rural sites” where Bintliff and Farinetti describe and interpret each site in some detail. These sites are then discussed throughout the volume in different contexts and by different authors. As the book is downloaded, it is difficult to move between the original description of the site and later analysis. The internal link would solve this beautifully. 

I was tempted (for a moment) to see whether I could easily modify the book to allow a reader to move more easily between sections. Then I noticed that the book was published with a ND license and technically my modifications would violate this license. Of course, I could do it anyway, but I suspect that if the authors publish a book with a restrictive license like this, they are not inclined to entertain modifications.

2. Published Data. As readers of my blog know, I am very interested in how projects publish data. It was exciting to see the Boeotia project published their ceramic data as simple .xlsx downloads here. (They also published their data on architectural fragments here). This data appears to not have any license associated with it which makes it tempting to think of ways to allow the reader to integrate it more tightly with the volume. With the vast number of online data presentation and publication platforms available, it seems pretty easy to create a way to link specifically to particular datasets (say, site data) as well as making the entire dataset available. 

3. Sites. The Boeotia survey pioneered offsite survey not only by collecting data at scale, but offering arguments for why this data matters. Foremost among these arguments it the (in)famous manuring hypothesis which suggests that offsite halos around settlement reflect the scatter of trash associated with the spreading of manure into market gardens around more dense settlements. Alternately, the halo could represent lower density settlement and activity areas surrounding a core settlement. The relatively lower density and shorter term occupation would lead to lower density ceramic scatters that appear archaeologically in very similar ways to manuring especially as they are likely to contain similar assemblages of household ceramics.

The Boeotia project also continued to sample higher density assemblages in the landscape at a higher level. These are areas that exceeded the surrounding density to such an extent that they plausibly represent higher intensity activity areas in the past. By sampling these areas more intensively, the survey teams produced a more robust sample of artifacts and a better relative measure of site densities. This allowed them to discern where densities “fall off” around the borders of the site and return to the level of background scatter and to speak more directly to the function of activities at the site. The functional cohesion of the various period assemblages and the continuity of densities creates a compelling argument for these sites as actually existing as activity areas in the past rather than as the accidental or incidental overlap of lower density scatters. In short, the sites documented by this project are convincing.

4. Early Byzantine Pottery, Assemblages, and Settlement. Finally, I was pretty excited to  read Athanasios K. Vionis, with Chrystalla Loizou’s chapter on “A household archaeology and history of Hyettos and its territory: the Byzantine to Early Modern pottery.” The thing that immediately caught my eye was their discussion of Early Byzantine pottery — particularly handmade and slow-wheel made wares. What’s distinct about their discussion is that they do not simply identify random sherds in offsite scatters, which are a rare, but not unexpected occurrence in areas with long settlement history, but they are able to identify assemblages that include amphora, flat bottomed pitchers (or juglets) and even some burnished brown table wares. While the number of sherds remains small, the diversity in the assemblages is perhaps sufficient to define persistent settlement during these often shadowy centuries.

My interest in this is two fold. First, as readers of this blog know, I’m puttering away on publishing the a more fulsome treatment of the “Slavic” (or better Early Byzantine pottery) from Isthmia and I’ve very recently agreed to write a chapter on the economy of the Early Byzantine countryside (with emphasis, I suspect, on Greece and Cyprus). The traces of evidence for this period are quite scant and the appearance of a cluster of sherds that suggest a domestic assemblage is meaningful indeed.

There is much more to say about this volume and there is a good chance that a longer, more detailed review will appear on this very blog in the near future.