On Sunday, we went to the Palace of Nestor, which is a pretty significant site - Telemachus went to visit Nestor in the Odyssey. Nestor was one of the kings of Mycenean Greece (read: Bronze Age, time of the Trojan War), and according to the Iliad, sent the second largest number of ships (after Agamemnon) to the Trojan War. Also, tablets of Linear B (the Mycenaen script that preceded the Greek language) were found in the archives room, and although they are just accounting records (5 goats, 10 sheep, 3 cows, etc) they are still valuable historical sources. So we looked at that site and then went to the museum, which had some really great pottery and even a few pieces of beautiful frescoes. We also visited a couple of tholos tombs, which are always cool - they're basically like giant beehives, and kings or chiefs were buried there. We visited some chamber tombs too, which are tombs built into a hillside. They were pretty much just in someone's backyard - there were some goats a few meters away from us, and someone's dog who wouldn't stop barking at us.
So the site that we are digging is called Iklaina, and there is good reason to believe that this is a district capitol of the kingdom of Nestor. It is mentioned in the tablets AND in Homer, and it is the second largest site in the area, with Nestor's palace being the largest. The aim of the dig is to find out more information about state formation in Mycenaen Greece - that is, how kingdoms absorbed chiefdoms and turned them into what we might call states or districts or provinces. For example, was it voluntary or involuntary? Interestingly enough, at the site, a destruction level has been found which suggests some sort of conflict. Right now, the site consists mostly of a wall, about 25 m long, which leads to a paved area, and a house. The trenches that I'm working on are at the house, which is pretty exciting. One trench has already been opened, and they found a burn level, and a lot of pottery turned upside down with stones on top of it, as though they fell down from a shelf or something. Yesterday, we opened up a new trench which seems to be part of the house too. It is all very exciting - this stuff is 3000 years old! And it's just been sitting in an olive grove, just a few centimeters under the ground. Amazing.
|
