Ron Marchese was part of a team of professors using "x ray" equipment to gather information about a city dating back to 300 B.C.
Ancient Greek cities like Plataiai aren't home to rock-star ruins or a Wonder of the World.
But Ron Marchese, who concluded his study this year of the underground city northwest of Athens, says part of the archeological site's significance is that it was a community of everyday people.
"There are always great sites that capture your imagination, but most people lived in communities like this," said the University of Minnesota Duluth professor of ancient history and archeology. "We have resurrected an entire community that no one knew existed."
Marchese, along with professors from Cambridge University and the University of Vienna, have been "X-raying" the 200-acre city 4 to 6 feet underground for 12 years. It dates back as far as 300 B.C., and the team recently completed its entire grid.
The group used an instrument that sends an electric current into the ground and walked across yards of plotted land to get numeric readings that are converted into visual images.
Marchese likens the technology to "peeling back the earth with Superman eyes."
The Greek government allowed one three-year permit that gave them 10 weeks of actual digging, so the new technology - involving electrical resistivity and a magnetometer survey - was used for the vast majority of the project. Of the 45 or so other sites that used the same method, the work done at Plataiai is considered the best, Marchese said.
"We really established a new level of technological expertise," he said, with "beautiful background readings" improved by the wet ground of the rainy season. "This is not fiction. Everything is there."
The work done at Plataiai vividly demonstrates the potential of geophysical survey, said Elizabeth Baughan, assistant professor of classics and archeology at the University of Richmond in Virginia, where Marchese has lectured on the topic.
"The results are, visually, some of the most impressive I have seen, with various building types clearly identifiable," Baughan said, noting that excavation is still needed to answer important questions about chronology of the grid-plan and functions of the buildings.
Marchese and his crew have found a temple for Dionysius, the god of wine, city blocks and avenues, bathhouses, tavernas, a gymnasium, a large urban villa probably owned by a wealthy family, the third-largest marketplace in the ancient world, a baptistery and possibly a stadium and other monuments.
The site's buildings and artifacts date from several ages ranging from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D. Items including a goblet labeled with the owner's name, coins and perfume bottles have been found through the initial limited excavation and as villagers have plowed the land.
"Based upon literary sources, this site is only important for the battle" - the 479 B.C. Battle of Plataiai between combined Greek forces and Persia, Marchese said. "But it was a very important site in geopolitics for about two centuries."
Whoever controlled the site controlled access to the passes that led to Athenian territory, so Plataiai suffered much destruction, Marchese said. During the classical period of Greek history, the city was destroyed by Persians and assaulted by Thebans and Spartans. It was rebuilt after Thebes was destroyed by Alexander the Great.
"This was going to be the new capital of central Greece," Marchese said of the wealthy city.
No one has lived on the land since the 1700s, when the community moved up the hill to be more secure.
The work done to "excavate" the city is important because archeologists aren't only concerned with finding temples and public architecture, said Marchese, whose team's work will be published in upcoming books and journals. "We want to deal with urban schemes; the life of the common individual," he said. The technology used to see what's underground is appreciated by villagers, who generally don't like archeologists. Important discoveries can lead to loss of land, Marchese said.
But the artifacts and images "transform our way of thinking about our ancestors and what they accomplished," he said. "You never know what's going to be released from Earth's grip."
Source: Duluth News Tribune