Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape: An Archaeological Ethnography

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meaning and identity in a greek landscape In this interdisciplinary study, Hamish Forbes explores how Greek villagers have understood and reacted to their landscapes over the centuries, from the late medieval period to the present. Analysing how they have seen themselves belonging to their local communities and within both local and wider landscapes, Forbes examines how these aspects of belonging have informed each other. Forbes also illuminates cross-disciplinary interests in memory and the importance of monuments. Based on data gathered over twenty-five years, Forbes’ study combines the rich detail of ethnographic fieldwork with historical and archaeological time-depth, showing how landscapes have important meaning beyond the religious sphere in terms of kinship and ideas about the past and in their role as productive assets. Hamish Forbes is associate professor of archaeology at the University of Nottingham. He has excavated in the United States, Ireland, Britain and Greece and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Greece on Methana, Crete and in the Southern Argolid. He is co-editor of A Rough and Rocky Place: The Landscape and Settlement History of the Methana Peninsula, Greece.

MEANING AND IDENTITY IN A GREEK LANDSCAPE AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHNOGRAPHY

HAMISH FORBES University of Nottingham

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521866996 c Hamish Forbes 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2007 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Forbes, Hamish Alexander. Meaning and identity in a Greek landscape : an archaeological ethnography / Hamish Forbes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-521-86699-6 (hardback) isbn-10: 0-521-86699-5 (hardback) 1. Methana Peninsula (Greece) – History. 2. Methana Peninsula (Greece) – Antiquities. 3. Landscape archaeology – Greece – Methana Peninsula. 4. Excavations (Archaeology) – Greece – Methana Peninsula. I. Title. df901.m54f67 2007 949.5 12 – dc22 2006039201 isbn 978-0-521-86699-6 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To the women in my life: Anne, Helen, Janet and Lin And to the memory of Michael H. Jameson, whose ideas on the Greek countryside led to the research described here

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Tables Preface and Acknowledgements Transliteration Conventions

page xi xv xxi

1 Introduction

1

2 Landscape Studies: From Frame-and-Tame to Visceral Feeling The Development of Landscape Archaeology and Anthropology Phenomenology: A Critical Overview Sensory and Visceral Landscapes Theoretical Approach of this Study

9 18 30 44

3 Historical Background to the Landscape of Methana Geology, Geomorphology and Soils Methana from the End of the Medieval Period to 1821 From 1821 to the First World War The Interwar Years The Second World War Onwards Conclusion

50 51 56 61 83 88 95

4 Conducting Fieldwork on Methana Cultural Ecology Studies Archaeological Survey The Study of Households and Household Transformation

97 97 108 110

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9

CONTENTS

Archival Sources and Methana in the 1990s Presentation of the Evidence Conclusion 5 Kinship, Marriage and the Transmission of Names and Property Introduction Family and Household Other Relatives Extent of the Kinship Group Greek Kinship and Anthropological Kinship Theory Marriage Alliances Fictive Kin Neighbours Kinship Obligations Names and Naming Dowry and Inheritance Conclusions 6 The Productive Landscape Introduction The Methana Settlement Pattern as Part of a Decision-Making Process Methana Communities in their Landscapes: Ethnographic Data and Archaeological Approaches The Methana Landscape as a Vertical Economy The Crop Rotation System in the Landscape Site ‘Territories’ versus Household ‘Territories’ and the Problem of Appropriate Analytical Levels Individual Plots and their Meanings Conclusion 7 The Historical Landscape: Memory, Monumentality and Time-Depth Of Time and Time-Depth Oral Testimonies and the Memory of Past Events Kinship and History: The Effect of Name Recycling Oral Testimony, ‘Official’ History and Local History viii

111 113 114 116 117 118 124 127 136 142 149 152 152 157 162 173 177 177 178 184 190 195 199 203 205 207 207 210 212 219

CONTENTS

The Meaningful Past Structures in the Landscape: Memorials of Past Time Settlements and their Locations as Historical Monuments Houses as Monuments Field-Houses Fields and Terraces Wells, Cisterns and Loutses Ambaria Grape-Treading Floors Churches Cemeteries The War Memorial The Nature of Time Conclusions

222 224 224 227 236 238 239 248 250 257 259 263 264 284

8 The Kinship Landscape Introduction Kinship and the Village Landscape Kinship and the Landscape of the Dead Kinship and the Organisation of the Productive Landscape Kinship and the Wider Landscape of Methana The Kinship Landscape Beyond Methana Methanites in a Linguistically Related Landscape Conclusions: A Greek Landscape with Relatives

286 286 287 314 318 327 331 333 335

9 The Religious Landscape The Supernatural in the Landscape The Supernatural in Methanites’ Lives The Supernatural in the Settlement Pattern Panighiria Extra-Mural Churches: Empty Spaces as Central Places The Religious Landscape in the 1990s The Dead in the Landscape: Cemeteries The Dead in the Landscape: Wayside Shrines The Supernatural and Movement Through the Landscape The Changing Importance of Churches in the Landscape Conclusions

343 345 348 352 358 359 374 380 385 387 391 392

ix

CONTENTS

10 Conclusions: A Greek Landscape from Within

395

Glossary Notes References Index

409 413 417 433

x

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

illustrations 1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.1 4.2 5.1

Location of Methana Panoramic view of Methana Methana’s spectacular volcanic landscape Geological map of Methana showing the main domes and lava flows A terraced hillside on Methana with mixed arable and trees Cross sections of Methana landforms and associated soils Changing settlement on Methana from the medieval period onwards Present settlements on Methana The village of Meghalo Khori: note steeper slopes above the village and gentler slopes below Inscribed stone on Kounoupitsa’s main church, dated 1824 Kypseli’s original church: the western (left-hand) end was probably added to an older church in the 1840s Above: exterior view of a mud-roofed house. Below: interior view of a mud roof Grafting domesticated pear scions onto a wild pear tree A laden mule on a mule track (kalderimi) Two kinds of kinship systems xi

page 2 3 11 52 53 55 59 63 65 67 69 77 105 107 133


5.2 Barba Thanassis’ fragmented landholding 6.1 A kalivi (field-house) 7.1 A medieval church. Above: the west end, showing ornamental tile work in masonry. Below: the east end, with Byzantine tiles still in place on the apse 7.2 Fabvier’s War of Independence fort – the Kastro Phavierou 7.3 A gheranaki (swipe) 7.4 A cistern-head inscribed with a date 7.5 An ambari. Above: exterior view. Below: interior view 7.6 The remains of an old rock-cut grape-treading floor near a mountain vineyard 7.7 The war memorial 8.1 Plan of the main study village 8.2 The growth of the Petronotis neighbourhood in the village of Liakotera 8.3 Kinship relationships continuing after death: a village cemetery with kinship ‘neighbourhoods’ 8.4 Sketch plan of the ownerships of an area of small irrigated plots 9.1 The distribution of Methana’s churches 9.2 Byzantine wall paintings in a small Methana church. The saints look down on worshippers from the vault of the church as though from the vault of heaven 9.3 The church of Aghii Asomati (Taxiarkhai), with works in progress 9.4 The panighiri at the extra-mural church of Saint Barbara (Aghia Varvara). The people standing outside are worshippers who cannot get inside the packed church 9.5 Empty space transformed into a central place: the Moularobazaro. Buying wool after the service at the panighiri at Saint Epiphanios’ extra-mural church 9.6 Empty space transformed into a central place. Above: Saint George’s church in the mid-1980s. Below: the same church in the late 1990s, with the war memorial moved to a more prominent position xii

163 185

209 217 243 247 251 253 265 288 289 317 323 344

345 361

365

367

373


9.7 The road built in the 1960s passes close to extra-mural churches 9.8 Saint Athanasios’ church. The white objects on the road in the foreground and beside the concrete picnicking bench are abandoned party litter 9.9 Different signposts point to different places of interest for different constituencies. None directs travellers to a settlement 9.10 The cemetery illustrated in fig. 8.3. Above: External view, showing the single entrance. Below: internal view 9.11 Different kinds of proskinitario

377

379

381

383 387

tables 5.1 A sequence of closely related households 5.2 Greek kinship terms in regular use 5.3 Links between household head and non-household members in work groups 5.4 Examples of naming in the 1879 census 7.1 Examples of discrepancies in ages reported in the mitroo arrenon and the 1879 census 7.2 0/5 ages in the 1879 census: those significantly above 20% suggest many ages were guesswork 7.3 0/5 ages in the 1879 census: gender differences in uncertainties over ages 8.1 A neighbourhood dominated by close kinship links 8.2 A sequence of closely related households 8.3 Two related groups on opposite sides of a street

xiii

125 126 154 159 270 271 272 296 298 300

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is an ethnography aimed primarily at archaeologists, but I hope it will also be of interest to cultural geographers and social and cultural anthropologists. Indeed, my original research on the peninsula of Methana in Greece, the focus of this study, was an ethnography, written up as my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. Yet I never intended to be an anthropologist. I embarked on a British undergraduate degree in Archaeology and Anthropology having already had some experience of archaeology, in both the classroom and the field. My experiences as an undergraduate only confirmed my belief that archaeology was much to be preferred over social anthropology, which seemed to me at the time a way of turning the lives of real people into artificial conceptual categories, as often as not via arid exercises in kinship algebra. My graduate studies in the United States in a Department of Anthropology in which archaeology was a sub-field, along with cultural and physical anthropology, initially left me with much the same views about anthropology and its practitioners. Here the situation was exacerbated by occasional disquisitions on why North American cultural anthropology was so much better than European social anthropology: the differences between the two versions seemed minor in comparison with the similarities. However, my views about anthropology changed when I met one of America’s foremost cultural ecologists, Robert Netting. He showed me that some kinds of anthropology could remain firmly rooted on – indeed, in – the ground, in a pragmatic way that made sense. His empathy with dwellers in rural communities, as well as his mastery of the well-placed pun, have remained an inspiration for much of my own work. xv


Thus, although I considered myself at heart an archaeologist, I eventually found myself conducting ethnographic research for two years in a village on a small peninsula in Greece – Methana (pronounced with the stress on the first syllable). The understanding derived from that initial fieldwork on Methana forms the basis of much of this book. However, it was also significantly informed by a campaign of archaeological survey in the 1980s and by research into nineteenth-century documentary sources in the late 1990s. Over the period represented by these dates, I have seen many changes in the people, their livelihoods, and their landscape on Methana, which I have incorporated into this account. The original germ of a book on Methana landscapes came from a discussion with a colleague who had also worked in Greece. After I had described aspects of Methana and its landscapes, she was very insistent that I should write what I knew. At the further urging of Lin Foxhall, my wife and closest colleague, I eventually applied for, and was awarded, a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for 1997–8. It was this award which allowed me to initiate this book and conduct research into documentary sources, the existence of some of which I had known about for almost a quarter of a century but had never had a suitable opportunity to study. The other element in the germination of this book was the flurry of publications on prehistoric landscapes, starting in the 1990s, in which phenomenological approaches were frequently employed. As will rapidly become apparent, I felt dissatisfied with the ways in which landscapes, ancient and modern, were conceptualised and with the apparent desire to employ ethnographic parallels which seemed simultaneously maximally different from (aka ‘most anthropological’), and also least relevant to, those of Europe. Many scholars discussing the meanings of ancient landscapes were mining the literature on modern societies and their landscapes within the narrow confines of university libraries. From my direct experience, I felt that some of their efforts were leaving the subject as little rooted in the realities of real people wresting a living from unforgiving and unpredictable environments as the kinship algebra which had turned me off anthropology as a student. Ultimately, the stance of the phenomenologist, dispassionately standing on the outside looking in, whilst purporting to empathise xvi


with the experiential world of their objects of study, lacks the genuine empathy with dwellers in rural landscapes which is so necessary for understanding the reality and complexity of meanings that their landscapes have for them. In this book, therefore, I present an alternative view of a set of rural landscapes, seen not from the outside, but from within. Of course, not being a Methanitis, I cannot give a direct personal description of the meanings of the peninsula’s landscapes as one who has grown up there. However, much of this book represents the ethnographer’s viewpoint gained as participant observer – as ‘marginal native’, or ‘outsider within’. It also represents the understanding of someone accustomed to participating in rural communities and their landscapes in Britain, before I ever visited Greece, and since. This presentation is also ‘alternative’ in being holistic in two senses. First, it represents a complex mix of sources of information. Traditional ethnographies have depended very largely on ethnographic data gathered via observation of life in the community or communities studied and via interviews which draw out information on a wide variety of topics. While this study depends greatly on such information, it also draws heavily on the material cultural record, much of it derived from archaeological survey. In addition, information from a unique set of nineteenth-century documents has been incorporated into the discussion and analysis to give a greater time-depth than is possible for most ethnographic studies. Second, unlike many recent archaeological examples, this book goes beyond discussion of religious monuments in landscapes. Although these have had a pivotal role in Methanites’ landscapes, so, too, have issues of production, reproduction and questions of remembering and forgetting in the secular sphere. Ultimately, the key which unlocks the greatest number of doors to understanding these landscapes is that most ‘anthropological’ aspect of so many small communities: kinship and the family. Equally ‘alternative’ is the European-ness of the study community, in contradistinction with the exoticism of many of the ethnographic studies used in discussions of prehistoric European landscapes. The issue of ‘valid’-‘invalid’ or ‘more valid’-‘less valid’ ethnographic studies to assist in understanding specific archaeological problems has a long xvii


and unresolved history to which I do not wish to contribute directly. However, many will have nagging doubts about the extent to which arctic reindeer herders or foragers from the Great Australian Desert can really shed light on the meanings of places and spaces for European agriculturalists and herders in prehistory. More important, I argue that using highly exotic ethnographic examples risks dehumanising the people thus involved. Ultimately, interpretation in archaeology is about trying to understand the lives and knowledge of real people in the past. In a period of research now extending over more than thirty years, focusing on data collected over a span of twenty-five years, a large number of people and organisations have had inputs in one way or another. This book would never have been written had it not been for periods of study leave in which I was able to concentrate fully on research and writing. I gratefully acknowledge the award of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship noted earlier, generous study leave provision from the University of Nottingham, and a semester of study leave funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I also owe an unrepayable debt of gratitude to all those Methanites who have accepted me into their villages, their churches and their homes, teaching me the true meaning of philoxenia (hospitality) and, equally important, giving me a glimpse of what a privilege it is to be a Methanitis. Particular thanks go to the president of the Demos of Methana, Panayiotis Lambrou, for permission to study and copy the archival sources held in the town hall and to the secretary and assistant secretary who made such study possible; also to Tobias Schorr, another non-Methanitis who has a special affection for Methana. Particular thanks, too, go to Athena Masst and her sister Penny, who have provided encouragement and important information on Methana from afar. Many friends and colleagues have also contributed to this book in multifarious ways. Studying the cultural ecology of rural Greek communities was the inspired idea of the late Michael Jameson, who maintained an interest in my research on Methana throughout. The debt that I owe to the late Robert Netting is equally great – not least for showing me that it is possible to be both an archaeologist and a cultural anthropologist and to enjoy both. I would also particularly like to thank Karen Stears for her suggestion that I put what I have xviii


learned about Methana landscapes into a book; Mari Clarke, with whom I shared my first period of fieldwork and on whose subsequent publications many aspects of the present work rely; Harold and Joan Koster, who introduced me to the benefits of working in the fields as part of fieldwork, and much more besides; Chris Mee, with whom I shared several summers during the Methana Survey and who has helped with a number of illustrations; Theo Koukoulis, who shared his knowledge and love of Greek churches with me; Bill Cavanagh for guidance on matters statistical; Lena Cavanagh for help on some abstruse aspects of Greek language and culture; Mercouris Georgiadis for correcting the Greek in the text; Jack Davis and Michael Given for pointing me towards some crucial references; David Taylor for most of the line drawings and diagrams; Keith Streb for his ingenuity in scanning a number of illustrations onto CD; Simon Whitmore and latterly Beatrice Rehl and Barbara Walthall for their advice on publication matters and for forbearance over missed deadlines; and two anonymous referees who provided supportive comments and insightful suggestions. Above all, Lin Foxhall has provided inspiration, support, advice and guidance while I have been involved in writing this book: she knows better than anyone what it is like to juggle teaching, administration, and research while also looking after an energetic family. Particular thanks are owed to the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: Mari Clarke: figs. 3.2, 3.9a, 3.9b, 4.1, 4.2, 7.4, 9.4 and 9.5 Liverpool University Press: figs. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.7, 3.8, 7.1a, 7.1b, 9.2 and 9.6a Modern Greek Studies Program of the University of Minnesota: figs. 3.9a and 3.9b Stanford University Press: figs. 3.9a, 3.9b and 7.4 Stefanie Moehrle: fig. 9.9 Tobias Schorr: figs. 1.2, 2.1, 3.6 and the cover photo

xix

TRANSLITERATION CONVENTIONS

There is no fully satisfactory system for transliterating modern Greek into Latin characters: the system used for ancient Greek is not entirely suitable. I have assumed that for those who do not know Greek, a simple transliteration into Latin letters will generally be of little value, so on occasions I simply give a word or phrase in Greek characters with its translation in English. However, where words or phrases in Greek are repeated, I give the Greek and a transliteration when they first appear and subsequently use a transliteration. Many Greek characters have close equivalents in Latin letters, but a number do not. Where they do not, I generally transliterate them approximately phonetically. =a = e = av or af, depending on whether the following letter is voiced or unvoiced =v = gh ( before , , , and has a sound close to an English initial y, whereas before other vowels and diphthongs, it is closer to an aspirated g. Nevertheless, I use gh throughout in order to distinguish from ) = g = dh (a sound similar to the th in ‘then’) =e = i = ev or ef, depending on whether the following letter is voiced or unvoiced xxi

TRANSLITERATION CONVENTIONS

=z =i = th (a sound similar to the th in ‘thin’) =i =k

=l =m = b if used in initial position, otherwise generally mb =n = d if used in initial position, otherwise nd =x =o = i = ou (a sound similar to the oo in ‘boot’) =p =r , = s =t =i =f = kh (a sound similar to the ch in “loch”) ψ = ps =o The acute accent indicates where the stress falls. Exceptions: Certain place names (e.g., Piraeus) and surnames (e.g., Triandaphyllou) do not conform strictly to these rules, if they are conventionally written in the form used for transliterating ancient Greek. In addition, I use the following characters in Albanian place names: e¨ represents the ‘er’ sound as in the standard British English pronunciation of the word ‘water’ – that is, without the post-vocalic r. j represents a sound like initial English y.

xxii

1

INTRODUCTION

Methana is a rough and rocky place owing to its volcanic origin: it lacks any running drinkable water or flat land. The inhabitants practise agriculture on the slopes and ridges of the gentler foothills, stabilising the cultivable land with walls so that the rainwater does not carry it away. (Miliarakis 1886, 207)

Landscape as a concept and a practice was originally devised by artists. It has been ‘discovered’ as a topic of intense interest by academics in several disciplines: landscape history, for example, especially in the form of English landscape history, has an honourable academic pedigree. In archaeology the rise of surface survey has led in the last two decades or so to an emphasis on the ways in which settlements have appeared and disappeared in different landscapes. Geographers, too, have for many years investigated settlement patterns and land use in landscapes, both historically and synchronically. Social anthropologists, on the other hand, with their emphasis on humans as actors in a social milieu and on the organisation of social systems, have traditionally shown much less interest in landscapes, although the situation has changed in the last two decades. Archaeologists have traditionally focused on ‘the site’: social anthropologists have likewise traditionally focused on its living equivalent, ‘the community’. Despite the development of surface survey in archaeology and the recognition of ‘the site’ as an inherently artificial construct, it has continued to be the mainstay of most archaeological thinking. Given the multitudes of ‘sites’ and ‘communities’ needing research worldwide, most researchers for a long time failed to look 1

MEANING AND IDENTITY IN A GREEK LANDSCAPE

1.1. Location of Methana.

beyond the confines of these narrow but theoretically absorbing loci of attention. More recently, however, scholars, especially in archaeology, have realised that there is more to their study-communities past and present than the settlement. Settlements have been set within areas of land which have clearly had a multitude of meanings – economic, social, political, historical, religious and more besides – for their inhabitants. Furthermore, given the nature of the typical study focus of many archaeological and social anthropological projects, the supposedly empty spaces-between-the-places have taken the form of rural landscapes. This volume investigates the meanings of the rural landscapes of Methana, a small peninsula in the Peloponnese of southern Greece, of no great historical (or Western tourist) interest (figs. 1.1 and 1.2). I first visited the area in 1971, and since that time it has been the primary focus of my academic research in various guises, anthropological and archaeological. During an initial two-year period of ethnographic 2

INTRODUCTION

1.2. Panoramic view of Methana.

fieldwork from 1972 to 1974, I gathered a large amount of anthropological field data. I also recognised numerous archaeological sites which I did not have permission from the Greek government to investigate. During the 1980s, therefore, I spent more time on Methana, codirecting an archaeological field research project. The project had archaeological survey as its main focus: a search for evidence of past human activity on the peninsula in the form of artefacts on the land surface. Thus, although sites in general were of primary interest in the research, rather than focusing on a particular site, as archaeologists have traditionally done, the research had a much broader canvas: the landscape as a whole (Mee and Forbes [eds.] 1997). As a result of conversations with colleagues, I began to realise that there was much more to be said about Methana and its landscape, especially in the context of an increasing archaeological and anthropological literature on landscapes and their meanings. With this in mind, I returned to my field notes, discovering aspects of the meanings of the Methana landscape to its inhabitants that held a significance of which I had not been fully conscious previously. I also visited Methana again in 1998 to conduct further research for the present volume, particularly noting changes since the original fieldwork and consulting archival sources. In its theoretical orientation, this book lies within the context of recent archaeological writings on landscape. Since the 1980s, archaeology has tended to move away from inherently materialist and processualist approaches to landscapes. In particular, phenomenological approaches in the context of prehistoric archaeology have emphasised the investigation of meaning in landscapes. Ironically, most works which use this approach lack a feeling that ‘real’ people actually 3


‘belong’ within the landscapes being studied: in many phenomenological approaches, the ‘meaning’ of prehistoric landscapes seems to relate primarily or exclusively to the exogenous archaeologist. To overcome such difficulties, discussion here proceeds beyond the confines of archaeological discourse, incorporating recent approaches to landscapes being pursued by social and cultural anthropologists. As Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Scheik (2001, 190) note, the ‘language’ and the meaning of landscapes are more readily accessible to people from traditional communities than is the usual terminology employed by archaeologists. Whereas archaeologists generally consider past places as removed from the present and no longer part of contemporary landscapes, people in traditional societies who are integrated with their landscapes view history as part of a living process which includes the present. The seamless links between present and past are reaffirmed through cultural-historical associations with landscapes: ‘[a]s archaeologists, it is important to consider the past in terms of indigenous peoples, not just of our discipline’ (Anschuetz et al. 2001, 190). Understanding how traditional societies in the present and recent past have related themselves to their own pasts via their landscapes is thus a vital element in this goal. Although less numerous than archaeological examples, ethnographic studies of the meanings of landscapes to their inhabitants generally escape the tendency to present the meaning of the landscape for the exogenous observer. However, most tend to concentrate on peoples and ways of life far removed from European experiences. Whether Australian Aborigines or indigenous circumpolar zone peoples can provide genuine pointers for understanding meanings of landscapes in prehistoric Europe is perhaps debatable. Nevertheless, these ethnographic studies indicate that there are ways to investigate and understand relationships between people and their landscapes which foreground indigenous views. Ethnographic monographs have traditionally tended to focus on non-material aspects: social, political and religious institutions or structures. This book is primarily an ethnographic exploration of identity, but it shares with archaeological studies a focus on a visible, material element (in this case, a landscape and its material contents) and its position in a wider cultural system. It is also archaeological inasmuch as 4

INTRODUCTION

it places its theoretical interests firmly within the historical context of archaeologists’ interests in landscape. Hence, it seems fair to describe it as an ethnography for archaeologists. Landscapes are not an element of material culture like pottery or tombs, but they are nonetheless culturally constructed, and they contain within them elements of material culture. Meanings can only inhere in landscapes when structured through the medium of senses and knowledge informed by a person’s culture: without meanings given to them by human groups, they are merely environments. Thus, this study moves inevitably from the particularities of the material environment as viewed by outsiders (non-natives), to the cultural and social institutions through which the landscape’s inhabitants have structured its meanings. The end point of the exploration of these cultural and social institutions is a focus on kinship. In this aspect at least, this book resembles many traditional ethnographic monographs. Unlike most ethnographic works to which archaeologists refer, this one does not concern a highly ‘exotic’ cultural group, with a lifestyle and world-view far removed from those of Westerners. Rather, it deliberately examines a community with a way of life and a form of religion more likely to be understandable to Western readers. In focusing on a much more ‘ordinary’ community, more closely approaching the reality of most readers’ own lives, my intention is to subvert the tendency of archaeologists to choose examples from peoples least like themselves, thus sometimes unconsciously dehumanising them. Simultaneously, I explore some fundamental aspects of anthropology, which developed its methodologies and outlooks as a discipline historically devoted to cultural and social ‘otherness’ through a study of a community which is very much ‘like ourselves’. This book, a distillation of a relationship among myself, Methana’s inhabitants, and their landscapes which has continued for more than thirty years, explores how the people of a small European community have experienced their own landscapes. It investigates how they have integrated a wide variety of aspects of the recent and more distant past into a range of present meanings which their landscapes have held for them. I also investigate how they have seen themselves belonging to the local community and within a local landscape and how these aspects of belonging have informed each other. 5


To achieve the presentation of how Methanites have experienced their own landscape, I have combined the results of ethnographic studies, archaeological survey, and study of local archival documents. I have also utilised two opposed but complementary anthropological styles of description. In the first part of the book, I set the stage, describing a variety of aspects of Methana – its geology, history and aspects of its social system – very much from the point of view of the outside academic observer. This etic viewpoint is transformed in the second part of the book into the opposite side of the descriptive coin, by presenting an emic description: that is, the insider’s view – or rather my attempt to represent that view. The purpose of the work is to present the multiple complex meanings of a specific landscape for the inhabitants who have lived there: how they have belonged within it, how it represents their historical roots, and how their relationship to it has changed over generations. However, the goal is more than simply a particularistic description of a society in a limited geographic area. It is a holistic view of a set of relationships to landscapes presented as a counterbalance to some archaeologists’ presentations of prehistoric landscapes whose singlefocus studies tend to use ethnographic comparanda drawn from highly ‘exotic’ societies. Although the details of the situation described here are unique, Methanites themselves have at another level been ordinary Greeks, living out their lives in a way thoroughly understandable to many of their compatriots. As I note in the next chapter, however, many of the features of relationships with their landscapes found among much more ‘other-ly’ peoples around the world are also directly comparable to what is described in this volume. At base, therefore, this work is about bodies of knowledge, which can be viewed at more than one level. Unlike more overtly political studies, it is not primarily about knowledge as power, although that element appears occasionally. Rather, it is about the knowledge that Methanites have of their identity as Methanites, living on the peninsula of Methana: what is important to them and known in detail and what is unimportant and therefore unelaborated. That body of knowledge is vast. It is my contention that it is also not neatly stored and systematised like a series of directories and sub-directories in computer programmes. It is unsystematised but nonetheless coherent. In 6

INTRODUCTION

the context of how Methanites know the things they know and under what circumstances their knowledge is triggered, the landscape is vital. It is full of meaningful features – prompts – which bring a relevant element of knowledge to the fore for a particular person in a particular context. Frequently, questions concerning these meaningful features would produce a recitation of the body of knowledge associated with them: in other words, the knowledge would not simply be divulged but would be performed. From this perspective, the landscape represents a stage on which issues of social relations, production and reproduction have all been played out over the generations. Physical structures, such as houses, as well as land ownership within the landscape have likewise acted as important social props which have simultaneously acted as monuments connecting individuals to their pasts through the histories of their inheritance. These props–monuments have also connected individuals to others through kinship, via shared aspects of those inherited pasts, giving meaning or significance to the dramas of social relations. This monumentalised landscape has also linked individuals with the future by the fact that land and houses would in due course be passed on as meaningful props to new inheriting generations. Finally, overarching this level has been the religious landscape of numerous churches scattered across the peninsula. They have provided the stages on which have been enacted the relations between timebound humans and the community of divine beings who lie both inside and outside the human world and its necessary temporalities. Yet, these churches have once more connected ordinary humans as they have met together to worship. Ultimately, all these features make the physical environment of Methana into a landscape; at the same time, the body of knowledge relevant to these prompts is what gives meaning to that landscape. There is also another level at which knowledge is being performed. This is the knowledge of the person who describes the body of knowledge. Modern anthropology contains a strong element of reflexivity in understanding the complex relationships of the anthropological researcher with a host community (see Chapter 4). Whether many anthropologists in the past ever considered ethnographies to be a form of ultimate truth is debatable: they certainly are not considered so in 7


modern anthropology. No knowledge is perfect, and this must be particularly the case when the presenter of Methanites’ knowledge is not a native. I did not learn Methanites’ body of knowledge by growing up on the peninsula: I had to learn it during a series of visits and through a language which I have learned but which is not my own. This description of a body of knowledge is thus derived as a result of a complex interplay between an outside observer who was neither fully outside (isolated from and dispassionate about) the community nor fully part of it. One advantage I have had, however, is an upbringing in rural communities, which has allowed me a closer understanding of what it is to live in a rural landscape rather than a city. Nevertheless, the ‘native view’ presented here is a non-native’s view – my attempt at putting Methanites’ unique body of knowledge into writing. The result is a description of a landscape as ethnography in which from one point of view the landscape is both stage and scenery for the generations of humans who have acted out their lives on it. From another point of view, however, the landscape itself is the protagonist.

