Athenian Acropolis Research Articles

Restoration and Strengthening Techniques for Ancient-Greek Monuments

ABSTRACT Beginning from the late 1970s, at the Acropolis of Athens, and from the 1990s, in many other significant archaeological sites around Greece (Epidaurus, Arcadian Bassai, Nemea, Olympia, Delos et al.), numerous restoration projects of ancient constructions have been carried out, mostly concerning classical cult temples. The projects were supervised and carried out by multi-disciplinary groups (archaeologists, architects, engineers, conservators, stone-masons etc.), on the basis of common principles. The combined effort of so many experts, as well as the talent of individuals in all rungs, often led to innovative intervention and strengthening techniques, which can be applied for the restoration of dry-stone monuments in general. Many of these techniques, and various scientific benefits derived as side-results from the restoration projects, are presented in this article synoptically. Despite the concise way of the subject presentation, and the diversity of nature of the aforementioned techniques, it is quite clear that all these techniques are firmly based on two common characteristics of the restoration projects: the multi-disciplinary approach of every intervention, and the respect and preservation of the original structural system of the monuments.

Notched marble plates under direct tension: Mechanical response and fracture

The mechanical response of notched marble plates under direct tension is studied experimentally. The motive of the study emerges from the needs of scientists working for restoration of marble monuments, the structural elements of which are often damaged and cracked. The specimens are made of Dionysos marble, used for the restoration of the Athenian Acropolis monuments. The aim of the study is two-folded: Description of the material’s overall mechanical response in the presence of macroscopic discontinuities and mapping the damage evolution process. Modern (Digital Image Correlation, Acoustic Emissions, Ultra High Speed Camera) and traditional sensing techniques were used in a combined manner. Concerning the overall mechanical response it was concluded that the size effect is extremely pronounced while the critical Notch Opening Displacement appears inappropriate as a fracture parameter. Analysis of the data pumped with the aid of the Acoustic Emissions technique enlightened crucial aspects of the damage mechanisms activated, indicating simultaneous generation of both tensile- and shear-cracking modes, attributed to the layered structure of Dionysos marble.

A Distinctly Rhetorical Space;Eusynoptosand the Greek Council-House

A Distinctly Rhetorical Space;<i>Eusynoptos</i>and the Greek Council-House

Panoramic Video: Recording and Representing the Digital Heritage Experience

In an essay on architectural representation, Stan Allen (2000) wrote about a paradoxical nature of built forms: “Buildings are presumably more tangible and physically present than drawings, yet it is only in the experience of the building that the most intangible aspects of reality can be made visible.”Documenting a heritage site is difficult since no representational method can make an exact copy without loss. This paper specifically examines panoramic recording media and related technologies as new means to archive and represent architectural heritage. It looks at cost effective and widely available platforms such as 360 video recording, YouTube, and immersive Head Mounted Display (HMD) equipment. Tests with subjects are conducted to probe how the experience of recorded panorama compares to the spatial and temporal experience in the physical space. For instance, the subjects with HMD are tested for the ability of sensing the correct scale and proportion of spatial forms in the playback. Through analysis of the test results, discussions are made as to the roles such systems can play in conveying the spatial environment, especially in representing some of its intangible aspects.The paper shows examples of prototype designs for exhibition that utilize panoramically recorded onsite footage in derivative forms. Recordings of sites such as Palladio’s villas and the Acropolis in Athens are used to demonstrate spatial and temporal editing, interactive panoramic walk-through combined with a map, and creation of a framed-video narrative reduced from panoramic videos. These methods illustrate a range of possibilities that put each dislocated recording back into context while controlling a balance between the viewer’s exploration and the intent of the curation, and shed a light on what is often difficult to achieve by other means of representations.

