An article by Michael Loy has been making the rounds lately, and my colleague Grace Erny brought it to my attention this morning. It so happens that I’ve also been talking a lot of Greek survey (and Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey) with my old friend David Pettegrew lately because he is working on a book that brings together the analysis of survey area with the publication of EKAS data. We’ve also been working on preparing a preliminary report for the Western Argolid Regional Project (WARP) and working to locate it relation to earlier work in the field.
Loy’s article makes an effort to trace the development of Mediterranean intensive pedestrian survey primarily in Greece and the Aegean over the past 50 years. The method is largely anecdotal and focused on the relationship between project directors starting with the three early systematic survey projects: the Minnesota Messenia Expedition (1961-1968), the Cambridge-Bradford Boeotia Survey (1978-1991), and the Southern Argolid Exploration Project (1972-1982). From these projects, Loy identifies the “Cherry-Davis Network” from which sprung any number of significant intensive surveys in Greece with primacy given, perhaps, to the Namea Valley Archaeological Project and the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project. He also notes several other genealogies existed “outside” this network including the “Chronotype” family of projects associated with Sidney Cyprus Survey Project, the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project, EKAS, the Australian Palaiochora-Kythera Survey Project, the Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project and Western Argolid Regional Project. Sadly, my little survey on Cyprus – the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project – slipped through the cracks here!
There are many ways to critique this article. On the one hand, the article reflects the relationships between project directors and gives some sense for how professional collaborations create genealogical relationships in disciplines defined as much by field-developed craft as the formal publication of methods, procedures, and practices. In fact, one thing that is striking about the development of intensive pedestrian survey as how quickly it intensified between the earliest project — like the MME and the Southern Argolid survey — and their siteless survey successors from the later 1980s (NVAP and PRAP being key examples).
On the other hand, this kind of network analysis overlooks the bottom-up influences that often influenced the development and transmission of survey methods. Individuals like Tim Gregory, who was my advisor, were often overlooked as significant participants in the functioning of these networks. Tim’s career intersected with both the Southern Argolid Exploration Project and the Cambridge Bradford Boeotia Project though his work at Thisvi in Boeotia. His surveys of islands in the Saronic Gulf and the Gulf of Corinth where he worked with P. Nick Kardulias (who studied with William Dancey, a key player in the development of siteless survey, in the anthropology program at Ohio State) grew from his work in Boeotia and the Southern Argolid respectively. Kardulias’s and Gregory’s work also intersected in their collaborations to survey and excavate the Byzantine fortress at Isthmia and to survey any number of small sites in the Eastern Corinthia. Tim’s and Nick’s work also intersected on Cyprus where Tim briefly worked on the later pottery from Athienou Archaeological Project’s Mallora Valley Survey Project directed by Nick and Ohio State anthropology professor Rick Yerkes.
When the Eastern Korinthia Survey began, it also drew upon participants in the Southern Argolid project and NVAP such as the ceramicist Daniel Pullen who became co-director of EKAS when Fritz Hemans’s stepped down. These influences combined with those of sometime Corinthian archaeologist James Wiseman through Tom Tartaron and Carol Stein, respectively, who had worked with Wiseman on the Nikopolis Survey and who served as the field director and as a team leader respectively. Tom had also worked on the Berbati-Limnes Archaeological Survey. Neither the Nikopolis Survey nor Berbati-Limnes appear in Loy’s networks.
Long, undoubtedly annoying, conversations with Tom Tartaron helped me, David Pettegrew, and Dimitri Nakassis develop our ideas about intensive pedestrian survey. As did conversations with Rob Schon who had worked on EKAS and both PRAP and SCSP and directed an experimental team on EKAS also informed my views on intensive pedestrian survey. More directly, my project with David Pettegrew on Cyprus was co-directed by R. Scott Moore who was a fellow Tim Gregory student with me and David, and worked with Tim at Isthmia and with the SCSP. We used the Chronotype system, in part, because we were all familiar with it from EKAS and SCSP where the data structure and sampling processes were refined and critiqued. Here the behind the scenes work of Richard Rothaus, another Tim Gregory student, who designed the survey database and at the same time was working with Nick Rauh on the Rough Cilicia Survey Project in Turkey. Versions of Richard’s database were used on PKAP, APKAS, and WARP and structured how we thought about survey units, walker transects, and descriptions collected via text fields, pulldowns, and check boxes.
WARP brought together two directors who had experience on EKAS – Dimitri Nakassis and Sarah James both of whom also had worked with Michael Cosmopolos on the Iklaina survey project as well (if I’m not mistaken). Scott Gallimore, the third director, cut his teeth on the Gallatas Survey under Vance Watrous on Crete. Sarah James also worked closely with Guy Sanders at Corinth and, on WARP, often mediated between the siteless approaches embraced my Dimitri (and myself) and Guy Sander’s more critical position regarding survey methods in general. Scott Gallimore’s work on the rather different Gallatas survey provided an additional perspective that shaped our work.
Update: As Dimitri reminded me in this little Twitter thread, he also was a student of John Cherry and Sue Alcock at Michigan and worked with Jim Wright in Nemea connecting WARP with the “Cherry-Davis-Wright” network as much as the SCSP/EKAS lineage.
It’s telling and significant that graduate students who worked with us on WARP have now worked on other survey projects in the Aegean basin and have undoubtedly transmitted certain ideas as well as contributed their own critiques to the development of field practices.
None of this is meant to necessarily contradict Loy’s top down view, but to complicate the implicit assumption that survey directors define the discipline in such an explicit way. A more subtle reading of survey project (which would involve more complex genealogies that extended well below the level of project director) would reveal a more dynamic space for the foment and transmission of ideas. Instead of the dendritic networks presented in the article a more rhizomic understanding of how ideas and practices shaped intensive survey.
Indeed, one of the things that always attracted me to intensive survey is its relative simplicity in practice and its largely non-destructive nature encouraged a more egalitarian attitude among its practitioners. Moreover the granularity of survey data and its digital format allowed projects to open up the process of analysis to more participants than many traditional excavations. As a result, it would seem that the character of intensive survey in the Mediterranean would reward the development of genealogies that looked beyond the hierarchy of project directors and first authors. This is not meant to take anything away from Loy’s work, but to suggest that he has just scratched the surface of the networks and relationships that have shaped contemporary survey practices in Greece and the Aegean.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 