EASTERN BOEOTIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT Tanagra - 2008

Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project (EBAP). B. Burke (Canadian Institute/Victoria), B. Burns (Wellesley), S. Lupack (London), V. Aravantinos (Director, Θ' ΕΠΚΑ) and I. Fappas (Thebes Museum) report on the 2nd field season, which focused on the area surrounding the mod. village of Tanagra, in an effort to provide a context for several known centres: the Myc tombs at the locations of Dendron and Gephyra to the E of the village, the kastro located on the peak to the SW, and the Med tower to the NW.
Three teams of walkers surveyed 703 units within an area of 5km², in which individual transects totalled 175 km. Several of the chamber tombs, which contained the famous painted larnakes excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, were located, as were indications of settlement remains. The cemeteries were composed primarily of roughly hewn chambers cut into the natural bedrock. The largest concentration of tombs around Eleon is below the Church of Profitis Ilias, where over 20 chambers have been identified. These were revisited and more extensively mapped in 2008. A similar number of chamber tombs (Fig. 1) was mapped and surveyed in olive groves near mod. Tanagra, in a location known as Dendron, during the excavations by T. Spyropoulos. Some impressive surface ceramics collected in 2008 in the vicinity of the tombs clearly date to the Myc period, including an LHIIB goblet with pendant rock pattern that predates the main phase of tomb deposition in LHIII.
R. Siddal began a geological and petrographic survey of the survey area, focusing on the E side of the region, in order to complete a map of subsurface deposits, the sourcing of building material, and a reconstruction of tectonic history and shifts in water sources.