Ancient Methone: Early Greek Maritime Trade, Industry, and the Origins of the Greek Alphabet

FAIN: RZ-230604-15

UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA 90024-4201)
John K. Papadopoulos (Project Director: December 2014 to June 2022)
Sarah P. Morris (Co Project Director: January 2015 to June 2022)
Manthos Bessios (Co Project Director: January 2015 to June 2022)

Archaeological excavation and analysis at the harbor site of ancient Methone, northern Greece. (36 months)

Excavations at ancient Methone by the Greek Ministry of Culture in collaboration with UCLA have uncovered one of the most significant harbor sites of the north Aegean, occupied from the Final Neolithic era (ca. 4000 BCE) to the destruction of the site by Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great, in 354 BCE. Perched between the Aegean, inland Macedonia, and the Balkans, Methone served as a conduit for the movement of commodities, peoples, and ideas across a relatively large area of the Greek world, involving Mycenaeans, Euboians, Athenians, eastern and northern Greeks and indigenous tribes, as well as Phoenicians, in both prehistory and history. Significant remains include an early agora (marketplace) that lies above an Early Iron Age phase with an enormous deposit of artifacts, industrial debris, and--most importantly--the largest corpus of early Greek inscriptions on clay known from the Aegean, dating between ca. 750 and 650 BCE. Methone thus offers a unique opportunity to explore not only a large ancient harbor and industrial center, but also Greek connections with indigenous populations and others attracted to this large site that formed a middle ground between different cultures. During the protohistoric period, Methone played a major role in the origin and development of the Greek alphabet, contributing especially to the issue of its transmission from the Phoenician alphabet, a process with major cultural ramifications. The proposed project promises to illuminate these processes of cultural contact, the rise of urbanism, and the spread of literacy in the ancient world.

Associated Products

The early history of the Greek alphabet: the new evidence from Eretria and Methone (Article)
Title: The early history of the Greek alphabet: the new evidence from Eretria and Methone
Author: John K. Papadopoulos
Abstract: Inscriptions on new archaeological finds in the Aegean, examined alongside linguistic evidence relating to Greek and Phrygian vowels, are here used to explore the origins and spread of the Greek alphabet. The ‘invention’ of vowels happened just once, with all of the various Greek, Phrygian and Italic alphabets ultimately deriving from this single moment. The idea spread rapidly, from an absence of writing in the ninth century BC to casual usage, including jokes, by 725 BC. The port of Methone in the northern Aegean emerges as a probable candidate for the site of origin. A place where Greeks and Phoenicians did business together, with international networks, was this where Semitic, Greek and Phrygian letters first coalesced?
Year: 2016
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Antiquity
Publisher: Antiquity

The early history of the Greek alphabet: new evidence from Eretria and Methone (Article)
Title: The early history of the Greek alphabet: new evidence from Eretria and Methone
Author: John K. Papadopoulos
Abstract: Inscriptions on new archaeological finds in the Aegean, examined alongside linguistic evidence relating to Greek and Phrygian vowels, are here used to explore the origins and spread of the Greek alphabet. The ‘invention’ of vowels happened just once, with all of the various Greek, Phrygian and Italic alphabets ultimately deriving from this single moment. The idea spread rapidly, from an absence of writing in the ninth century BC to casual usage, including jokes, by 725 BC. The port of Methone in the northern Aegean emerges as a probable candidate for the site of origin. A place where Greeks and Phoenicians did business together, with international networks; was this where Semitic, Greek and Phrygian letters first coalesced?
Year: 2016
Primary URL: doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.160
Primary URL Description: Enter article as published
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Publisher: Antiquity (Antiquity Publications Ltd.)