8

2

LANDSCAPE STUDIES: FROM FRAME-AND-TAME TO VISCERAL FEELING

When God had finished making the world, He found a pile of stones which He had not used. Picking them up, He threw them over His shoulder. They landed in the sea and formed Methana. (A Methana folktale)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

To a western European, Methana’s landscape is spectacular. Its precipitous volcanic slopes, tamed by terraces and fruit trees or covered in verdant wild scrub which often seems to grow straight out of the barren rock, are far removed from the rolling hills of English landscape paintings or the landscapes typical of central Europe or North America. Greeks not native to Methana have described its steeply sloped mountains as disturbing looming presences, threatening to topple down onto visitors to the seaside resort there. Yet others have described Methana as ‘nothing but rocks and prickly oak bushes’. This book is about what Methanites themselves think about a landscape in which they have been born, in villages in which their grandparents were also born; where they have grown up and made a living from the land, and where they in turn have brought up families. It explores the multiple, complex meanings of a landscape to the inhabitants who have lived there and who have inherited it over the generations (fig. 2.1). This chapter provides the theoretical background to the book, starting with a history of changing archaeological approaches to landscapes before 9


examining recent and current theories of landscape in archaeology and anthropology. The word ‘landscape’, derived from the Dutch landschap (Schama 1995, 10), first appeared in the late sixteenth century used by painters as a technical term. The word’s gradual change of use, and its application to rural scenery itself, occurred especially in the eighteenth century simply because it reminded the spectator of landscape pictures. Thus, the term as applied to actual places and spaces originated with a sub-text of ‘picturesqueness’ (Hirsch 1995, 2, 7–8). The history of our understanding of what is meant by ‘landscape’ therefore relates not so much to an actual environment but to a way in which that environment is visualised: what elements and aspects are highlighted or ignored – indeed, in landscape painting, which elements are changed to accommodate cultural preferences in visualisation. For example, the popularity of landscape painting in nineteenth-century Paris was associated with new ways in which Parisians saw the actual countryside (Green 1995, 38–40). In the twentieth century, the geographer Carl Sauer introduced the concept of the ‘cultural landscape’, which is created from a natural landscape by a cultural group. His concept has been taken up in more recent years by anthropologists such as Strathern (2000, 49–53), who focuses on the interaction between the kinds of environments which different Papua New Guinean societies inhabit and the patterning of their activities within them. Drawing on the work of Gell (1995), she notes that landscapes become primarily auditory rather than visual in situations where thick forest obstructs the view beyond a few metres (Strathern 2000, 49–50). In indicating that archaeologists first appreciated the potential of landscape studies in the 1950s, Bender (1996, 323) ignores the work of Cyril Fox in the interwar years. Publication of The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region (Fox 1923) set the stage for later developments in British landscape archaeology by employing a geographical approach to understanding settlements and the relationships between past societies and their environments, rather than using the artefact-based, antiquarian or site-based perspectives current at that time. Fox applied this approach to the whole of Britain in The Personality of Britain (1932). His intention was to ‘illustrate as effectively as possible the physical 10


2.1. Methana’s spectacular volcanic landscape (Photo: Tobias Schorr).

factors which influenced the destiny of Man in Britain’ (preface to 1st edition). Having divided Britain into a Lowland and a Highland Zone, he summarised the relationship between communities and their environments as follows: we may say that soil character is the controlling factor in lowland distribution, elevation in highland distribution; also that Early Man tends to fit himself into the mountain pattern of the Highland Zone, on to the hill pattern of the Lowland Zone. (Fox 1947, 89; italics in original)

The language of much of the work is that of geographical determinism, yet Fox also indicates that humans make choices, and that technological, economic and political factors influence decisions on settlement location (e.g., Fox 1947, 78–84). In the Epilogue, he presents his final thoughts, setting the scene of actual communities at the beginning of the Iron Age and the sorts of landscapes they inhabited: This forest was in a sense unbroken, . . . but in another sense it was limited, for the downs and heaths which here and there touched the sea or navigable 11


rivers . . . were the terminals of far-reaching stretches of open and semi-open country, grassland and parkland. These zones it was that nourished much of the human life of the time; here were flocks and herds and patches of corn, groups of thatched huts with trails of smoke, and the palisaded banks of the new and strange fortresses; manifestations which all became scantier as parkland merged into woodland. This open country was sometimes at valley level, but more often consisted of low hills, plateaux, or ridges of moderate elevation but dominant; so that Man moved on his vocations above the environing forest, and his eye ranged over wide spaces. Lowland Britain then, to most natives in the dawn of the Iron Age took shape as an environment in which Man’s life was canalized, and movement shepherded, along belts of open country which . . . ended either at the sea or in the mountains; the memory of movement along them took the form of a succession of great landscapes – the Weald of Sussex seen from the South Downs; the lower Severn and the hills of Wales from the Cotteswolds; the Fenland from the Icknield way; the Vale of Trent from Lincoln Edge. (Fox 1947, 90)

By ignoring the quaint language and outdated interpretations of prehistory, one can appreciate Fox’s achievement in recognising the importance of understanding how individuals in prehistory would have experienced their landscapes: how they would have seen them and moved through them. An essential modernity exists in the work, which represents in essence a careful balance between processualist and phenomenological approaches to landscape study in archaeology, long before these terms were ever thought of. In the 1950s, W. G. Hoskins, recognising that English landscapes were not simply ‘natural’, introduced novel approaches to landscape studies (Hoskins 1955, 13; Hoskins 1977, 11). For millennia human communities had had visible effects on those landscapes, which could be identified if one knew how to do so (Hoskins 1977, 11–16). In English Landscapes: How to read the man-made scenery of England, he describes landscapes as texts, which were ‘saying something’ to him and which could be deciphered if properly read (Hoskins 1973, 5). The Making of the English Landscape (Hoskins 1955, 1977) describes how successive peoples from the Mesolithic period onwards exploited, divided 12


up, moved through and settled the land. The landscape becomes a palimpsest: a document on which messages have been written and rewritten as people in each period superimposed evidence of their activities on pre-existing traces (e.g., Hoskins 1977, 12–15, 299–303). The task of ‘the student of the English landscape’ (Hoskins 1977, 12) is thus to understand the multiple meanings left from the different superimposed historical messages, although Hoskins does so primarily in personal terms (e.g., Hoskins 1977, 298–9). Even when discussing the meanings of landscapes to others, he prefers to quote passages which closely mirror his own views (e.g., Hoskins 1977, 258–69). English landscape historians have intensively researched toponyms and village names in early documents such as Anglo-Saxon charters and have also reconstructed the original meanings of modern place-names by deriving them from their old English or Norse roots (e.g., Hoskins 1977, 51–74). The particularities of English history, with the establishment of place-names and the earliest relevant written documents largely post-dating the Roman occupation, mean that this approach focuses primarily on the medieval period. Some scholars (e.g., Hooke 1998, 1–34) have used the approach to understand the meanings for past inhabitants of the landscapes in which they lived. The exercise has considerable merit, allowing scholars to envisage features of the landscape which made a significant impression on peoples living centuries ago – in other words, what had ‘relevance’ or ‘meaning’ to the people themselves (Hooke 1998, 2). Hooke (1998, 19) suggests that ‘place-names [are] like a decipherable map to “hidden treasure”: the treasure of understanding man’s historical perception of the natural landscape’. Thus, like Hoskins, she treats landscapes as texts, although her concentration on the Anglo-Saxon period inevitably leads to a restricted use of the concept of palimpsest. Anglo-Saxon documents and place-names identify significant topographical features: variously shaped valleys and hills, trackways, woodlands, tumuli, wells, and springs (Hooke 1998, 1–20). Others refer to plants, especially trees, often identified as to species. Animals and birds, too, are sometimes referred to (Hooke 1998, 21–35). An approach of this nature would be easy enough in the case of Methana because the living population can tell the scholar large numbers of different 13


toponyms. As with Anglo-Saxon place-names, geographical/geological features predominate, with plants appearing more rarely. Perhaps the most significant features, though, are the saints’ names, each one deriving from the patron saint of the churches which are widely distributed across the countryside. However, although the meanings of toponyms give local colour to the picture of the Methana landscape, they are not unique. The saints who exist on Methana are found throughout Greece, and some of the same place-names can be found in other parts of the Argolic mainland. We do not know when and why specific names were given to most of the particular localities where they are now found, nor do place-names indicate Methanites’ attitudes to their landscapes. The personalised meanings of the different toponyms are unfathomable. Ultimately, as Hooke (1998, 1–2) notes for Anglo-Saxon England, documents and archaeology, or even place-names, cannot readily give us a true picture of the aspects of the landscape which had meaning for the inhabitants of a particular place. Schama (1995) takes a very different approach to landscapes. As a documentary historian, he addresses the issue of how Western culture has viewed the natural world and the interrelationship of culture with nature in the last few centuries (Schama 1995, 7–12). His focus is on landscapes as metaphors and as myths and memories with centuries-long histories (Schama 1995, 15). Nevertheless, like several other approaches to landscape, he asserts that his book is a way of looking: a way of searching underneath the superficial layers of recent and modern Western culture for continuities with older traditions relating humans with their local environments. The traditions are varied, linked in complex ways to other aspects of culture, including the political, and relate as much to specificities of place as to time (Schama 1995, 14–18). Landscape and Memory . . . does [not] make any claim to solve the profound problems that still beset any democracy wanting both to repair environmental abuse and to preserve liberty. . . . But if by suggesting that over the centuries cultural habits have formed which have done something with nature other than merely work it to death, that help for our ills can come from within, rather than outside, our shared mental world, this book may not entirely have wasted good wood pulp. (Schama 1995, 18–19) 14


Processualist archaeology, which developed in the 1970s, espoused overtly ‘scientific’ methodologies within the discipline, readily incorporating aspects of other scientific disciplines. Because the ways in which past human populations interacted with their environments were a particular concern, processualist archaeologists looked especially towards disciplines such as ecology and geology. The development of regional survey is generally considered a particularly important contribution of the processualist school to archaeology. However, it was initially inspired by Gordon Willey’s (1953) research in the Virú Valley of Peru, initiated in the 1940s, well before the emergence of processualism. Willey used the patterns of settlements thus identified as an important source of information about trends in demography and the social, political and religious institutions of the region in prehistory, as well as for identifying relations between communities and their environments (Trigger 1989, 282–5; Willey and Sabloff 1974, 148–50). It is easy to criticise processualist approaches on various counts, not least the mechanistic way in which the complexities of actual human behaviour were treated. But processualist archaeologists’ acceptance and development of regional survey implemented the crucial recognition that archaeology was more than the study of artefacts and that individual sites should be placed in a wider setting. Sites had to be understood in the context of access to natural resources and connections with other settlements and to centres of political and economic power (e.g., for Greece; Cherry, Davis, and Mantzourani 1991, 4). As part of this approach, it was recognised that identifying the places where sites weren’t could be as important as identifying where sites were (Forbes and Mee 1997, 3; Cherry et al. 1991, xv). As regional survey developed, it became clear in many areas that artefacts were not simply restricted to ‘sites’ but could be found in varying quantities between sites, emphasising that the whole of the landscape was an arena for human activity, not simply the settlements (e.g., Mee and Forbes 1997, 39–40; Cherry, Davis, Mantzourani, and Whitelaw 1991, 20–8). By analysing the patterning of the appearance and disappearance of sites in a region over time, and often the varying levels of ‘background’ artefacts between sites, archaeologists recognised that they were studying the continuous histories of regional 15


landscapes, not simply clusters of sites (e.g., Cherry et al. 1991, xvi). The regional survey approach has had a major impact on Mediterranean archaeology, especially in Greece. For the Mediterranean area, Cherry’s (1983) article ‘Frogs around the pond’ marked the coming of age of regional survey. Subsequently, major publications have emphasised the importance of understanding the histories of these regions holistically in terms of changing landscapes rather than changing patterns of dots as settlements have appeared and disappeared over time (e.g., Cherry et al. 1991). Some (e.g., Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel 1994) even emphasised the importance of blank areas between sites. The Southern Argolid Project involved several geologists and cultural anthropologists ( Jameson 1976; Jameson et al. 1994; Sutton [ed.], 2000). The publication of the archaeological survey itself contains substantial chapters on the background to the archaeological survey and on the analysis of the archaeological and documentary sources ( Jameson et al. 1994, 57–148, 214–59). Other chapters focus on the interactions of local populations with the region’s environment. The concluding chapter, synthesising material from preceding chapters, focuses on the co-evolution of the regional environment (here termed ‘landscape’) and human settlement, rather than simply concentrating on the history of settlement patterns. The Methana regional survey (Mee and Forbes [eds.], 1997) had a similar theoretical orientation. Besides archaeologists, the survey employed a geologist and several geographers specialising in geomorphology ( James et al. 1997) to analyse the physical features of the landscape and their pasts. Like the Southern Argolid survey, the Methana survey also benefited from a cultural ecology study – in this case completed before the project started (Forbes 1982). Most of the evidence recovered in the survey relates to periods outside the scope of the present work, but data on the medieval and especially post-medieval periods provide important background material. Of particular importance was the recognition that different intensities of ‘background’ artefacts at different altitudes represent different kinds of relationships between past inhabitants and the productive landscape (Mee and Forbes 1997, 39–40). 16


Although regional survey has had a major beneficial impact on Mediterranean archaeology, the processualist school of archaeology from which it derived, with its emphasis on science, tended to treat humans mechanistically and as whole populations, reacting with their environments and other populations in a series of seemingly almost inevitable feedback systems. It was assumed that the archaeological record was left by Homo oeconomicus, whose populations were inherently economically rational. Thus, settlement location decisions were viewed as dominated by the need for access to resources, whether agricultural land, grazing, water or minerals. There was no place for considering economic irrationality: religion, for example, was considered to be part of ‘the belief system’, only visible in the archaeological record in the form of ‘religious sites’. Such sites may be treated as rather an embarrassment because they are archaeologically visible yet cannot easily be fitted into the category of ‘settlement-pattern’. In the Kea Survey (Cherry et al. 1991), mentions of shrines are almost entirely in the site index or ancillary to discussions of specific types of artefacts, or else they are comments which boil down to ‘not settlement’ (e.g., Cherry et al. 1991, 466), or alternatively ‘indicative of being a central place’ (Whitelaw and Davis 1991, 266). There is little discussion of the place, and meaning, of religious sites in the landscape. In contrast, the discussion of agricultural terraces and terracing is far more indepth (e.g., Whitelaw 1991). Although several churches are discussed by the Kea Survey in the broader context of post-Roman developments (Cherry et al. 1991, 351–3) and a table lists existing churches (Whitelaw 1991, 427), as far as I am aware, the Methana survey was the first to have a section devoted specifically to churches (Koukoulis 1997b). The results of that survey have contributed materially to later chapters in this book. Above all, processualists, like their pioneering settlement archaeology precursors, treated the landscape as inherently part of the ‘natural’ world and thus predominantly separated from human concerns (Trigger 1989, 280–2). Humans were treated as belonging to the world of (for archaeologists, material) culture, whereas the natural world, being on the other side of the nature–culture divide, was often treated conceptually as a separate entity (see, e.g., Hirsch 1995, 6). Landscape 17


often became simply the backdrop to cultural change through time, treated on occasions as the same as ‘environment’: part of the natural world which might constrain human behaviour or might be degraded by it (e.g., Jameson et al. 1994, chap. 6). Above all, there was a tendency to treat landscapes as describable in absolutist terms via scientific methods. More recent approaches to ‘landscape’ and ‘environment’ remove the certainty that they exist in a universal form, external to the processes of history (Flint and Morphy 2000, 13). PHENOMENOLOGY: A CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Processualists’ mechanistic and generalising treatment of human behaviour and landscapes, and their assumption of humans’ economic rationality as a prime cause, have led post-processualists to react in the opposite direction. A number have emphasised the importance of subjective elements of the landscape: memory, power, identity, human agency and especially ritual. Social theory is used as a pivotal element in constructing sociosymbolic dimensions which emphasise the way individuals perceive and experience landscapes (Ashmore and Knapp 1999, 1). Attempts to understand and describe things in landscapes as a subject experiences them (Tilley 1994, 12) are the critical element which previous approaches have lacked: the phenomenological school of landscape archaeology developed to address exactly these issues. Phenomenology, an approach derived from existential philosophy, concerns the ways in which humans experience the world around them and how they interpret those experiences (Barnard and Spencer 1996, 617; Woodward 2000, 123). When used by many archaeologists, phenomenological approaches to landscapes frequently involve the identification of ideational landscapes, with issues such as ritual, power and identity taking centre stage. A landscape as an ideational construct integrally links memory, time and the past. According to Tilley (1994, 27–34), some connections of landscapes and places with temporality are entirely personal, some are encoded within families or wider kin groups and some are within cultures or sub-cultures. Tilley’s (1994) work set down a marker for phenomenological approaches to landscape, but it has not gone unchallenged. In an incisive article, Fleming (1999) identified flaws in several aspects of 18


Tilley’s application of his ideas to ritual monuments in Wales (see also Fleming 2005). They include the diversity of the monuments, undermining the belief that the builders had a common mindset; sampling problems; incorrect information; and lack of consideration of alternative explanations and hypotheses (Fleming 1999, 119–21, 124). Although these are cogent arguments, they relate to the implementation of the approach rather than its theoretical underpinnings. Here I examine other aspects of implementation along with the theories which underpin these archaeological phenomenologies of landscape. Bintliff (2000, 148), discussing the settlement history of a region in central Greece, has likewise challenged the ‘currently-fashionable trend in landscape archaeology theory’, referring specifically to Bender et al. (1997) and Tilley (1994). He concludes: the distribution of fertile agricultural land, ergonomic work constraints on territorial size, social factors affecting the dispersion of communal groups, and limited locational possibilities for settlement micro-location, appear more important than the conscious inheritance of traditional ‘senses of place’. (Bintliff 2000, 148)

That physical factors, rather than a nebulous sense of place, were the prime cause of the observed settlement history of a landscape is reasonably convincing in the context in which Bintliff is writing. Nevertheless, it is doubtful if many who employ phenomenological approaches to landscapes would consider that a sense of place explains details of settlement histories of several millennia. Additionally, Bintliff’s approach treats landscape as practically the equivalent of environment, in an essentially processualist way: the landscape is external to historical processes. In Chapter 9, I demonstrate that the establishment of the present-day settlement pattern of Methana seems to have owed very little to the conscious inheritance of traditional ‘senses of place’, or to limited locational possibilities for settlement micro-location, or to ergonomic constraints, but a great deal to the need for a religious focus to Methanites’ lives. The observations in the previous paragraphs do not mean that attempting to understand the meaning(s) of place to contemporary and former populations is an empty exercise. However, the problem for archaeologists, as for landscape historians such as Hooke (1998), 19


is that it is difficult to document – let alone understand – how peoples in the past perceived and experienced their landscapes (Fleming 1999, 124). In her phenomenological approach to landscapes, Bender stresses ‘the physicality of “living in the world”, the interlocking habitus of action, belief, experience, engagement’ (Bender 1993, 248). However, when she discusses the complex social relationships of the people who actually ‘live[d] in the world’ of the past rural Wiltshire landscape of south-central England (Bender 1993, 248), she tends to dehumanise many of those actively engaged in those landscapes. They are collectivised, anonymised, and homogenised in their reduction to the linguistically and politically loaded terms ‘peasants’ and ‘peasantry’ – the terms traditionally applied by an urban-based bourgeoisie to a conceptually alien population of an inferior class in an alien rural landscape. From the context it is clear that the terms are used to indicate lowstatus rustics of all sorts, rather than being defined in the kind of strict terms that anthropologists have used. The viewpoints of this ‘peasantry’ are never presented – not surprisingly, perhaps, because most were illiterate and have long since taken their views with them to the grave. Yet, the views of contemporary literate observers largely external to the social matrix of the rural landscape, such as the antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley, are quoted (Bender 1993, 258–9). Similarly, the acts of members of the political and economic elite, such as the Duke of Queensbury, are recorded and discussed (Bender 1993, 262). Raymond Williams, in his The Country and the City (1973), identified a disjuncture between outsiders (estate owners, improvers, industrialists, artists) who record the landscape in an objectified way and insiders who do not. Although Hirsch (1995, 13) takes issue with certain elements of Williams’s thesis, it is clear that other elements of his critique of landscape are very relevant here. The tendency to dehumanise those who actually live in, or lived in, landscapes is structurally built into the form of phenomenology employed by many archaeologists. As Tilley (1994, 12) describes it: Being-in-the world resides in a process of objectification in which people objectify the world by setting themselves apart from it. This results in the creation of a gap, a distance in space. To be human is both to create this distance 20


between the self and that which is beyond and attempt to bridge this distance through a variety of means – through perception (seeing, hearing, touching), bodily actions and movements, and intentionality, emotion and awareness.

