Writing Isthmia

One of the simple pleasures of summer research work is the routine of writing a final report. Final reports are equal parts summative and aspirational. They generate a feeling of accomplishment after a project ends and serves as a place for the first and most speculative round of interpretations. 

As some readers of this blog know, about half of my summer work has focused on studying Early Byzantine material from the site of Isthmia in Greece. This summer we largely focused on making sure that we understood the abandonment and post-abandonment processes that took place at the bath and could place the Early Byzantine phase of the site into this context. This included making sure we comprehended the state of the bath before and after the construction of the Hexamilion Wall, which used the northern wall of the bath as part of its structure. 

Writing the final report for Isthmia has largely been an exercise in pulling together and studying material from notebooks, for the storerooms, from various databases, and from lists of inventoried finds. This can be pretty tedious, but it’s the best way to ensure that we understand the arguments that exist for the Roman bath and how our research will fit in. As a result, our final report will perhaps not set the world on fire in terms of a provocative new analysis, but we think that our synthesis of the range of existing material is valuable and look forward to sharing this work when its all written up.

For now, here’s the summary at the end of the report which begins with the abandonment of the Roman bath as a bathing establishment sometime in the four or early fifth century AD. It should give a reader a sense for what we were trying to say:

It is clear that some time prior to abandonment, the bath underwent some kind of significant renovation. The clearest evidence for this (that is relevant for this report) is the installation of the clay floor in Room VIII. The material under this clay floor, while not narrowly diagnostic, appears to date to the 2nd-4th century (or perhaps a bit later). This work may be contemporary with the construction of a new furnace under Room III.

The abandonment of the bath witnessed the arrival of a thin, hard floor deposits of the kind that were visible in Room I and Room II. These deposits suggest that the floor of the bath was open for the deposit of a thin layer of sediment. Wohl argued that these entered Room I (and perhaps Room II) from an open north door.

This thin layer of sediment seems to have been the surface in the northern rooms when the construction of the Hexamilion wall began. In fact, the Hexamilion cuts through this layer of sediment. The construction of the Hexamilion appears to have involved a series of narrowly spaced activities. The builder of the Hexamilion removed the east wall of the bath as well as the east (and south) wall of Room VIII. It also seems likely that they removed sections of the elevated floor in Room IX but left the hypocausts below intact. The builders used the material from the walls and the Room IX floor to install the Hexamilion wall along the north side of the bath in Rooms I, II, and III. This also involved the demolition of the vaulted roofs in the northern rooms, part of which the builders left on the floor in Room II. The latest material beneath the collapsed vault appear to be late 5th century.

With the north wall of the bath incorporated into the Hexamilion Wall, a major disruption to the drainage system occurred. It appears that the bath originally drained through its north (although the drain in the southwestern corner of Room I and the elevated nature of Room III suggests otherwise). At this point, the bath had lost its east wall but it appears the vault of Room VI continued to stand. Because the northern (and southern) rooms had lost their roofs and the east side of the bath was open, whoever was using the bath cut a drain into the mosaic across the northern part of Room VI. This drain cut into the robbing trench of the east wall of Room VI. It flowed into an existing drainage system along the west side of Room VI which was then diverted into a deep cavern under Room II. An existing drain that ran under the mosaic floor (and wall) from the southwestern corner of Room I to the drainage system in Room II was opened to the surface. In Room III one of the steps that leads down to Room V was cut to serve as a drain and it too flowed into the Room II system. This suggests that some of the concern was the flow of water into the bath from the Hexamilion wall. A small north-south “drainlet” was cut into the threshold between Room VI and Room IX to the south. The presumably drained water into the now floorless expanse of Room IX. The best date for the installation of this drainage system comes from under a mound of red earth deposited along the south side of the drain in Room VI during its construction. The material under this mound of red earth dates to the late 4th to early 5th century. Since this material is effectively contemporary with the material from under the collapsed vault in Room II, it suggests that the installation of the drain and the Hexamilion were roughly contemporary.

It seems like this improvised drainage system supported activity in the bath building at the floor levels in Room I and Room II which date into the 5th and 6th century respectively based on pottery found at floor levels there. This material is consistent with evidence that we have indicating that the drain went out of use around the early 6th century. The drain in Room I was closed with a tile propped up by a piece of amphora. The latest material from the drain area in this room was a fragment of a Late Roman lamp of a late 5th century type. In Room II the drain was also closed with a slab of stone and a burial occurred in the drain. The burial was accompanied by a 6th century lamp and a 7th century cooking pot also appeared near floor level. It is possible that the drain in Room VI (and Room III) continued to function, but there is reason to think that it was not the case. A depositional layer associated with the lamp deposit documented by Wohl in her 1981 article spewed across the drain in Room VI. This deposit contained material from the 5th to late 6th century (on the basis of a handless beaker with wavy lines IPR 72-60). This dumping event seems to suggest that the drainage system (or the activity that it supported) was no longer functioning or useful suggesting that it occurred after the burial in Room II which required the stopping up of the drain (indicating that it was functioning). In short, the latest material in the floor was probably in a corner of Room II and 7th century in date.

At this point, it is after this point that it appears that parts of the Roman Bath begin to collapse. The surfaces in Room I, II, III, IV, and V are covered in a layer of debris and collapse. It seems likely that the vaults over Room VI collapsed around this time as well.

The now-collapsed bath, however, continued to attract some attention. Between Room I and Room II a hard surface was created covering the top of the wall separating the two rooms. Room IV and Room V were covered in plaster floor and an apsidal structure was built in Room III. This surface features 7th century material both on and beneath the floor. In Room VIII the southern area of the room saw a number of late walls including an odd apsidal structure and the “e-shaped feature” which was likely an oven of some kind. These surfaces, structures, and features were all associated with an assemblage of pottery that including hand-made and slow wheel beakers, heavily micaceous cooking pots, “group N” pitchers, and Sarachane type amphoras. Moreover, areas adjacent to these structures often featured greater quantities of Early Medieval, “Slavic Type” and 7th century material.