This site contains the currently available on-line resources of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Project, Archaeological Survey (NVAP-AS).
The Nemea Valley Archaeological Project (NVAP) is sponsored by Bryn Mawr
College and conducted fieldwork under the auspices of the American School of
Classical Studies at Athens with permissions from the Ministry of Culture and
Sciences of Greece.
Duplication, Publication, and Redistribution
The texts and illustrations contained in this site may not be published, reproduced, or otherwise redistributed without permission of the authors or artists and are for personal and educational use only. Commercial use is strictly prohibited. Scholarly publications should make reference to this site as "The Nemea Valley Archaeological Project Archaeological Survey: Internet Edition,"http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/NVAP.html.
NVAP-AS was organized in 1983 to investigate through the technique of intensive surface survey an area of approximately 80 square kilometers in the southern Corinthia, Greece. The area extends from Mt. Phoukas and the ridge of the ancient city-state of Phlius, on the north, to the Dervenakia (Tretos) Pass and Mt. Strongylo, on the south. From 1984-86, three teams of archaeologists operating in the field each summer examined a total of 50 square kilometers; in 1989, much of the remainder was inspected using less intensive procedures. The archaeological survey was the first in Greece to take as its most basic unit of analysis not the site but rather the individual artifact: we have been interested in explaining the existence of all traces of activity in the ancient landscape, not only major concentrations of artifacts or those that remain in the places where they were originally deposited. The specific goals of the survey were to: 1) establish the distributions of artifacts of particular dates within the survey area; 2) to evaluate how far such distributions adequatedly represent past patterns of settlement and other human activities; and 3) to provide some explanation for long-term changes in the human behavior which such patterns reflect. Geomorphological investigations conducted in association with the archaeological survey mapped soil units in most of the area that was intensively surveyed. Nearly 100 archaeological sites were defined and investigated, most of them previously unknown. The density, date, and nature of artifacts found in smaller numbers at hundreds of off-site locations was also an important focus of research. Members of the project are committed to the development of electronic archaeological resources and, for this reason, are making available for the first time a complete illustrated catalogue of all sites. In addition, the table of contents contains links to other resources now publically available, including our complete photographic database. We encourage use of the gazetteer for scholarly purposes and are grateful for comments by others on the archaeological significance either of sites or artifacts under study by NVAP-AS. We do not anticipate that any print version of the gazetteer will be available in the near future, although many interpretive studies by members of the project have been published in print or are in preparation.
Project Director
James C. Wright, Bryn Mawr College
Survey Direction
John F. Cherry, University of Michigan
Jack L. Davis, University of Cincinnati
Eleni Mantzourani, University of Athens
Museum Direction
Robert F. Sutton,Jr., Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
Geological and Geomorphical Survey Direction
Ann Demitrack, Stanford University
Ethnographic Survey Direction
Susan B. Sutton, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
Ceramic Analysis
Effie Athanassopoulou, University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Hugh Elton, Trinity College
Lynn Kraynak, University of California at Berkeley
Daniel J. Pullen, Florida State University
Laurie Roberts, Boston University
Jeremy B. Rutter, Dartmouth College
Tom Strasser, Indiana University
Robert F. Sutton, Jr, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
Lithic Analysis
John F. Cherry, University of Michigan
Curtis N. Runnels, Boston University
Robin Torrence, University of Sydney
Co-ordinator of Publication
Ada Kalogirou, University of Cincinnati
Museum Studies Co-ordination and Data Base Design
Mary K. Dabney, Bryn Mawr College
Photography
Taylor Dabney
Supervision of Illustration
Julia E. Pfaff
Ethnographic Assistants
William C. Alexander, State University of New York at Albany
Tassoula Karakatsidou, Columbia University
Geological Assistants
Tina Niemi, Stanford University
Joan Pederson, University of Illinois at Chicago
Illustration
Julie Perlmutter
Julia E. Pfaff
Lyla Pinch Brock
Rosemary Robertson
Funding
Bryn Mawr College
Cambridge University
Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
Institute for Aegean Prehistory
Loyola University of Chicago
National Endowment for the Humanities (RO 20731 and RO 21715)
National Geographic Society (2971-1984; 3265-1986)
University of Cincinnati
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Michigan
Mapping and Internet Access
Sebastian Heath, University of Michigan
HTML
Sebastian Heath, University of Michigan
Jack L. Davis, University of Cincinnati
Scanning
Phoebe Acheson, University of Cincinnati
Ada Kalogirou, University of Cincinnati
Marguerite Prendergast, University of Cincinnati
Christine Wittmer, University of Cincinnati
General Overviews and Methodology
J.C. Wright, J.F. Cherry, and E. Mantzourani, "The Program of Archaeological Investigations in the Valley of Nemea During the Years 1984-1986," Athens Annals of Archaeology 18 (1985) 86-103.
J. Pederson, Pedestrian Archaeological Survey: A Geomorphological Evaluation in the Nemea Valley, Greece (University of Illinois at Chicago, M.A. thesis 1986).
J.C. Wright, J.F. Cherry, and E. Mantzourani, Das Nemea Valley Archaeological Project, in Kolloquium zur aegä ischen Vorgeschichte. Schriften des Deutschen Archä ologen-Verbands 9 (Mannheim 1987), edited by W. Schiering, pp. 98-112.
J.L. Davis, "Surface Surveys: New Twist on an Old ASCSA Tradition," Newsletter of the Alumni Association of the American School of Classical Studies 22 (Fall 1988) 5.
J.C. Wright, J.F. Cherry, and E. Mantzourani, "The Nemea Valley Archaeological Project: A Preliminary Report," Hesperia59 (1990) 579-659.
J.L. Davis and S.B. Sutton, "Response to A.J. Ammerman, `The Dynamics of Modern Land Use and the Acconia Survey'," Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 8 (1995) 113-23.
The Neolithic
J.F. Cherry, A. Demitrack, E. Mantzourani, T. Strasser, and L. Talalay, "Archaeological Survey in an Artifact-Rich Landscape: A Middle Neolithic Example from Nemea, Greece," American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988) 159-176.
Mycenaean
J.L. Davis, "If There's a Room at the Top, What's at the Bottom?," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, London 35 (1988) 164-65.
Classical and Roman
S.E. Alcock, "Urban Survey and the Polis of Phlius," Hesperia 60 (1991) 421-63.
S.E. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge 1993).
S.E. Alcock, J.F. Cherry, and J.L. Davis, "Intensive Survey, Agricultural Practice and the Classical Landscape of Greece," in New Directions in Classical Archaeology, ed. I. Morris (Cambridge University Press 1994), 137-70.
Byzantine
E-F. Athanasspoulos, Intensive Survey and Medieval Rural Settlement: The Case of Nemea (University of Pennsylvania dissertation 1993).