An immediate difficulty arises: whether most peoples around the world both now and in the past have thought like existentialist philosophers. It is highly questionable whether ordinary people create, or have created, a gap between themselves and their landscapes. Flint and Morphy (2000, 12–13) suggest that people have always seen themselves as an integral, indivisible part of a landscape and an environment, with a merging of self with landscape and environment defining their continua between past and future. Cooney (2001, 172) argues that it is precisely the lack of engagement of largely urban and rootless intellectuals with the realities of rural landscapes which has allowed recent scholarship on Neolithic landscapes, for example, to see ritual and ceremony as central issues, with monuments as fixed foci for mobile people (Cooney 2001, 172). In much the same vein and even more damning is Carrier’s (2003, 5–11) connection of the distanced and disengaged gaze, a hallmark of 1990s phenomenological approaches to landscape archaeologies, not simply to the urban mind but to industrial capitalism itself – a far cry from the small-scale prehistoric societies being discussed. In attacking post-modern theories of landscapes, Cooney (2001) points out that in such approaches, ‘the philosophical sources that are used to underpin this approach, such as the work of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Foucault, cannot be separated from the social context in which they were written. To paraphrase Eagleton (1996, 116) these after all are just more white, Western males who assumed that their version of humanity should apply to everyone else’ (Cooney 2001, 174)1 . Although some archaeological landscape phenomenologists have started to incorporate some of the issues raised in this chapter into their approaches, Eagleton’s criticism remains a fundamental stickingpoint. Thus, Tilley’s (2004, 31) claim that his exegesis, based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ideas of experience, perception, and embodiment ‘is both ahistorical and lacking a culture’, lacks any element of reflexivity. The statement seems oblivious to the fact that we all carry with us our own cultural baggage, and archaeologists especially 21


also carry with them a heavy subconscious historical baggage. It is impossible to have an understanding of humans’ place in the world completely free of one’s own cultural setting. The only recourse is to accept this fact and to attempt to make that baggage as explicit as possible (see later in this chapter and Chapters 4 and 10, this volume). Echoing Cooney, Brück (2001) notes that the subject-object dichotomies central to much phenomenological discourse deriving particularly from Foucault (1970, 1973, 1977) are a post-Enlightenment phenomenon (Brück 2001, 652). To develop different interpretations of personhood in the Neolithic, she does not focus purely on the monuments, exploring alternative concepts derived from the anthropological literature (Brück 2001, 654, 656). Nevertheless, her views on the potential for widely diverging, conflicting interpretations of landscapes, including attempts to subvert dominant discourses of power and involving fractured and evanescent conceptions of the person (Brück 2001, 656–7), seem far more relevant to the social, economic, political and ethnic complexities of post-industrial urban cultures and countercultures than to the small-scale societies of the Neolithic. In the early 1990s, a number of anthropologists recognised that an understanding of the meaning of place should not privilege our Westernised vantage points and peripheralise all others. ‘Rather than places becoming exemplars of our concepts, they should be seen as, to varying degrees, socially constructed products of others’ interests (material as well as ideational) and as mnemonics of others’ experiences. The contests and tensions between different actors and interests in the construction of space should be explored’ (Rodman 1992, 644, original italics). This recognition directly opposes the preceding examples of phenomenological approaches to landscapes by archaeologists who claim to describe and understand how earlier inhabitants experienced their landscapes but actually privilege their own perceptions. Tilley’s (1994, 12) argument that objectification and the creation of a gap between the self and the world as it is experienced is fundamental to being human seems equally untenable in the context of the meanings of place even in Western societies, as Hanson’s (1995, xiii–xiv, 13) discussion of his California farm indicates (discussed later in this chapter). The indigenous concept of man ples in Vanuatu in Melanesia is a ‘powerful condensation of person and place’ (Rodman 1992, 647). 22


It emphasises that the land is inalienably attached to the people of the place, constructions of place depending on an evocation of an original state in which people and place were one (Rodman 1992, 647–8). The connectedness between people and place creates what Giddens (1990, 102) calls an ‘environment of trust’ in kin relations, local communities, cosmology and tradition which is place-based. The reclaiming of place from European occupation after independence was likewise integrally associated with a reclamation of their past (Rodman 1992, 648). Not even when a person dies on Vanuatu does he or she immediately go far from the land of the living. Funerary ceremonials are necessary to dis-locate dead individuals from the places that were integral to their identities as persons and detach the deceased from their places, ensuring that they depart from the world of humans (Rodman 1992, 652). In New Ireland, there is a comparable need to detach the deceased from their place among the living. Here the dissociation of the dead from the living is related to the erasure of inhabited and worked upon landscape as a product of the funerary process (Küchler 1993, 97–100). Similarly, among the Piro, when an adult person dies, the house in which he or she lived is abandoned because the dead soul is potently attached to the place. Abandoned house sites are avoided because of the dead souls which inhabit such places, so the landscape is punctuated with places where the supernatural is to be found (Gow 1995, 53–4). In these examples, place is polysemic and multilocal: identity, kinship, community, cosmology and history are all implicated (i.e., folded together) in a sense of place. Place can also be dynamically constructed. In Vanuatu, narratives of place overlap rather than coincide. Thus, the narrative landscapes of an influential old man, a 10-year-old boy, and a grandmother were all substantially different, while the most powerless people had no place at all (Rodman 1992, 649–50, 652). A second difficulty, the gap between theoretical statement and realisation in actually bridging the existentialist gap, is a major focus of Cooney’s (2001) critique of recent English publications on prehistoric landscapes. The examples herein demonstrate the difficulties for archaeological landscape phenomenologists in employing other senses besides vision (but, see Cummings 2002). Even more important, many never move beyond objectification to achieve the goal of bridging the 23


gap. They are always on the outside, looking in (or on the inside of a structure, looking out) at landscapes and, like the protagonist in Albert Camus’ great existentialist novel L’Etranger (The Stranger), observing the world and events without apparently fully comprehending their meanings for others. Tilley introduces the idea of a phenomenology of landscape, and the supposed distance between the observing self and the object viewed, in a long quote from Heidegger (Tilley 1994, 12), describing a Black Forest farmhouse in entirely dehumanised terms. Although, parenthetically, the raison d’être of the farmhouse lies in the surrounding rural landscape, the latter never appears in the passage. The description of the house removes the human element. It came into being ‘by the dwelling of peasants’ (that loaded word again). It was not people but ‘self-sufficiency’ which ordered the house, positioned it on a mountain slope, gave it its shape, arranged its furniture. Finally, we learn that ‘a craft . . . built the farmhouse’. These are the views of the outsider, firmly disengaged from an objectified phenomenon. Tilley’s quote from Heidegger is no isolated example. His use of de Certeau’s (1984) work again dehumanises, distances and objectifies by claiming that new places are alien and hostile: spatial knowledge must overcome this (Tilley 1994, 28). His view contrasts with Rodman’s (1992, 647) observation that, far from viewing new places as alien and hostile, people often see them in terms of familiar ones. In a similar vein, again following de Certeau (1984), Tilley (1994, 28) connects walking with thinking, claiming that walking through a landscape is an act of appropriation of a topographical system in the same way as speaking is an appropriation of language. The connection between the two can readily be made because both the act of gazing (surveillance) – inevitable while walking through a landscape – and discourse have been seen by philosophers such as Foucault to involve the exercise of power ( Jay 1993, 410–12). Yet, from the point of view of Methanites, the idea would seem bizarre. For example, when Methanites passed near a church, they might enter it for a few minutes to be in the presence of God. The idea that by entering a church one was ‘appropriating’ God, or even His house, would be preposterous. As we shall see, for individual Methanites, some sectors of the landscape belonged to them: other sectors belonged to 24


other people. The idea that one appropriates a landscape via the act of moving through it is the viewpoint of the exogenous disengaged tourist, not the native. The concept of a speaker appropriating a language is likewise very much the viewpoint of the academic, the orator and the politician, all of whom exploit language for a living and for power. Hanson, who is both academic and farmer, suggests that much of the world outside of cloistered academe prefers to act rather than to talk or think (Hanson 1995, Dedication and Acknowledgements). Nevertheless, the connections among landscape, language, power and control is not simply an academic construction: it can be clearly seen in ethnographic examples. For the Gitksan, an aboriginal North American group, the connections among landscape, language, power and control are explicit. According to a clan chief: ‘the land and language go together, that’s your identification. You say you own this, your land, most of the place names are all in our language. . . . Most of them, place names, are almost like totem poles to us’ ( Johnson 2000, 302). The Gitksan term for describing berry patches refers primarily to territorial prerogative rather than to an actual vegetation type. Furthermore, the terms for types of places such as camping places and net sites are categorised as ‘Territorial Words’ ( Johnson 2000, 306). Similarly, the names and histories of land owned by House groups (matrilineal corporate groups) form their ‘deed’ to the property: specific names to specific places are proprietary ( Johnson 2000, 310, 315). The Gitksan are not unique: in Vanuatu in Melanesia, children and women have no claims of ownership of land. Men exercise the power of land ownership. Place is one of three disciplines which organise people’s know-how, and power, exercised through the appropriation of the language by men in verbal discourse, is crucial in the uneven distribution of all disciplinary knowledge. The young and the women tend to be silent when serious talk occurs and power is expressed (Rodman 1992, 648–50). ‘Inequality is such that men, especially older ones, are the most qualified to “talk seriously” and exercise power’ (Rodman 1992, 648). In reality, wholesale appropriation, whether of language or anything else, is the privilege only of an elite. If language, landscape and power can be part of a single discourse in indigenous societies, what of movement through a landscape, 25


which Tilley equates with speaking? Several scholars have noted the importance of movement through landscapes, especially the act of walking. It is evident in archaeological and ethnographic publications on landscape that a large proportion of discussions of movement involve a connection with elements of eliteness. Several studies emphasise the significance of moving through landscapes, usually in terms of demonstrating elite status. Examples include the political importance of a ‘kingly walkabout’ (Balzani 2001, 211; Shepherd 2001, 351) in Rajasthan and the role of pilgrimage in South India in constructing male identities and affirming the hierarchisation of men over women (Osella and Osella 2003). Dubow (2001, 250–3) discusses the significance of travel, especially on foot, for colonialising Europeans in South Africa, and Bender (1993, 246) connects movement through landscapes with elite status in discussing advertising for train travel. From the opposite side of the fence, Ronayne (2001, 154–8) discusses the dispossession of local groups from their conceptual landscapes and their histories when archaeological sites were re-signposted for the benefit of visiting tourists. These examples discuss travel as though it were an end in itself. Dubow’s (2001, 250–3) overview makes the matter explicit, and for Balzani (2001, 216–17), pilgrimage on foot was not primarily about reaching a destination but about travel itself. The pre-eminence given by these authors to pilgrimage highlights the element of disengagement from landscapes which many writers seem to take for granted, yet which is far removed from the viewpoints of peoples who are grounded in them. According to van Gennep (1960, 182–5), pilgrimage is a clear example of a transition ritual, or series of transition rituals, which connect ceremonies of separation at the start of a rite of passage with those of incorporation which complete these rites (van Gennep 1960, 184). Transition rituals are liminal rites, in which the subject has a special liminal status, outside that of being in the normal world, in between two normal statuses (van Gennep 1960, 21–2). Both Christian and Moslem pilgrims have traditionally been considered to be outside ordinary life, in a special transitional state (van Gennep 1960, 184–5) – a state, furthermore, which has its own elite status. Turner and Turner (1978, chap. 1) have developed van Gennep’s concept of 26


liminality during pilgrimage, defining it as a ‘no-place and no-time that resists classification’ (250) which is removed from normal social structure. These aspects are the complete opposite of the normal people placed within normal social structures in specific places and times, which are the focus of this work. Even Dubow’s (2001) discussion of secular travel through South African landscapes contains elements of travel as an act of transition, of being outside any ‘normal’ status, comparable to pilgrimage. Travel through the South African terrestrial landscape is likened to the sea voyage from Europe to southern Africa (Dubow 2001, 248). For the traveller, the sea voyage is a liminal period, separate from the experience of the normal world – a ‘lacuna’ (Dubow 2001, 242) in reality, with the sea being ‘lawless and liminal’ (Dubow 2001, 241–3). And just as pilgrimage is about travelling in order to return in a transformed state, travel in colonial South Africa is likened to the Grand Tour, and naturalists’ travels in former centuries, journeys of discovery and self-learning, premised on the idea of travel for the sake of self-development and ultimate return (Dubow 2001, 251). The focus on movement through a landscape as an implicit or explicit elite act, in which the subject is deliberately disengaged with normality, may well be a reaction of the urban mind, dislocated from the land, as Cooney (2001, 172) argues, to the experience of moving through non-urban and implicitly alien landscapes. Thus, Bender’s discussion of movement across space and through landscapes by non-elites concentrates on diaspora and movements of the dispossessed – peoples again dislocated from their former landscapes (Bender 2001). There are other approaches to, and aspects of, movement which have been largely ignored, although Low (2002, 270–1) notes some relevant approaches from nomadology. LaBianca (2000, 209–12) argues that frequent and unpredictable movements through the landscapes of Ottoman period Transjordan were a necessity for colonially marginalised and subordinated indigenous peoples. Brumfield (2000, 56–60) discusses the regular movement between village and outlying metokhia (seasonal settlements) in Crete employed by subsistence farmers under the control of first the Venetians and later the Turks. The last time movement to metokhia was regularly used was when Crete was 27


controlled by the Germans during World War II, and Cretans reverted to their former habits (Brumfield 2000, 57). Yet, these were primarily movements through familiar, not alien, landscapes. Movement through landscapes as part of the everyday practicalities of making a living is rarely discussed: farmers simply travelling to their fields as part of the drudgery of their quotidian existence have not excited the same theoretical attention as have ‘walkers’ or pilgrims. Gell (1995, 237–8), for example, does not link Umeda movement through the forest while hunting, raiding and escaping from raids to a sense of place. My participation with a pregnant wife in archaeological survey on Methana elicited a body of knowledge concerning fellow villagers who had been born out in the fields. In every case, the mother, having gone into labour while working in the fields, was hurrying home to deliver the baby but was overtaken by the event while still on the track. These examples of movement through familiar landscapes were especially meaningful for Methanites but were not verbalised until memories were triggered by my wife’s special liminal status. Instances of anxious, urgent, painful journeys through the landscape when activities of agricultural production are abandoned to engage in activities of human reproduction must surely be common experiences for rural women in the non-Western world, but they have aroused little interest among archaeologists and anthropologists. The focus of landscape phenomenologists on unknown rather than highly familiar landscapes is congruent with Cooney’s (2001) attack on post-modern approaches to landscapes. He argues that scholars have brought with them an intellectual baggage associated with ‘the cultural realities of a largely urban intellectual community of post-modern nomads’ (Cooney 2001, 174), for whom almost all rural landscapes are alien. To make a living successfully – for example, by hunting and gathering – demands an intimate knowledge of landscapes and their associated flora and fauna. One of the few scholars to link movement in pragmatic hunting and gathering with a sense of place is Myers (2000, 84) whose work is broadly critical of certain aspects of phenomenological approaches (Myers 2000, 76–80). Jiang (2003, 228) similarly emphasises the critical importance of a long timeframe, measured in many generations, in which a detailed knowledge of local environments accumulates. For Methanites, movement through a landscape is 28


normally unimportant. Specific places within the landscape have significance, whether visited or not, as indicated by signposts beside the road which highlight the existence of certain meaningful sites, even if the traveller goes nowhere near them (see Chapter 9, this volume). It is instructive to contrast the attempts of archaeological landscape phenomenologists to describe and explain the perceptions and experience of those who live in, and from, a landscape with the following description by a farmer of his own family’s farmhouse and its wider landscape in California. There is no description of furniture or house plan: those things do not make a relationship. Nor is there any hint of elitism when movement through the landscape is described. I did not know the first two generations of agrarians who built and lived in this house. They are now mere oval pictures on our staircase wall. But I do carry an appreciation of them through the memory of my own grandparents. . . . They were pioneers whose answer for every problem that arose – be it crop failure, sickness or death – was mostly silence, self-denial and harder work. My mother . . . and father . . . sacrificed much – time, money, worry and concern – for my own education and urged us all to leave the ranch for a time if we were to save it. Yet they were proud, I think, when we all chose to farm, rather than to enter academic life, upon receipt of our degrees. Almost all of what I have I owe to them. (Hanson 1995, xiii–xiv) Walk a farm each evening: a horse-shoe turned up here, over there an old half-exposed disk blade, square nails in the alleyway. All are artifacts of a cadre of men now lost, relics in an island of farmland besieged by growing urbanization. . . . Meander through vineyards and orchards of a past agrarian generation. See the residue of their work. . . . [I]t is too often forgotten that . . . we are now paving over an invaluable resource: men and women who can read the weather, who know the cycles and signs of plants and animals, understand the human experience of physical labour, and are about our last bulwarks against uniformity and regimentation. (Hanson 1995, 13)

Here are memory, movement through landscapes, time and the past, all integrally linked: some of the connection of landscapes and places with temporality is entirely personal, while some is encoded within families or wider kin groups, as Tilley (1994, 27–34) claims to be doing although with less than complete success. Yet Hanson’s book is about farming and fighting: a very long way from phenomenology. An aboriginal North American view makes much the same point very 29


succinctly: ‘the chiefs and elders who speak Gitksan know well that their homeland is a humanised landscape that has a myriad of place names and associated legends and historical narratives’ (Rigsby 1987, 371, quoted by Johnson 2000, 321). Many contributors to a volume of archaeological and anthropological studies of landscapes (Bender 1993) write in terms of landscapes as the object of the viewer, taking the viewpoint of an external observer, substantially distancing herself or himself from the object of his or her view. This is evidenced in the tendency to discuss landscape as something seen by a viewer positioned inside a structure, looking at landscape paintings, or through a window, or else using the language, history and ideology of landscape painting (e.g., Bender 1993, 247; Cosgrove 1993, 285, 296, 299; Küchler 1993, 85–6; Olwig 1993, 320– 1, 327–32; Thomas 1993, 21–3). Thus, Bender (1993, 246) discusses class-based elements of a railway advertisement’s photograph of a landscape yet seems unperturbed by the objectification of that landscape. Neither does she place it in its historical context of a cultural tradition of railway photographs (see Schama 1995, 11). For some people (e.g., Hanson, previously), landscapes are fourdimensional, incorporating the observer within them and generating a sense of time as well as space. Putting a landscape into a painted picture or a photograph reduces it to just two dimensions from the four which are to be experienced from being within it. The image is frozen onto its backing: space and temporality are lost, and the landscape is monosensual. For those who objectify landscapes as objects of their gaze, only vision has meaning. For those who experience landscapes from within, sounds and smells are also vital ingredients. They can be smells of smoke from a bread oven, of rain or of a manure heap brought on the wind (on bad smells, see Bartosiewicz 2003). Sounds can include sheep bleating, a combine harvester at work, or church bells from a distant or nearby community. SENSORY AND VISCERAL LANDSCAPES

In line with Merleau-Ponty’s particular fascination with vision ( Jay 1993, 299), the majority of archaeologists who have addressed phenomenology and landscapes have concentrated exclusively on the 30


visual. Nevertheless, a few have acknowledged that other senses contribute to experiencing landscapes. Cummings (2002) emphasises multi-sensuality in prehistory, noting the importance of sound (e.g., Lawson, Cross, and Hills, 1998; Watson and Keating 1999; see also Goldhahn 2002), a feature echoed by Gell (1995) for the Umeda of Papua New Guinea, whose ‘auditory culture’ (Gell 1995, 236) results from the densely wooded landscapes in which they live. Although vision is important to the Umeda, it is mostly employed in close-range situations (Gell 1995, 239). Having indicated that the privileging of sight over the other senses is a largely post-medieval phenomenon in Western culture, Cummings (2002, 249–50; see also Classen, Howes, and Synnot, 1994, 3–5; Gell 1995, 237–8) concentrates on the sense of touch, arguing that the juxtaposition of rough and smooth stones in some prehistoric monuments was intentional and meaningful. However, most differences in texture can be as readily identified by sight as by touch. Furthermore, most examples relate to the limited internal contexts of what are generally considered to be ritual monuments, rather than their positioning in a wider landscape. Within the dark internal spaces of monuments such as tombs, small flickering lamps would doubtless accentuate contrasts between rough and smooth stones very clearly, oblique lamp-light casting far more obvious shadows on rough-textured stones than on smooth ones. Bender et al. (1997) concentrate exclusively on the (visual) meanings of stones in the natural upland environment of Bodmin Moor for prehistoric communities (see also Tilley et al. 2000). Indeed, Tilley et al. (2000, 217) claim that the inhabitants ‘lived in a world of stone’. Their concentration on stone in the landscape may derive, consciously or unconsciously, from a number of studies of the Imerina of Madagascar. However, whereas Kus and Raharijaona (1998) concentrate on stone in the Imerina landscape and its political, symbolic and historical manipulation, they indicate that other elements of the landscape such as vegetation also have meaning (Kus and Raharijaona 1998, 54). They warn that ‘[s]tone as symbol is not “monolithic” in its associations and . . . while stone may be good to think with, it does not necessarily suggest the same thoughts in all cultures’ (Kus and Raharijaona 1998, 59). 31


Cummings’s study, as that of Kus and Raharijaona, should warn us to consider seriously the potential prehistoric significance of perceptible textures other than stone in landscapes. It is entirely possible that there was meaning in the various textures (and colours) provided by moorland vegetation: marsh and bog vegetation, areas of heather, furze and bracken, for example, as well as the characteristic texture of vegetation growing among clitter (granite rubble). Practical Bronze Age farmers would have recognised the different grazing potentials of these various kinds of vegetation. If we consider that they may have given a religious or mythical significance to different vegetation types, we must recognise that their perceptions would entail cross-cutting meanings (religious and economic) emanating from the same location. Anthropologists’ analysis of sound in cultural systems over the past twenty years or more (Panopoulos 2003, 641) is not a new development. A nineteenth-century guide to understanding the South African landscape observes: ‘[t]he voices of birds, the hum and buzz of insects, the sough of the breeze and the roar of the torrent must be to the cultivated hearing of the dweller in the wilderness as understandable as different notes are to the ears of a practiced musician’ (Lord 1871, 4; Dubow 2001, 249). The biblical Song of Songs (2: 10–13) defines seasonal change through birdsong and the fragrance of blossom. Similarly in England, the passing of the summer months is defined by a nursery rhyme about the call-notes of the cuckoo, a bird recognised primarily by sound2 . Archaeologists have generally failed to notice a strong European tradition of incorporating sounds in landscapes, at least in the postmedieval period. The use of the alphorn and yodelling are well-known examples from the Alpine zone, where the steep mountain valleys of landscapes themselves play an integral part in sound transmission. Bells in particular (e.g., goat bells, church bells) are designed both as an integral element of landscapes and to give added meanings to them (e.g., Corbin 1998; Price 1983). Thus, after the installation of the 144-ton bell Tsar Kolokol (‘Emperor Bell’) II in mid-seventeenth-century Moscow, horsemen were sent out into the countryside to ascertain how far its strokes could be heard. One Russian Orthodox sect believes that Judgement Day and the end of the world will occur should a successor to this bell, Tsar Kolokol IV, ever ring again (Price 2003, 944–5). In 32


medieval Europe, time was measured in the countryside by the striking of bells for the offices of worship of the church. Bells were so integral to these rural landscapes that in the early thirteenth century, John of Garland claimed that the Latin word for a bell (campana) was derived from the word for countryside (campus). He contrasted the visual landscapes of urban communities, where people knew how to tell the time by looking at clocks, with the aural landscapes of the countryside where people could not read clocks but told the time by bells (Le Goff 1980, 36)3 . The dichotomisation of knowledge and understanding in urban and rural landscapes is at the heart of much of the discussion in this chapter. On the Greek island of Naxos, sheep and goat bells are both polysemic and multivalent (Panopoulos 2003, 640). At one level, incorporated into the musical ‘signature’ of Greek radio and TV, they represent the national consciousness of the rural landscape and its inherent ‘Greekness’ (Panopoulos 2003, fn. 3, 652; Forbes 1996, 68–9). At a pragmatic level, a flock’s particular identity is dependent partly on the kind and combination of different bells on the animals. The bells also allow herders to derive information on the movement of their own flocks moving through the landscape, even if invisible (Panopoulos 2003, 643). Bells symbolise continuity of the flock over time, despite the constant turnover of different animals, and also the continuity of the male line of flock owners: bells are handed on through the male line, from father to son, standing for the reproduction of a household’s pastureland, its fold and its pastoral identity in general. In a sector of Greek society in which houses are passed through the female line, sheep and goat bells act as material symbols of the long-term continuity of the male line, which houses represent on Methana (see Chapter 5, this volume) (Panopoulos 2003, 644–5). The construction and representation of landscapes via musical compositions and, more generally, the representation of space through music – for example, via antiphonal choirs and echo effects – is another part of European tradition. Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons) and Debussy’s La Cathédral engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral) are paradigmatic pieces evoking landscapes from the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, respectively. Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne), from the 1920s, are a particularly 33


good example. The composer harmonised traditional melodies and poems in the language from his own landscapes in the Auvergne, as a statement of his own belonging. Bender, Hamilton, and Tilley (1997), describing a project on Bodmin Moor, provide a vivid example of the exclusion of non-visual senses in phenomenological approaches to landscapes (Bender et al. 1997, 147). Although very sensitive to some visual aspects of the landscape, the report simply treats the wind as a ‘problem’ for their work (Bender et al. 1997, 166) rather than incorporating it positively into their own experience of the landscape or considering it an element of ancient landscapes. In an exposed location like Bodmin Moor, the wind is as much part of the landscape as the view. It may or may not have been a major contributing factor to the positioning of hut features such as doorways: by focusing purely on the visual, the report never explores the question. In Mongolia, wind directions and rain patterns are salient features of cultural landscapes (Humphrey 2001, 56). Such familiarity with wind and rainfall patterns presupposes a deeply rooted familiarity with specific landscapes apparently lacking among the archaeologists working on Bodmin Moor. For Aboriginal peoples in Australia’s Western Desert, rain clouds crossing the desert were an inherent part of the landscape. In their wake they left fresh green plants (the ‘big green grass’) (Layton 1995, 213). Hanson’s comments cited earlier highlight the weather and its signs as integral to the knowledge of landscapes: again there is an inbuilt element of familiarity. For those who experience them from within, the sky can be an integral part of landscapes. A Methanitis writing about Methana (Athanasiou 1998) emphasises the importance of the sun and the sea by including them in the book’s sub-title. In a similar vein, Methanites would assess whether rain had fallen at some distance from them by the smell and feel of the wind. After assessing the wind, they might say:

