Frederick A. Cooper, University of Minnesota
"Stones are all we have," asserts an eighty-two year old informant who apologizes for the antiquity of his house. The informant's statement also reflects an age-old adage of Greece: this is a country made of limestone and marble. Stone has always served as the primary building material, as it still does today.
But, beginning in the 1950's, this vast resource has gone for the production of cement used to either encase older buildings, or to build new ones of reinforced concrete. Our informant simply observes that his village has yet to be transformed from a medieval settlement into a one of poured concrete frame houses.
Four co-investigators from The University of Minnesota, University of Pennsvlvania and Oxford University have undertaken a survev of vernacular architecture in the western Peloponnesos. This project covers a chronological period from the medieval to 1950 A.D. and employs methodologies which include Geographic Informations Systems, landscape archaeology, architecutural history and folklore.
The Franks gained possession of the western Peloponnesos in 1205 at the close of the last crusade and held it for more than two centuries as the Principality of Achaia. The Morea, a name derived from mulberry, became the popular and usual designation for this region. Despite the duration of Frankish rule, however, this period is one of the least studied phases in Greek history.
The few scholars interested in the Frankish Peloponnesos have focused their attention on the imposing fortifications of the period and on major ecclesiastical buildings such as the Cathedral of Andravida and monasteries founded by the western mendicant orders. Other categories of physical evidence have received little or no consideration. the result is an incomplete picture, slanted in favor of the larger, better-preserved and easily accessible monuments and sites. Often there is little awareness of the social and historical importance of secular village architecture of the past 800 years.
For the first three field seasons the Morea project has undertaken a combined ground and satellite survey which seeks to be more inclusive, encompassing long-neglected Frankish utilitarian structures, as well as domestic and industrial vernacular architecture of the succeeding centuries. Our purpose, therefore, is two-fold: first, to document this architectural heritage before the widespread adoption of reinforced concrete construction (beton) destroys the evidence for the architecture of the Byzantine, Frankish, Turkish and early modern periods; second, to develop a chronology and typology of buildings across the region, from the 13th century to the mid-20th century.
In addition to houses, other vernacular structures recorded and analyzed include domed bake ovens, spring houses, animal shelters, storage sheds, churches, monasteries, water-powered grist mills, olive oil pressing factories, and abandoned Frankish sites, six of which were discovered by satellite remote sensing.
Beginning in 1991, the Greek Ministry of Culture and Education through the Archaeological Service, has granted us yearly permits for an intensive geographical and vernacular architectural survey of the northwest Peloponessos. The survey area embraces nearly 600,000 square kilometers and thousands of villages and towns.
The selection of a village for recording is based first upon its inclusion in the Venetian censuses of the Morea taken in 1689 and 1700. For any such village to be recorded, we require the existence of a minimum of 5-10 pre-beton houses. This means we bypass the many villages which have succumbed to modernization. For the most part these have become the market centers in the fertile coastal plains. The selection process will reduce the final count to approximately one hundred mountain villages by project's end in 1994.
To streamline the recording process over such a large area, we developed a method which combines traditional and electronic means of surveying and mapping. Prior to the house survey performed by the drawing team, two to three persons traverse the roads and pathways of ear-marked villages, electronically mapping them by entering stations into a Global Positioning System, or GPS. The GPS is a hand-held receiver which trains on U.S. Department of Defense satellites and fixes accurate positions of latitude, longitude and elevation. This data, called waypoints, are downloaded into a computer CAD program and a preliminary map showing an array of waypoints is generated. Some of these points are joined to produce roads; other are interpolated to generate contours and topographic features. These maps are then used by the house survey team to navigate through each village as they record the buildings on survey sheets.
