Dissertation committee:
Βαλαβάνης Παναγιώτης, Ομότιμος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Λαμπρινουδάκης Βασίλειος, Ομότιμος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Μποζάνα-Κούρου Παναγιώτα, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Πλάντζος Δημήτριος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Παλαιοκρασσά Λυδία, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Πέππα-Παπαϊωάννου Ειρήνη, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Πολυχρονάκου-Σγουρίτσα Παναγιὠτα, Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Ιστορίας-Αρχαιολογίας, Φιλοσοφική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
As the crowning gems at the apex of the loci sacrosancti (sacred inviolate places) where Hellenism flourished and reached grand achievements in Antiquity, the supralocal sanctuaries of the Aegean were agents par excellence of a multidimensional religious reality and major channels of culture and civilization fulfilling a versatile role. The present Ph.D. thesis investigates the genesis and evolution of the phenomenon of “supralocality” in the Aegean cult activity, as it is inferred through the examination of the emergence, constitution and historical course, synchronic and diachronic, of the greatest shared cult foci which developed on all four sides of the Archipelago. Within the framework of the work in hand, an attempt is made here for the first time towards an overall assessment of the current subject on the basis of a systematic and thorough recomposition of the life, function and form of a series of sites of such status in crucial geographical and topographical contexts, which evoke special interest as cult junctions, religious-spiritual centres, and, altogether, polysemous landscapes, spaces of communication or mediation, seats of rare cultural concentration-clustering, collectors of actions and experiences of particularly wide range, with perpetual vital involvement for centuries and with (trans)formative impact on many different aspects of the ancient Greek world. Introducing a main corpus of archaeological criteria of supralocality as our methodological guide (multi-participatoriality/multi-inclusiveness, heterogeneity of dedicators and votive offerings, written evidence: texts+inscriptions, performance of broad scale activities, architectural elaboration and material wealth, location-topography-geographical position, rhythm and frequency of cult activity) in the management (search, evaluation and interpretation) of the archaeological data and of the primary and secondary sources related to it in consideration with any relevant references by ancient authors, this study encompasses a large chronological spectrum; its starting-point lies in the Bronze Age, in which the first known material allusions of supralocality in Aegean cults appear, while it extends, subsequently, (especially) from the earliest historical times up to the end of the Archaic period, a time-span within which several fundamental Aegean cult structures had been crystallized to a notable degree and all the (until then) paramount supralocal sanctuaries had already been set on the pathway of an intensely dynamic progress, acquiring distinguished material and symbolic significance and cultivating bonds and institutions among as well as between the members of the individual societies which composed their human resources. The evidence which comes to light is synthetically processed and (re)appraised per period and per geographical zone, viewed within the boundaries of a distinct historical nexus in connection with the given social, political or economic circumstances of each era, occasionally directly or indirectly interwoven with momentous events, addressing, in parallel, necessary questions, remarks, hypotheses, controversies, reflections, findings, reconsiderations, comparisons and discriminations in accordance with the nature and in proportion to the requirements of each case.
The prehistoric Aegean has only a few candidate supralocal cult sites to display compared with that of the historic epoch. In the Early Bronze Age, the enigmatic Kavos-Dhaskaleio on Keros in the Cyclades, with its rich material assemblage and the peculiar character of the exerted in situ worship, stands out as the first and, in essence, single, in all probability supralocal ritual space of the period, presumably of multiple functionality, although the possibility of the existence of more broad-based inclusive cult sites, which would favour common gatherings of a diverse crowd of numerous participants-visitors, cannot be excluded. The increase of indications of supralocality in the cult of the Middle Bronze Age concerns, basically, sanctuaries which occupied dominant extramural locations away from settlements on Crete (Kato Syme Viannou, peak sanctuaries and sacred caves in East and Central Crete) and on Kythera (Hagios Georgios of the Mountain), an island which was apparently under Minoan influence, in cohesion with the consolidation and expansion of the palatial political system and of the ideology of social élites as well as with the mercantile and economic activity and the control of the sea routes respectively. The trend for the establishment or/and reinforcement of cults of supralocal appeal was given new impetus in the Late Bronze Age, once more in correlation with social and political developments, as is denoted by the further growth of some sanctuaries (Kato Syme Viannou) and by the big decrease or the selective maintenance of a few others (peak sanctuaries – principally Juktas – and sacred caves) to the corroboration and invigoration of the status quo; by contrast with Crete, in the Cyclades and in mainland Greece there are scanty traces that might be regarding multi-participatory devotional synergies (the shrine at the site of the later sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas in Epidauros). In Mycenaean times, the sociopolitical upheavals which took place brought about the decline of older sanctuaries of Crete, where a grave reduction of the active supralocal cult spots is attested, with just a small amount of sites to survive (Kato Syme Viannou, Juktas, Psychro, Patsos), along with a simultaneous turn to lesser local cults; the definition of the various components and parameters of the cults detected in the rest of the Aegean remains uncertain, with the idiosyncratic building complexes of the Cult Centre at Mycenae and of the sanctuary of Phylakopi on Melos raising questionable thoughts on the eventuality of supralocal cults or joint cults, while equally debatable is the assumption about the likelihood of attributing supralocal virtue to a number of sanctuaries of mainland Greece in places remote from residential areas.