Acoustic Emissions versus Pressure Stimulated Currents during bending of restored marble epistyles: Preliminary results

The efficiency of two modern sensing techniques, namely the “Acoustic Emissions” and the “Pressure Stimulated Currents” ones, when they are used as Continuous Structural Health Monitoring tools, is assessed experimentally. The protocol includes multi-point bending of an accurate copy of a fractured marble epistyle of the Parthenon’s Temple on the Acropolis of Athens, under a scale of 1:3. The integrity of the epistyle is restored with three pairs of bolted titanium bars, according to the pioneering technique developed by the scientists of the “Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments”. The data provided by the above techniques are considered in juxtaposition to each other and also in comparison to data provided by the “Digital Image Correlation” technique. It is concluded that, at least from a qualitative point of view, the data of all three techniques are in good mutual agreement. Combined exploitation of the various sets of experimental data enlightens interesting aspects concerning the succession of failure mechanisms activated during the loading procedure, revealing the critical role of the internal interfaces characterizing the restored epistyle. Moreover it is definitely indicated that both the “Acoustic Emissions” and the “Pressure Stimulated Currents” techniques provide clear signs of upcoming failure well before macroscopically visible damages are detected at the external surface of the specimen.

Contested Space at the Entrance of the Athenian Acropolis

Public spaces of protest in ancient cities, whether deliberately crafted or organically formed, can prove elusive, but the existence, appearance, and function of such spaces should not be ignored because of their relative invisibility. In Contested Space at the Entrance of the Athenian Acropolis, Jessica Paga looks to ancient Athens to demonstrate how such spaces were built and used, as well as their potential role in propagating the success of the world's first democracy. Concentrating on the archaeological record and the historical context surrounding the use and transformation of public spaces in Athens, Paga posits the entrance area to the Athenian Acropolis as a consciously elaborated site of dissent and unity for the burgeoning democratic polis in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE.

Kindly Terror and Civic Fury: Eumenides and the Language of Myth

Abstract In the conclusion of Aeschylus's Oresteia, Athena declares that deinon—typically translated “fear” or “terror”—should be held at the heart of the polis for all time. This move is allegorized by the enshrining of the Erinyes (or Furies) in the Athenian Acropolis. This has been interpreted variously as a charter for political absolutism, a justification of the repression of matrilineal relationships, or as an expression of the often paradoxical manifestation of divinity in Greek tragedy. This article argues that deinon is an example of Aeschylus's use of a mythical mode of thought that rational discourse cannot easily access. To elaborate the meaning of Athena's deinon, I examine its shifting role in the Oresteia, alongside that of the Erinyes, and find modern analogues in the ideas of the sublime and the uncanny. In these concepts, post-Enlightenment reason theorizes paradoxes that were inherent properties of mythical reality to the archaic mind. By exploring the correspondences between these ancient and modern terms, I demonstrate how Aeschylus unites mythical and political thought in a performance of myth that expresses and accommodates the logical anomalies of human experience.

TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTING A DORIC COLUMN IN A VIRTUAL CONSTRUCTION SITE

Abstract. This paper deals with the 3D reconstruction of ancient Greek architectural members, especially with the element of the Doric column. The case study for this project is the Choragic monument of Nicias on the South Slope of the Athenian Acropolis, from which a column drum, two capitals and smaller fragments are preserved. The first goal of this paper is to present some benefits of using 3D reconstruction methods not only in documentation but also in understanding of ancient Greek architectural members. The second goal is to take advantage of the produced point clouds. By using the Cloud Compare software, comparisons are made between the actual architectural members and an “ideal” point cloud of the whole column in its original form. Seeking for probable overlaps between the two point clouds could assist in estimating the original position of each member/fragment on the column. This method is expanded with more comparisons between the reference column model and other members/fragments around the Acropolis, which may have not yet been ascribed to the monument of Nicias.

