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Producing the Peasant in the Corinthian Countryside David Pettegrew, Messiah College William Caraher, University of North Dakota

Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association Philadelphia January 2012 (Special thanks to the directors of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey, Timothy Gregory and Daniel Pullen, for their continuing generosity in allowing us to use the project data for this paper). Introduction Peasants have often occupied the periphery of ancient and modern discussions about the economy of Greek and Roman Corinth. In antiquity, writers had little to say about agriculture, land use, and settlement in the Corinthia, preferring instead to comment on the regions commercial facilities (Slide). In the modern era, scholars have ignored and downplayed rural Corinthians or, in the absence of evidence, abstracted them apart from physical places of habitation. Over the last few decades, however, regional studies have changed our knowledge of Corinths territory in two fundamental ways. First, survey in the Corinthia has revealed numerous and varied places that people occupied from ancient to modern times. And second, regional studies in Greece more broadly have highlighted the contingencies of rural life that complicate assumptions about synchronous categories like peasant and their static country abodes. Territory was dynamic space constantly shaped by regional and global forces. In our paper today, we seek to make a particular contribution to the currently under-developed state of knowledge about the Corinthian countryside, and a more general contribution to this session about using regional survey to
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place small farmers. We use three case studiesone modern, two ancientto highlight how a wide range of processes and activities made rural Corinthians differently visible and therefore differently detectable to the blunt instruments of regional surface survey. The methods of archaeological survey most easily intersect the lives of rural inhabitants when they invest in places over time, but these investments reflect the accumulation of resources and connections to a wider world that problematize traditional definintions of peasants as timeless, isolated people (Slide). (Our first case study is part of a collaborative venture between Bill Caraher, Timothy Gregory, David Pettegrew, and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory. We are currently preparing this for publication) Lakka Skoutara When our field team first discovered the modern settlement of Lakka Skoutara in 2001, it seemed, at first glance, an ideal environment for thinking about the diachronic processes of habitation and agriculture in the territory. Located near Corinths historical border with Epidauria, Lakka Skoutara is a basin hemmed in by steep wooded slopes containing a dozen long houses apparently oriented toward subsistence agriculture. Bypassed by the modern roads in the area and filled with swarms of stinging bees and biting flies, this cluster of country houses around a church and crossroads was neither historically significant nor unique in the region. Over a 10 year period, an EKAS team documented the settlement with a combination of intensive pedestrian survey, architectural study, and interviews with the few people still alive who had some connection to the valley. This multifaceted study demonstrated a dramatic contrast between the rather limited nature of the archaeological evidence and the fluid processes of land use and agriculture reported in our interviews.
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While thousands of olive trees today seem to point to olive cultivation as the main agricultural activity, our informants told us that many of these trees were planted just 50-80 years ago. (Slide) The only material indicators of recent olive processing, in any case, were crates, pruned branches, and a few wooden ladders. The discovery of a premodern olive pressbed (trapetum mortarium) near the church, however, suggests that olives were processed in the valley centuries before our informants memories. In contrast, there was much evidence for sustained productive investments in cereals (Slide x 2): massive piles of stones cleared from fields, numerous field walls to keep out grazing animals, overgrown terraces, and threshing floors 1020 m in diameter! But inhabitants informed us that cereal production ceased by the decade after WW II. Likewise, resin production (Slide) was historically important in the region from the 19th century until the 1970s, but the ubiquitous artifacts of resin productioncorroding resin collectors that litter the wooded hillsidesare poor reflectors of the scale of production historically. The large basins built into and outside of a couple of the houses (Slide) suggest that resin collecting was a significant economic industry that may have been energized by proximity to the Saronic. The discovery of 19th and 20th century pottery and tiles imported from Aegina and the Piraeus at least point to goods exchanged in Saronic markets via the nearby harbor of Korphos. The houses also defied facile classification (Slide). Interviews and formation process studies documented aggregate structures that represented episodes of construction, remodeling, abandonment, and reconstruction. In some cases, these archaeological processes were obvious from assorted roof tiles of various dates and fabrics, as well as the attractive mixture of bricks and cinder blocks in restored walls. But in most cases, our informants revealed more complex life cycles (Slide). We learned that one house (#3: Sklias) now
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collapsing had existed on the spot since the 1920s, maintained and refurbished without significant extension for 70 years; that another (Slide: Perras) was refurbished in the 1970s intentionally reusing fieldstones of the former house in order to create material and stylistic continuity with the ancestral domicile; that the low foundations of another house (Slide: #4) represented not an earlier phase of the structure or a later extension to accommodate new members, but the divided living space of two brothers unable to get along. (The dispute was so bad that one brother finally abandoned the house and stripped the roof of his half of the tiles!) Interestingly, the final phases of all the houses were half a century out of sync with the associated threshing floors and cereal cultivation. The artifacts associated with the houses were also not the typical domestic assemblages one would expect from sustained habitation (Slide). The survey carried out around several houses showed that while tile often produced an important signature of building phases, there were multiple houses (Slide) where tiles had been stripped at the time of abandonment. The intermittent patterns of occupation at most houses left only the lightest scatters of table wares, kitchen wares, and storage vessels. In some cases, the interior and exterior of the houses (Slide x 2) were nearly devoid of artifacts, reflecting the stripping of household materials and equipment when out of use. Only a few recently abandoned houses had significant domestic signatures as well as post-abandonment use of the spaces (Slide) for storage, hunting, and herding. There was little, in any case, to distinguish between seasonal and full time habitation. Our informants told us that during times of duress like the German occupation of Greece, the lakka bustled with fulltime habitation (Slide). At other times, families lived in the valley during the harvest and returned to the village during the winter and summer months. And yet, today, a couple of farmers and a shepherd visit the lakka almost daily because it provides a place to water their flocks or a nostalgic escape from the bustle of village life. The trickle of activity ensures that the small church receives regular attention.