The use of standardized survey sheets, allows a team of 12 to 15 persons - most without any drafting or architectural training - to draw and to collect a great amount of data about both the form and the spatial aspects of the dwelling in a matter of ten to twenty minutes; to date our inventory comprises over 2500 houses. On these forms, team members sketch the four facades of each house, and the exterior plan, and interior if accessible, noting the size, placement and orientation of windows, doors and out-buildings. Coded icons at the bottom of the page allow team members to quickly note the materials and other specific details of the design and construction, including quoining and lintels and arching systems. Where applicable, a quick sketch is made of the yard, including notation and orientation of bake ovens, apothekes (storage sheds) and other out buildings. Black and white photos are taken of each house, and color slides are taken of important details and interiors and roof trees, when possible.
The encoded data collected for each individual house are transferred to a combined graphics and database system and are superimposed upon the digitized plan of the village. The digitized topographic town plans with the overlays of houses allow for their integration into three-dimensional views of the whole village. We used this view of the village of Skilloundia, along with social factors involving the orientation of houses, to determine three distinct phases in the development of this town. The databank can also be searched to bring up all houses in a single village or in the entire area, which show distinctive and comparative elements of design or material. These data allow us to develop spatial and temporal relationships among buildings, such as the various aspects of the yard in relation to the house. Also we can detect the growth of the village.
For instance, a cluster of early houses in old Skilloundia became sandwiched between two later phases of building activity. Careful inspection of the construction techniques in Skilloundia revealed a distinctive masonry detail in several of the houses of the second phase of development. While we could establish no firm dates for these houses at Skilloundia, analysis of our databank yielded similar masonry details of houses in two other villages with dates of 1847 and 1871, respectively. 1850 and 1870, therefore bracket the building second period.
Many of the towns named in the Frankish and Venetian censuses and still later towns have been abandoned and forgotten "'because of metoikesis, a process thereby the families of an entire settlement collectively change abodes and move to a new, often nearby, location, often retaining the name of the original town. Metoikesis is a particularly Greek social phenomenon. The practice was common enough in antiquity, but until now has been unrecognized as continuing into modern times as a means for an aging town to establish a new future.
Analysis of our inventory thus far yields four sorts of villages: first, those that remained at their original sites, in which case only vestiges of medieval architecture are still to be seen, as in this slide of Chalandritsa; second, those villages whose foundations are of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries due to metoikesis; third, the original, long-abandoned and now forgotten name-sake site, usually Frankish in date, as here at Kastro tis Oreias; and fourth, the recently-abandoned village due to modern-day metoikesis, as at Skilloundia.
Prospection for those Frankish sites which have been forgotten after metoikesis and which represent the oldest in our survey, has many obstacles which include a hilly terrain, dense vegetation, and the inevitable destruction of built forms by both natural and man-made forces.
In order to achieve a satisfactory level of comprehensiveness we have adopted the advanced technology of remote sensing using Landsat digital spectral data. Through the use of satellite spectral analysis, features that are obscured by dense vegetation on the ground are easily detected on an enhanced image of the Landsat satellite scene, as in this detail showing the oval ring of a medieval fortification wall.
Over the past three summers, we located, by spectral analysis, four uncharted Frankish citadels in an area at the southwest end of the Erymanthos Ridge, in the modern nomos of Achaia: the citadels of Haghia Triada, the peak on the skyline, Kastro Oreias, Sandomeri and Frankish Portes which lies in the saddle of the distant range. Names for the abandoned Frankish settlements at Hagia Triada and Kastro tis Oreais have not been preserved; on the other hand, the citadels at Portes and Sandomeri are located on cliff sites above the later towns resettled by medoikesis and retaining the older names.
Kastro Oreias, north of Kakotari, rises above the gorge of the upper Peneios River, as seen in this misty view. Like the citadel at Aghia Triada, it was an uncharted site of some importance. The site is now desolate, occupied only by sheep and goats and a single shepherd and his family. The remains include more than 100 houses, three churches, a cemetery, three springs, a mill along the river, and a briqzef _the Turkish period. We discovered at least two areas with extensive remains of iron slag which, along with the mills, indicates that this was an industrial settlement.