ATLANTIS IN SPAIN II

Plato, who lived in the 4th century B.C., wrote the dialogue Timaeos and Critias when he was 52 years old. In this he describes a catastrophe in Athens from an earthquake in the presence of excessive rain. He also describes several details, not visible in his century, in the Acropolis of Athens. These details are a spring and architectural details of buildings in which the warriors used to live. In Critias he mentions that the destruction of the spring was caused by an earthquake. The time of the catastrophe of Atlantis was not defined by him but it is implied that it occurred after the assault of the Atlantes in the Mediterranean. Archaeological excavations confirmed the existence of the spring which was about 25 m deep with respect to the present day walking level. Archaeologically dated ceramics, found at its bottom, denote the last function of the spring was in very early 12th century B.C. Plato describes the warriors’ settlements which were found outside of the fortification wall in the North East of the Acropolis. The philosopher, who was not a historian, describes a general catastrophe in Greece from which the Greek language survived till his century. Archaeological studies have offered a variety of tablets of Linear B writings which turn out to be the non-alphabetic type of writing of the Greeks up to the 12th century B.C. before the dark ages commence. Modern geoarchaeological and palaeoseismological studies prove that seismic storms occurred in the East Mediterranean between 1225 and 1175 B.C. The result of a fifty-year period of earthquakes was the catastrophe of many late Bronze Age palaces or settlements. For some analysts both Athens and Atlantis presented in Timaeos and Critias are imaginary entities. They maintained that the imaginary conflict between Athens and Atlantis served Plato to produce the first world’s “science fiction” and gave the Athenians an anti-imperialistic lesson through his fabricated myth. However, a part of this “science fiction”, Athens of Critias, is proved a reality of the 12th century B.C., described only by Plato and not by historians, such as Herodotus, Thucydides and others. Analysts of the past have mixed Plato’s fabricated Athens presented in his dialogue Republic with the non-fabricated Athens of his dialogue Critias. This serious error has deflected researchers from their target to interpret Plato’s text efficiently.

The Acropolis Museum: Contextual Contradictions, Conceptual Complexities

Drawing on the public debates on the location of the new site museum exhibiting the sculptures and other artefacts of the iconic Athenian Acropolis, the author highlights the complexity of integrating a new site-specific museum to a historically charged urban monumental and cultural landscape. By presenting 13 alternative viewpoints on the topic of this museum's location together with the respective museological concepts debated during the planning stage, this paper delineates the various conceptual hierarchies on the notions of ‘context’ and ‘content’ in the relationship between the museum and its cultural landscape.

The Caryatids in the New Acropolis Museum: Out of Sight, Out of Light, Out of Mind

This paper argues that the display of the iconic Caryatids in the New Acropolis Museum has been seriously compromised by the overriding desire amongst Greek politicians and heritage professionals to use the museum to reinforce their long-standing request for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. In designing a museum geared primarily to achieving the repatriation of the sculptures taken from the largest of the temples on the Athenian Acropolis, the museum’s architect has ensured that these marbles were presented within sight of their former monumental home, exhibited in a manner that imitates the architectural layout of the Parthenon, while the large windows of the museum allow vast amounts of natural light to illuminate the marbles. By contrast, the five Caryatids that remain in Athens have been treated with considerably less respect for such restitutionist sensibilities. Displayed within the concrete heart of the museum, lacking views of the outside world, let alone to the Acropolis, and with limited access to direct natural light, the marble women are positioned with no consideration for their original alignment. The important functional role of the Caryatids as integral structural elements within the architecture of the Erechtheum is also poorly represented in the manner of their current museological display in Athens.

Fixing the Acropolis: William J. Stillman and the Restoration of Athenian Antiquity

William J. Stillman’s 1870 photographic album The Acropolis of Athens details, with extraordinary sensitivity, the classical monuments of the Athenian Acropolis. But the album itself is part of a larger transnational history of the production, representation, and circulation of Greek antiquity. It is also a central artefact of Stillman’s own life and affiliations. Tracing these two interlocking histories is to place the album’s imagery, narrative, and informational material within the larger ambit of individual, national, and Euro-American politics, historical ideology and aesthetics. Stillman’s album is centrally influenced by the German-led archaeological activity on the Acropolis, reflecting both its widely-held assumptions on the worth of Greek antiquities and the proper way to view them, as well as an ambivalence verging on antipathy toward indigenous Greek archaeological (and photographic) activity. This tendency complicates (but does not completely erase) Stillman’s powerful sympathy and outspoken activities on behalf of Greek and Cretan independence and self-determination. The moment that produced Stillman’s album is not the only one in which he photographed the Athenian Acropolis. Comparing his photography of 1870 with his 1882 rephotography of the site is to find changes and slippages that highlight the vicissitudes of Stillman’s own complex history. It also has significant implications for the imagery he produced earlier, connecting Stillman’s work to the larger constellation of nineteenth-century imagery of the Athenian Acropolis.

