Recherche par auteur > Costaki Leda

Over ten years ago, Pierre Rouillard in the volume Proasteion edited by Pascal Darcque, Roland Étienne et Anne-Marie Guimer-Sorbets, raised the question "Quelle archéologie du proasteion ?" Today, we are in a position to offer a new approach to the archaeology of the Athenian proasteion through a powerful digital research tool created by Dipylon Society for the study of ancient topography.
The digital webGIS platform Mapping Ancient Athens draws on data from all published excavation reports of the last 180 years. This is data mostly from rescue excavations in the city that take place prior to large public infrastructure works or construction on small private plots. By combining data on the use of space and the date of the excavated remains, one can make general observations on the topography of the city in any given historical period. However, these observations can lead to more complex questions on the development of the city and the shift of interest from one area to another.
Findings confirm what have always been regarded as typical activities in the peri-urban area of the city: workshops, burial grounds, gymnasia and cult places. However, their spatial relationship emerges more vividly on the digital map, as well as their relationship to the street network and the city's water-management system.
With the help of Mapping Ancient Athens we collect and analyze data from rescue excavations on the use of space outside the city-walls. There is however another component of the proasteion that needs to be studied, that of the landscape and natural surroundings. For this, we turn to information on historical maps, especially E. Curtius and J. Kaupert's 19th cent. map of Athens that illustrates not only the landscape, the hills, the rivers and the torrents, but also, the agricultural nature of the proasteion: the gardens, the cultivated land and the olive groves.
We hope to revisit questions on the identity of the proasteion by focusing on two areas of Athens. One is the eastern part of the city, less known in the Classical period, but with a flourishing history in the Roman period. It is a rare example of a peri-urban area in the Classical period transformed into urban by the construction of a new fortification wall in the 3rd cent. AC. The second case-study sheds light on the archaeology of the Western Hills of Athens, originally included within the Themistoclean city-wall of the 5th cent. B.C., but eventually abandoned and given over to changing uses. It is a part of the city where the geomorphology is still preserved to a large degree and the landscape is more imposing than the man-made features.