(it has rained elsewhere). Almost all Methana households grew a tub of the sweetscented herb basil just outside their doors. They would regularly run their hands casually through it to enjoy the smell, and it was normal practice to give a guest a sprig of basil to smell while being entertained. The Greek word for the herb, vasilikos, means ‘royal’, referring in this sense to the Heavenly King – God. Its special religious status is 34


marked by the use of basil sprigs for sprinkling holy water and by the fact that most Greeks do not use it as a culinary herb. But the clearest indicator that both sounds and smells were an integral part of Methanites’ landscapes could be found in churches, where liturgies incorporating incense, music and the use of bright images re-created the Divine ‘landscape’ of the kingdom of God, the senses of sight hearing and smell all engaging in re-creating in imperfect form on this earth the perfection of the Divine world. A single chapter in Bender (ed., 1993) incorporates smell in the experience of landscapes. In the Melanesian society described, smell is so important in the landscape that it has entered the belief system and is invested with heavy symbolic meaning as well as having practical significance (Küchler 1993, 95–6, 99–100). ‘[The] relation between odour and the material world is essential for an understanding of “land” and “landscape” production’ (Küchler 1993, 96). Gell (1995, 237) notes that the Umeda of Papua New Guinea were much more aware of their olfactory and acoustic surroundings than he was. Classen, Howes, and Synnot (1994, 97–99) write of ‘smellscapes’ in tropical forest environments because of the impact of aromas on judging the passing of time and as a means of spatial orientation and location. Rodman critiques the privileging of speech and hearing in narratives of polysemic places in Vanuatu in Melanesia (Rodman 1992, 649, 651), highlighting the senses of sight, touch, taste and smell: ‘narratives can be expressed through the sight of a rock that grew, through certain smells, in a way the wind blows, or the taste of a mango’ (Rodman 1992, 649). Places in Vanuatu also include people turned to stone, spirits, ancestors ‘and memories piled upon memories with scarcely a mark on the landscape to show that people lived there’ (Rodman 1992, 651). The rock that grew acted as a visual marker or ‘prompt’ relating to a historical event (see also Chapter 7, this volume). Place in Vanuatu is both polysemic and multivocal. Landscape discussions referring to a variety of senses indicate that they are being experienced from within. Archaeological landscape phenomenologists who concentrate on objectified and framed landscapes which engage only the eye imply that they need to be kept at a safe distance, preferably with a barrier such as a window between the observer and the observed, and with a border – a window frame or 35


picture frame – around the outside. It is especially easy to privilege the visual if one’s preferred landscapes are contained within picture frames or on the other side of a window pane. Control is also most easily achieved by setting limits or bounds. The otherwise uncontrolled and potentially alien view can thus be framed and tamed, and observers distanced from the object of their gaze and insulated in their monosensual visual experience. The observed landscape thus becomes not unlike a wild animal in a zoo (for framing and landscapes, see Schama 1995, 10–12). In the context of nineteenth-century Europeans’ writings about travel in Africa, Pratt (1992, 202–8) explores the connection between landscape painting, as metaphor and reality, and imperialist ideology. She particularly highlights the phenomenon of the word-painted landscape as a ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey scene’ (Pratt 1992, 205) in male explorers’ accounts: there is a clear connection between the metaphor of a landscape painted in words and mastery over what is seen (Pratt 1992, 204–5). In addition, expeditions such as that of Speke to Lake Victoria Nyanza (Pratt 1992, 205–6) are closely analogous to pilgrimages: Osella and Osella’s (2003) exploration of the role of pilgrimage in constructing male identities is very relevant here. Pratt contrasts male accounts of travel with the accounts given by European women in this period. Mary Kingsley (1982), writing originally in 1897, eschews descriptions of far-reaching landscapes and associated tropes of imperial domination, preferring to concentrate on the enjoyment of stealing quietly along on a night-time river journey in which visibility was highly limited (Pratt 1992, 213–16). Pratt’s study thus neatly combines the ideas of travel as pilgrimage and the production of static pictures of landscapes within the context of an agenda which is overwhelmingly masculinist and ultimately colonialist. Bender et al. (1997) provide an extreme example of the frameand-tame treatment of landscapes. A large frame was transported out onto Bodmin Moor to be erected in positions where doorways were believed to have been placed in prehistoric huts. The meanings of landscapes to the area’s prehistoric inhabitants could supposedly be understood once they had been thus bounded and controlled (Bender et al. 1997, 166, 170). The report focuses heavily on the meanings of elements of the landscape to the exogenous archaeologists, none of whom 36


apparently had a long-term relationship with Bodmin Moor (Bender et al. 1977, 157, 166, 169, 173, 175), presumably unlike the Bronze Age inhabitants. No landscape illustrated contains a human presence, apart from the archaeologists themselves. One contributor explicitly states that the prehistoric landscape could only have meaning if all humans (apart from the archaeologists) were removed (Bender et al. 1997, 157). While attempting to ‘reconstruct’ the meanings of a symbolic landscape to the settlement’s prehistoric inhabitants, the authors fail to consider that the prehistoric landscape was also a human one. The existence of a settlement presumably owes a great deal (though doubtless not all) to economic factors: these are not considered. Messages of objectification, control, power and appropriation underlying phenomenological approaches to archaeological landscapes are explored by Lazzari (2003), drawing once again on Foucault (1972), de Certeau (1984), and Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1968). Yet, while highlighting counter-hegemonic practices, she, too, fails to question the hegemonic position of vision in modern Western society (Lazzari 2003, 195–204). Her attempt to understand how non-Western, nonmodern societies give meanings to landscape also fails to transcend the cultural baggage of Westernised post-modern philosophical discourse. Echoing the frame-and-tame approach noted earlier, landscape is seen as a ‘gate’ (Lazzari 2003, 211) to understanding social difference, the term employed here as a metaphor for philosophical discourse on gender. Landscape is thus objectified by its exploitation as a concept rather than using it as a way of understanding relationships between people via their relationships to space. Further evidence of the lack of understanding of non-urban, nonWestern landscapes is Lazzari’s denial that landscapes can be read as texts and her assumption that landscapes can only be ‘read’ (if at all) at a level of elements deliberately constructed to have a single layer of overt cultural meaning (Lazzari 2003, 201, 211). Instead, she considers landscapes as ‘part of a web of visible and invisible aspects of social life or, rather, “said and unsaid” things’ (Lazzari 2003, 201). However, as already noted, for those who are integral to landscapes, even natural features, which were not made to be seen – patches of natural vegetation, the wind, and the sky – can be read as texts. Hence, natural and humanly modified landscapes and, on Methana at least, even built 37


structures such as churches and above all houses, can indeed be read as polysemic texts. At least as much meaning comes from elements not constructed to have meaning ‘up front’ (i.e., ‘unsaid’) as those which have, and different levels of meaning inhere even in those which have been. Actual written texts themselves are rarely fully monosemic: normally they can be read at different levels, with different kinds of message being derived from both said and unsaid elements of that text. The Gitksan described by Johnson (2002) clearly understand their landscapes as a series of texts. Significantly, the quotes of Gitksan themselves – as also Hanson’s presentation of his farm – can likewise be read as polysemic texts. Besides the overt (‘said’) messages represented by Johnson’s and Hanson’s written words, there are un-, or indirectly spoken criticisms of modern urban European ideologies which, being disengaged from landscapes, see but cannot read them and thus do not understand the multiple messages which are evident to those who belong in them. To be fair, some of the pioneers of phenomenological approaches in archaeology have developed their ideas, incorporating issues raised in this chapter. Thus, Tilley (2004, 217–25) now explicitly considers that landscapes implicate senses other than sight, discusses the importance of familiarity with landscapes for their understanding, and rejects approaches which view them from outside. Other archaeologists have applied post-processual ideas to landscapes, including alternative phenomenological approaches in somewhat different ways. Woodward (2000, 8, 139–42) discusses the experience of moving from the bottom to the top of the Lanceborough King Barrow in Dorset and the changing views accompanying the movement; she does so as an insider who has repeatedly visited the site. For her, the site is evidently an old friend, not simply some object of dispassionate academic interest. The close relationship between archaeologist and site is no mere rhetorical device: anthropologists have repeatedly remarked on close connections between knowledge and a true sense of place (e.g., Myers 2000, 80–2). Nevertheless, the sites to be viewed from the top of the Lanceborough King Barrow are almost entirely associated (archaeologically, at least) with ritual: barrows and henges. The described landscape is 38


again largely visual and largely monosemic, although stray comments in the book hint that it is also personalised. Bradley (2000) examines the importance of a sense of place for past populations, demonstrating that many elements in relationships of prehistoric and later peoples with their landscapes cannot be understood purely in rational, economic terms. His primary interest in natural places and the ways in which they have been foci of recurrent ritual or ceremonial activity highlights the limitations of processualist approaches to ancient landscapes. Yet, although drawing on earlier examples of Tilley’s work, he does not employ overtly phenomenological approaches and occasionally implicitly criticises them (e.g., Bradley 2000, chap. 3). The book brings new insights into European prehistory, combining aspects of the landscape with the artifactual record. Yet, in focusing on marginal locations, it fails to provide a paradigm for the approach taken in this book: in terms of populations in those landscapes, it primarily examines the realm of religious belief and ritual, or at least ritualised or ceremonial behaviours. Furthermore, like the earlier approaches of Tilley and of Bender, it treats landscapes as almost entirely visual entities, ignoring the contribution of the other senses. By contrast, the present book argues that for Methanites, landscapes are more than simply visual entities and that the religious landscape is only one aspect of a polysemic whole, in which various types of meaning overlap, elide and interlink depending on context. Hanson as well as Rigsby (reported by Johnson), as noted earlier, indicate other ways of perceiving and experiencing landscapes. Both express a view from within a landscape. To Hanson, the landscape is clearly personalised as a member of the family. It cannot be appropriated and objectified, any more than family members could be. The Gitksan landscape is similarly humanised. The land is their active partner in their long history and at the same time their larder. It must be acknowledged and treated with respect ( Johnson 2000, 305). These views share a number of elements with those of peoples around the world whose understandings and experiences of their landscapes have been studied by anthropologists. Those who stand outside landscapes and objectify them are divorced from any understanding of the ways in which peoples react to and relate to landscapes from within. Cold 39


detached scientific description is wholly antithetical to the visceral reactions of people to specific times and places in their lives (e.g., Panopoulos 2003, fn. 19, 653–4; Toren 1995, 164). Despite substantial differences in approach between Johnson’s (2000) and Rodman’s (1992) studies of landscape perception, and major cultural differences between the peoples of Vanuatu and the Gitksan, many similarities emerge in the relationship between people and land. One of the most fundamental is that Gitksan also do not dissociate people from the landscape. Another is the polysemy of Gitksan landscapes, being a productive landscape (their larder) and simultaneously the text of their history, bearing witness to the successes and tragedies of the ancestors, of lessons learned and passed down. ‘The history of the people is written on the landscape’ ( Johnson 2000, 305, original emphasis). Also directly comparable with the Vanuatu example, for the Gitksan, places are dynamically constructed. When elders ‘read’ the text of their history by describing specific resources and places, they mix their personal histories with historical narratives, often making reference to their own travels in the past ( Johnson 2000, 314–15). Here, too, it is possible to see a clear connection between place and history with speaking and the exercise of power. Elders, in their roles as authorities on the landscape ( Johnson 2000, 321), while setting out the histories embodied in the landscape, also have the power to privilege their own personal histories as part of the narrative. Another significant feature of Gitksan landscapes is the way in which places have an apparent tendency to act as mnemonics (see also Rodman 1992, 644) or ‘prompts’ for foregrounding other bodies of knowledge, much as in Vanuatu. When discussing types of place or types of resource, Gitksan recited their knowledge of certain categories of information, for example, listing where one might go for particular resources, or where they had actually gone, often presenting not one or two examples but a list of specific named sites. For plants of restricted location, the entire list of known locations might be recited. Similarly, one respondent, when asked about lakes in general, recited the names of several lakes on his territory, describing them, their locations, and the etymologies of their names ( Johnson 2000, 314). For the Gitksan, as in Vanuatu, place is a discipline which organises people’s know-how. 40


Because the names of places and the ownership of places are completely interlinked, the recitation of the places and their properties is itself an act of power especially associated with chiefs and elders (as noted earlier in this chapter). Native Fijians also linked land, history, and identity via acts of recitation (Toren 1995, 163). Conceptions of the land are central to their identity. Toren speaks of their ideas of the relationship between identity and the land being as much visceral as intellectual. ‘[I]n their daily lives, villagers emphasise embodied sensuous experience: that which seems experientially to be unmediated, directly derived from seeing, hearing, touching and smelling the land and consuming its products’ (Toren 1995, 164). Although Methanites focused on different bodies of information (frequently kinship rather than environmental features and food resources), we shall see how they, too, would use a place in the landscape as a prompt for the recitation of a substantial body of information. The historical narratives embodied in place-names among the Gitksan, and in past village places among the Fijians of Sawaieke country, and the histories embodied in kinship on Methana mean that in each case mnemonics or prompts in the landscape relate to history and frequently trigger or prompt recitation of especially meaningful bodies of knowledge. The importance of kinship in Methanites’ experience of their landscapes is not unusual. Kinship is an essential feature of identity and the organisation of people on the ground in a very large number of societies. For example, for the Piro of Amazonian Peru, what they ‘see’ when they look at the land is kinship (Gow 1995). Similarly in Fiji, kinship and the landscape are mutually implicated: relations with places can be multivocal, involving any combination of agricultural production, kinship, history and the supernatural (Toren 1995). ‘[In Fiji, t]hrough situated narration, the “here and now-ness” of place expands to a more distant horizon, constituted by past and ongoing relationships such as garden-making and home-building. At the same time this enables the place of narration to have features of a distinctive vantage point or perspective on the horizon which encompasses these relations’ (Hirsch 1995, 9). In Australian Aboriginal societies, too, kinship is implicated in landscape (e.g., Morphy 1995, 197–201; Myers 2000, 78). 41


It is therefore clear that, unlike urban nomads who study or write about rural landscape, peoples who ‘belong’ in them experience them from the inside. In Fiji, this bond of belonging between people and place is such that people belong to the land and sea, rather than vice versa, being at the same time their ‘substance’ and their ‘owners’ (Toren 1995, 171). Furthermore, experience of landscapes from the inside generally involves other senses besides sight, and, for large numbers of indigenous peoples, identities are implicated in landscapes. However, many indigenous peoples do not neatly intellectualise their understandings of their connections with their land. The following statement about his relationship with his landscape was made by an Australian Aborigine, echoing the visceral relationship of native Fijians to their landscapes: I feel it with my body, with my blood. Feeling all these trees, all this country . . . when the wind blows, you can feel it. Same for country . . . you feel it. You can look, but feeling . . . that put you out there in open space. (Lawlor 1991, 237, quoted by Myers 2000, 73)

The difficulties for Westerners of understanding the complex relationships between Australian Aboriginal groups and their land continue to generate active debate, as noted earlier. Methanites likewise did not set out their relationship to the landscape in clear intellectual terms. My understanding of the complex ways in which Methanites related to and drew meaning from their landscapes developed organically, over a protracted time span. Above all, however, in large numbers of societies land, identity, and history are all interconnected via the multilocality, multivocality and polysemy of landscapes (Rodman 1992). Thus, landscapes or places within landscapes can be considered as larder, history, historical monument, kinship monument or religious monument, depending on which context or level and whose experience and identity is being foregrounded. Often they are several things simultaneously, different types of meaning coalescing to focus on and highlight a specific type of meaning which the individual wishes to foreground or emphasise in a particular circumstance. These phenomena are especially stressed in studies of Australian Aboriginal landscapes (e.g., Morphy 1995; Myers 2000) in which sociality and landscape are totally intermeshed (Bender 42


1996, 323). Yet, they can be found almost as complexly and completely intermeshed in other non-Western landscapes as well. Ultimately, we must question whether phenomenological approaches as formulated by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, for instance, are appropriate for the kinds of understandings of landscapes that archaeologists or anthropologists require. My dissatisfaction with their approaches indicated earlier, derived from my direct experiences within landscapes, relates in large part to the way in which such phenomenologies distance and dislocate embodied individuals from the spaces in which they belong. In addition, I share with Cooney (2001) a strong feeling that some archaeologists who espouse such approaches tend to reflect unwittingly the world-views of Western urban intellectuals for whom rural landscapes are exotic environments. These phenomenological approaches prioritise the stock-in-trade of academics – language – and the sense which allows an urban-based population most easily to separate itself from these environments – sight. They cannot readily accommodate visceral reactions. As the Aboriginal statement noted earlier indicates, seeing distances the viewer from the landscape, but feeling, which does not require language, puts a real you ‘out there in open space’. An alternative way of perceiving perception is the contention that it exists as a complete sensorium which, while never fully articulated through language, is nonetheless permeated with social values (Howes 2005, 2–3). In his landmark work Les Cinq sens: philosophie des corps mêlés, the philosopher Michel Serres (1985) addresses the sensorial poverty of contemporary theory (Howes 2005, 2). The present work does not claim to set a Serresian agenda for the study of landscapes. However, a passage in Serres’s work is similar in certain ways to my own reaction to some phenomenological approaches to archaeological landscapes: When I was young, I laughed a lot at Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. He opens it with these words: ‘At the outset of the study of perception, we find in language the notion of sensation . . .’ Isn’t this an exemplary introduction?. . . . From his window the author sees some tree, always in bloom; he huddles over his desk. . . . What you can decipher in this book is a nice ethnology of city dwellers, who are hypertechnicalized, intellectualized, chained to their library chairs, and tragically stripped of any tangible 43


experience. Lots of phenomenology and no sensation – everything via language. . . . My book Les Cinq sens cries out at the empire of signs. (Serres 1995, 131–2, original emphasis)

THEORETICAL APPROACH OF THIS STUDY

This book focusing on the landscapes of the peninsula of Methana is an attempt to describe how Methanites have related themselves to each other via their landscapes. It is written by a white, western European male who grew up in a western European rural landscape and who is still part of a complex rural community located within such a landscape. Therefore, like Johnson (2000, 304) with the Gitksan, I feel a certain commonality of experience with Methanites. For all the self-evident ‘differentness’ of the field situation from my Western experience – in language and culture, and in terms of landforms, plants and climate – the situation had a feeling of familiarity to it by the very fact of being rural. My fieldwork method of working alongside Methanites in the fields (see Chapter 4) further reinforced my familiarity with their landscapes. It was thus that I became aware of how households’ plots of land were often located alongside the plots of closely related families (Chapter 8) and of how certain simple features in the landscape had their own monumentalities which on occasions helped to explain some very visceral feelings about them. Although I could never have been fully an insider (‘a native’) in the community, it is just this ‘marginal native’ structural position, allowing the ethnographer to experience and sense a society from within while also being informed by a viewpoint located outside, which has traditionally been considered a major strength of social anthropology (e.g., Geertz 1983, 56–9; Ferraro 1992, 91–2). In the following chapters I set out the complex, eliding, overlapping and interlinking meanings of landscapes on Methana. At any one time, Methanites might foreground the significance of one aspect of meaning while leaving others unstated, or as a secondary consideration. Particular events and contexts governed which aspects were foregrounded and which were given less emphasis or ignored. My position as ethnographer and marginal native was a significant element on a number of occasions when issues relevant to the meanings 44


of landscapes were raised. Once I had explained that I was there to learn about ‘agricultural life’, most Methanites were very ready to instruct me in the correct ways of participating, whether in agricultural work, religious events, or other activities such as name-day celebrations. In addition, their tendency to rehearse their knowledge in the light of various ‘prompts’ in the landscape supplied important guidance on what aspects of places had significant meanings. The chapters in the second part of this book indicate that different broad, culturally meaningful themes were often implicated even within a single narrative or social context. Frequently, imparting an item of information about a place would cause a speaker to move on along a train of thought to other related items of meaningful information concerning the place. As often as not, these add-on items of information might be treated as having greater significance for the speaker than the original observation. On several occasions when I was engaged in agricultural work with someone in a field, practical observations about a plot which the speaker owned, perhaps relating to a terrace wall or a well, would lead on to how or why a feature had been built or how his or her family had come to possess it. Because most property was inherited, or at the least bought from a close relative, the speaker would demonstrate the correctness of the statement concerning the previous generation’s ownership by identifying the present owners of surrounding plots and the kinship links between them and the speaker. Explanations of certain features of plots might likewise be forthcoming in terms of past events involving ancestors, which might in turn lead on to reminiscing about a memorable event or incident. Thus, initial comments concerning agricultural and productive aspects of the fields would connect with issues of kinship. In turn, kinship aspects might lead seamlessly into significant aspects of the past, with the fields becoming, by the end of the narrative, a form of historical monument to ancestral owners or key events in the past. My understanding of the meanings of places and spaces in the landscape emerged piecemeal during my fieldwork experiences. Methanites’ knowledge of their landscapes was vast and connected to many other parts of their lives which were highly meaningful to them. This knowledge was drawn on selectively by speakers to meet the needs of a specific context or situation, to guide actions, to explain particular 45


phenomena in response to the questions, or merely in recognition of the presence, of the unknowledgeable ethnographer. However, at no time did anyone on Methana present me with a systematised body of knowledge organised in any clear way. I simply absorbed Methanites’ own ideas as I developed an understanding of their lives and the landscapes in which those lives were lived, partly as a result of my fieldwork method of placing myself within those same landscapes. For Methanites, as for the middle-class residential communities studied by Low (2001), many of the spatial meanings of their landscapes were latent. As with Low’s study, I also found that understanding the meaning of place and space required that I drew on multiple sources: historical documents, material culture, the archaeological record and ethnographic data (Low 2002, 274). In communicating the experiential reality of the field situation to an audience, I have been faced with two major difficulties. The first was that, because of the nature of the printed page, I was forced to do exactly what Serres criticises in Merleau-Ponty: limit my use of the senses to language via the printed word and vision via the illustrations – within the frame of a page, no less – in describing knowledge of the sensory immediacies of landscapes. Worse still, I use language as a model and metaphor to explain knowledge. I cannot deny these facts but would point out that in trying to understand Methanites’ understandings of their landscapes and present them to others, I eschewed my desk and the view from the window, preferring to place myself firmly in those landscapes, experiencing the dirty hands, sweat and sore muscles necessary to complete agricultural tasks (see Chapter 4). Moreover, as I make clear in the concluding chapter, one can comprehend a language either as though from the outside, via a formal set of grammatical and syntactical rules, or as though from the inside as an organic entity, via utterances. In this work, I have preferred to use the latter approach. Second, in seeking to present Methanites’ knowledge of their landscapes, I faced a dilemma similar to that of Hunn (2006), attempting to present detailed ethnobiological knowledge to an academic readership. I found I could understand the body of knowledge on Methana landscapes which I had absorbed and present it to others in an understandable way if I divided it up into four broad areas of meaning: 46


(agricultural) production, kinship, history and religion. These themes, however, are simply a heuristic device, an artificial ordering of an unsystematised but coherent and integrated body of knowledge – the ethnographer’s model, rather than Methanites’ own. Nevertheless, they do not distort my experience of the ways in which Methanites gave meaning to their landscapes. They can also be clearly seen in Clark’s (1988) ethnography of household transformation on Methana, along with two additional themes there, consumption and conflict. Consumption, a critical element within the focus of Clark’s work, has a limited part to play in the present work, except inasmuch as it has a historical dimension, linking people to the productive landscape in previous generations, but far less for the past quarter-century or so. Conflict is an inherent part of life, including rural life, and it forms another central plank in Clark’s thesis. I could have made it a fifth theme but have chosen to subsume it within the others. I prefer to treat it in much the way Methanites did: as an inevitable but unwelcome by-product of imperfect humans’ interactions with each other and their landscapes. It is something which has had a negative value for Methanites, whereas the four themes identified have all had a broadly positive value for them. In a body of knowledge in which all factors can interlink, it is virtually impossible to define one factor as pre-eminent, with the rest dependent on it. Nevertheless, I found that I could best make sense of the complexities of Methanites’ knowledge of and feelings for their landscapes if I focused on family and kinship. This is not surprising because, as discussed earlier, much of the meaning of landscapes to those who are within them is about belonging. There is a widespread tendency to implicate personhood – identity – in place. Kinship is likewise primarily about identity and belonging. Nevertheless, although kinship is widely identified as a primary social organisational principle in ethnographic studies, it has less regularly been the focus of attention for studies of European societies. For Greece and southern Europe generally, a number of studies emphasise the importance of the family (see Chapter 5) but few highlight the centrality of kinship beyond the family. Research agendas among Mediterranean societies developed after World War II included ‘amoral familism’ (Banfield 1958), ‘the image of limited good’ (Foster 47


1965), and ‘honour and shame’ (e.g., Peristiany 1966). They focused primarily on the family and its well-being in economic, social and reputational, and religious terms (Stewart 1996, 211–12). A parallel contemporary research agenda on the economics of rural populations considered peasantries (in a specialised anthropological, rather than pejorative, sense) as having a mode of production centred firmly on household reproduction rather than individual profit. Discussions of wider social links concentrated on patron-client relations connecting different classes vertically within society rather than on horizontal kinship links within a class (Spencer 1996, 418–19). Although Greek kinship does not have the satisfying ‘otherness’ of Australian Aboriginal or many African or Native American kinship systems for most western Europeans or North Americans, it has played a crucial role in defining how Methanites have seen themselves in relation to others, human and supernatural. Simultaneously, the landscape has had a fundamental role in structuring the ways in which those relationships have been played out. Like European kinship systems, for many European archaeologists looking for ethnographic studies to illuminate their research, Christianity also lacks the ‘otherness’ of religions elsewhere in the world. Australian Aborigines are highly favoured when discussing relationships of cosmology and religious belief to place, but the Pacific provides alternative exotic examples (e.g., Tilley 1994, 37–54, 57–62). However, the active debate among anthropologists, after several decades of research, as to the relationship of place to Aboriginal cosmologies and religious belief systems is warning enough. Similarly, after nearly a century of debate over the nature of the Pacific religious concept of mana, Keesing (1984) discovered that mana was not a noun after all, but a stative verb: on the basis of recent work it appears that mana is not a supernatural force, but a quality of efficacy (Lindstrom 1996). There are thus advantages for choosing a society with a highly complex but (for Europeans) more understandable religious system – Christianity – when considering communities’ relationships to their landscapes in terms of religion and cosmology. Archaeologists, in trying to escape their own potential or actual preconceptions of past peoples’ lives, have raided the warehouse of ethnographic literature. Specific tribes in Australia, the Americas, Africa, or 48


the circumpolar zone provide important lessons concerning the ways in which ‘other’ (i.e., non-industrialised, non-Western) peoples relate to their landscapes. Yet, that extreme level of ‘otherness’ from that which Westernised archaeologists themselves experience allows them to objectify these peoples, keeping them at a safe distance, in ways similar to archaeological approaches to viewing landscapes criticised earlier in this chapter. In Chapter 5, I note the dynamic tension between the ‘Westernness’ and the ‘un-Western-ness’ of Greek culture. This ‘like but yet unlike’-ness compared with the experiences of most Euro-American academics is crucially important in the context of understanding how ‘real’ people relate to their landscapes. Life in rural Greece has been a mix of the differences between how people in modern Western capitalist, industrialised societies interact with their landscapes and how those in small-scale non-Western societies do so. It can thus be seen either as an important bridge between polar opposites or as a case study which proves the falseness of the dichotomy. I prefer to consider it the latter. The differences between the lives of Methanites over the past few generations and those of most Euro-American academics should be obvious in this work. Yet, there is also a level at which their lives have clearly been not so different as to emphasise their ‘otherness’. Methanites, therefore, provide an example of ‘realness’ as ‘ordinary’ people. Although different from those of most European and North American archaeologists, their lives, history and culture have been far more like ours than the ‘ethnographic examples’ normally paraded in archaeological discourse. My intention is thus to indicate the meanings that landscapes have for such ordinary people: to describe a Greek landscape with real people.