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In sum, our work at Lakka Skoutara convinced us of the divide separating the fluid landscapes of a real countryside and our own abilities to describe and categorize settlement in maps like this one (Slide). Threshing floors, ladders, rusty resin collectors, and even houses create a complex assemblage of artifacts in some way disproportional to the varied investments in the valley over the last two centuries. As the generational investments in the valley have survived unevenly in the archaeological record, the resulting palimpsest landscape is underrepresentative of the dynamic world of these rural Corinthians. Nonetheless, threads of stability and investment are visible in the valley in the continued habitation in particular places and in the physical modification of the landscape through large-scale agricultural installations. Material investments made in response to broader forces shaped habitation for a time and physically constituted significant places that were remembered well beyond their time of use. Ano Vayia and the Classical Landscapes of the Corinthia (Slide) In our survey of the eastern Korinthia, we were hopeful that we would encounter some of those Classical farmsteads that fill the archaeological literature of the Greek countryside. Interestingly, it was not the intensive survey teams on the Isthmus who located the best parallel for a Classical farmstead, but a small extensive survey team who spent their days walking quickly across all the ridges of our survey area (Slide). In their survey above the sheltered inlet of Lychnari Bay, a team of two people encountered the site of Ano Vayia with its impressive complex of rough polygonal masonry. (Slide x 2) If architecture made the site visible, however, the dearth of ceramic artifacts created problems for interpreting this well-preserved building. On the one hand, Ano Vayia appears to bear a form of productive investment and habitation beyond the capacity of poorer smallholders. The owners quarried a significant amount of stone and cut into bedrock to construct a building some 22 meters long and 6 m wide, and an associated circular tower with its 6-meter diameter. Pithos and
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amphora sherds of Classical-Hellenistic date indicate the importance of storage at the site, while tiles of different types clearly point to a roofed building. A few cooking ware sherds and a small hopper mill fragment indicate activities related to food preparation; two fine-ware sherds suggest dining. On the other hand, this trace quantity of kitchen wares and fine wares seems inconsistent with known urban and rural domestic contexts of the Classical period, with their high quantities of fine wares. The ceramic artifacts at Ano Vayia provided no indication that the domestic activities were intensive or of long duration. The site, then, presents the contrasting image of relatively highinvestment architecture, and a ceramic assemblage reflecting limited deposition. In its immediate context, the site can be read as an investment (Slide) connected to two other rural installationsa set of walls and a tower (Slide x 2) that together looked over the bay of Lychnari and a productive landscape. We concluded from these three sites that the investment at Ano Vayia marked a response to the sites coastal location at a timethe 4th or 3rd centuries BCwhen small garrisons are known to have been stationed to provide immediate response to banditry in the Saronic Gulf. Whether this was a garrison site, a fortified seasonal settlement, or a family farmstead that was short-lived, the investments briefly materialized and stabilized a place in the landscape without producing a diverse ceramic signature. And while the building at Ano Vayia was not evidently refurbished in subsequent centuries, a few sherds of later Roman and Byzantine date point to some continuing attraction for rural Corinthians. Certainly, the historical factors that led to investment and made the site visible in the first place determined our ability to detect and study this site with the coarse methods of extensive survey. The Busy Isthmus (Slide) Our final case study comes from the distributional survey of the central Isthmus. As the urban centers adjacent eastern territory, the Isthmus was close
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enough to the city that any farmers could commute to holdings in this part of the territory. Since extensive surveys of the territory thirty years ago produced few small sites of Roman date, some scholars concluded that scattered farms did not exist beyond an outer ring of villas (Slide). The intensive distributional survey conducted by EKAS changed this picture in two fundamental ways (Slide). First, it produced substantial evidence for numerous ceramics indicating periods of abatement and intensification in regional connectivity. Fragments of imported Early Roman and Late Roman amphoras indicate more intensive land use in the 1st-2nd centuries and again in the 4th to 6th centuries. Imported table wares allow