What Would You Say That You Do: Isthmia Final Report

One of the most consistent assumptions about my summers is that I’m digging. I used to try to tell people that I don’t really dig (much less LIKE to dig), but I’ve more or less given up on that. This is partly because it invariably prompts the response: if you don’t dig, what would you say… you do there?

This summer in Greece, my colleagues, Richard Rothaus and R. Scott Moore, and I worked on the Late Roman and Early Byzantine phases of the 2nd-century Roman bath at Isthmia. We were particularly interested in evaluating the conclusions of Tim Gregory in his 1995 preliminary report and Birgitta Wohl in her 1981 article on a deposit of lamps from the bath. 

The main outcome of this year’s season is a 9,800 word preliminary report on our research. This has focused on the abandonment levels. Our goal was to evaluate the evidence for the dating of the abandonment of the bath (and the building of the Hexamilion wall),  to contextualize later material present at the bath, and to inform how we understand the re-use of this monumental structure. Be aware that these are all provisional and at time tentative conclusions.

Here’s a labeled plan of the bath which will help make the report linked at the end of this blog post make sense. 

Final report from “Slavic Team” at Isthmia.