49

3

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE LANDSCAPE OF METHANA

[Barba Andreas] said that before the 1821 war Methana was deserted: so were Aegina and other places. Only after that period was Methana settled. The people who had previously been on Methana had fled at the coming of the Turks. (Entry in field notes)

This chapter presents the chronological background to later sections of this work. Part of its remit is to discuss the origins of important features which appear in later chapters. The issues explored include the origins of Methanites and their villages, the origins of the agrarian landscape, and the changing local economy. Although the subject matter of this book tends to focus discussion within the confines of the peninsula in terms of how Methanites view their peninsular landscapes, this chapter demonstrates that over hundreds of years, what might be seen as purely local developments have been powerfully influenced by external factors. The balance between internal and external factors is also played out at a dialectical level in apparent contradictions between documentary and oral sources on some of these significant historical developments. The former are represented partly by brief but informative accounts of the peninsula given by western European travellers who visited in the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Archaeological data, which provide a great deal of historical evidence especially for the earlier periods discussed, also fall firmly under the heading of documentary sources. Significantly, most of the archaeological work on the peninsula has also been conducted by non-Greeks (Deffner 1909; Mee 50


and Forbes [eds.] 1997; Vanderpool 1930). Oral histories, as inherently evanescent sources of information, differ fundamentally in their substance from the concreteness of archaeological finds or permanent written documents, which are favoured by Western academics. The fact that they are produced by the local population means that there is thus an inherent tendency for Western academics to privilege nonindigenous historical sources. The way in which the discussion in this chapter negotiates between indigenously generated ethnographic data and exogenously generated ‘documentary’ data acts as a link between the issue of landscapes-seen-from-within versus landscapes-viewedfrom-without in the preceding chapter and the description of the various forms of fieldwork conducted on Methana which follows. GEOLOGY, GEOMORPHOLOGY AND SOILS

The history of how humans have constructed their landscapes on Methana and given them meaning has been strongly influenced by the physical geography of the landmass. This chapter therefore begins with a brief description of this aspect. Methana lies on a volcanic arc extending from near Athens to the Turkish mainland near Bodrum. Along this arc is a series of volcanic islands, including Melos and Thera, and other islands which have volcanic outcrops, such as Aegina and Poros, close to Methana. Methana, the only peninsula on the volcanic arc, is mostly volcanic in origin but for two significant limestone outcrops. The more important of these lies in the southern sector of the peninsula and includes the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland ( James et al. 1997, 7). Methana’s volcanic area comprises an agglomeration of lava domes and flows rising to some 740 metres in a landmass with maximum dimensions less than 10 km east-west and north-south (fig. 3.1). Four potassium-argon dates all give ages of less than 1 million years, and a Pliocene date (5.2–1.8 million years) for the oldest volcanic activity has been suggested, with the majority of it in the succeeding Pleistocene period (1.8 million–10,000 years). Much of the landscape is thus, geologically speaking, very young and has therefore been relatively little affected by erosion. Additionally, much of the volcanic rock was probably semi-solid when originally produced, so the lava did not flow any 51


3.1. Geological map of Methana showing the main domes and lava flows (Source: James et al. 1997).

great distance, leaving steep-sided flows. The result is an exceptionally rugged and mountainous relief in which flat land is very rare, being found only in a few upland basins ( James et al. 1997, 5–10). Around much of the peninsula, however, a zone of less steeply sloping land rises from the coast to between approximately 100 and 200 metres altitude. Above this zone the land generally rises very steeply, especially on the west side of the peninsula, into the rugged interior where most of the 52


3.2. A terraced hillside on Methana with mixed arable and trees (Photo: Mari Clarke; Hamish Forbes).

volcanic domes are to be found, interspersed with the limited number of upland basins with deep level soils. With virtually the whole Methana landmass consisting of slopes, the majority steep, the agrarian landscape of the last few centuries has consisted almost entirely of agricultural terraces (fig. 3.2). Indeed, the presently documentable evidence of terracing, both in use and abandoned, must represent the exploitation of close to the maximum possible limit of cultivable land on the peninsula in the recent past ( James et al. 1997, 27). The reason for such intense terrace building lies partly in the volcanic soil’s fertility, which is notably greater than that of the limestone-derived soils common to many parts of the Peloponnese, but also in its nineteenth-century history. Although the present terraced landscape seems timeless, much was probably constructed in the nineteenth century (a topic discussed later in this chapter). In a steep, rock-strewn environment like that of Methana, terracewall construction provides a convenient way to segregate larger stones from cultivable soil. When asked why their landscape was terraced, Methanites would respond to the effect that ‘the walls are built to 53


remove all the rocks from the soil – how else can we get rid of them?’ Outside observers note that terraces provide both readily cultivable surfaces and effective protection against erosion: Methanites did not generally list these functions ( James et al. 1997, 27; see Grove and Rackham 2001, 110). The highly visible terrace systems of present-day Methana sweep down all the gentler slopes like broad flights of steps: the Methana term for a terrace system is skala – a flight of steps. Terraces are frequently found on slopes over 30 degrees and also frequently on irregular broken slopes, sometimes providing small pockets of soil only cultivable with a hoe ( James et al. 1997, 27–8; e.g., Grove and Rackham 2001, 107–8). Where slopes are least severe, the walls are low and the amount of stone used is necessarily limited. Consequently, huge stone-piles can sometimes be seen, where excess stone not used in wall-building has been dumped. James et al. (1997, 24–9) indicate limited post-glacial erosion on Methana. Poor agricultural practices have not been a significant factor despite evidence of fairly high population levels in certain periods of antiquity (e.g., Gill, Foxhall, and Bowden 1997; Bowden and Gill 1997). It is hard to envision high population levels without widespread cultivation and equally hard to envision such a steeply sloping environment being cultivated in any period without substantial soil loss, except with the use of terraces. Nevertheless, there is no clear evidence of ancient agricultural terracing on Methana, and there is active debate concerning its existence or extent in antiquity (see, e.g., Foxhall 1996; Lohmann 1992). It is therefore unwise to assume that the agricultural landscape of Methana has always been terraced, even though it is unclear what alternative methods of soil stabilisation might have been used in antiquity. The rough tripartite division of the landscape into a gently sloping coastal zone, extremely steep slopes above it, and a rugged upland interior with scattered basins containing flat land (fig. 3.3) have influenced the peninsula’s settlement history. The great majority of pre-medieval archaeological sites on Methana are within 200 metres altitude of the shore. Although significant numbers of sites in the interior date to the period approximately 500 bc–ad 600, they are all small: the major settlement sites occupied over that time span are all located on the coast (Mee and Forbes 1997, 39–41). These observations emphasise 54


VL Vsc

A

D

TR

Vdc Ab

A

D

Vsc Vsc

Vdc Vdc Af

P

VL Vsc Vdc P Ab Ar At Af TR

Volcanic lithosol Soil in shallow volcanic colluvium Soil in deep volcanic colluvium Soil in pyroclastic deposit Soil in alluvial basin fill Soil in recent tan-trench fill Soil on tan-trench terrace Soil on fan surface Terra rossa

Pyroclast deposit Colluvium Alluvial fan gravels Terra Tossa Limestone Dome Andesite Dacite Volcanic agglomerate Lava flow At Ar

3.3. Cross sections of Methana landforms and associated soils (Source: James et al. 1997).

that, from a multi-millennial viewpoint, the settlement locations of the medieval and post-medieval periods discussed later in this chapter, either high in the rugged interior or at the junction of the gentler slopes and the steep slopes rising into the interior, are anomalous. The availability of water supplies may explain the tendency for major pre-medieval settlements on Methana to be located close to the coast. At present there is only one permanent freshwater spring, on the northern part of the peninsula, and there is no reason to believe that the situation was any different in antiquity. Hot mineral springs were known in antiquity (Pausanias 2.34.1–3) and formed the basis of the peninsula’s twentieth-century tourist industry, but they do not provide drinking water. There is one on the north coast below the village of Palea Loutra and two on the east coast, below the village of Vromolimni. Apart from the one freshwater spring, the only other reliable source of naturally occurring drinkable water is in wells close to the coast. Throughout the twentieth century, the water in almost all of these has been brackish. Despite its poor quality, in the past many people drank it, although rainwater collected in cisterns was much preferred. 55


Whether the well water was brackish in previous centuries is unknown but seems probable: Dodwell (1819, II, 282) observed in the first decade of the nineteenth century that the water in a well below Methana’s only settlement at that time was ‘brackish and unpotable’, although it was regularly drunk by twentieth-century Methanites who had no alternative supply. Ancient farmsteads and other settlements high in Methana’s interior presumably depended on rainwater collected in cisterns. Unfortunately, little is known about cistern technology in previous centuries (e.g., Koukoulis 1997a, 94), so with the exception of the spectacular medieval refuge site of Profitis Ilias, with its huge waterstorage systems (Koukoulis 1997a 93–94), the level of dependence on cisterns must remain open to speculation. The peninsular nature of Methana and its geology separate it from and contrast with the neighbouring parts of the Peloponnesian mainland, including the Plain of Trizin, one of the largest and most fertile coastal plains in the Peloponnese. In addition, the mountain range west of the plain contains numerous springs: some of these irrigate the Lemonodhasos (the Lemon-Forest), an area at one end of the plain, particularly famed in the days before mechanised irrigation for the luxuriance and extent of the lemon groves growing there. The existence of substantial numbers of permanent springs in the mountains behind the Plain of Trizin results partly from geological factors but also relates to higher average rainfall on the mainland ( James et al. 1997, 5). Both factors emphasise the contrasts with Methana, the largely waterless condition of which is exacerbated by its warmer, drier climate, more comparable to that of the Cycladic islands – the driest zone of Greece – than the mainland ( James et al. 1997, 5). As will become apparent later in this chapter, Methana’s particular combination of physical features has given it a distinctive settlement history. METHANA FROM THE END OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD TO 1821

Although Methana’s past includes evidence of prehistoric settlement, that for the medieval and all earlier periods is almost entirely archaeological. For the purposes of this book, therefore, nothing can fruitfully 56


be added to what has been written about these periods in Mee and Forbes ([eds.], 1997). For the early modern period until the early nineteenth century on Methana, the evidence is also largely archaeological, but occasional historical references to it and a few local stories are also of some use. From the end of the medieval period to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Methana seems to have had a single settlement, also called Methana. At the end of the medieval period, it was located high in the interior of the peninsula, some 400 metres above sea level, at a site known locally by the mixed Greek-Albanian name of Paleokatundi – Old Village (fig. 3.4). The even higher and more remote medieval settlement at Profitis Ilias seems to have been abandoned by this time. Paleokatundi is marked by a late medieval church and the foundations of ruined houses (Koukoulis 1997a, 94, 99; Forbes 1997a, 103; Mee et al. 1997, 173). Its eagle’s-nest position, on the side of the peninsula away from that most immediately open to attack by pirates entering the Saronic Gulf, emphasises the lack of security in this period. From this position of relative security, Methanites in previous centuries seem to have exploited a wide range of the more favoured parts of the peninsula. Remains of small clusters of structures and concentrations of artefacts dating to the medieval and post-medieval periods suggest the existence of temporarily occupied settlements. These would have been associated with specific seasonal tasks. Some sites seem to have been associated with seasonal work on olive trees and cereal terraces at low altitudes close to the coast (e.g., Mee et al. 1997, 150). Such locations were presumably too vulnerable to piratical attack for anything except temporary occupation. Vines are notorious for needing deep soils which only a limited number of locations could provide. They are also notorious for the time and labour they demand. One site, in a narrow upland basin highly suited for vines known as Makrongou, illustrates something of the nature of the seasonally occupied sites of this period. A substantial number of grape-treading installations exists close to the edge of the basin floor. Although they are undatable and no longer used, two small huts (kalivia) and a small amount of medieval and Turkish period pottery close by suggest the periods to which they belong (Mee et al. 1997, 161). 57


On the basis of oral historical reports of the use of similar installations in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, this area was probably the scene of intense activity during the vintage in the autumn and possibly in the spring for the slow heavy work of digging the vines. It may also have been the focus of temporary settlement later in the autumn after the vintage, when terraces surrounding the basin floor would have been ploughed and sown in cereals. The grape harvest would have demanded the labour of most, if not all, family members. Once the grapes had been picked, they would have been trodden on the treading floors at the site, and the must (grape juice) would have been collected in goatskins for transportation back to the village on donkeys or even carried by humans. For the autumn ploughing and sowing, whole families may have lived for several days at the site, bringing their sheep and goats with them, along with their plough cattle. The same may have been true of the cereal harvest. Better-preserved temporarily occupied sites on Methana from more recent periods often have the remains of a stone-walled fold for the household’s livestock. There is no reason to think that Turkish-period households would not have done the same. Other important places constructed in the landscape away from the settlement during the Turkish period were eight to ten small churches (Koukoulis 1997b). A number of small extra-mural churches already existed before the beginning of the Turkish period. The exact reasons for their construction are now lost to us. Some medieval churches seem to have been built originally to serve small settlements but continued to be maintained after the settlements’ demise. Other churches, especially those built in the Turkish period, do not seem to have been built to serve individual settlements. Instead, they fit into the Greek tradition of constructing churches at sites well away from settlements as well as within communities. Whatever the reasons for their construction, the small extra-mural churches on Methana have profoundly influenced the ways in which later inhabitants have conceptualised, and reacted to, their landscapes, as will be indicated later in this chapter. Even the position at high altitude and away from the Saronic Gulf may not have been sufficient to keep the Paleokatundi settlement safe. In a story told by one informant, it was attacked, the inhabitants being tortured with their own boiling olive oil until they disclosed 58


GULF OF EPIDAURUS

SARONIC GULF

Medieval settlement

Later Ottoman and C19th settlement

Medieval and earlier Ottoman settlement

C19th settlement

3.4. Changing settlement on Methana from the medieval period onwards.

where their treasure was hidden. If there is any truth in the story, it is unclear when the episode could have taken place. One potential historical context might be the campaigns of the piratical Turkish admiral Barbarossa in 1537 and 1538. In 1537, he devastated the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf close to Methana, carrying off 5,000 prisoners. A visitor to the island the following year reported it deserted (Hasluck 1910–1, 162, fn. 13, fn. 14). 59


Given the proximity of Methana to Aegina, it is conceivable that Barbarossa’s operations in the Saronic Gulf included Methana. By comparison with the magnitude of the devastation of Aegina, the loss of a mere 200 or so people from Methana (Forbes 1997a, 105; Koukoulis 1997a, 99) might well have been considered beneath mention. It is also possible that Methana was depopulated at some time in the medieval period or later because virtually all localities on the peninsula have been given Albanian names, suggesting the loss of at least a majority of the original Greek-speaking population. Although all of this is speculation, the tradition of the attack on Paleokatundi, although historically questionable, is important. It is part of a wider topos: Methanites’ view of the past generally, and particularly that before Greece’s independence, was as a time of immense hardships and great physical insecurity. Several of the Cycladic islands seem to have been repopulated by Albanian speakers following episodes of devastation in the sixteenth century (Hasluck 1908–9; Hasluck 1910–1, 158–62), although they may have settled at least on the islands of Ios and Kea prior to these events (Hasluck 1908–9, 225; Bennet and Voutsaki 1991, 369). The establishment of an Albanian-speaking population on Methana might be envisaged as part of this pattern. Hasluck (1908–9, 227) suggested that these Albanian populations mostly originated as part of a conscious programme of colonisation operated by the Turkish government. Perhaps significantly, the population of Aegina in the early twentieth century was also partly Albanian-speaking. Whatever the actual fate of Paleokatundi, by the time of the Second Venetian Occupation of the Peloponnese (1685–1715), the peninsula’s only permanent settlement was located at a lower altitude. Although still on the side away from the Saronic Gulf, its position was now at the junction of the gentle slopes rising up from the sea and the much steeper slopes leading up into the interior of the peninsula (Forbes 2000c, 214). Twentieth-century Methanites stated that the location at this point on the landscape allowed villagers to escape into the relative security of the broken landscape of the interior should pirates be sighted, again highlighting the element of insecurity in twentiethcentury Methanites’ view of their history (Forbes 2000c, 214). The English traveller Dodwell, who visited the village of Methana in the first decade of the nineteenth century, corroborates this attitude. He 60


and his party were received with courteous hospitality from the priest, but not until he had ascertained that they were not Turks. Only then did he remove the fish he had been cooking for his evening meal from its concealment (Dodwell 1819, 281). All the evidence so far presented suggests that the landscape of Methana in the three centuries preceding the Greek War of Independence contained a single settlement1 . Although a mid-eighteenthcentury account (Chandler 1817, II, 248) provides an apparent exception, it seems to be the result of a misunderstanding. Later eighteenthand early nineteenth-century travellers’ accounts (Chandler 1817, II, 247; Dodwell 1819, II, 281; Leake 1830, 454–5) also agree that little cultivation was visible on the peninsula, except around and below the single village. Dodwell (1819, II, 281) remarks on the existence of terraces as an unusual feature in the Peloponnese, commenting that ‘[t]he rest of this mountainous promontory consists of sterile desolation, or of volcanic rock of a dark colour, which is occasionally variegated with shrubs and bushes’. Doubtless, there were pockets of cultivation at considerable distances from the village, especially for vines, probably associated with seasonally occupied huts, but the overwhelming impression received by travellers was of uncultivated desolation. Chandler (1817, II, 247) notes that the vegetation of his landing spot had been burned. This and Dodwell’s observation are significant, because the fertile volcanic soil of the peninsula readily supports luxuriant scrub vegetation. They also raise questions concerning twentieth-century Methanites’ accounts of villages being hidden by tall-growing scrub during the Turkish period. The lack of cultivation, in contrast to a later nineteenthcentury description of Methana as an intensively cultivated landscape (Miliarakis 1886, 207–10), also suggests a very limited population. FROM 1821 TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR

In this section, I begin by discussing issues surrounding the apparent establishment of several new villages on Methana during and after the Greek War of Independence. In particular, I consider how to balance conflicting evidence provided by local oral traditions on the one hand with that provided by largely exogenous sources, especially Western 61


travellers’ reports, on the other, using the village of Kypseli as a particular case study. The problem is far more than one of which sources are ‘correct’ and which are ‘incorrect’ or ‘misleading’. It touches important ethical and positional issues, especially within anthropology but also in archaeology, already aired in Chapter 2. Should we privilege our Western (and academic) viewpoint, which tends to favour written documents largely generated by outside agencies, or should we privilege local (oral) historical sources belonging to Methanites themselves? The answer in this case lies partly in mundane birth and census records generated by Methanites themselves and partly in understanding aspects of the kinship system. For the later part of the period under discussion here, oral sources, either gathered as field data or recorded in other publications (esp. Akritas 1957; Athanasiou 1998) are also a crucial element, not only as records of events or developments but also as descriptions of important elements in the Methana landscape, such as terraces, houses and cisterns. The Greek War of Independence against Turkish rule began in 1821. In the early years of the war, the fortunes of the Greeks fluctuated wildly, but after the decisive naval battle at Navarino in 1827, when the Turkish fleet was destroyed, the worst of the fighting was over. It would seem that the War of Independence was a major turning point in the history of settlement on Methana. A census of the population of the area of newly independent Greece compiled between 1829 and 1832 by the French Scientific Expedition to the Peloponnese presents a very different picture of Methana from the one painted earlier in this chapter. The census data, given as numbers of families, indicate that the long-established settlement of Methana had a population virtually unchanged from that of a Venetian census of 1700. But with the appearance of five new settlements, the peninsula’s population had more than doubled. These villages are all still part of the present-day settlement pattern, as indicated in fig. 3.5 (Forbes 1997a, 105–8). The most logical explanation for the sudden appearance of these new villages is that they were founded by refugees during the War of Independence, which erupted in 1821. Methana, with its peninsular situation and its elevated and broken terrain, has been a refuge landscape throughout its history (Forbes 2000c, 213). In addition, the 62


3.5. Present settlements on Methana.

French Philhellene Fabvier made it the base for his army in 1826, at a time when few parts of Greece were safe from the attacks of the Turks or their allies (St. Clair 1972, 291–2; Forbes 1997a, 107). The remains of his fortifications are still visible (see fig. 7.2) on the peninsula’s narrow isthmus, where his force guarded it from a land-based attack (Mee et al. 1997, 162–7). Despite the historical evidence, however, Methanites have no generally accepted oral historical record referring 63


to the establishment of several new villages which approximately doubled the population on the peninsula in less than a decade. Although a recent publication by Athanasiou (1998, 43), himself a Methanitis, seems tacitly to accept this evidence, almost all Methanites believe their villages were founded long before the Greek War of Independence. Thanks to the pioneering work of Jan Vansina (1965, 1985), anthropologists have become aware of the value of oral traditions as historical documents, particularly among non-literate peoples around the world. Although exact chronologies can almost never be achieved, it is evident that many peoples are able to record events at least as far back in time as the century and a half that had elapsed between 1830 and the period of initial fieldwork, and often much further into the past (Vansina 1985, 187–90). It has also been discovered that the corpus of intentional oral historical accounts found around the world contains a very limited range of topics but that tales of migrations are consistently represented (Vansina 1985, 119–20). A recurring feature of oral histories is that key events, especially large-scale public events such as wars and migrations, tend to continue to be remembered, even if uncoupled from linear time (Vansina 1965, 116; 1985, 24). In light of these observations, the lack of an oral tradition of a mass population movement to Methana raises important questions. Other peoples around the world have oral historical traditions dating back six generations – about 150 years – so why should such a momentous event be unremembered on Methana? There is no simple answer to this question, but a partial answer is that there is no ‘standard’ pan-Methana oral history of the establishment of the new villages. Instead, there are several competing stories, some more popular than others. Another part of the answer may lie in the nature of the Greek kinship system and in Methanites’ own ideas of history and time-depth – issues to be explored later in this work. A significant feature of the new settlements is that they were all located in positions not unlike that already occupied by the original village (fig. 3.6). These locations were away from the coast, but most gave their inhabitants ready access to the cultivable land running down to the sea. At the same time, they allowed easy flight to the relative 64


3.6. The village of Meghalo Khori: note steeper slopes above the village and gentler slopes below (Photo: Tobias Schorr).

safety of the rugged interior of the peninsula behind them (Clark 1988, 63). A number them were also invisible from the sea, being hidden behind volcanic features – locations also directly linked to fear of attack from the sea. The last time any Methanites abandoned their villages and fled to the interior was during the Second World War, when a small German naval force approached the peninsula. Fearing the worst, people grabbed their prized possessions and headed for the mountains (Forbes 2000c, 219). All the new settlements were also positioned within relatively easy reach of a pre-existing extra-mural church. For a deeply religious population, a place of worship was evidently an essential feature of a safe settlement location. The village of Kounoupitsa is a particularly instructive example. A church was already standing in a location not far from the village long before 1821. However, another church in the centre of the village bears an inscription dating its construction to 1824, when the War of Independence was still raging and its outcome 65


was far from certain (fig. 3.7). Had the village been well established prior to the outbreak of war, it seems unlikely that there would have been a large open space in the middle of a closely packed settlement in which to locate a church. Likewise it seems unlikely that long-term inhabitants would have chosen such an inauspicious moment to initiate construction (Forbes 1997a, 108; Koukoulis 1997b, 236–8). The French census of 1829–32 omits four other villages which exist at present and whose names appear in later nineteenth-century documents. There are hints that at least three of these may originally have been the locations of seasonal settlements. The population of the fourth, a community of a few houses named Meghalo Potami (‘Great River’), after a massive ravine close by, may have been included with the nearby original village of Methana, now renamed Meghalo Khori (Large Village) because in subsequent decades, fathers from Meghalo Potami registering the births of sons were listed as living in Meghalo Khori. Kaimeni Khora, meaning ‘Burnt Place’ or ‘Unfortunate Place’, is not listed in the French census: it is first mentioned in the register of male births (see Chapter 4) in 1846 (see fig. 3.2). The location, completely hidden from the sea, is adjacent to moderately good arable land by Methana standards, and a small basin in which vines were grown in the later twentieth century. It is the kind of place where one would expect there to have been a seasonal settlement prior to 1821, when there was a single settlement on Methana. Aldenhoven (1841, 420–1), who seems to derive his information from the same sources as the French Expedition (Forbes and Mee 1997, 2), mentions an archaeological site ‘near Kaymeno-Khori’. In this interesting linguistic slip, he has changed the name from ‘Burnt Place’ to ‘Burnt Village’ – an unlikely mistake if there was not a settlement of some kind there. Methanites claimed that the village was founded by refugees from the Aegean island of Psara, devastated during the War of Independence (e.g., Athanasiou 1998, 43). A Greek government document of 1828 refers to 2,000 refugees from Psara quartered on the island of Aegina, close to Methana (Khouliarakis 1973, 32). Athanasiou (1998, 83) reports a tradition on Methana that the ancestors of people with one particular surname – probably the commonest in the village in the later twentieth century – came from Psara. Archival sources from Psara 66


3.7. Inscribed stone on Kounoupitsa’s main church, dated 1824 (Source: Koukoulis 1997b).

dating to the 1820s indicate that there were several families with this surname on the island at that time (e.g., Sphyroeras 1974, 18, 81, 464, 467, 482). The 1879 census indicates that almost half the inhabitants of Kaimeni Khora shared this surname, which was entirely restricted to this small village. The census and male birth records indicate that these eight households derived from a group of five or six men with that surname. The dates of birth of their offspring range from 1821 to 1843, which would be consistent with a group of relatively young men, presumably brothers or cousins (or both) and their families fleeing the consequences of the War of Independence. The story as presented to me claimed that all the inhabitants of the village came from Psara, but I was unable to identify any of the other Kaimeni Khora surnames in the published Psara archives. Furthermore, five out of six of these other surnames can be found in other villages on the peninsula: one appears in the [mitroo arrenon – register of male births] dating to 1809, clearly indicating that the family did not come from Psara. Four more surnames are more commonly found in neighbouring villages, suggesting that Kaimeni Khora families with those names originated in other villages 67


on Methana. Thus, it would seem that only a portion of the inhabitants of the village originated as refugees from Psara. The village of Dhritseika is also missing from the French census. The name suggests that it was on land originally owned by members of a lineage with the surname Dhritsos, Dhritsas, or Dhridzas – all three variants appear in nineteenth-century documents. In Greece, the ending in -eika is characteristic of the names of small seasonal settlements associated with a particular family. There is no clear evidence to indicate when Dhritseika came into being as a seasonal settlement, nor when it became a permanent settlement: even by 1879, it had only 11 families. The last of these ‘missing’ villages, Kypseli, gives us a somewhat clearer idea of the social dynamics of how some of the other villages were settled. The village’s location is close to areas highly suited for growing vines. The cluster of gardens in the centre of the village still bears a place-name in Albanian indicating vines. Not far distant is a larger area which has traditionally been highly prized for its vines, in which there are the remains of numerous small, crudely built shelters. The area’s location a few minutes’ walk from the village means that they would have been unnecessary as seasonal residences for the inhabitants of Kypseli or the adjacent village of Aghii Theodhori. The best interpretation is that the shelters, although undatable, were constructed to be occupied seasonally in the period prior to the War of Independence, before the village existed, when farmers would have come from the other side of the peninsula to tend their vines. There was no unanimity on when Kypseli was initially settled, although the consensus placed it during the Turkish occupation. The house considered to have been the oldest in the village was stated by one occupant to be 400 years old, although support for this date was not forthcoming. The village at the time of its founding was said to have consisted of a small collection of houses, dispersed along a path traversing a hillside and hidden in thickets of trees so as to be invisible to raiders out at sea. Informants could not generally place the origins of the earliest occupants with any accuracy. Significantly, though, their surnames were almost entirely restricted to the village, even in the later twentieth century. The lack of the same surnames in other 68


3.8. Kypseli’s original church: the western (left-hand) end was probably added to an older church in the 1840s (Source: Koukoulis 1997b).

villages suggests that Kypseli was founded primarily by families from beyond Methana. Notwithstanding Methanites’ beliefs, historical records indicate a post-Revolution foundation. Two dates carved on Kypseli’s original main church (fig. 3.8) indicate that it was built, or else a pre-existing church was refurbished and extended, in 1848 (Koukoulis 1997b, 246– 7). The village is first mentioned in the register of male births in the following year – 1849 – when Gheorghios Dharemas registered the birth of a son. The following year, 1850, Andonios Dharemas registered his son: his residence is described as Koliani, a small seasonally occupied house-cluster not far from one of the peninsula’s harbours – the only such reference in more than 1,800 entries in the register to the end of 1878. Two more boys were born in Kypseli the following year. Within four years of the first mention of Kypseli, each of the five surname 69


groups which still made up the bulk of the late-twentieth-century village community had registered a son. It is evident that for three of these surname groups, several registering fathers shared the same surname. In 1852, Vasilios Maltezos registered his son Emmanouil. His residence is listed simply as ‘Methana’, although at this stage there was no village with that name: the village which originally bore the name had been renamed Meghalo Khori. A Vasilios Maltezos is also recorded registering a son Emmanouil in Kyspeli in the same year, suggesting that the same household had moved to the village very shortly after the original registration. References to ‘Methana’ occur sporadically in the register of male births until the mid-1850s, but there is never more than one son registered to families so listed. The best way to interpret these occurrences, as also the single reference to a seasonal settlement, is that they represent families in temporary accommodation who had newly arrived on the peninsula. Athanasiou (1998, 85) states that the surname associated with the final entry which lists ‘Methana’ as a residence belongs to late arrivals on Methana from Argos. The documentary and inscriptional sources therefore indicate that Kypseli was founded in the later part of the 1840s. The construction or major refurbishment of its church presumably represented one of the first acts of those who settled there, in view of the registration of the first birth the following year. The construction of a church at such an early stage in the village’s establishment mirrors the construction of the church in the centre of Kounoupitsa. Most Methanites, however, placed considerable emphasis on the fact that their villages already existed much earlier, during the Turkish period. In researching the question of the origins of Kypseli, I have therefore faced a dilemma which has considerable ramifications for the self-esteem of the inhabitants themselves: should I believe the evidence of the written documents, or should I believe people’s own oral histories? The natural tendency of most academics is to prefer ‘hard’ evidence: tangible documents, whether written sources or items of material culture. Methanites’ views of the origins of their settlements depended on oral history: the transmission of generally anecdotal material through the generations without leaving a visible trace for scholars to verify. 70