Acropolis Remapped: on a Democratic Politics of Resistance

In 2010, forty-eight years after Jerzy Grotowski's iconic 1962 performance of Stanisław Wyspiański's Akropolis, Greek director Michael Marmarinos presented to the Athenian audience Acropolis: Reconstruction. In his homage to the Polish director, Marmarinos asked the question that Grotowski (and Wyspiański before him) had raised: what is the contemporary Acropolis? Marmarinos’s Acropolis observes the ruins of contemporary Athens; frustrations, tensions and other dramaturgies of the crisis that was beginning to transform the urban fabric of the Greek capital. In this article, I map the in-crisis restructuring of Athens in dialogue with Acropolis: Reconstruction. Employing Deleuze’s idea of a ‘minor or minimising treatment’ of the classics, I examine the becoming-ruins of monuments in a city in crisis, by searching for the contemporary acropolises not in the ruins upon the hill (the remains of classical Athens and the symbol of its democracy) but in the ruins in its shadow.

Investigation on the Implementation of Optical Refinements in the Partrthenon Frieze Reliefs

Issues related to visual representations as perspective distortions, optical illusions and refinements were known in antiquity, since a number of architectural monuments are illustrative of such practices. The Parthenon of Acropolis in Athens is a relevant example where this knowledge was probably applied. The present paper aims at providing analytically documented evidence of whether optical refinements were considered in adjusting the background level inclination of the Parthenon west frieze reliefs and in the design of the carved human figures. For this reason, the implementation of optical refinements for avoiding perspective distortions is elucidated and the calculations for their prediction described. Employing this mathematical analysis, optical refinements related to the west frieze reliefs and their background inclination were determined. These diminish optical illusions when a region of the frieze blocks’ is observed from a viewpoint on the stylobates’ level between two columns. Also presented are characteristic anthropometric proportions per interna- -tional standards, and their modifications when optical refinements are applied. These modified proportions of a human body are compared to those of human figures carved on the Parthenon west frieze blocks. The latter were determined via evaluation of their digital data obtained by means of 3D laser scanning. What was revealed, was an impressive conformity between the reliefs’ background inclination along with the depicted human body proportions of the Parthenon frieze, and the corresponding ones calculated for avoiding optical illusions due to perspective distortions. These findings give substantial weight to the hypothesis that optical refinements were implemented in the Parthenon west frieze. However, they cannot exclude the fact that the human body proportions followed aesthetic rules and norms of the Parthenon construction period.

Le décret d’Athènes sur la kréanomia des Petites Panathénées : un modèle politique pour la distribution des viandes entre les dèmes attiques

