The North Fortification Wall

One of the major research goals for this season of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project was working out the date and arrangement of the fortification wall on the northern side of the height of Vigla. This wall dates to the Hellenistic period and was part of a larger effort to fortify important or vulnerable stretches of the south coast of the island during those politically turbulent days. A trench dug by looters in 2008 indicated that the wall along the northern side of the coastal height might be very well preserved.

Our excavations in the 2011 season suggests that the level of preservation on the northern side of the height was not consistent. On the other hand, it did nicely confirm the orientation of the wall along the northern side of Vigla.

From points collected prior to the backfilling of the looter trench in 2009, we were able to establish the orientation of the wall. This orientation follows exactly the orientation of the wall found in our 2012 trench. The red line on the image below is the orientation of the fortification wall established by the looters trench. It follows closely the north face of the wall excavated this week.

While this is heartening, we still don’t quite understand how a wall at this orientation joined with the east and west walls to produce a fortified enceinte. It seems like the walls on the eastern and western flanks extended further north than the north fortification wall. We know that a rock cut fosse or taphros (basically a dry moat) complemented the wall along the northern flank of the fortification. Perhaps walls extending north from the northern wall on its east and west side served to force the enemy to cross the rock-cut moat by preventing them from circumventing the dry moat and attacking the north wall directly from the relatively level ground between the moat and the wall.

This trench is also producing some interesting finds, but more about that in another post…