Oral accounts are also necessarily reworked and transformed as one generation passes them to another (Vansina 1965, 19–46; Vansina 1985, 13–27). They are nevertheless genuine ethnographic data. In ethnographic terms, they can be considered to have a claim to be of greater importance than the outside observer’s own views. Furthermore, the data provided by the register of male births are not a wholly unimpeachable source. Internal evidence in the documents themselves indicates that those I studied were compiled from more than one original list, probably in association with the 1879 national census. They are also clearly incomplete prior to 1844: although the first entry was dated 1809, the next two dated to 1829, with further entries in 1831, 1834, 1838, 1839 and 1840. Fortunately, other oral historical statements tend to support the ‘hard’ evidence that there was no permanently occupied village on the site of Kypseli around 1830 and, more generally, that settlements on Methana mostly post-date 1821. During my first fieldwork, a man born at the end of the nineteenth century told a story which agreed in outline with that derived from historical documents. He claimed that Methana had been uninhabited before the War of Independence. When settlers arrived after the outbreak of the war, they found churches already there with tiles unlike modern ones (many are actually of Byzantine date; Koukoulis 1997b). But because the settlers did not have any tiles themselves, they built their house roofs of mud, on juniper poles cut from the hillsides. The brief statements of the alternative story remained unheeded in my field notes for many years. My elderly informant was an incorrigible teller of long, convoluted stories, sometimes scrambling together elements of well-known biblical stories with those from ancient Greece or retelling well-worn stories of the more recent Greek past, such as the fate of the women of Soulli2 . I had therefore written him off as an unreliable verbal rambler. Following Koukoulis’ (1997b) research on Methana churches and my own researches into archival sources, however, his story gained credibility. This issue is further discussed in Chapter 7. In a nutshell, however, although some of the details of his story are almost certainly incorrect, the crucial facts relating directly to Methana support the ‘hard’ evidence version of Methana’s settlement. For example, a few 71


of the kinds of mud-roofed houses described in the story could still be seen in several villages at that point (Clarke3 2000a, 110–12). The oral sources involved in this man’s story were presumably his grandfather, identifiable as a father first registering a son in 1851, only two years after the first birth registered in Kypseli, and his father, whose birth was registered in 1867. This informant also provided further tangential evidence that the village was founded only in the late 1840s. During a conversation, he indicated an enormous stone-pile on the edge of land which he owned, right on the margin of the village: it was made by his grandfather while clearing stones from gently sloping land to make fields here. This highly desirable land, in wide terraces and immediately adjacent to the village, would almost certainly have been cleared at the beginning of the village’s existence. Similarly, in the early 1970s, a man in his fifties stated that his grandmother could remember when the village was merely a cluster of ten houses. Furthermore, although the house reputed to be the oldest in the village was claimed to be 400 years old, the old lady who lived in it in the 1970s linked herself historically back only to the mother-in-law of her own mother-in-law. This would date back to much the same timeframe as the grandfather of the elderly storyteller in the previous paragraphs. In Chapters 7 and 8, I indicate that the ‘400 years’ claim for an old house seems to be a formulaic phrase to describe a house considered very old. In its lack of ‘real’ accuracy, it is not unlike the phrase ‘from before the time of Christ’, used by Methanites on occasions to describe events or structures dating to a few centuries ago (see Chapter 7). Other historical records also put the standard oral version of the village being hidden in high vegetation into a different perspective. Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century visitors to Methana commented on the lack of vegetation. In reality, thick vegetation was unnecessary for hiding Kypseli from the sight of raiders at sea because it was one of several very effectively hidden behind a volcanic hill. Indeed, the description of Turkish period houses hidden by vegetation can be found elsewhere in Greece (e.g., Hahn 1996, 435, 443, 445). It may well be another facet of the topos noted earlier: the past as a time of troubles and great insecurity. Methanites’ descriptions of the raiders themselves also emphasised the differences between present and 72


past. They were said to have hidden away during the daylight hours, only emerging at night to look for lights in houses, thus identifying places to raid. Their description as creatures of the night, shunning the day, and preying on ordinary people gave them a fairy-tale quality, making them virtually identical with the Kallikandzari, half-animal, half-human creatures in Greek Orthodox belief, representing forces of anomie during the liminal twelve-day period after Christmas (see Chapter 7). Their raider counterparts likewise represented the forces of anomie in the historically dark days before the new era ushered in by the War of Independence (Forbes 2000c, 219–20). The differences between the popular local view of Kypseli’s founding and the evidence for post–War of Independence settlement can most satisfactorily be explained by focusing on the evidence, noted earlier, for abandoned temporarily occupied shelters in a vineyard area some ten minutes’ walk from the present village. Although undatable, they seem to indicate that the location of Kypseli was the focus of temporary settlement associated with vine cultivation. There is a strong possibility that immigrants to Methana were allocated, or took over, a location for a village which already had a history of seasonal occupation associated with viticulture. The history of other villages, especially Kounoupitsa, where a church was built at the height of a brutal war, indicates that a place of worship was considered an essential element for a new village. It seems likely, therefore, that the building or major rebuilding of Kypseli’s church was directly associated with the founding of the village. The registration of the first birth a year later seems more than mere coincidence. In later chapters, I describe Methanites’ elastic concept of time and their tendency to assume a greater time-depth than warranted, especially beyond the grandparental generation. This phenomenon helps explain Methanites’ preference for a greater antiquity for the village than the date suggested by the ‘hard’ evidence. The reason for the village’s establishment some twenty years after the end of hostilities is unclear. The worst of the disruptions caused by the War of Independence would have been over (Frangakis and Wagstaff 1987, 441). The arrival of sufficient numbers of ‘refugees’ to found a village at this time may be linked to a relatively high level of population fluidity and residential flexibility in rural populations from 73


the medieval period through to the nineteenth century (Forbes 2007; see also Sutton 2000). The social dynamics of the founding of the village seem comparable to the situation already outlined for Kaimeni Khora. Three of Kypseli’s surname groups seem to have originated as groups of relatives. Groups of co-operating families, recruited primarily within the male line, are a recurrent feature of traditional social organisation in the Balkans. The classic study is that of Campbell (1964) among the pastoral Sarakatsani. However, as Koster (1977, 77) points out, kin-based ‘companies’ are widely used by other herding groups in other parts of Greece. Koster (1976, 20) also documents the formation (or re-formation) of a temporary patrilineally organised company when short-term exigencies demanded it. Such multifamily units are also a feature documented historically among Slavic- and Albanian-speaking groups, pastoralist and agriculturalist, in southeastern Europe (Hammel 1972; Forbes 1982, 464–7). Later twentieth-century Methanites considered that ties of kinship dominated whole neighbourhoods of villages because succeeding generations of children stayed in the village, building new houses close to their parental homes. This is clearly correct up to a point, but the examples of Kaimeni Khora and Kypseli indicate that a significant number of the refugees who established new settlements came as groups of closely related kin. Thus, in the ten years following the first birth to be registered in Kypseli, three separate fathers with the surname Dharemas and five fathers with the surname Maltezos or Maltezou registered sons. Three fathers with the surname Pavlou or Pavlis also registered sons in the first ten years after 1849, one in Kypseli, the others in separate villages elsewhere on the peninsula. For the other two villages, the 1879 census lists only a single family in each. Although the 1879 census records for Kypseli have not so far been found, five separate Kypseli fathers with the surname Pavlis registered sons in the four years preceding 1879. Three of them seem to have been brothers, each first appearing in the records registering a son called Ioannis, the registrations occurring in quick succession between 1867 and 1872. Because of the tradition of naming first sons after their paternal grandfather 74


(see Chapter 5), the inference must be that these first sons were all named after the same paternal grandfather. A Ioannis Pavlis from Kypseli registered a son in 1852, only three years after the village first appears in the records. The fact that he did not appear again in the register might mean that he only had one son. But it is perhaps more likely that he also had older sons, born elsewhere, who could well be the three fathers registering first sons called Ioannis fifteen to twenty years after his register entry. Two other fathers with the same surname registered first sons who were not called Ioannis. There is, therefore, a strong possibility that these two other fathers were more distantly related. If so, it would indicate that more than one family with the surname Pavlis was among the initial settlers in Kypseli. Their failure to appear in the register in the early years could simply indicate that their family or families did not produce sons after they arrived on Methana. Houses in those early days were very basic, constructed entirely of locally available materials, with a single room for living accommodation (Clark 1995, 514–15). A few remained in the 1970s. Their walls were built of roughly squared blocks, care being taken only over the quoins. Each course was bedded on mud, with smaller stone chippings filling larger gaps between stones. Mud roofs were laid on brushwood held up by juniper poles supported on beams generally consisting of unworked tree trunks (fig. 3.9). The clay of the roofs would crack as it dried out during the summer. With the arrival of the autumn rains, the clay would soften, and a heavy stone roller was often used to roll out the clay, closing the cracks and making the roof watertight (Clark 1995, 515). Most houses were built with their long axes aligned up and down a slope, the steepness of the slope often allowing a storage area under a suspended floor at the downhill end. Originally, these floors were also constructed with mud in the same way as house roofs, although those I saw in the 1970s were all boarded. Besides houses and churches, another type of structure in the landscape had considerable historical significance for Methanites. They said that in the old days they kept most of their food in small hidden storehouses (ambaria) on the mountainsides around the village (fig. 7.5), maintaining only enough for their immediate needs in their dwellings 75


because the Turks would come to take olive oil and wheat. Methanites quite frequently referred to them and to the reasons for their existence, but none could remember them in use. Nor is there any evidence of a Turkish period date – those close to Kypseli were presumably contemporary with the founding of the village. The historical veracity of the attacks on Methana, too, is debatable. Dodwell, visiting the peninsula less than two decades before the outbreak of the War of Independence, noted that the inhabitants of the village at the landward end of the Methana isthmus claimed never to have been troubled by Turks. In corroboration, he describes large amounts of food kept in their houses in a way seldom seen elsewhere in Greece at the time (Dodwell 1819, II, 284). Ambaria, therefore, stand as monuments to the insecurity and hardships of the past (see Chapter 7). Fear of attack and removal of food supplies must have been very real for Methanites to have built such extra-mural stores. Yet, the recurrent stories of attacks on villages to steal food do not seem to be borne out by the historical evidence (Forbes 2000c, 220). Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the population of Methana grew, but it seems likely that it did so almost exclusively from natural increase. Any in-migration is unlikely to have had a significant effect on the peninsula’s population growth (Forbes 1997 109–11), but there were apparently occasional arrivals. The 1879 census lists a single man simply called Ioannis, without any surname. Further comments note that he was a rope-maker ‘from Turkey’. He is also noted as the only Greek speaker in his community, in which everyone else spoke Albanian. Rapid population increase on Methana created a high demand for land. Travellers’ descriptions of Methana in the Turkish period indicate the lack of cultivation visible over much of the peninsula, except for the area close to its only settlement, the rest being described as desolate (Chandler 1817, II, 247–8; Dodwell 1819, II, 281; Leake 1830, II, 454– 5). By the late nineteenth century, the situation had changed dramatically. A geography of the eastern Peloponnese emphasises Methana’s extensive agricultural land base and the intensity with which it was cultivated, in stark contrast to the neighbouring Plain of Trizin, famed in antiquity for its fertility (Miliarakis 1886, 195, 207, 209–10). 76


3.9. Above: exterior view of a mud-roofed house. Below: interior view of a mud roof (Source for both: Clarke 2000a).

77


Miliarakis’ description makes it clear that in the earlier 1880s, large areas of the steeper slopes remained unterraced, whereas at the end of that century, a commentary on the ancient writer Pausanias, who described Methana in antiquity, notes the existence of ‘patches of ground, supported by terraces, high up on the mountain sides’ of Methana (Frazer 1898, 287). Terrace construction continued into the twentieth century: there are currently few parts of the peninsula, even on the very steepest slopes, which do not have traces of cultivation terraces on them, many now abandoned and covered in scrub. Thus, much of Methana’s seemingly age-old terraced landscape was actually produced in less than a century. Although limited areas had evidently been cultivated for centuries, intensive terrace-building started in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and had reached its final extent approximately 100 years ago. Although the normal tradition in most parts of mainland Greece is for uncultivated land to belong to the community as a whole, on Methana all uncultivated hillsides were owned by individuals. Methanites said that in the old days, during slack periods in the agricultural year, families with several boys would build terraces in areas of uncultivated hillside which they owned. Even the introduction of high explosives in the twentieth century did little to improve the slow, backbreaking work in which human energy and the use of levers and other hand tools were the primary resources. Such was the pressure of the population on land that some of the terraces were too small to plough: they could be cultivated only with hand tools. A number of Methanites in the later twentieth century recognised that their landscape was unusual in comparison with other areas of Greece for the intensity with which it had been terraced. The reason was explained in a story. In the time of the Turkish occupation, because of a shortage of land, they did not have enough bread, even though people were cultivating high up on the mountainsides. So a local official was sent to the Turkish authorities to ask for more land. The reply was that they could not have more land: instead they should kill half the population. The official returned, saying because he could not kill half the population, Methanites must cultivate up to the very last peak on the peninsula. Like the origins of the villages, this explanation definitively places the intensive terracing of 78


Methana back in the hazy past of the evils of the Turkish period. Once again, however, the independent evidence of outside observers makes it plain that there was little to be seen prior to the War of Independence and that it was primarily the product of the nineteenth century. The extensive cultivation of olives noted by Miliarakis (1886, 209– 10) also seems to have been the result of nineteenth-century activity. One method of increasing families’ holdings of olives was to dig up wild olive trees in uncultivated areas and plant them on cultivated land, watering them repeatedly over the dry summers for several years, then grafting them with domesticated olives. An alternative and less laborious method was to clear an area of hillside already owned by the family, leaving any wild olive trees in place. Domesticated olives were then grafted onto the wild trees. Terraces would often be constructed around the trees once the domesticated olives became productive. Some of the trees thus produced were in seemingly impossible places, where no soil could be seen, such as in lava flows, which were simply a massive jumble of boulders, with occasional scrubby bushes growing out of what looked like bare rock. Their yields, however, were always poor. That Methanites had sought to graft domesticated olives onto such trees indicates the pressure on land in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. In the 1970s, these trees were in the process of being abandoned. Suckers produced by the original wild rootstock from below the graft were no longer removed, so the domesticated part of the tree gradually atrophied and died, leaving a series of wild olive bushes. The build-up of families’ agricultural resources not only ensured more food for them to eat but also increased the agricultural resources each son could expect to inherit. Families with several girls frequently kept substantial numbers of sheep or goats because tending these animals was traditionally considered primarily women’s work (Forbes 1982, 298–302). Children, especially girls, were often expected to take their families’ animals out and tend them while they grazed to ensure they did not stray onto prohibited areas. Sometimes they would gather in groups with their families’ animals, leaving them to graze together while they played various games. Frequently, the animals would become the girls’ dowries when they got married. 79


Despite continued extension of terraces, by the later nineteenth century, there was a serious shortage of land. The 1879 census documents note a number of younger family members, primarily teenagers of both sexes, working away from home as servants. The figure of 9 percent of those born on Methana resident elsewhere in the 1880s (Miliarakis 1886, 205) is much smaller than that for the island of Ydhra (more than 40 percent) further around the coast, whose population plummeted throughout the mid to late nineteenth century, but it is significantly higher than that of the far less densely populated mainland opposite Methana, which had only 3 percent of its population resident elsewhere (Miliarakis 1886, 179, 210). According to oral histories, some households found themselves with too small a land base to support them. In these circumstances, a number of unmarried men found work elsewhere. Sometimes whole families sold their possessions on Methana and started afresh. Most families who left in the later nineteenth or earlier twentieth centuries went to Athens or its port, Piraeus, which were expanding very rapidly at this time. A number bought farmland on the outskirts of Athens (Clark 1988, 71). By the early twentieth century, there were so many Methana expatriates that in 1906 they formed their own regional association (Athanasiou 1998, 124) – a tradition common to expatriates from many parts of Greece (e.g., Sutton 1991, 393–4). America was an alternative destination for a number of young men (Clark 1988, 71–2). Some went to work on the Panama Canal. Other Methanites rented land on the Plain of Trizin, some four to six hours’ walk from their villages, at this time often staying several days in the open while working on their land. Some managed to buy land there, because the underexploited state of the area meant that it was cheap, partly because of the malaria which was endemic there until after World War II. Several Methanites had stone kalivia built on their plains property so that they could stay under cover during their spells of work there (Clark 1995, 518). One elderly informant in the 1970s described the inhabitants of villages on the edge of the plain as being yellow from malaria by August in the years before World War II. Although Methanites working their land there for short periods were less affected by it, they ascribed examples of serious illness, including miscarriages, to it. 80


The 1879 census lists several households temporarily resident on the Plain of Trizin. Most of the land was cultivated in cereals, but several households planted vines there. Boats were hired to transport the produce back to the village. In the 1970s, the remains of a grapepressing floor were still visible on the edge of the sea below one of Methana’s villages. The grapes were transported in baskets and then pressed there, the juice being transported up to the village in goatskins (touloumia) on pack animals. The pressing of the grapes on the seashore substantially reduced the number of journeys up the steep mule tracks to the village, but there was an ever-present risk of the skins splitting and the precious juice being lost. Traditionally, most Methana households were highly self-sufficient, supporting themselves by subsistence agriculture. A limited amount of cash was also essential, however, but was much harder for most households to obtain. Comments made by elderly people in the 1970s indicated that prices for olive oil in the past were high, but the vagaries of olive fruiting meant that a surplus for sale could not be guaranteed. Farmers were also heavily dependent on merchants coming by boat to buy oil. Transportation of oil to boats was in large touloumia loaded onto mules or donkeys. The financial loss from damage to a skin was much greater for oil than for grape juice. Miliarakis (1886, 207) refers to ‘the productive type of domesticated pear known in the trade by the name of “Methana pear” . . .’ indicating another source of income. Athens, and its port, Piraeus, were among the fastest-growing cities in Europe in the later nineteenth century, and demand for agricultural produce grew with it (Forbes 1993, 221– 2; Kousoulas 1974, 67, 105). The pears mentioned were very hard and, by modern standards, almost inedible but kept for a long time without deteriorating after picking. Miliarakis’ description also notes that Methana was producing a significant quantity of lemons (Miliarakis 1886, 209). Their cultivation was dependent on irrigation, carried out on a small scale from shallow wells close to the coast by means of a swipe, a simple counterweighted lever device (see fig. 7.3), and poured into shallow channels which ran between the trees. Like the pears, lemons were sold to the owners of coasting vessels who would take them to be marketed in Piraeus. Also like the ‘Methana’ pears, lemons would keep for considerable periods without deterioration of quality. 81


Both kinds of fruit were therefore well suited for transportation in purely sail-powered vessels, which might take several days to reach port even within the Saronic Gulf if the winds were contrary. The most significant development on Methana in the later nineteenth century was the establishment, shortly after 1870, of a spa exploiting the sulphurous hot springs on the east coast of the peninsula. The facility grew rapidly from an initial situation with no permanent buildings to accommodate bathers and with baths taken in simple hollows into which the waters flowed directly from the springs. By 1907, a second mineral spring further along the shore was being exploited. The settlement which had grown up around the springs now had bathhouses and accommodation for visitors and had the fourth largest population on the peninsula. Although officially named Methana, the settlement was normally called Loutra (‘the Baths’) by Methanites. In recognition of its importance, it was also the administrative centre of the peninsula during the summer months. During the other six months of the year, that role was taken by the village of Kounoupitsa, on the northern side of Methana (Athanasiou 1998, 55–6; Forbes 1997a, 112). Some of the income from sales of produce or tourism went to improving Methanites’ standards of living. The lack of springs and the tedious, time-consuming trip from villages to wells close to the coast for brackish water encouraged villagers at an early stage to construct large cisterns close to their villages to trap rainwater. The heads of these cisterns often bear dates (see fig. 7.4): the earliest seem to have been constructed not long after the middle of the nineteenth century. At much the same time, villagers started to build improved two-storey houses, employing specialist masons and using imported tiles and timber for pitched roofs, and floors constructed with boards rather than mud. Leaks were an ever-present problem with mud roofs, especially in the autumn rains, because the clay cracked in the process of drying out over the summer: use of tiles on pitched roofs eliminated the problem. The use of imported, longer lengths of timber also allowed wider, more spacious houses, but they remained simple, two-room affairs in which household members cooked, ate, entertained, and slept (Clarke 2000a, 112–13). 82


THE INTERWAR YEARS

The time spans for this and the following section were firmly within the range of recall for Methanites during the first period of fieldwork in the earlier 1970s. For this reason, much of the information is derived from oral sources, mainly recorded by myself and Clark/Clarke (as presented in, e.g., Clark 1988; Clarke 2000a, 2000b), but also as reported to Akritas (1957) and by Athanasiou (1998). During the years 1912–22, Greece was involved in a series of wars, including World War I. Although some thirty young men from Methana lost their lives in military actions (Athanasiou 1998, 109–10), the war had less general effect on Methanites’ lives than World War II. In 1922, however, the government requisitioned the tourist accommodation in the spa town for the temporary settlement of some 2,000 refugees from Asia Minor. Although their presence doubtless had a substantial effect, it was short-lived. By 1927, almost all had left again: only three families of Asia Minor refugees remained permanently on Methana (Athanasiou 1998, 110–11). The arrival of Asia Minor refugees in Greece had a lasting effect on Methanites’ lives in another way. According to Methanites, many refugee families brought considerable amounts of wealth with them (see, e.g., Athanasiou 1998, 110). Some invested their money in motorised coasting vessels (venzines) rather than the sail-powered vessels which had previously been standard. Their introduction in the Saronic Gulf after the First World War provided much more reliable communications between Methana and the port of Piraeus, and waits of several days for favourable winds to take agricultural produce to the capital in sail-powered vessels were no longer necessary. The venzines thus allowed Methanites to tap into the high demand for agricultural produce in the nation’s capital, which had grown substantially as a result of the influx of the Asia Minor refugees. The profitability of lemons had fallen since the late nineteenth century as a result of competition from other areas, but the advent of reliable transport links to Piraeus meant that Methanites could now market more perishable crops. They therefore grubbed up their lemon trees and cultivated cucumbers on their irrigated land. Compared with 83


the wide plains of central and northern Greece, the amount of irrigable land was severely limited. But Methana’s southerly position and close proximity to the capital resulted in an early start to the growing season for summer plants, low transport costs, and premium prices for early and fresh produce in comparison with more distant locations. Demand for irrigated produce was so high that some Methanites sank wells in areas further away from the coast. These were inevitably deeper than the older ones, some being as much as 20 metres deep. Although these were major investments, farmers themselves generally did much of the work, mostly by dint of hard physical labour, although explosives were also used on occasions. The deeper wells depended on a much more sophisticated mechanism than a simple wooden swipe. Water was brought to the surface in an endless chain of buckets constructed in steel, attached via steel gears to a horizontal pole driven round and round by a donkey or mule. Although these were substantial capital investments, much larger areas could be irrigated than under the older system, in turn demanding a commensurate increase in the intensive work of irrigation, weeding, and picking the produce. However, the agricultural year accommodated the new regime well because the summer months after the harvest were relatively slack. Because the boats collecting the produce could draw close to the shore below the fields, transporting produce to boats was generally a straightforward matter (Forbes 1997, 114). The planting of fig trees was another major capital investment made during the interwar years. The trees were planted mainly on unirrigable land relatively close to the sea to increase the earliness of fresh figs sent to Athens. The earliest figs usually coincided with a meatless period in the diet according to the Greek Orthodox religious calendar, during the first fifteen days in August: a desire to enliven the meatless diet increased the demand for fresh figs. Once again, access to reliable transportation of the highly perishable product was an essential element in this development, as was the labour-intensive pattern of picking the fruit every day or two at an otherwise slack period in the agricultural calendar (Forbes 1997, 114). Although Methanites as a whole significantly increased cash crop production, demand for good-quality land on which to grow cereals 84


remained high. Land prices on the nearby Plain of Trizin continued to be low because of malaria, but the soil was water-retentive and highly fertile. More Methanites bought land there during this period, primarily for cereals, though some established vineyards. As in the period before the First World War, the produce of this land was frequently transported back to Methana by boat. Also as before, Methanites with land there were affected by malaria, but the need for high-quality land over-rode the health risks (Forbes 1997, 114). The introduction of chemical fertilizers in the 1930s was a significant development. Most households owned some sheep and goats, but their numbers were generally low, and limited supplies of manure tended to be targeted on vines or irrigated land rather than cereal land. Methanites in the late twentieth century said that prior to the use of fertilizer, a sixfold return on cereal seed was considered very high, whereas with fertilizer they expected closer to a tenfold yield. Fertilizer use encouraged rapid development of cereals in their earlier growth stages, leading to higher yields in years when spring rainfalls necessary for the development of the seed failed partially or completely. Higher yields meant less land under cultivation for cereals, so some families started to abandon their least productive terraces. The most important feature for many Methanites during the interwar years, however, was the continued growth and development of Loutra. The advent of the venzina undoubtedly played a part, but Methana’s spa was also a port of call for coastal passenger steamers. Although there were no docking facilities at the beginning of this period, and passengers and baggage had to be transferred to shore in small boats, the spa boomed in the interwar years (Athanasiou 1998, 123; Forbes 1997a, 113). By the end of the interwar period, Loutra was by far the largest community on Methana: the permanent population rose by some 3.5 times, and a wide range of accommodation for visitors was built. Docking facilities for steamers were constructed in 1936 (Athanasiou 1998, 123). Because they did not exist elsewhere on the peninsula, Methanites’ contact with the outside world was now primarily via Loutra rather than from several small unimproved anchorages around the coastline. Many villages barely maintained their populations or lost them to a rapidly growing Loutra. Consequently, Loutra became the location of an increasing number of specialist 85


services on which the inhabitants of other villages depended (Forbes 1997a, 113). The development of the spa affected villages in other ways. Farmers with land close to the shore near the hot springs or with enough capital to buy a plot of land nearby built more accommodation. Much of it was, by modern standards, distinctly primitive – often merely a row of three or four separate rooms, each frequently lived in by a whole family of visitors, with a simple paved area in front. Walls were constructed from local volcanic rock, reducing costs, even though lime, roof timbers and tiles all had to be purchased. During the summer months, therefore, farmers became involved in the tourist trade, which tended to provide a more reliable cash income than dependence on the vagaries of the market for agricultural produce (Forbes 1997a, 113). The timing of the functioning of the spa in the summer months fitted well with agricultural activities. From the end of the threshing in July until the end of September is a period of relative inactivity under traditional Mediterranean agriculture regimes. People could therefore run the accommodation they built for summer visitors while still farming during the rest of the year. Methanites who did not have land close to the spa benefited in other ways, working in the spa as bath attendants, waiters in restaurants and so forth (Forbes 1997a, 113–14). Farmers sold produce to the visitors, many of whom tended to cook their own food on cooking facilities provided in some of the accommodation. Goats would be driven to the spa daily, being milked on demand for visitors. Other farmers provided eggs, chickens, and other foods. Demand for fresh vegetables and fruit started to affect agriculture. Farmers grew large numbers of melons without irrigation on areas of water-retentive land, for sale in the spa, transporting them in baskets on pack animals (Forbes 1997, 113). Because sales of agricultural produce were directly in the hands of the producers, farmers were able to maximise their profits on these generally small-scale enterprises. At this time, travel in Greece was restricted by primitive transportation links, and medicine was relatively primitive. Methana’s easy accessibility to transportation links and its proximity to the country’s largest population centre was thus a major advantage. Because much of Greece’s population was still engaged in subsistence or semi-subsistence 86


agriculture, Loutra was a resort for the wealthier minority. As it developed, it became more than a place where people came for cures to aches and pains: in the interwar years, it truly developed as a centre for vacationing in its own right. A number of substantial Western-style hotels were built, and a casino apparently also doubled as a restaurant and a venue for theatrical performances (Athanasiou 1998, 122). It was not uncommon for the king of Greece to visit in his yacht during the height of the season. Prior to the development of Loutra, opportunities for Methanites from different villages to congregate were limited to one or two days in the year when they attended the annual liturgies at extra-mural churches of major significance, particularly Aghios Gheorghios. At that time, these otherwise empty spaces in the landscape became the only central places on Methana for just one day in the year (see Chapter 9). Summer tourism allowed increased opportunities for contact between the inhabitants of the different villages on a regular basis because many villagers visited Loutra, either for a day trip to sell produce or for employment during the season. The resort thus began to compete with liturgies at isolated churches as a focal point for a pan-peninsular identity. Although older Methanites regularly described the hardships of making a living by agriculture during the interwar years, in reality they seem to have been relatively well off in comparison with those in many parts of Greece. Most families met almost all their immediate needs from the produce of their land, via the classic combination of limited wants and high levels of work. The basic subsistence crops of cereals, olive oil and wine were supplemented by a variety of more minor crops, including a range of legumes and vegetables, supplemented by the gathering of wild greens, which accompanied the basic staple of bread. Everyday textiles were made from home-grown cotton and flax, with wool and goat hair (the latter for sleeping mats, saddlebags, waterproof capes, and so forth) being provided by families’ sheep and goats. Their domestic animals also provided milk and cheese, and chickens provided eggs and occasionally supplemented the meagre meat content of the diet. Cash seems always to have been in short supply, but many families had access to capital when the need arose. Anecdotal evidence suggests 87


that a number of families had difficulties finding suitable opportunities for investing cash. To this end, some families made speculative purchases of poor-quality agricultural land in places such as the islands of Poros and Aegina, or in house-plots in the capital, which could be used for dowries for daughters or granddaughters, or sold if necessary (Forbes 1997a, 114). THE SECOND WORLD WAR ONWARDS