After a large number of editions and commentaries since its discovery in 1842, this most celebrated “ sacred law” of the Lycurgan Era (ca. 330 BC) has now taken its place -with the fragment published in 1959 -in the 2nd fasc., provided by Stephen Lambert, of the new corpus of the Athenian Leges et decreta (IG II3 1, 447). Hovewer, the text may still be improved on two points of major importance for a better understanting of the clauses related to the twofold kreanomia. This paper aims to show first that the inscription does not mention, as usually admitted on the basis of a certainly mistaken restoration, two preliminary sacrifices (tas duo [ thusias]), but the sacrifice of the two female sheeps or ewe (tas duo [arnas]), the one to be immolated at the entrance into Akropolis, the other most probably in the area of the “ Old Temple” (= Erechtheion), and both to be divided thereafter in a regular number of collective portions between the authorities of the city and other officials sharing to the procession. The main object of the decree of the Demos was, however, more related to the current affairs : the reorganization of the great sacrifice for Athena Polias in buying a number of cows as high as possible with a specific amount of money provided by the leasing of a new piece of land called He Nea (identified today with some confidence to a portion at least of the Oropian territory). But, in this case too, the modern scholars have all been deceived by an unsound restoration of the sentence concerning the distribution of meat between the demes of the city-state. Instead of introducing here, indeed, the idea that the sharing of each deme to the meats was conditioned by the number of demesmen participating to the procession (kata [ tous pempon] tas), the obvious supplement must be kata [ tous bouleu] tas), as proposed long ago, with great caution, by one of the first editors, J. L. Ussing, but always ignored or neglected since : the distribution organized in Kerameikos is to be made to the demes according to the number of the councillors that each of them provides (to the boule of the Five Hundred). So, this inscription gives us a unique instance of transfer of a democratic rule from the political life into the religious sphere. Besides, the date of the decree having been more precisely fixed at the year 335/ 4, it is suggested that the last lines of the inscription may conserve the mention of a sacred embassy (theoria), which was sent by the Demos to the new king of Macedonia, in order to inform him on the reorganization of Panathenaia hekatomb, since Alexander was the donor of Oropos territory to Athens after Thebes’s destruction (autumn 335). Any way, it is known from Arrian’s narrative that the victor of a Persian army at River Granicus (spring 334) had consecrated 300 panopliai to Athena Polias on the Acropolis of Athens. In an appendix to the paper, it is shown that the undertanding of the contemporary dossier formed by three decrees in honour of Phyleus of Oinoe and his acolytes (now IG II3 1, 327) has beeen greatly improved by the restoration – due first to A. P. Matthaiou, accepted next by S. Lambert – of the title grammateus, instead of hieropoios, for the elective office held by this magistrate, who was thus the Secretary of the Council and the People (cf. Arist. A. P. LIV 4) in the year 336/ 5. Nevertheless, the opinion of the last editor concerning the number and the status of Phyleus’ demesmen jointly honoured with him cannot possibly be correct : they are decidedly not collaborators of him as associated secretaries (sun[ grammateis]), but most probably colleagues of the same deme within the Council (sun[ archontes dèmotai] : being three -and not just two as thought untill now -they constitued with him the normal delegation from Oinoe at the Boule (the number 4 is indeed the constant bouleutic quota from this deme in the IVth century). And the most eventfull year 335 might easily provide an plausible explanation to the exceptional honour granted to this quatuor of Oinoe.

Hand mills from the vicinity of the Athenian Acropolis. The findings from Athens Metropolitan Railway excavation

Χειρόμυλοι από την περιοχή της αθηναϊκής Ακρόπολης. Τα ευρήματα από τις ανασκαφές του αθηναϊκού ΜΕΤΡΟ. Το παρόν άρθρο αποτελεί προκαταρκτική παρουσίαση των χειρομύλων για την άλεση των δημητριακών που εντοπίστηκαν κατά την ανασκαφική έρευνα στο οικόπεδο Μακρυγιάννη, στους πρόποδες της Αθηναϊκής Ακρόπολης, την οποία διενήργησε η πρώην Α΄ Εφορεία Προϊστορικών και Κλασικών Αρχαιοτήτων πριν από την κατασκευή του Σταθμού του ΜΕΤΡΟ «Ακρόπολις». Η έρευνα επικεντρώνεται στους χειρόμυλους παλινδρομικής κίνησης, τους χειρόμυλους «ολυνθιακού τύπου» και στους περιστροφικούς χειρόμυλους, οι οποίοι ήρθαν στο φως κατά την ανασκαφή, όχι κατά χώραν, αλλά είτε ανασύρθηκαν από επιχώσεις διαφόρων χρονικών περιόδων, κυρίως αρχαίων φρεάτων και δεξαμενών, είτε είχαν εντοιχισθεί σε τοιχοποιίες ή θεμελιώσεις διαφόρων κτιρίων. Αυτοί οι χειρόμυλοι ήταν κατασκευασμένοι από ηφαιστειακά πετρώματα άγνωστης προέλευσης, δεδομένου ότι δεν έχουν διενεργηθεί έως σήμερα πετρολογικές αναλύσεις. Οι μυλόλιθοι παλινδρομικής κίνησης «σαμαρωτού τύπου» και οι μυλόλιθοι «ολυνθιακού τύπου» αποτελούν την πλειονότητα των αντικειμένων που μελετήθηκαν και χρονολογούνται σε γενικές γραμμές από την προϊστορική εποχή έως τη ρωμαϊκή περίοδο, ενώ οι περιστροφικοί χειρόμυλοι είναι σπάνιοι. Επιχειρείται η χρονολόγηση των αθηναϊκών χειρομύλων της ανασκαφής με βάση τη σύγκρισή τους με ήδη δημοσιευμένα παράλληλα από άλλες περιοχές, τη χρονολόγηση της στρωματογραφίας της ανασκαφής και τα καλά χρονολογημένα συνευρήματά τους. Τέλος, σκιαγραφείται μία πτυχή της καθημερινής ζωής των κατοίκων της περιοχής, που κατά μερικούς ερευνητές ταυτίζεται με το Αθηναϊκό Δήμο του Κολλυτού.

