2009 edition, nos. 60/61 - The American School of Classical Studies ...

student Reports
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Bronze Age Greece. At its present stage of
development, my project has the potential to
illustrate the role of the corridor building in
the economic organization of Late Helladic
society and reveal regional socioeconomic
developments, social stratification, and
settlement types in Mycenaean Greece.
ddd
Greece through the eyes
of thucydides
Andrew Sweet
cornell University
2007–08 MArtin os t wA l d Fellow
Thanks to the Arete Foundation, sponsor
of the School’s Martin J. Ostwald Fellowship,
I was able to spend the 2007–08
academic year as a Regular Member of the
ASCSA. Before I arrived for the program, I
had never been to Greece, so I was looking
forward to becoming acquainted with the
country’s people and culture. I had also just
completed my exams at Cornell University
and was hoping to find a dissertation
topic while abroad. My membership at the
American School enabled me to achieve
both of these goals.
I have been very interested in Thucydides
since I first studied his work in my
freshman year of college, so visiting nearly
all of the sites mentioned in his History
was an amazing experience. One of the
first places Mellon Professor John Oakley
took us to was ancient Plataea. Not much
remains there today, but seeing the spot
where the Peloponnesian War began (at
least according to Thucydides) was very
special to me. As we wandered around and
looked at the foundations of the walls and
the sherds lying on the ground, I could not
help but think of the destruction of the
city at the hands of the Spartans and the
Thebans in 427 B.C. Although the city was
subsequently rebuilt, I felt like I was seeing
the results of the siege that Thucydides so
vividly described.
One highlight of the School trips was
a visit to Pylos with Director Jack Davis,
who knows the area very well. Some of
the most important military actions in the
Peloponnesian War happened at Pylos and
Sphacteria, but Thucydides’ description of
the harbor there includes what appears to
be a serious inaccuracy. We took a boat ride
around the harbor and even landed at a few
places on Sphacteria, which gave me a better
feeling for the local geography. We also
visited nearby Voidokilia Bay, a place that
some scholars have conjectured Thucydides
mistook for the harbor of Pylos.
Another memorable stop was Mantinea,
where I gave one of my reports. Thanks to a
tip from Corinth Excavations Director Guy
Sanders, we stopped at the perfect place
to look over the ancient battlefield. In his
description of the battle, Thucydides says
that the Spartans fell short in experience
but won through courage. It seemed like an
odd comment to me, since the Spartans are
best known for their unrelenting training.
When the trips were over, I continued to
think about this passage. I searched elsewhere
in Thucydides for the juxtaposition
of courage and experience, and I came to
realize that both were important components
of morale. Morale is a crucial determinant
of success in war, so I decided
to do a comprehensive study of morale
in Thucydides’ History as my dissertation
project. I never imagined something that I
came across while researching a site report
would grow into my dissertation!
ddd
towards an Agora: urban
environment and Civic
space in the Peloponnese
JAmieSon C. donAti
institUte oF Fine Arts, nyU
2007–08 eUgene vAnderpool Fellow
Thanks to a Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship,
I spent 2007–08 conducting on-site
research for my dissertation, which traces
the spatial and architectural development
of the Greek agora in the Peloponnese during
the Archaic and Classical periods. This
is a region of southern Greece that exhibits
diverse patterns of urbanization. Here,
bands of small villages took longer to materialize
into centralized urban centers, even
well into the fifth century B.C. This circumstance
naturally influenced the location of
an agora in the city as urban form matured.
The concept of peripheral elements playing
an important role in deciding where the
Greek agora was placed challenges conventional
wisdom that views it as a nodal
point at the center of a city. Also important
to my research is the relationship between
the social and political structure of a city
to the built environment of the agora. Here
I try to break away from an Athenocentric
model to illustrate that the Greek agora can
Photo: J. Donati
Archaic walls (notably, aligned with Classical
walls) beneath the South Stoa in the
Argive agora.
take on different forms, as it addresses different
social and political needs. We cannot
expect that those elements which characterize
agoras in democratic cities have the
same meaning, or are even to be found, in
other political cityscapes.
Five cities in the Peloponnese serve as
case studies for my project. Corinth, Argos,
and Sparta are of the older Peloponnesian
type, while Elis and Megalopolis were built
after neighboring villages joined into a single
urban center. As I quickly learned, each
city presents its own unique set of challenges:
some have been more thoroughly
excavated and published than others; some
have literary and epigraphical testimonia
which can aid our understanding of the
material culture; and some offer opportunities
to re-examine what has already been
excavated.
At Corinth one of the more persistent
problems after 110 years of American excavations
has been the inability to definitively
locate the Greek agora. No pre-Roman civic
buildings have been securely recognized,
leading many scholars to conclude that the
Greek agora must lie in an unexcavated
section of the city. My dissertation includes
a reexamination of the Greek structures in
the central part of the city and suggests that
this area of Corinth could have functioned
as the commercial, religious, and political
heart of the Greek city.
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