TY - JOUR
T1 - A palace under the olive trees. Investigating the spatial organization of the Mycenaean palatial center at Ayios Vasileios (Laconia, Greece) through large-scale magnetic gradiometry
AU - de Neef, Wieke
AU - Voutsaki, Sofia
AU - Ullrich, Burkart
AU - Freibothe, Ronald
N1 - Funding Information:
The research leading to these results received funding from the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Germany) under Grant Agreement No. AZ51 F15.
Funding Information:
The research presented in this article is generously funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (post-doctoral grant AZ51 F15). We thank Ms. Adamantia Vasilogamvrou, the director of the Ayios Vasileios Project, as well as the Archaeological Society at Athens and the Laconia Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities for permissions to prospect the area. We would like to thank Corien Wiersma and the participants of the Ayios Vasileios Survey for their support, and for sharing their data with us. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments, and are very grateful to Todd Whitelaw who commented on an early draft of this article. Extra thanks are due to the municipality and inhabitants of Xirokambi who welcomed us during our fieldwork, especially to Christos Giannakas who made us appreciate the olive trees after all.
Funding Information:
The research presented in this article is generously funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (post-doctoral grant AZ51 F15). We thank Ms. Adamantia Vasilogamvrou, the director of the Ayios Vasileios Project, as well as the Archaeological Society at Athens and the Laconia Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities for permissions to prospect the area. We would like to thank Corien Wiersma and the participants of the Ayios Vasileios Survey for their support, and for sharing their data with us. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments, and are very grateful to Todd Whitelaw who commented on an early draft of this article. Extra thanks are due to the municipality and inhabitants of Xirokambi who welcomed us during our fieldwork, especially to Christos Giannakas who made us appreciate the olive trees after all.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - The results of a large-scale magnetometry survey are used to investigate two key aspects of the spatial organization of the Mycenaean palatial settlement at Ayios Vasileios (Laconia, Greece): the extent of the site and the existence, or possibly even zoning of distinct functional areas. These include the palatial core, funerary zones, industrial areas, and infrastructure. The unique situation at Ayios Vasileios, which remained relatively undisturbed after its abandonment, provides the possibility to explore the potential, limitations, and challenges of spatial research based on geophysical data of a prehistoric urban context. We do so by engaging different sources of information: geophysical contrasts mapped by our own and previous surveys, information from the excavations of the palatial core and the adjacent North Cemetery, preliminary observations on surface materials, and wider scholarship on Mycenaean palatial settlement. This dialogue between the disciplines enables us to problematize the interpretation of non-invasive geophysical prospection data and to check our implicit assumptions. Taking into account the different resolutions of these interdisciplinary sources, we formulate hypotheses about the layout and organization of the site which we hope to substantiate in the future by comparing against the surface data and the progress of the excavation.
AB - The results of a large-scale magnetometry survey are used to investigate two key aspects of the spatial organization of the Mycenaean palatial settlement at Ayios Vasileios (Laconia, Greece): the extent of the site and the existence, or possibly even zoning of distinct functional areas. These include the palatial core, funerary zones, industrial areas, and infrastructure. The unique situation at Ayios Vasileios, which remained relatively undisturbed after its abandonment, provides the possibility to explore the potential, limitations, and challenges of spatial research based on geophysical data of a prehistoric urban context. We do so by engaging different sources of information: geophysical contrasts mapped by our own and previous surveys, information from the excavations of the palatial core and the adjacent North Cemetery, preliminary observations on surface materials, and wider scholarship on Mycenaean palatial settlement. This dialogue between the disciplines enables us to problematize the interpretation of non-invasive geophysical prospection data and to check our implicit assumptions. Taking into account the different resolutions of these interdisciplinary sources, we formulate hypotheses about the layout and organization of the site which we hope to substantiate in the future by comparing against the surface data and the progress of the excavation.
KW - Data interpretation
KW - Greece
KW - Late Helladic archaeology
KW - Magnetic gradiometry
KW - Spatial organization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124019165&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s12520-022-01513-6
DO - 10.1007/s12520-022-01513-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124019165
SN - 1866-9557
VL - 14
JO - Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
JF - Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
IS - 2
M1 - 34
ER -