Survey Archaeology and Modern Greece

One of the most fun aspects of the end of the semester rush is the feeling of one thing ending (the semester, winter, teaching) and another thing just straining to start. 

Right now, I’m thinking as much about my summer field season as wrapping up this semester. As part of that work, I’ve put together an abstract for the annual CHAT conference this fall which will be in Greece. The proposed paper will be co-authored with my friends Grace Erny and Dimitri Nakassis and is titled: “Survey Archaeology and Contemporary Greece.”

Here’s the abstract:

Over the past 50 years, Mediterranean intensive pedestrian survey introduced new forms of rigor to diachronic archaeological research in Greece. The chronological diversity of surface assemblages encouraged research questions that considered the transformation of landscapes and regions over the longue durée. In most cases, archaeologists calibrated their sampling strategies to produce spatially and functionally meaningful assemblages from often scant and scattered ancient artifacts in the plough zone. The abundance of twentieth and twenty-first century material in the Greek countryside, however, has posed challenges for prevailing collection strategies and interpretative schemes.

The Western Argolid Regional Project and the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey both sought to document Modern material culture in ways that are both consistent with standard intensive survey practice. This work sought to improve our understanding of site formation processes, to document diachronic post-Medieval landscapes, and to develop methods suitable to the distinctive archaeology of Modern Greece. This paper will focus on a few case studies from our work in the Western Argolid and Eastern Corinthia that show the potential of intensive pedestrian survey to contribute to an archaeology of the Modern world. In particular, we argue that intensive survey methods provide significant insights into the diverse lifeways and built environments of rural populations in Greece across the turbulent political, economic, and social developments of the last 150 years.