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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2021

Layers of memory. 2009-2019: Ten years of excavations and research at Kirrha (Phocis, Greece)

Résumé

The prehistoric archaeological site of Kirrha, at the south-east limit of the plain of Itea (Phocis, Central Greece), is a coastal tell settlement on the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf. Two excavation campaigns were undertaken there by the French School of Athens in the late 1930s, uncovering extensive areas of a Middle Helladic (MH, ca. 2100 – 1700 BC) to Late Helladic (LH, ca 1700 – 1075 BC) settlement and numerous graves of the same period. Five deep soundings, halted by the water table, revealed a long-lived magoula, already established at least by the end of the Early Helladic period. After the publication of the pioneer excavations in 1960, Kirrha became a key site of the Aegean Prehistory, one of the most important for the MH period of Central Greece. After a long break, archaeological activity resumed in the 1960s, with a series of numerous rescue excavations operations following the urban growth. Eventually, a new research programme was set up in 2009, under the co-direction of the French School of Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Delphi. After ten years and a series of six excavation seasons, fieldwork has stopped in Kirrha since 2019 and time has come for study and publication. Study is well advanced, especially as regards pottery, lithics, archaeobotany and archaeozoology. As for the excavation operations, six distinct areas were investigated in various locations on the site, totalizing more than 750 sm of excavated area and uncovering layers dating from MH II to LH III. In the meantime, geomorphological survey in the plain of Itea and geoarchaeological borehole drilling survey around and in the tell were undertaken. Two major achievements resulted from these last operations: on the one hand, it is now clear that the site was founded in a marshy environment, or even in a laguna, and it is probable that the first houses at Kirrha were pile dwellings ; on the other hand, some Neolithic sherds in secondary position were found in our excavations. C14 dates from the base of the cores drilled into the tell should soon shed light on the date of the foundation of the site. Excavations in various sectors of the site have shown the complex entanglement of graves and habitation remains. Sector 2.3.5, on the western slope of the tell, makes a particularly vivid case. There, in the largest of our trenches, the remains of the last phases of the MH settlement were disturbed by a necropolis of the Transitional period (MH III-LH I), arranged in a pattern already pointed out in the litterature, but that was never observed at a such level of detail. With the help of a very close collaboration between archaeologists and bio-anthropologists, we have excavated and recorded 40 distinct funerary contexts in this area. Many of them presented a very complex history of (re)deposition(s) and formed altogether a multistratified necropolis indicating constant visits and the shaping of a vibrant space of memory.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03406198, version 1 (03-05-2022)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-03406198 , version 1

Citer

Raphaël Orgeolet. Layers of memory. 2009-2019: Ten years of excavations and research at Kirrha (Phocis, Greece). Mycenaean Seminar, Mar 2021, Londres, United Kingdom. ⟨halshs-03406198⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 05/05/2024
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