us to be precise. Eastern Sigillata B, a late-1st to 2nd century ware, appears three times more commonly in the survey territory than the early-1st century Eastern Sig A, suggesting better commercial connections from the later 1st to 2nd centuries. While the 3rd and 4th centuries are not well represented by our assemblage, substantial quantities of later forms of African Red Slip (Forms 99 and 104-106) and Phocaean Ware (Form 3 and 10) indicate bumper periods of importation again in the late 5th and 6th centuries. These patterns reflect the overall development of the regions urban center, harbors, and sanctuaries, with new patterns of land division, developing urban fabric, and growing commercial facilities in the later 1st and 2nd centuries; then the reduction of imported pottery at the urban center and sanctuary in the 3rd-4th century; and then another intensive period of large-scale exchange and building construction in the later 5th and 6th centuries. In short, the Roman Isthmus marked urban periphery to the city of Corinth that grew and changed in tune with the city, sanctuary, and the harbors. Second, the EKAS survey has changed our picture of the Isthmus in its record of the distribution of Roman artifacts, pointing to a varied pattern of investing in the land over seven centuries (Slide x 3). At one end of the habitation spectrum, we recorded dense concentrations of Early and Late Roman artifacts that probably represent the locations of farms and villas occupied over centuries.
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These sites usually yielded table wares, amphoras, and kitchen wares, and sometimes produced ceramic fragments of pithoi, basins, lamps, and beehives (Slide). Moreover, the frequent occurrence of less diagnostic building materials, elite-status items like marble revetment and tesserae, and agricultural equipment like saddle querns, hopper mills, and occasionally olive equipment offer an aggregate signature of residence, consumption, and production. The overlays of these artifacts mark places where generations of inhabitants invested in the land, and these investments allow us to discuss the habitation of the places over time. On the other end of the spectrum, however, are scatters of artifacts that represent ephemeral uses of the landscape (Slide). Low-density scatters of imported table wares, amphoras, and kitchen wares have no consistent relationship to the high-investment sites. We need not explain these lower-density scatters by single processes like manuring or a cohort of hypothetical donkeys that lost their loads. Low-density scatters may represent a wide range of ancient rural activities, buildings, and installations, including especially seasonal habitation, low-intensity rural activities, and short-term exploitation of the countryside of the sort we have seen at Ano Vayia and Lakka Skoutara. The wealth of the individuals who created these scatters and the place of short-term or seasonal activities within a general economy of the Roman countryside, however, remain impossible to determine. What is clear is that these were places where investments were not as great over the long term. In short, the Isthmus created numerous opportunities for smallholders to engage in agricultural activities and larger land owners to invest in more intensive production. But in a palimpsest landscape reflecting varied habitation, buildings, and cultivation, our blunt methods more easily detect the rich over the poor. Conclusions To conclude. In this paper, we have brought together three case studies from the Corinthia to make two related points about the small rural dwellers of the
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ancient territory. The first concerns how we picture rural worlds. The countryside was not a singular, categorical space, the peasant was not a categorical character, and the farmstead was not a static place. Methodologically, categories flatten diachronic rural lives into synchronous terms that do not reflect the dynamics of habitation. Our examples provide glimpses of more liquid landscapes whose inhabitants were responsive to broader regional and global forces. Our second goal has been to highlight how the methods of archaeological survey intersect with the peoiple who once inhabited the landscape (Slide) through the behaviors of investment and settlement continuity. At one end of the spectrum are dense artifact concentrations that constitute physical investments in the land renewed through time; they mark aggregate processes of building and producing through time. At the other end of the spectrum are lower-density scatters that represent fluid behaviors of poor smallholders who intentionally pursued economic behaviors like diversification of crops and fragmented holdings. It is when peasants invest, connect, and produce that our tools of assessment most easily intersect the archaeological record. If we seek to locate the poorest Corinthians, we have to look beyond the site, villa, and farmstead to the ephemeral artifactual landscape.

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