The Second World War was a period of hardship for Methanites. The very high census figures for 1940 suggest that many people who had resided elsewhere returned when war seemed imminent, putting increased pressure on resources at an already difficult time. At the beginning of the war, some households’ mules were requisitioned for use as pack animals on the Albanian front, leaving them unable to plough their land. Additionally, supplies of the chemical fertilizers on which families had come to depend were disrupted. Adverse weather conditions compounded the other problems, resulting in exceptionally poor harvests. And, with the onset of war, it was almost impossible to buy wheat or barley because those who had surplus refused to sell. The subsequent German invasion of Greece only exacerbated matters. Athanasiou (1998, 114–17) does not give exact numbers of Methanites killed in action during World War II. After the German invasion, a number Methanites joined the communist forces: some were never heard of again. In other cases, families were presumably unwilling to talk about people who were considered black sheep. For many Methanites, however, the main memory of the Second World War years was of hunger. The people who suffered worst tended to be those who had depended most heavily on tourism. Some people admitted having stolen whatever food they could as children and eating wild fruits to reduce their hunger. Doubtless, some adults did the same. Many people ate animal fodder – barley, vetch and carob pods. Vetch had to be boiled in several changes of water to make it edible. Carob pods, normally used for animal fodder in former times, caused extreme thirst for the eater. Although it was stated that no one died as a direct result of famine, some inhabitants of at least one village only survived because close marriage ties with another 88


village which had better cereal land ensured support during these years. A German force briefly landed on Methana to improve the harbour facilities at the small bay by the church of Aghios Gheorghios. One or two informants described families who saw the approaching ships and fearing the worst, heading for the interior of the peninsula, taking their large copper cooking pans (kazania) and abandoning their houses, as in previous centuries (Forbes 2000c, 219). The Germans forced some Methanites to work on the harbour construction. They are said to have treated the workforce roughly, but Methanites faced worse from their own countrymen. They said communist partisans tended to take whatever they could from people – especially gold coinage, the only reliable currency at a time of rocketing inflation. Some of those who joined the partisans used their positions to settle old scores with individuals on Methana. One informant described a small partisan force coming to the door of a house and the occupant having to jump out of a window on the other side to escape (see Chapter 7; see also Forbes 2000c, 219). In Greece, a period of civil war followed World War II. Although most Methanites were not directly affected by these hostilities, life did not approach normality throughout the country until the early 1950s. The postwar era saw increasingly rapid change in many aspects of Greek life, but for Methanites developments in agriculture, transportation and health throughout Greece had special impact. In the immediate postwar years, Greece’s programme to eradicate malaria had positive effects for those working land on the Plain of Trizin. There were also programmes to eliminate other human parasites such as bedbugs and fleas. In other aspects, however, life on Methana was initially not unlike that of the interwar years. It was in the 1960s that change started to have a significant impact on Methanites’ lives. The provision of electricity and mains water supplies to rural communities developed apace in Greece during the 1950s and 1960s. So, too, did the development of a nationwide network of roads, reaching even far-flung villages. Work on an all-weather vehicular road to connect Methana to communities on the Plain of Trizin and beyond started in 1958–9 (Athanasiou 1998, 123). After this, work started on an all-weather road on Methana to complement or replace the steep 89


narrow mule tracks (kalderimia) which had been the mainstay of its communication network since at least the nineteenth century, and probably for many centuries before that. This process continued in stages over a considerable period. It was incomplete during the first period of fieldwork on Methana in 1972–4, but by 1976 all villages were connected by road (Clark 1988, 92). The construction of a vehicular road meant comfortable travel by bus to Loutra or other villages instead of a long walk over steep mule tracks (kalderimia). The advent of the road also coincided with the introduction of a vehicle ferry service between Loutra and Piraeus, which significantly improved the marketing of agricultural produce. At much the same time, most Methana villages were connected to mains electricity, and mains water as well. Because almost all Methana villages are located in the same basic altitudinal zone, the road cut across the sides of the peninsula, connecting the villages to one another in sequence. In doing so, it altered the way in which Methanites perceived their peninsular landscape and reacted to it. Previously, communications between villages were via the old kalderimia. Although there were tracks between adjacent villages, those most regularly used ran vertically up and down the mountainsides, allowing villagers access to their fields, which were mostly located below and above their villages, including in the centre of the peninsula. Because of Methana’s roughly conical shape, the most direct communication between villages other than those adjacent to each other was usually over the top of the peninsula and down again. Thus, although the old communication system was organised primarily on a vertical axis, the new one had a horizontal axis. In addition, the kalderimia communication system tended to take people close to areas which belonged to them as they travelled up and down the mountain between villages. In the new system, their travel was divorced from proximity to most of their land. The network of kalderimia over the top of the peninsula connected people in villages on opposite sides of the peninsula directly. Travel between these villages by the new vehicular road was via Loutra, often with a protracted stop there before the bus set out for the other side of the peninsula. Thus, the new communication system had Loutra as its hub, unlike the traditional system of mule tracks. 90


Connection of the Plain of Trizin by road to Methana meant that farmers with land on the Plain were henceforward spared the long travelling times and overnight stays for many agricultural tasks. Instead, they could travel in the morning by bus, lorry, or taxi, returning in the evening after a full day’s work. Their kalivia therefore became unnecessary. The road also allowed direct transportation of produce back to the village on a lorry, eliminating hire of a boat to convey produce, offloading it below the village and reloading onto pack animals for the final leg of the journey up the steep track to the village. Once again, the old vertical axis to the landscape of kalderimia was supplanted by the new horizontal axis of the vehicular road. The introduction of a vehicle ferry service to Loutra across the Saronic Gulf from Piraeus further consolidated Loutra’s primate position on the peninsula as largest settlement and administrative centre. The new transportation networks made Loutra the connecting point between villages on opposite sides of the peninsula and also the point through which people had to travel going to and from the outside world, whether that was the Plain of Trizin and beyond or the capital across the Saronic Gulf. The introduction of vehicular travel within Methana and beyond made visiting other villages much easier. This was especially significant for celebrations of important festivals elsewhere on the peninsula. Every village held a major celebration (panighiri) on the feast day of its patron saint when all households held open house for visitors, especially relatives and friends living in other villages. In the past, the elderly and frail were unable to make trips of well over an hour along steep and often rough tracks. Even the able-bodied had to think twice. The bus provided easy travel to all for a relatively small fare. The same was true for patron saints’ day festivals at the peninsula’s two most important extra-mural churches, which acted as celebrations of panMethana identity. As noted later in Chapter 9, the road passed close to both sites, making attendance much easier. Following Greece’s entry into the European Union, there has been a further programme of road-building on Methana. These roads give access to various sectors of the agricultural landscape, some opening up the coastal zone to vehicles but the majority giving access to high interior areas. The agricultural rationale for some of these roads is not 91


easily understandable, given the continuing abandonment of much of the terraced landscape, especially in the higher parts of the peninsula. However, as discussed in Chapter 9, the major result for many Methanites is that they make many other extra-mural churches, previously in remote locations in the interior, much more easily accessible. Road-construction programmes on Methana have therefore unintentionally changed Methanites’ cognitive maps of the landscape. Villages which used to be roughly equidistant in travelling time from each other via the kalderimia over the top of the peninsula are now nearer or farther, depending on how many other villages must be driven through on the vehicular road. Yet, at the same time, the use of vehicles makes journeys to all villages on the peninsula relatively easy. Similarly, prior to the construction of roads, journeys to most extra-mural churches for their annual patronal festivals were of comparable difficulty via kalderimia, though some were inevitably further than others. The ease of accessibility of some but not all churches by road means that there are now two categories of churches. The easy accessibility of some by road makes more obvious the difficulty of accessing the others for which there is no road. Developments in health and transportation, allied with real increases in disposable incomes nationally, greatly affected the spa in the postwar era. Its primary raison d’être had always been treatment of a wide range of illnesses – to alleviate various aches and pains, especially rheumatism, arthritis and skin complaints but also as a treatment for various other conditions, including gynaecological problems (Clark 1988, 82, fn. 41). The wide range of conditions for which the waters were considered effective drew a correspondingly wide age range of clients to the spa. Its function purely as a vacation resort had been secondary. In the period 1961–5, Methana was the second most popular spa in Greece. The yearly averages for these years were 12,243 visitors and 184,058 baths, increasing by 1970 to 13,750 visitors and 192,864 baths (Athanasiou 1998, 60–1). Improved road communications combined with increasing levels of disposable income allowed a much greater range of possible destinations for Greek vacationers than had hitherto been possible. With the modernisation of Greece, increasing numbers of people preferred Western medicine, with its emphasis on surgery and drugs for cures, 92


rather than the traditional treatment of taking the waters. The development of more distant and exotic locations in Greece meant that Methana as purely a vacation destination began to be seen as oldfashioned and unexciting. Visits to the hot springs became increasingly the preserve of the elderly and conservative, many of whom had low incomes. Those arriving in Methana purely for vacationing also tended to be from towards the bottom of the economic spectrum. Methana reached its peak in popularity as a spa in the earlier 1970s. By 1981, it had slipped from second to third place in popularity, and by 1996, it had slipped to eighth place (Athanasiou 1998, 61). Between the earlier 1970s and the later 1990s, the number of visitors for the baths nearly halved, and the actual number of baths taken dropped by more than 50 percent. For those who come for the baths, the attraction of the place has remained: the average number of days stayed dropped only slightly. Foreign tourists have never ‘discovered’ Methana, apart from occasional yachts cruising the islands. The peninsula possesses no natural sand beaches nor the spectacular and well-known ruins which foreign tourists prefer. The tranquil and slightly faded ambience of Loutra, still reminiscent of the 1930s, which attracted Greek visitors after the Second World War, was likewise inimical to the operation of lateopening bars and nightclubs which attract the foreign package-tour set. Clark (1988, 82, fn. 42) found little local interest in promoting foreign tourism in the mid-1980s, and late-twentieth-century restaurateurs knew only the most rudimentary vocabulary in English, the standard language of foreigners. The development of rapid communications within Greece, combined with major changes in agriculture, have had an even greater effect on Methana’s family farms. Mechanisation of almost all aspects of farming and the preference for a cash income rather than dependence on subsistence farming have had an inevitable impact. Despite the soil’s natural fertility, the narrow terraces supporting almost all cultivable land on Methana make access by modern farm machinery impossible. Furthermore, family ownership of small, scattered patches of land, a successful strategy for reducing the risks of crop failure under subsistence agriculture (Forbes 2000b, 225–7), is antithetical to extensive mechanised, market-orientated farming. 93


Most Methanites in previous generations recognised that the road to socioeconomic upward mobility led to urban life, preferably in a skilled trade or in a white-collar position. In the 1970s, the majority of the households in the main study community on Methana depended primarily on subsistence agriculture. Few of the children, however, wished to take over their parents’ farms, preferring careers dependent on education or a skilled trade, in a well-resourced urban location and earning a cash income. At the same time, Methana farmers attempting to grow high-value crops for cash sale were constantly frustrated by other circumstances. In the years immediately following the Second World War, after an initial phase of growing citrus on their irrigated land, a number of farmers grew early tomatoes, exploiting the extremely mild coastal microclimate and the closeness to Athens. Once again, however, their initial advantages were undermined by large-scale enterprises and the introduction of fast boat services to places substantially farther south, such as Crete. By the late 1990s, the majority of the irrigable land had been abandoned, although one or two small plots were still cultivated, on a scale suited to domestic consumption. Large numbers of coastal plots were advertised for sale as building plots for holiday homes for city dwellers – access being afforded by the recent construction of roads supposedly for local agricultural production. The agricultural landscape away from the coast has also been substantially abandoned, although some areas of terraces continue to be cultivated, especially close to villages. Most village houses contained only older families, normally couples whose children were living elsewhere. Their subsistence needs and labour forces were far more limited than in the days when families were large and children stayed on Methana. In addition, the price of wheat was so low compared with other prices that many households no longer grew it, preferring to buy bread or to make bread with purchased flour. Vines have also suffered from progressive attack by the parasite Phylloxera. The only answer to this pest is to grub up the old vines and establish new vineyards, using Phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, but the labour input involved is high. Many elderly farmers no longer have the energy or financial resources nor, with their children all having left, the incentive to replant what would be a long-term investment. 94


In the late 1990s, most families on Methana continued to maintain at least some olive trees because olive oil was still relatively expensive, and Methanites distrusted the purity of commercial olive oil. European Union subsidies were another consideration. However, cultivation of the trees was often no more than trimming away the worst suckers and removing invading scrub around their trunks in years when there was a crop. Many households kept one or two goats for milk for cheese making: they generally continued to grow barley as fodder, even if they did not grow wheat. Many of these reduced elements in the agricultural economy were only possible because of the wider political and economic realities of the era following the collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe. Temporary migrants from Albania, working for far lower wages than Greeks would accept, did much of the heavier farm work. By the late 1990s, few village houses had families with children, and few families made a living primarily by agriculture. Many houses stood empty, and others were only used as holiday homes (Clarke 2000a, 115). Nevertheless, although often inhabited by only one or two elderly people, many houses were transformed from the simple structures standard in the 1970s. Many had special-purpose rooms, including bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens, the work sometimes being paid for by children residing elsewhere. As Clarke (2000a, 121) indicates, households in Methana villages were no longer units of production but had become units of consumption. CONCLUSION

Fundamental changes have occurred in the human landscape of Methana over several centuries. Many have been integrated into Methanites’ own understandings of their landscapes and their significance. However, almost all the information for earlier periods has been provided by individuals who are not Methanites. At various points, I have indicated that Methanites have had their own views – sometimes themselves heterogeneous – on their history, and that they are sometimes at odds with those related here. In ethnography, it is widely accepted – even expected – that divergences can occur between the ways in which the ethnographer explains or views behaviours and 95


the explanations or descriptions given by the host population. These dichotomies have various names: the anthropologist’s model versus the indigenous model (or ethnomodel) is one widely used set of terms. The terms emics (meaning an indigenous definition) versus etics (meaning a definition derived from outside the culture) provide another (Barnard 1996). In the discourse of this chapter, when Methanites’ understandings of their history diverge from those of the outsider (the writer), the outsider’s understanding is generally given greater meaning. The issue is more than a simple one of the egotism of the author and his colleagues. It relates to the kinds of evidence which are given greater significance, or ‘truth’. Academics prefer ‘hard’ data which escape the protean tendencies of the oral record. Written records, built structures, and items of material culture can be copied down, photographed, planned or drawn, dated, or given an actual or probable terminus post (or ante) quem. They can thus be shown as ‘proof’ to other scholars within academic discourse. Such matters have little relevance within the context of being a Methanitis. The fact that I had done my best to identify the ‘true’ history of the founding of Methana’s villages in a previous publication, based on detailed examination of the historical and archaeological record (Forbes 1997a), drew severe criticism from one of Methana’s community leaders at an academic conference in Greece. It conflicted with the orally transmitted history which he had learned; therefore, it could not be correct. In later chapters, I reverse the balance between the outsider’s view and Methanites’ views. Ultimately, this book is an attempt to explain how Methanites give meaning to their landscape, as interpreted by an outside observer. Although I will occasionally indicate disagreement, from an academic outsider’s point of view, with facts or interpretations which they have presented, it will become clear that Methanites’ understandings of their landscape are highly complex, integrated and logical bodies of knowledge and emotional involvement which are worthy of the greatest respect.

96

4

CONDUCTING FIELDWORK ON METHANA

Aghiou Nikolaou [Saint Nikolas’ day]. Coldish north wind and overcast. . . . Today we went to collect wood underneath [the landlord’s] huge almond tree . . . after we [had] had a grumble campaign in the village about the wood that [his wife] burnt, and how we wouldn’t have any for the rest of the winter. . . . I guess the word must have got back to them, as we hoped it would. (Field notes, 6 December 1972)

CULTURAL ECOLOGY STUDIES

Because this book is an ethnographic exploration of the meanings of landscapes, I include in this chapter some of my own personal background with its particular cultural baggage before describing my methodology. The information represents some of my ‘qualifications’ for understanding the meanings of Greek rural landscapes, the reasons I understand them in the ways that are presented here, and an explanation of some of the fieldwork methods employed. Although in the past the ethnographer may have been perceived as a dispassionate and unbiased observer, an element of reflexivity is now generally expected of Anglophone writers of ethnographic studies (see, e.g., Johnson 2000, 304; also Clark 1988, 3–16, in the context of her fieldwork on Methana). As Clark (1988, 3) notes in the introduction to her study of Methana households, factors such as the age, gender, marital status, personality, and cultural and educational background of the researcher affect which windows into a community will be 97


open to him or her and which will be closed. They affect choices of fieldwork methodology, location, preferred types of person with whom the researcher interacts and so on. Personal factors also guide the ways in which the researcher perceives what is seen and heard in the field situation. Furthermore, choices made in the initial stages of fieldwork can have far-reaching effects in terms of guiding the ways in which the researcher and the members of the host community interact with each other later in the fieldwork period. My relationship with Methana occurred through a series of chances. I had been working on an archaeological excavation in the southern Argolid (see fig. 1.1), a nearby part of the Peloponnese of Greece, while simultaneously engaged in preliminary ethnographic reconnaissance prior to conducting ethnographic fieldwork in that region. The archaeological site was producing stone tools made of obsidian, a volcanic rock. Because we knew that much of Methana was volcanic, a small group of us made an excursion there on a day off, hoping to find an obsidian source. Even the idea of conducting ethnographic fieldwork was something of an accident. Having studied primarily archaeology as an undergraduate, I had intended to conduct research into an archaeological topic when I started as a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. However, once there I fell under the spell of a charismatic cultural anthropologist, Robert McC. Netting, who specialised in ecological anthropology. It was through his influence that I decided to conduct ecological anthropology research on traditional agriculture in Greece: the brief was to co-ordinate ethnographic studies in the southern Argolid with a long-term archaeological project in the region, of which the excavation was part. In the event, our party never discovered an obsidian source on Methana, but we saw the peninsula’s extraordinary terraced landscape and the wide range of traditional arable and tree crops grown there. Agriculture was evidently a mainstay of many inhabitants. On the basis of this experience, I decided to maintain my links with the archaeological project as much as possible but to change my field location to Methana. Thus, it was that I arrived on Methana during the summer of 1972 to begin ethnographic fieldwork, with my first wife, a very 98


limited knowledge of Greek, and as many belongings as we could each carry on the plane to Greece. My educational background had included six years of the study of the history, culture, cosmology and language of ancient Greece prior to studying archaeology and anthropology at university. As preparation for fieldwork in Greece, I had also taken an introductory course in modern Greek. Many aspects of the ancient language which I had learned as an academic exercise differed markedly from the language spoken in rural Greece in the later twentieth century ad. Nevertheless, many words which I met in the early stages of fieldwork, when the language-learning curve was very steep, were already familiar from my study of the ancient language, even if many grammatical constructions were different. Learning a language, however, is about more than simply getting the correct words and grammar. There is in any language a set of formulaic or semi-formulaic phrases which are required in specific contexts. Most are not found in any dictionary or grammar book: they must be learned in situ. I arrived on Methana with a list of formal Greek phrases, greetings, and responses appropriate to a wide range of social contexts and coaching on some of the do’s and don’ts of proper behaviour in rural Greek communities. These were just some of the benefits derived from a relatively brief but immensely informative stay with fellow-students Harold and Joan Koster. Having conducted their own ethnographic studies in the southern Argolid for a year before my fieldwork started, they were able to pass on crucial elements of their experience directly. As a result, I was able to adjust to the language and culture of rural Greece more quickly and with less trauma than has been the experience of many anthropologists who have described the initial stages of fieldwork in various parts of the world (e.g., Chagnon 1997, 8–31). Another relevant factor was my background in rural life. I had grown up in English rural communities, was comfortable with village life, and was aware of some of the factors associated with productive rural landscapes. My background meant that I felt ‘at home’ in English rural landscapes in a way that I did not feel at home when I was living in cities while studying as a university student. The rural landscapes and 99


way of life of Methanites were very different from those of the English countryside, yet there were similarities in outlook between Methanites and the people of rural England with whom I had grown up which were not to be found in urban populations. The background just described inevitably informed my interactions with Methanites engaged in making a living from the countryside. The style in which one conducts ethnographic fieldwork combines what ‘works’ in the specific cultural context in which the researcher finds herself or himself, with aspects of one’s own personality and background (e.g., Chagnon 1997, 13–19). My own rural background informed my decisions on specific aspects of my fieldwork methodology, and the way in which I gathered data. It has also continued to inform my viewpoint on theoretical aspects of the study of the meanings of landscapes, in particular, my critique of certain phenomenologies of archaeological landscapes discussed in Chapter 2. The first period of fieldwork on Methana was designed as a cultural ecological study. I was aware that I was studying pre-industrial agrarian techniques and technologies and that therefore there was a potential link between my research and the study of the countryside of ancient Greece. Nevertheless, the primary fieldwork aim was to study the adaptation to the exigencies of the environment by contemporary households engaged in small-scale agriculture, employing almost exclusively their own labour resources and a relatively traditional technology. Although the term environment included parameters of the relevant human environment such as political and economic factors, I focused particularly on the natural environment and the landscape (Forbes 1982, 17). It was almost inevitable, therefore, that I should spend a considerable amount of time developing an understanding of that landscape, not only as productive environment but also in its various other guises. Thus, my approach was not dissimilar to that of Johnson (2000) among the Gitksan, which was from an ethnoecological perspective and a ‘strong background in botany, geography, natural history and formal ecology’ ( Johnson 2000, 304). He had been a long-term resident of the region before he initiated work with Gitksan elders and was, ‘like the Gitksan people, a traveller on the land, a forager, with my eyes alert for potential resources and camping places’ ( Johnson 2000, 304). Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, 100


both our viewpoints on the landscapes described are as seen from the inside. Unlike a number of cultural ecological studies undertaken at that time, the Methana fieldwork did not focus on a whole population but rather on individual households as decision-making units (Forbes 1982, 22–3), and the ranges of decisions made by different households in reaction to the particular circumstances in which they found themselves. The concentration on decision making reflected the research emphasis on farmers’ knowledge of their environment and the ways in which it could be used for making a living. To understand this knowledge, the primary focus was on subsistence ‘technology’: that is, a flexible repertoire of skills, knowledge and methods of attaining desired results under varying circumstances, comprising the cultural traditions for dealing with the physical and biological environment (Merrill 1968, 577, 585). Field data were gathered principally via the standard ethnographic methods of participant observation and interview. Frequently, the latter was in the context of informal and unstructured interviews, conversations in which information was exchanged on how things were done in Britain in comparison with how Methanites did them. Sometimes attempts were made to steer the direction of conversations, but often the most useful information was derived from sitting back and listening to that of others. I also found participating in agricultural activities a very useful way of learning how Methanites made a living by agriculture. This approach had worked well for the Kosters (e.g., Koster 1977, 5): when I visited them before going to Methana, they encouraged me to adopt their approach of ‘learning by doing’ in data gathering (Koster 1977, 5; see also Clark 1988, 5–6). It is difficult to explain the practicalities of ethnographic fieldwork in a few paragraphs, not least because of the great variety of forms which it can take. Archaeologists understand that excavation is destruction, and therefore they have a duty to extract the maximum information from every trench, square, posthole, and so forth. In addition, the specifics of their field location channel the exact ways in which they tackle the business of excavation, field survey and so forth: at a detailed level, every field situation is unique. In living communities, the potential totality of information is almost infinite. As a result, ethnographic 101


field research generally focuses on a relatively restricted area of the life of the host community. Detailed documentation of all aspects of a community’s life would demand more than a lifetime. Ethnographic fieldwork also takes place in an incredible diversity of cultures, societies and social contexts worldwide. Hence, details of the ways in which fieldwork is conducted vary to an even greater degree than they do in archaeology. The twin factors of research targeted on a limited aspect of cultural activity and the great diversity of cultures and cultural contexts generate an immense diversity of forms in which fieldwork is conducted. For example, Briggs (1970) spent seventeen months with a single Inuit family group, some 150 miles from anyone else. Young (1991), on the other hand, conducted ethnographic field study on the Newcastle police while he was a member of the force. Carrithers (1983) conducted fieldwork with Sri Lankan forest monks. Because the monks lived in the forest to get away from people, he spent relatively little time among them, although he lived in Sri Lanka for three years (Carrithers 1996, 229–30). A further complication is the intensity of the ethnographic experience. To immerse oneself in an alien culture with an alien language, on one’s own or with just a partner, for a period of a year or more is not easy. It generally demands psychological resilience on the part of the researcher and considerable tolerance on the part of members of the host community to have a stranger in their midst learning often the simplest facts about the society. To be successful, each researcher develops a particular research ‘style’ to accommodate the interaction of her or his own personality with the practical and cultural exigencies of the field context and the specific personalities with whom they find themselves. Success in such a situation equates with a certain level of acceptance by the host community. To obtain an understanding of the chosen aspect of a society’s or community’s life without being particularly disruptive or unduly intrusive, the researcher must frequently exercise considerable ingenuity. As Chagnon (1997, 16) describes, there were times when he could simply not bear to see a Yac nomamö. From the other side of the relationship, Chagnon’s nickname among the Yac nomamö was the word for a particularly annoying insect, indicating the difficulties he had in not being too disruptive while still learning about their way of life (Chagnon 1997, 15). 102