The irregular dispersion of supralocal or possible supralocal cult poles and, likewise, the impression of religious diversity in the prehistoric Aegean gradually gave way to a more and more homogeneous (with respect to some specific manifestations) but also multifarious image of religious attitude and behaviour, as a corollary of the transformative changes which granted a sensational creative urge to the Aegean world from the Transitional period (i.e. the so-called Greek “Dark Age”) on and, at an even faster pace, from the Geometric and, later on, in the Archaic period. The foundation of new and the resetting of pre-existing sanctuaries of supralocal range proclaimed those shared cult centres of the Greeks not simply religious leaders and pioneers of a new era but, what is more, points of reference and guarantees of the social order and consistency, in the end, consecrated fields of external and internal working, of ritual and experiential communion, expressive of a collective social, communal and ethnic consciousness via the mutual (among its members) recognition of and veneration for differentness/otherness. The fervent care for large-scale multi-participatory religious congregations, complemented by the instrumental haphazard or periodic contribution of non-Hellenic people, in a controlled environment under the auspices of the gods, became synonymous with collaboration in common cult, breaking the local barriers and spreading all over the Aegean, yet not in its entirety or in uniform conjunctions. The four panhellenic sanctuaries (Delphi, Sanctuary of Apollo; Olympia, Sanctuary of Zeus; Isthmia, Sanctuary of Poseidon; Nemea, Sanctuary of Zeus) are highlighted as hierarchically most prominent representatives of supralocality, since they demonstrate some of the richest – materially and textually imprinted – assemblies of worshippers-visitors and collections of votive offerings, edifices and artefacts. Quite a lot of other Aegean cult sites fall under the same category of supralocal nuclei in mainland Greece (Poseidi, Sanctuary of Poseidon; Dodona, Sanctuary of Zeus; Kalapodi, Sanctuary of Artemis and Apollo; Eleusis, Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore; Perachora, Sanctuary of Hera), in the Cycladic territory (Delos, Sanctuary of Apollo; Despotiko, Sanctuary of Apollo), on Crete (Kato Syme Viannou, Sanctuary of Hermes and Aphrodite; Ida, Cave of Zeus or Idaeon Antron), in the Eastern Aegean and Ionia (Samos, Sanctuary of Hera; Didyma, Sanctuary of Apollo; Ephesus, Sanctuary of Artemis), all of them bearing indisputable witness to a glorious cult past and giving utterance to the “agon” (understood both as emulation and as antagonism) as lovers of the great, the beautiful and the true. Their unique material and symbolic dilation in the passage of time and their posthumous fame is conclusive testimonial evidence of all the above.
On the whole the supralocal sanctuaries of the prehistoric and historic Aegean were not random, spontaneous or arbitrary, religious constructions appertaining to an opportunistic plan; they were a rational, premeditated step towards co-existence and interaction in the same cult arena far from any sterile standardization or idealization, guided by a common light, which penetrated the minds, hearts, souls of the adorers, gave life to their ideas, sprinkled their mundane expectations and their transcendent aspirations. Participation in the ritual processes of these excellent sanctuaries was the product of free will and conscious resolution, a volitional and critical act, an emphatic statement of political and religious civilization.