‘Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography’: William J. Stillman and the Acropolis in Word and Image

In 1870, the American William J. Stillman — diplomat, journalist, painter and photographer — published an album of autotypes entitled The Acropolis of Athens: Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography. For a newcomer to the medium, Stillman’s images were remarkable for their poise and clarity. But where the photographs were ‘clear and lively’, to borrow John Szarkowski’s phrase, the brief text which accompanied each was, by comparison, laborious and lifeless. Facing each other across each double-spread, text and image seemed to speak in completely different registers, in a manner which presaged many subsequent uses of similar material, most famously Vers une architecture. This article explores the relationship between word and image at play in Stillman’s The Acropolis in terms of Stillman’s intentions and the genre of the photo-book, and considers the implications that this book, as object and genre, has for word-image relationships within architectural history.

ALCHEMY ON THE ACROPOLIS: TURNING ANCIENT LEAD INTO RESTITUTIONIST GOLD

AbstractThis paper assesses the historical validity of the famous tale that, near the beginning of the Greek War of Independence (1821–32), the Hellenic revolutionary army offered lead ammunition to their Ottoman enemies who they were besieging on the Athenian Acropolis. This gift was presented to the Turks in an effort to halt their quarrying of the Parthenon and the other classical monuments on the hill-top, within the masonry of which the Ottoman defenders were searching for the ancient lead clamps which could be melted down and recast into ammunition. This paper will, however, demonstrate that there is a lack of contemporary evidence to support the tale and the earliest recorded references to the story only occur some four decades after the event was claimed to have taken place. Yet despite this lack of eyewitness evidence, from the early 1980s onwards, the tale has been frequently passed off as historical fact and referenced with regularity by campaigners lobbying for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

The Charitonidis Class: A group of large Athenian Late Protogeometric skyphoi

This article assembles and publishes a group of distinctive large Athenian Late Protogeometric skyphoi. Aspects of shape and decoration are fully discussed, so too the evidence for establishing the date of the group, as well as their distribution. The group, if not the potter, is named after the man who published two complete examples of the class from the South Slope of the Athenian Acropolis: Serapheim Charitonidis.

The story of a soil that became a glaze: Chemical and microscopic fingerprints on the Attic vases

In order to study the provenance of the clays used for the black-glaze (BG) decoration of Athenian pottery, we analysed in situ with the use of a Bruker handheld-PXRF system ~100Geometric, Archaic and Classical decorated sherds from the 19th century excavations at the Acropolis of Athens (Graef and Langlotz, 1933), Boeotian ware from the Kavirion excavations and test pieces from the early excavations at the potter's quarter in Corinth. The sherds were also examined microscopically and documented by means of optical microscopy/digital photography. The results were compared with laboratory BG specimens produced by following the “iron reduction technique” at the THETIS workshop in Athens. The laboratory BG specimens used clay-colloids from 36 different ferruginous, illitic, low-calcium content, clay-sources in Attica. Trace element comparison between modern and ancient BG samples, with respect to the Zn content, points to the occasional use in antiquity of clay-deposits from Laurium. In addition, two phenomenological features of the ancient BG samples also present in prominent museum exhibits, i.e. the characteristic star-like micro-cracks and distinct brown-black colour shades, appear in the laboratory BG specimens produced from specific clay-deposits in the Panakton plateau and Mount-Parnes region.