House walls at abandoned Frankish settlements stand to various heights, for instance one to two storyes as seen here at Kastro tis Oreias or nearly full height at Akova. Examination of details and their topographic setting within the surrounding terrain of terraces allows for a clear reconstruction of the Frankish house type.
These tower-houses were nearly square in plan, 4 x 5 meters on a side and rose three to four floors in height. The lowest floor served as a barn, having its own side door. The household main floor comes at the third level. Access to the entrance doorway is across a breach made by separating a landing on a built terrace and the facade wall of the house by several feet. A crossway of planking could be drawn moat-like for increased security. The second and fourth storeys were accessible from within, through trap doors and by ladders.
With the Greek War of Independence in the 1830's the staircase moves forward to abut the house and the fourth floor disappears from the design. In standing houses, a later generation usually lopped off the top floor and lowered the roof. Moreover, the post-Independence houses increased the dimensions of the floor plan to 12 by 6 meters. However, major components to the house design carry through the medieval to the pre-beton period.
The Greek house has two distinct facades: one entrance facade, as on the screen, and the other a prospect facade which captures a panoramic view. Occasionally these are combined into one facade, but more typically they are opposite from, or adjacent to, one another. Houses are usually built into the terrain, taking advantage of the natural slope, with the entrance on the higher side, leading onto the second story. The prospect is a three-storey facade has a balcony for viewing, on the side of the house where the land slopes away. This facade faces away from the street and is characterized by a formal, symmetrical arrangement, often with well-crafted masonry details such as stone lintels and arches. The entrance side is less formal, with its ingress often through the yard, providing access to the apotheke, bake ovens and other utilitarian structures. As the functional side of the house, it often displays many additions and renovations over time.
The abandoned town of Skilloundia offers an ideal type-site. It represents a modern example of metoikesis; the residents left their venerable homes, some having been damaged by earthquakes, for a government-built town in the 1970s. The new Skilloundia is laid out in a grid plan with beton houses.
Although relatively few written records exist on the architecture of more modern villages dating from the late 18th century to the present, it is still possible to develop an accurate chronology of their buildings.
The houses themselves provide the best evidence as to period and method of construction. Traditionally, the study of house plans has been the primary method by which researchers establish a typology of buildings. Our survey, however, also focuses on facades and construction methods, including arch and lintel systems, quoining and other aspects of masonry technique. Structural solutions for carrying loads above doors and windows as well as facade design varied from one builder to. the next. A careful analysis of these construction methods has proved fruitful in developing typologies both within and across villages. Date stones and oral tradition provide other means by which to establish dates, especially within the last three generations.
According to local informants in the Alpheios River watershed in the Nomos of Elis, the southern portion of our survey area, skilled--even famous--masons came from Langadia, a northwest Arcadian town that spills down steep, mountainous slopes in a cavea setting.
Moving north in 1992 and 1993, houses recorded in villages of the Alpheios watershed and those in the area of the Peneios River watershed have revealed a number of interesting regional variations in architectural detailing and construction. Here we recorded many more date stones than previously, and verbal evidence of stonemasons from Epirus in northwestern Greece. In addition, the Achaian villages exhibited a much more frequent use of stone slab roofs (characteristic of Epirote vernacular architecture), often retaining the first course of stone slabs even when a modern tile roof was installed. Moreover, construction stones sculpted with heads, crosses, cypresses, birds, dancing women, etc., are more frequently found than in Achaia than in other regions of our survey and probably in all of Greece.
Further analysis is needed to more accurately affix dates to individual structures, but our methodology so far is yielding obvious results. The survey of the understudied Frankish constructions and later vernacular architecture of the Morea promises to be an effective means of developing a chronology of building from medieval to modern times.
With few written records surviving, and with rural Greeks rapidly adopting modernity, recording the existing material remains and collecting the folk knowledge of these often ignored structures becomes increasingly imperative.
© Frederick A. Cooper 1993