Three Things Thursday: Final Week at Isthmia Edition

This summer I’ve been trying to limit my blogging to a few times a week (excluding my “Foto Phriday” feature. Slowly, but surely, I’ve started to feel pressure to blog more and my discipline and focus have started to falter. My excuse is that is very hot here in the Corinthia and I’m getting excited about the end of the field season. This isn’t a very good excuse though.

Today, I’m giving in to my impulse to write with a short and sweet three things Thursday.

Thing the First

I’ve been thinking more and more about two metaphors that seem popular in today. First is life in the shadow of empire. This seems fitting to describe the Dark Age settlement that I’m studying at Isthmia which literally emerged in the shadow of the Late Roman Hexamilion Wall. 

The other metaphor is life amid ruins. This first captured my attention in Anna Tsing’s Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) and has sort of lingered around the edges of my thinking for the last decade or so. At Isthmia, of course, life amid ruins is quite literal. The 2nd century Roman Bath that forms a key character in the story we’re trying to tell is literally falling down throughout our narrative. In fact, the act of ruination appears to be more than simply a narrative distraction, but is fundamental to our understanding of the life at the Roman bath. As the partially deconstructed building falls down people who are living (or at least visiting) the Roman bath and the shadow of the Hexmilion Wall make do and adapt their surroundings.

Thing the Second 

As someone who received his PhD at the turn of the millennium, I hope that I can be excused for continuing to be preoccupied with the notion of continuity or change. Most of us studying Late Antiquity were talking about it as much to justify the period as a reasonable object of study as to argue that our focus on the period offered insights into both antiquity and the Middle Ages. Today, the study of Late Antiquity feels on more solid ground and less in need of justification, but the specter of continuity or change continues to exert an influence over how archaeologists (in particular) study the 4th to 8th centuries.

Our study of the Roman bath at Isthmia, puts the issue of continuity into relief. We’re trying to discern whether how much time passed between the last activities on the floor of the bath building (while it was partially deconstructed and falling down) and the activities on top of leveled surfaces that stood atop the rubble of collapsed walls which made the floor of the bath inaccessible. The nearer in date the two deposits, the better we can argue for continuity at the site. This is significant because the assemblage atop the collapsed walls of the bath includes handmade pottery that does not appear on or near the floor.

Thing the Third 

One of my great weaknesses as a scholar (other than, say, the compulsive blogging or my inability to focus on one thing at a time and so on) is that I need to write to think. As a result, I fill my world (and often the world of other people) with words, half baked ideas, and convoluted arguments. 

Right now, I’m in writing mode here at Isthmia. I’m trying to narrate the history of the afterlife of the Roman bath. It’s fun, frustrating, and energizing in turn. It is also incredibly inefficient and the embodiment of a kind of slow practice that requires patience for iterative aspects of writing (and thinking).