To write and to paint: more Early Iron Age potters' marks in the Aegean (Article)
Title: To write and to paint: more Early Iron Age potters' marks in the Aegean
Author: John K. Papadopoulos
Abstract: In Hesperia 63, 1994 I published a paper on Protogeometric and Geometric potters’ marks in Greece. The existence of such marks on pottery of the period had been largely overlooked. I provided a catalogue of some seventy pieces, from various parts of Greece, which had symbols that could be interpreted as potters’ marks. My primary aim in that paper was to draw attention to the existence of such marks and to attempt to provide a classification of the main types of marks: 1) painted symbols on wheelmade pottery; 2) incised symbols on wheelmade and handmade pottery; 3) stamped impressions on coarseware pottery; 4) finger or thumb impressions; 5) isolated painted figures. Since 1994, additional Early Iron Age potters’ marks have come to light, not least from Athens, the Corinthia (Corinth, Perachora, Isthmia), Ithake, Macedonia and Epirus. One aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the new examples—published and unpublished—as well as to isolate a group of potters’ marks whose function is now assured: reference marks. The new corpus of non-alphabetic marks from Methone—not all of which are potters’ marks—now fully published, adds a whole new dimension to any discussion of alphabetic and non-alphabetic marks on pottery in the later 8th and 7th centuries BC. The new Methone corpus may even contribute to a reassessment of the place where the adoption of Greek alphabet took place. The paper also reviews the evidence of the need for non-verbal and non-alphabetic symbols—semata—in early Greece, from Ajax’s winning lot in Iliad 7.187-189, to Bellerophon’s semata lygra in Iliad 6.168. In these early contexts, semata may have been simple symbols, pictorials tokens, or devices, denoting “sign,” “mark, “seal,” “signature,” “token,” “device,” “emblem.” The fact that a sema could be a symbol, such as the ubiquitous X, or a more complex pictorial device, underscores the fact that in Greek there is no distinction between the word “to write” and “to paint,” graphein.
Year: 2017
Primary URL Description: Book chapter
Format: Other
Periodical Title: J. Strauss-Clay, I. Malkin, and Y. Tzifopoulos, eds. Panhellenes at Methone: graphe in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, Berlin

Methone: terrestrial and aerial photographs (Article)
Title: Methone: terrestrial and aerial photographs
Author: Hugh Thomas
Abstract: The advent of photogrammetry has resulted in the transition of photographic recording from two to three dimensions. This recording technique predominantly relies on two forms of photography: terrestrial and aerial. Ground-based photogrammetry focuses on the creation of high resolution and accurate models of in-situ archaeological remains. Conversely, aerial photography centres on the creation of detailed photogrammetric models encompassing a relatively small area through the use of kites, UAV's, and other platforms, or lower quality models of significant size, such as entire sites. Despite the importance of both ground and aerial photogrammetry, these two techniques are rarely used in tandem, generally applied to small-scale projects rather than full site models. This effectively removes terrestrial models from any site based analysis whilst conversely resulting in large scale site models being a static representation of the area at the time aerial photography was performed. This paper focuses on the methodology created for the Ancient Methone Archaeological Project, which allowed for the production of a monumental photogrammetric model (83,000 m2), viewable on both a macro and micro level via a combination of both terrestrial and aerial photographs. This methodology resulted in a level of detail, as yet unparalleled for a large-scale site model, with archaeological remains, both horizontal and vertical, visible in sub-centimetre resolution. This paper is designed to focus on photogrammetric methodology rather than a detailed analysis of the accuracy of Photoscan and its use in archaeological photogrammetry, which has been recently summarized by Sapirstein (2016).
Year: 2017
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Archaeological Science
Publisher: Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

The Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: A Preliminary Report on Fieldwork, 2014-2017 (Article)
Title: The Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: A Preliminary Report on Fieldwork, 2014-2017
Author: Sarah P. Morris
Author: John K. Papadopoulos
Abstract: Ancient Methone (Pieria) was a major port in northern Greece from the 1st millennium B.C. until Philip II of Macedon destroyed the city in 354 B.C. Excavations carried out since 2003 by the Greek Archaeological Service have unearthed Bronze Age burials, important Early Iron Age deposits and inscriptions, and direct evidence of the Macedonian siege, destruction, and aftermath, thereby extending the history of the settlement from the Late Neolithic period past the 4th century B.C. In 2012 an international team joined the Ephorate of Antiquities of Pieria to study and publish these discoveries, and as the Ancient Methone Archaeological Project, launched a fresh phase of multidisciplinary fieldwork from 2014 to 2017, the preliminary results of which are presented here.
Year: 2020
Secondary URL: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/news/newsDetails/webinar-the-ancient-methone-archaeological-project-the-movie
Secondary URL Description: Film made of the Ancient Methone Archaeological Project. See : https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/news/newsDetails/webinar-the-ancient-methone-archaeological-project-the-movie
Format: Journal
Publisher: Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: The Movie (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: The Movie
Writer: John K. Papadopoulos
Director: Jeff Vanderpool
Producer: John K. Papadopoulos
Abstract: A one-hour documentary movie that outlines all aspects of the Ancient Methone Archaeological Project, and overviews its most significant finds.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/news/newsDetails/webinar-the-ancient-methone-archaeological-project-the-movie
Primary URL Description: Methone the movie.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Film

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