When we move to life outside the city, our textual sources fail us almost entirely. To 'repeople' the Messenian countryside, we must turn to the results of archaeological surface survey. As already mentioned, Messenia has been the subject of two major survey projects. The first, the Minnesota Messenia Expedition, was primarily focused upon tracing Bronze Age activity in the area; this fact, together with the project's fairly extensive reconnaissance of the region, has meant that its suggestions about historical settlement in the region remained very tentative. By contrast, the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project was committed to a fully diachronic and highly intensive investigation, and definite historical settlement patterns are begining to be traced in its study zone in southwestern Messenia, a region which lies some 20 kilometers southwest of the city of Messene.
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While analysis of the PRAP results is still ongoing, one clear observation is that there appears to be an increase in settlement and land use in the period after the liberation from Sparta. A comparison of maps tracing activity in the Archaic/Classical era, compared to the Hellenistic (here dated from the later fourth to the first century B.C.), makes this point clearly, with many more sites appearing in the countryside at that time. Just as the Messenians resumed their place in Greek political, military and cultural activities, so -- with freedom -- they reorganized their life within the countryside, which they now farmed for themselves and not for their Spartan masters. These rural-based sites took many forms: villages, hamlets, wealthy homes, simple farmsteads. Three examples can be given here to illustrate some of the variety of the Hellenistic countryside.
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Several of the sites discovered by PRAP appear to be long-lived nucleated settlements, best described as villages or hamlets. Romanou Romanou (I4), for example, in the southern part of the study region demonstrates signs of occupation from prehistoric through to modern times; indeed a modern village sits on top of part of the site (which measures some 38 hectares in extent) today. Only some 3.5 kilometers to the south of this site lies the promontory of Pylos/Koryfasio, famous for its role as an Athenian base of operations during the Peloponnesian War. At some point after liberation, a polis (city-state) was constituted in this area, with its urban center located on that headland. Romanou in the Hellenistic period, therefore, can be identified as a village satellite of that city. Finds of Hellenistic date at Romanou include Eastern Sigillata A (ESA) pottery.
Romanou represents one, and one commonly found, level of settlement in the countryside; villages and hamlet communities appear to have been preferred forms of residence in the PRAP study region. In other parts of Greece which have been surveyed (e.g. Boeotia, the Cycladic islands, the Corinthia, the Argolid peninsula), the predominant form of rural settlement is instead the small farmstead dwelling. While such sites are noticeably less frequent in the Messenian countryside than elsewhere, they do appear (especially in the post-liberation, Hellenistic era). This 'lowest' level of rural settlement is represented, for example, by the small site at Metamorfosi Ayios Konstadtinos (A6). A modern church is now located at this site, which lies on the eastern slope of a fertile valley system. The area covered by the site appears to be tiny: perhaps extending over some half a hectare. Like the village of Romanou, the site appears to be quite long-lived, with material dating to the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Modern periods. Most ceramics, however, belong to the Hellenistic period, and appear to represent a single household assemblage, with finds of both table wares and coarse wares. Such finds point towards the interpretation of this site as a small residential unit, of the type seen elsewhere in the Greek world.
One general trend that has been associated with the Hellenistic age is a growing social stratification, an increasing disjunction between rich and poor. Such divisions were, of course, impossible in an enslaved Messenia, where the essential conflict lay instead between Spartan and Messenian. As we have seen, however, post-liberation Messenia could participate in more global social and economic trends, and there are signs of such distinctions in wealth and status in Hellenistic Messenia.
Even survey evidence can testify to this development. Approximately one kilometer southwest of the ancient and modern village of Romanou lies Romanou Glyfadaki (E1), where a small (0.39 ha.), extremely dense and extraordinarily well-preserved ceramic scatter was discovered. When this material was collected by PRAP, it was apparent that most pottery and tile was to be found within a clearly demarcated rectangular area approximately 50 m. long and 20 m. wide. Geophysical work was subsequently done at the site, in the hope that subsurface features might be found to correspond with these distinct patterns in surface material. This indeed turned out to be the case, with geophysical results corresponding well with the pattern of ceramic densities. A series of anomalies was discovered which can be interpreted as the foundations of a structure whose south wall can be traced for at least forty meters in the area studied. Part of the course of the structure's west wall, as well as the position of a cross wall, were also detected. The high surface densities of pottery and tile were found inside the area set off by these wall lines.
The fragments of pottery recovered at Glyfadaki were both larger and in a better state of preservation than is usual for the surface material in the PRAP study area. A few Archaic and possible Geometric sherds have been identified, as well as some Early Modern to Modern material, but by far the dominant element in the collection is material of the Hellenistic, especially the later Hellenistic, epoch. The pottery of this period constitutes a recognizably domestic assemblage, with amphora fragments, cooking wares, fine wares including black painted plates, bowls and cups, and a lamp fragment. Pithos rims and large quantities of tile in several fabrics were also collected, as were three pyramidal loomweights. Six fragments of moldmade bowls were also collected. It was noted than many of the fine wares from Glyfadaki resemble closely the pottery from Hellenistic levels at the city of Messene.
How to interpret this very interesting site? Putting all our evidence together, Glyfadaki appears to have been a small, independent site, lying near the larger contemporary settlement of Romanou, and in close proximity to the coastline. Nothing indicates that Glyfadaki possessed a ritual or other special function; indeed, the ceramic material makes a very clear case for the site as a dwelling place, and a relatively short-lived one at that. While it is admittedly difficult to assess the social status of a site's inhabitants from surface ceramics alone, when taken in conjunction with the sheer size of the structure discovered through subsurface prospection, Glyfadaki emerges as the likely residence of a reasonably well-to-do individual in the Hellenistic period. Comparing the site of Glyfadaki with a poorer site such as Metamorfosi Ayios Kondstadtinos (A6), we can see differentiation, and social stratification, in the Hellenistic countryside. The discovery of wealthy Hellenistic burials near the former, including the tumulus at Tsopani Rahi (I17),which is actually visible from the site of Glyfadaki, reinforces this conclusion.
This trend towards greater social differentiation would develop still further in the Roman period, with the appearance of luxurious rural residences, or 'villa' structures. An example of such a structure from the PRAP study area is the site of Marathopolis Dialiskari (G1), where an impressive quantity of Roman fine wares and amphora fragments, as well as architectural remains (including portions of a bath complex, domestic architecture and its furnishings, productive facilities) are indicative of a vital and wealthy sea-side residence during the later Roman period. Apart from their identification as elite homes, Glyfadaki and Dialiskari share another feature in common: both are in coastal or near coastal locations. Such a preference points to increasing interest, on the part of at least some Messenians, of looking and reaching 'outward', in joining the wider political and social world of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean.