Emborio Hinterland Project - 2023

Olga Vassi (Ephorate of Antiquities of Chios) and Andrew Bevan (UCL) report on the first year of fieldwork in a new collaboration between the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chios and the BSA.

Since 2021, this project has been implementing a comprehensive, intensive field survey of some 10 sq.km around Emborio, with a view both to enhancing the understanding of the hinterland of the site’s prehistoric and Archaic communities, and to contextualising a range of other known nearby evidence. EHP’s priority in 2023 was on achieving as wide a coverage as possible of the study area via pedestrian survey (in parallel lines 10m apart, recording every 10m to create a virtual 10x10 grid) and via complementary topographic and architectural mapping. The team walked ~65,000 individual, 10m survey units over an area of 6.6sq.km, reaching about 75% of the mandated study area, and most of the areas of intense human activity (fig. 1). Surveyors recorded counts of ~50,000 pottery and ~10,000 tile fragments on the landscape surface, and made permanent collections of ~5,000 diagnostic potsherds, as well as some knapped stone.

It is clear that a range of new sites of prehistoric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Late Roman and Medieval date were discovered, while some other site locations from previous studies were this year reidentified, revisited and better defined. In light of current evidence, only a few small prehistoric scatters and isolated finds beyond the excavated prehistoric levels at Emborio can be identified, and the rescue excavations at the small site of Phoki. There is also a small amount of prehistoric knapped stone found across the landscape, including obsidian.This corroborates the pattern observed in the 1950s Emborio excavations where the later Neolithic and Bronze Age lithic assemblage was not especially impressive and a further indication that we should not let the high profile of the Emborio ‘as publication’ mislead us about the relatively modest size and modest resources of the Emborio site, as well as the seeming low density of other Neolithic-Bronze Age activity nearby. This is especially clear if contrasted with large contemporary sites on the opposite Turkish coast, such as Limantepe. One small scatter found in the valley behind the Emborio harbour (fig. 2), produced for example a few obsidian finds (including an obsidian bladelet, with the best comparanda being from later Neolithic levels at Emborio) as well as coarseware potsherds and knapped chert fragments.

There is a considerable amount of evidence across all periods from ~650 BCE onwards, beginning in the Archaic, and through Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Late Roman, Medieval, Ottoman and Recent. A lot of coarse and fine-decorated ceramics, tile and surviving wall foundations at several sites survive from the Archaic period. For example, Archaic surface material, and the terracotta figurine head is one of several pieces of evidence suggesting a small, special site astride the modern road north out of Emborio and up towards the modern mastic museum (fig. 3). This road-way was clearly a key artery in the past, with site of many periods found alongside it, and a long line of heavy-set walling on its east side.