Archaeological services in Macedonia The Akanthos site and monuments are officially known (in English translation) as the Archaeological Site of Akanthos (see the website given in the box). Excavation and administration (archaeological services) are conducted by, and are under the authority of, the
Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports through its departments. Currently (2018) the relevant departments, or ephorates, are under the Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, which is under the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, which is under the General Secretary of Culture, which is under the Minister of Culture and Sports. The department with the responsibility of guidance and oversight of the site is the Ephorate of Antiquity of Chalcidice and Mount Athos, which has a list of responsibilities including the monasteries, and the sites of Akanthos, Olynthos, and Stageira. These assignments supersede previous arrangements, which might be cited in literature and on the Internet, such as 16th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Thessaloniki, which is no more. The archaeological ephorates of Macedonia began in the Balkan Wars, starting in 1912. There was already considerable international interest in the antiquities of Macedonia. The Ottoman Empire was supporting some rescue archaeology. For example, when an earthquake caused an opening to appear in a tumulus at
Derveni, suggesting the impending collapse of a structure underneath, the Ottomans assigned
Makridi Bey (
Bey is a Turkish title), ethnically an
Ottoman Greek, Theodoros Makridis, who had been at Hattusas, to excavate it. He never got a chance to finish it. In 1912 a Greek expeditionary army entered Macedonia. Among them were volunteers who were Greek archaeologists. With the approval of the army, they took over all archaeology in Macedonia, collecting and storing ancient items, surveying sites, and doing preliminary excavation, with the assistance of other Greek soldiers. The new Governor-General of Macedonia created the first official Archaeological Service. The General Staff of the Army began to automatically assign soldier-archaeologists to it. On November 9, 1912, the office of Ephor of Antiquities of Thessaloniki was created, with George Oikonomou as ephor. He was also head of the Archaeological Service. Gradually additional ephorates were created, which were numbered, 2nd, 3rd, etc., using capital Greek letters for numbers. Each of the ephorates required a museum to house its artifacts. The number of ancient sites to be protected and investigated is very large; the budget never seemed to be large enough, and there were never enough archaeologists to go around. The Archaeological Service accepted assistance from foreign institutions. A French mission had done some excavation for research under the Ottomans. French soldiers in Thessaloniki were glad to assist. The
French Archaeological School of Athens had been formed and was active.
Johns Hopkins and
New York University undertook excavations. The Greek
Archaeological Society of Athens and the
University of Thessaloniki took a hand. By 1996 there were 25 ephorates of Prehistoric and Classical Archaeology in addition to others on related topics. In 2003 the ephorates were organized into eight directorates. The names and responsibilities of the ephorates require frequent adjustment to support the expanding archaeological investment. The names and numbers of museums also change frequently. Currently many of the artifacts from Halkidiki in general and Ierissos in particular are on display at the
Archaeological Museum of Polygyros. Others are to be found in the
Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.
Background to Chalcidic settlement Chalcidice has been occupied since the
Palaeolithic, the beginning of human culture, which started at about 3.3 MYA (million years ago). Whether it was continuous occupation for that length of time is not answered by the evidence, which is intermittent. Whether the intermittency belongs to the evidence or to the habitation is not yet known. The major find site for the Palaeolithic is
Petralona Cave, where the
Petralona Skull was found, from a fully human
Hominid believed to be ancestral (or close to it) to both modern and
Neanderthal men. The date is the
Middle Pleistocene (700,000–128,000 BP, or "before present"). Some assign it to the later Middle Pleistocene, 200,000–150,000 BCE, but a carbon date on the ashes of a fire yields 700,000 BCE. The fire is the earliest known one of human origin.
Mesolithic culture also is present. The Middle and Late
Neolithic (5500–3000 BCE) are represented at sites near rivers. In the
Bronze Age (3000–1100) site density increased. The sites have the form of
tells, or mounds, which in this case result from the construction of successive mud-brick and wood houses over the same site. These are at seaside locations. The dead were deposited in distinct cemeteries, whether in burials or cremation urns. There is no evidence of ethnicity. History begins in the Early
Iron Age (1100–900 BCE).
Thucydides mentions that, on the way home from Troy, a contingent from
Pellene in
Achaea of the Peloponnesus, driven to Chalcidice by a storm, deciding to stay, founded
Skione, according to the Skionians, he says. The date is debatable, but if Troy fell in 1180 BCE, it would have been in the 12th century BCE. This is the first report of Hellenes in Chalcidice. The settlements of the period are on fortified heights (acropoli), whether on the coast or in the interior. The culture shows affinities to that of southern Greece. According to other sources, Chalcidice was also occupied by tribes of
Thrace and other people of unknown language driven from Macedon by the Macedonians moving in.
The Akanthos site After 1912 the fact that the Akanthos site was occupied by an inhabited village endowed it with a low archaeological priority. After 1932, the hills were open, but there was still little interest in improving the priority. In 1973 the priority changed suddenly with the discovery of the cemetery. A bulldozer preparing a site for new construction broke into a number of sarcophagi and shattered some pottery. Immediately the archaeological ephorate issued a non-development order, which it had the power to do, being a government agency, and conducted rescue archaeology on an emergency basis. This was the beginning of a systematic excavation that continues today, with no end in sight. The rescue archaeology soon extended over a large number of graves. The total is not known for sure. Numbers vary from a mere 600 to as many as 60,000. Part of the problem is that over such a length of time graves were destroyed to make way for others, or were placed over others. A few general observations can be made. The earliest cemetery was placed further inland near the center of Ierissos, while the later were more toward the sea., and were aligned pointing to sea. Currently a number of chronological work areas are distinguished, the two main ones being the cemetery of Akanthos, and the medieval cemetery of Ierissos, discovered in 1984. The first contains tombs ranging in time from the Proto-Geometric Period through the abandonment, with the most from the classical centuries, the 5th and 4th BCE. The second contains the graves of mediaeval Ierissos, from the founding of the Kolovou Monastery on the hill in 883 CE, which made use of Greek and Slavic texts, to the 12th century CE, judging by the coins. The fact that some coins date from the 6th century suggests that the site was not entirely abandoned. The graves are not spectacular find sites, compared to the tombs of chieftains, or monumental architecture, or hidden treasures of precious metals. The ordinary people were buried there in a variety of coffins or ash containers. Women and children predominated. Grave goods were abundant: favorite objects broken to kill them, the abundance and quality being indicative of the wealth and status of the deceased, as is usually the case. The clay figurines are especially revealing of life in the city. Of the greatest value archaeologically is the pottery, of which the shape and decoration typically fall into known types providing relatively certain chronological sequences and connections with other parts of Greece, Asia and Europe. The similarity of the ceramics to that of Corinth, east Greece, Thasos, Attica, and the Cyclades, along with the coins minted in Akanthos, are generally interpreted that the prosperity of Akanthos derived from its commercialism, which its strategic location supported. ==History==