Anthropologists who achieve a reasonable level of success at fitting in with the host culture sometimes describe themselves as ‘marginal natives’. Thus, Clark (1988, 9) described herself and her adjustment to the community where she lived not as being one of the Methanites but being like them. The literature on ethnographic fieldwork regularly emphasises the marginality of successful ethnographers in the field and their ambivalent status as ‘sort of one of us, yet not really’. Titles of monographs such as Stranger and Friend (Powdermaker 1966) and Friends, Brothers and Informants (Kumar 1992) highlight the ambivalent relationship between the ethnographer and those who comprise the host community. When I arrived on Methana, people were very aware that I ‘knew letters’ – I was educated. Many Methanites had had only a few years of elementary education. The older generation had spent much of that time simply learning Greek rather than their letters because an Albanian dialect was the language of the home. They considered that educated people were excused manual work, especially physically hard labour, expecting them to dress smartly to differentiate their exalted status clearly from those engaged in physical labour for a living. People with a university degree were expected to ‘sit’ and ‘work with a pencil’. The word – I sit – also indicated ‘not working’ or ‘doing nothing’. If I fulfilled their expectations, I would not only have created an even larger barrier than my obvious foreignness and laboured Greek already did, but I would also have been cut off from much crucial information on how people made a living by farming. Direct participation in a number of tasks, agricultural and otherwise, therefore answered several fieldwork needs simultaneously. Although fieldwork venues were highly varied, much of my field data resulted directly or indirectly from, or benefited from, my being in the agricultural landscape. My regular involvement in the landscape meant that I could wear the same sorts of workaday clothes as other villagers. The importance of minimising differences in dress between myself and other villagers was made clear when an elderly woman told me approvingly that she considered me like ordinary villagers, singling out the fact that my clothes, suited to working in the fields, were no different from anyone else’s. Her statement reinforces Clark’s (1988, 9) observation noted earlier. My choice of clothing also emphasised strongly my repeated 103


explanations that I wished to ‘write a book about’ agricultural life on Methana: to do that successfully, I had to experience as many agricultural tasks as possible. Many, such as digging vines, picking olives, and leading pack mules, were completely new to me. Nonetheless, with my rural background, the idea of working in the fields was not. My decision to ‘learn by doing’ thus suited my own personality and also reduced the social and cultural differences. Methanites patiently taught me how to do certain tasks in the fields. In some, I achieved a modicum of competence. Others, like ploughing, were always beyond me, although even then my failed attempts were a useful lesson and provided amusement. For others again, such as grafting domesticated varieties of trees onto wild rootstocks (fig. 4.1), I was always simply a bystander. It says much for the tolerance and hospitality of Methanites that they would often invite me to accompany them when all I could offer was a stream of questions about what they were doing. Quite apart from allowing me to contextualise myself within a rural community on Methana, active participation provided a range of ethnographic data at several different levels. At one level, it allowed me to measure and quantify many detailed aspects of agriculture, including sizes of harvest, inputs of labour and so forth. At another level, actually participating in digging vines or ploughing a field taught me factors such as the nuancing of physical properties of soils which affected potential yields and the ways in which technologies were applied. Work of this nature also allowed me to build up a picture of the number, size and distribution of families’ widely scattered holdings. When picking olives, for instance, it was natural to ask how many trees a household had and where they were located, without seeming to be too obviously prying into rather private matters. On occasions, I would be told other important information without any prompt from me: that a particular tree or group of trees were the dowry of the wife, or of the man’s mother, for example. At yet another level, working with one particular household all day meant that I was incorporated into it rather more during that time than I would have been had I simply been visiting their house for an hour or so in the village. Thus it was that I began to understand the ways in which Methanites related themselves to their landscapes as they went about the boring and sometimes debilitating work of making a living by agriculture. 104


4.1. Grafting domesticated pear scions onto a wild pear tree (Photo: Mari Clarke; Hamish Forbes).

Methanites were sometimes very reticent about divulging information concerning their family enterprises. This was not simply because I was an outsider: they were at least as unwilling to divulge information to other Methanites. Because houses in the village were generally packed close together, it was hard to get people to talk about sensitive topics such as quantities of a crop harvested, sales of produce and sizes of land holdings, for example, for fear of being overheard by other villagers. However, when I was working with a family in the fields, away from other Methanites, people were more likely to divulge information of a sensitive nature. This was apparently not simply because of the 105


privacy of the fields. It seemed that, because of the presence of someone unusual while tedious chores were being done, people were more prepared to talk about a wide range of matters. Furthermore, because I was helping without asking for any material reward, people seemed to feel obliged to answer my questions in a straightforward manner. Because the conversation was on many occasions allowed to drift in the direction which Methanites wished to take it, I was able to identify issues which were especially important to them. For example, I describe in a later chapter how I was inveigled into accompanying a man to see a ‘marvel’, when actually he wanted me to help him move large boulders to make the wall of a new terrace. During the course of the hours I spent there, he explained how he had built the other terraces next to the one we were working on and requested that I take photographs of the area as a record of his work. Experiences such as this, which I initially wrote off as wasted time, made me subsequently realise the element of monumentality in the cultivated landscape. Issues of importance to Methanites often emerged during reminiscences about life in the old days. Particular activities or features in the fields might lead to stories of pirate raids during the Turkish period, or their own youthful experiences, walking barefoot in the dark to start work in distant fields as soon as it was light. Thus it emerged that the past was considered generally to be a time of hardship. Once Methanites learned I was prepared to participate in agricultural tasks, they took it for granted that I would also spend time in the countryside, simply watching agricultural activities and discussing practical agriculture with them. Knowing that I had actually done the work made them more prepared to discuss the details of their own lives in agriculture. It was then sometimes possible to steer conversations. Even here, though, conversations might deviate from the intended direction, especially if several households were working in close proximity. In this situation, conversations during rest breaks would not turn to matters of any sensitivity to any of them, but reminiscences or stories directly relating to the location might be forthcoming. One place which rarely provided much information was the village’s stores-cum-coffee houses. Although some anthropologists (e.g., Panopoulos 2003, 639; Photiadis 1965) have found such gathering places prime locations for obtaining information, few details of 106


4.2. A laden mule on a mule track (kalderimi ) (Photo: Mari Clarke; Hamish Forbes).

household production were normally forthcoming. However, the shop-cum-coffee house where most people congregated had a good view of the main mule track to the upper parts of the peninsula. From this vantage point, it was possible to monitor mules laden with agricultural produce, such as baskets of grapes or sheaves of wheat, descending the mountainside (fig. 4.2). Because mules, and to some extent donkeys, were readily identifiable from a considerable distance, mainly by their colouring, observers would occasionally comment on the number of loads belonging to a particular family which had been transported to the village. Others with poorer eyesight occasionally asked me to identify the mules. Such incidents made it clear that I was not the only person interested in other households’ productivity. A fieldwork activity which placed me very much ‘in the field’ was vegetable gardening. I started a winter garden in the early stages of fieldwork because it was suggested that I might cultivate a fallow plot close to my house. Having a rural background, I considered vegetable gardening to be both recreation and sound economic sense, but other benefits soon became apparent. My garden ensured a steady stream of comments and advice concerning the best way to work the soil, apply 107


fertilizer, and deal with pests and other problems, introducing me to Methanites’ sophisticated knowledge of working the soil for growing crops. I also cultivated an unirrigated summer garden in conjunction with a villager. Once again, by working with him, I learned a great deal about Methanites’ incredibly detailed knowledge of their environment (e.g., Forbes 1982, 14–15). Visiting other people’s houses was a normal activity for Methanites. People celebrating a name day would be visited by a stream of wellwishers wishing them

(many happy returns) who would normally stay for refreshments. In addition, frequent visits between kin and neighbours occurred for many reasons. As an (albeit temporary) member of the community, I was also expected to visit people: my participation in agricultural work with a number of households made visiting them in their houses considerably easier. It also allowed me to follow up certain questions or issues which had emerged during work in the fields that I had been unable to pursue for one reason or another. The approach which I took to data gathering also highlighted households as units involved in decision making, ownership and production, not simply as elements of the kinship system or the focus of child socialisation. When the study was undertaken, much writing about the relationships of local communities with their environments concentrated on populations – whole communities, for example (Forbes 1982, 19–23). By focusing on individual households, I was able to escape the restriction of normative (average, community-wide) approaches to understanding the details of how Methanites made a living. I could thus explore variations in the ways in which different households employed their knowledge concerning technology and the environment to suit their specific circumstances. In so doing, I developed a better understanding of the ways in which the landscapes of Methana could have varying meanings to different people in a single community. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

During my travels through the countryside of Methana in my initial fieldwork, I noted a number of archaeological sites. The Greek 108


government’s strict laws concerning archaeology require a permit for virtually any activity involving the archaeological heritage. Such permits have generally been hard to come by. Thus, I was unable to investigate archaeological sites, apart from noting their existence. However, I was aware that my ethnographic studies had little timedepth: an archaeological field survey project was therefore highly desirable. Methana was also considered a suitable venue for an archaeological field survey project by archaeological colleagues, especially Christopher Mee and Lin Foxhall, not least because of the preceding ethnographic study (Forbes and Mee 1997, 1). So, the Methana Archaeological Survey started with a preliminary season in the summer of 1981 and continued until 1987 (Forbes and Mee 1997, 3–4). The survey’s research was informed by the rapidly developing methodology of pedestrian survey in which teams of archaeologists walked across the landscape searching for artefactual remains. Concentrations of artefacts were identified as ‘sites’, with areas and dates indicated where possible (Mee and Forbes 1997, 35–7). In the final publication of the Methana Survey (Mee and Forbes [eds.], 1997), the results of research by teams of archaeologists, geographers, and geologists gave an overview of the physical environment and the changing settlement pattern from the Neolithic to the later twentieth century. The project acquired the services of a Byzantinist, Theodore Koukoulis, who made a special study of the numerous small churches on the peninsula (Koukoulis 1997b), the importance of which will be obvious in this work. My brief, to write the chapter on the postmedieval period (Forbes 1997a), allowed me to research the meagre documentary sources relating to the peninsula. Most Methanites considered that their villages had been founded well before the earlier nineteenth century. However, the documentary evidence implied that the twentieth-century settlement pattern of Methana was relatively recent, dating to the years immediately following the declaration of Greek independence from the Turks in 1821. During my periods of research on Methana’s archaeology at this time, I spent what spare moments I could visiting old friends in villages and keeping abreast of developments in their lives. Having young children at that stage was an additional bonus: it redefined my status and opened the door to new areas of conversation and information. 109


Although marriage defined a person as an adult (see Chapter 5), true validation of adult status depended on producing children. My arrival at a house with small children almost invariably generated questions concerning child rearing, providing for children’s future and so forth. I was thus able to broaden my understanding of Methanites’ lives. THE STUDY OF HOUSEHOLDS AND HOUSEHOLD TRANSFORMATION

During 1985 and 1986, Mari Clarke conducted ethnographic fieldwork on Methana (Clark 1988, 10). She had already shared two years of fieldwork with me there from 1972 to 1974 when she had been my wife and had returned to update and develop her research for her Ph.D. (Clark 1988). She also made further visits to Methana in the 1990s to update aspects of her research (Clarke 2000a, 107, fn. 1). A major part of her research concentrated on the description and analysis of individual actors in the context of creating and re-creating households (Clark 1988, 13). In her study, she focused on the household as a link between the individual and the wider society. A second major focus was on the transformation of households over time (Clark 1988, 15–16). Clarke’s research in the mid-1980s and the 1990s not only investigated aspects of life on the peninsula but also updated aspects of the research which we had both conducted in the earlier 1970s. As is to be expected, her data and viewpoints differ occasionally from those which I developed in my earlier work. In anthropology, this is only to be expected, because two experiences are represented, including differences in the gender of the researchers, time at which the research was conducted and so on. Despite these differences from my own experience, the resulting descriptions of family life, belief, and outlook among Methanites presented by Clarke are very much in line with my own perceptions, developing areas of understanding which I had tended to neglect in my earlier research. Her work is a vital component in much of the discussion of this book, as will be readily apparent. 110


ARCHIVAL SOURCES AND METHANA IN THE 1990 S

Because of the discrepancy between the documentary sources and Methanites’ own views of the past, I undertook a further short spell of fieldwork in 1998 to investigate the issues involved, especially to study local archival sources. I had been aware since the period of initial fieldwork that there was a running register of male births, the mitroo arrenon, initiated late in the Turkish period and continuing into the period of Greek independence. Unfortunately, my first period of fieldwork occurred when the military dictatorship ruling Greece at the time was becoming increasingly unstable, finally collapsing in the summer of 1974 shortly before my fieldwork ended. Local government officials, most of whom owed their positions to their support of the military junta, were understandably nervous in this period of flux. My request to study these nineteenth-century documents was refused on the grounds that the documents were classified military secrets. During the archaeological survey in the 1980s, most of my energies were expended on maintaining contacts with friends from the initial fieldwork. Had the time been more auspicious, I might have studied the mitroo arrenon, but there was considerable antipathy on the part of the Greek government to the Anglophone political axis in international politics. Locally, too, the council of one Methana community created difficulties for the archaeologists with the local administration. Thus, again in the 1980s, it proved impossible to gain access to these archival sources held by the local administration. It was therefore only in 1998, some twenty-five years after learning of the existence of nineteenth-century lists of male births, that I was finally able to study them. The mayor of the main town could not have been more helpful. He gave me full permission to study and copy these documents, instructing town hall staff to give me every assistance in whatever else I might wish to study. However, the town hall had seen three moves of building, so the archives were in some disarray. While leafing through the bundles of papers in the archive, the assistant secretary found some likely looking documents which turned out to be the original returns of the 1879 census. I had no idea these still existed. I managed with some difficulty to persuade him that they, 111


too, were of value to my research into Methana’s history. The returns for all but three communities were complete and well preserved. The oldest section of the mitroo arrenon was a printed document with entries starting in 1809 and running up to 1878, which seems to have been compiled from a variety of originals. It was presumably produced in connection with the 1879 census. Its usefulness, already very substantial, was further increased by the opportunity to crosscheck with the returns from the 1879 census. Access to more recent sections of the mitroo arrenon was also offered but I declined for several reasons. First, I could be assured that individuals named in the documents up to 1878 would not still be alive. There could be no such assurance for substantially more recent documents. Second, I was forbidden to photocopy the documents. Hand-copying the mitroo arrenon and the detailed census returns for the majority of the communities on Methana took up a substantial amount of the fieldwork period. Copying out more documents would have reduced my time spent on other aspects of research. In addition to transcribing documents, I also visited old friends and travelled around Methana noting changes that had occurred since the mid-1980s. Two major changes in the landscape of Methana had occurred since I had last been there in the 1980s. One was the abandonment of large areas of agricultural land. The abandonment of narrow terraces with poor soil had been ongoing for decades, but now even land previously considered highly productive was uncultivated. The other major change since the period of archaeological survey in the 1980s was the network of agricultural roads criss-crossing the landscape. When I had conducted my original fieldwork, the only vehicular roads had connected villages with each other and the peninsula with the mainland. In my visits to friends, I was particularly interested to talk to older people about what they knew of the origins of villages on Methana. The idea that the past was a time of tribulations and intense toil occurred repeatedly in my conversations concerning the past. Methanites’ stories-histories (one Greek word covers both – see Chapter 7) emphasised how hard it was to make a living by agriculture, the lack of security, and the fear of raids by Moslem Albanians. It also became apparent that much knowledge of the past was incorporated 112


into the particularised pasts of individual households and individual houses, amplifying the work done by Clarke, linking aspects of kinship, production, reproduction and monumentality. In my conversations, the development and improvement of the two traditional main sacred sites on the peninsula were repeatedly referred to approvingly. In addition, a third sacred site had been added to the list, now that the new agricultural roads enabled vehicular access. While the agricultural landscape was in decline, the opposite was evidently happening to the religious landscape. PRESENTATION OF THE EVIDENCE

Older ethnographic monographs tended to utilise the convention of the ‘ethnographic present’: even a situation many decades in the past was described in the present tense. Throughout this work, I avoid this convention: I refer to Methana in the past tense, even when referring to a situation which existed only a few years ago. Such a usage emphasises that the Methanites whom I have met and learned from were real individuals, living ordinary lives, and not simply representatives of social institutions, frozen permanently in some conventional eternal present. What I encountered even a few years ago can be assumed to have changed, just as changes have been all too visible between the time I first conducted fieldwork in 1972 and my most recent visit in 1998. The abandonment of the ethnographic present is part of the reflexivity in understanding the relationship between the ethnographer and the host community mentioned early in this chapter. It recognises that researchers’ own personalities and backgrounds will inevitably affect their viewpoints and the relationships they will have with the host community. For the same reason, I have noted my own background rooted in rural landscapes in relation to understanding the meanings for Methanites of their landscapes. An openness in describing the personal background of the researcher necessarily extends to the researcher’s methodology. Most older ethnographic monographs have a considerable element of the ‘black box’ about them where fieldwork methodologies are concerned. Although there is much more that could be said about ethnographic fieldwork methods, I have tried in 113


this chapter to give at least a flavour of what it has been like to conduct ethnographic research on Methana. On the other hand, I have attempted to maintain, wherever possible, the long-standing ethnographic tradition of pseudonymising individuals and communities. Thus, the main study community is not identified but is given a pseudonym, and informants’ names have also been changed to pseudonyms. This practise is in accordance with anthropologists’ concerns that their detailed studies should not be used to identify individuals and exploit the information presented. On the other hand, in keeping with the thread of monumentality and memorialisation which runs through much of this work, I am aware that many Methanites would wish that they, their communities, and their forebears be fully identified and their achievements publicly documented. Thus would their identities achieve monumentalisation. Archaeologists and historians, especially those researching in many Western societies, do not generally need to confront such ethical issues. The critical decision I faced was how to present the information contained in archival sources: to present the actual names or to anonymise or pseudonymise. When presenting the information to archaeologists and especially historians in various fora, I have met a strong expectation that because these are historical records, they should be presented accurately and without distortion. They have had no qualms about anonymity of subjects, especially if their identities are revealed in unclassified documents dating back more than a century. After considerable thought and consultation over the legal dimensions for Greece, I therefore decided to present the actual names. My decision was based on the fact that at least 125 years have elapsed since individuals were recorded; hence, neither living individuals nor their parents are identified. CONCLUSION

This book results from fieldwork conducted over approximately a quarter of a century. The different phases of fieldwork have had quite different aims. Reflecting these different aims, research methods have varied, from the standard ethnographic techniques of participant observation and interview, through archaeological surface survey, 114


to historical-archival research. What started as primarily a synchronic study of traditional agriculture moved on to a diachronic study of the relationship of the peninsula’s inhabitants with their land as seen primarily through the archaeological evidence of changing settlement patterns and other material remains on the ground. Then, in the third stage, I investigated the origins and development of Methana villages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the variations in focus and approach, an interest in the relationship that Methanites have had with their land and landscape has remained. This work brings together the various strands to describe what this land and landscape have meant to Methanites, and through them, to me.

115

5

KINSHIP, MARRIAGE AND THE TRANSMISSION OF NAMES AND PROPERTY

(pumpkin for meat [literally: ‘food’] and in-laws for relatives). (Methana saying, reported by Clark 1988, 192–3) The village family is a web of vital dependencies among its members: motherwife, husband-father, children and grandparents. Each person has a place in the system, is sustained by it, contributes to it (especially as an adult), and is concerned about its well-being. To the villagers, interaction with relatives, neighbours, and friends is the spice that gives life its savor; but it is the family that sustains and gives meaning to life. . . . People perceive the family as the natural solution to the division into male and female, each with different skills and roles. Each sex is deficient without the other; each complements the other’s aptitudes and natures. (Aschenbrenner 1986, 40–1) The great importance of the family to the villagers rests partially on the fact that it is the only enduring social group with which they identify and to which their energy is directed. The family has many and diverse functions and is embedded in nearly every sphere of life. . . . the family constitutes an economic team that farms its holdings and most of the non-agricultural pursuits of contemporary villagers are also carried out as family operations. Even now, with the advent of bank loans, it is still the case that the holdings and wealth of a given family economic team originate mostly through inheritance and dowry from the family groups in which a father and mother were reared. (Aschenbrenner 1986, 44, emphasis in original) At the core of a villager’s social world is, as we have seen, the family. It provides her or him with the emotional security of unqualified trust and affection as well as the practical base of livelihood. But the family does not exist in isolation. Bonds of kinship fan out from it to link it to other family groups within the village and the immediate Messenian countryside. A family 116

KINSHIP, MARRIAGE AND TRANSMISSION OF NAMES AND PROPERTY

regards such bonds as a vital support and it directs much effort and concern to forming them and keeping them strong. (Aschenbrenner 1986, 46)

INTRODUCTION

As later chapters of this book demonstrate, much of the way in which Methanites have experienced their landscape, its history, the patterns of ownerships, especially of their houses and plots of land – and those adjacent to their own – and the locations which they visit within the landscape, has been set within a kinship idiom.1 However, rather like Just (1991, 114), my original intention when embarking on ethnographic fieldwork was to have as little as possible to do with studying kinship. My undergraduate degree was technically in Archaeology and Anthropology, but the formal complexities, and (to my mind at the time, irrelevancies) of the anthropological study of kinship persuaded me to concentrate on archaeology. Likewise, as a graduate student taking a compulsory taught course on kinship, I felt that kinship studies preferred to categorise and typologise abstract concepts rather than to understand the essentials of peoples’ everyday lives. Cultural ecology, which allowed me to study other societies with my feet and research topic firmly on the ground persuaded me that ethnographic fieldwork was a viable option. Choosing a European fieldwork location also seemed ideal for minimising time spent on establishing how the kinship system worked: European kinship did not excite the complexities of anthropological interest that kinship among more ‘exotic’ societies did. This brief foray into autobiography is more than an anecdotal digression. Given the centrality of the study of kinship in cultural anthropology, the reader might be excused for believing that the centrality of kinship in explaining Methana landscapes derives from the core beliefs of the researcher rather than the realities of Methanites’ own lives. However, in my Ph.D. thesis, kinship was largely subsumed within discussion of property transfer – inheritance and dowry – and to an appendix specifically requested by a member of my thesis committee. It was only as I came to explore the deeper meanings of their landscapes for Methanites and to consider issues of identity and belonging that I was forced to conclude that my teachers had been wiser than I thought: kinship was indeed a crucial feature in Methanites’ lives. 117


FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD

At the core of Methanites’ kinship system, and of the idiom in which kinship is used as a model of behaviour, lies the family. The statements at the beginning of this chapter, from Aschenbrenner’s study of a rural community in the western Peloponnese, could equally well apply to Methana in the eastern Peloponnese. Furthermore, Aschenbrenner’s study emphasises the fundamental changes in the lives and work of the villagers, including in aspects of kinship itself, but – as on Methana – the centrality of the family as the most enduring feature of social organisation remains. Like many words referring to fundamental cultural concepts in Greek, several relating to kinship are highly protean, changing their meanings in relation to their context of use. The concepts of [ikoghenia] (family), [spiti] (house) and [soi] (kingroup) are especially good examples. For example, when Methanites described the complex web of blood and marriage relations which made up the social fabric of their village, they frequently remarked, – ‘we are all one big family.’ On other occasions, they would refer to their own exclusive households using the same term, ikoghenia. Clearly, even though there was a certain amount of exaggeration, ‘family’ in the first context was being used far more inclusively than in the latter. Besides describing biological and marriage relationships, ‘family’ is also a moral concept. It describes expectations that there will be generosity and harmoniousness in relations between individuals. As Clark (1988, 155–69) clearly demonstrates, a family on Methana should have ! [kali sira] (good order), the members should be [mazemeni] (here meaning ‘pulling together’). Thus, the statement that a village is ‘all one big family’ indicates a principle of village life: ideally all members of the village, like members of a good family, should be [aghapimeni] – loving one another (see also Just 1991, 126). In other words, they should have harmonious relations with each other. The ultimate public and symbolic recognition of this ideal occurs every year in the final church service of Easter Day, itself a time of renewal, known as the Aghapi (literally ‘Love’). When it ends, all participants embrace as a symbol of harmonious relations throughout 118


the community (Campbell 1976, 26). The fact that the expectations are not always fulfilled, either in villages or in households, does not undermine the fundamental principle of what should happen. Methanites thus reflect Schneider’s observation that Euro-Americans define relatives both in terms of a common natural substance (‘blood’ – e.g., du Boulay 1974, 144–6 for Greece), and a code of conduct – the fact that they behave like relatives (Schneider 1968, 29). Several issues in this chapter, including the definition of a household and the quasi-kinship status of neighbours, are best understood as deriving from a definition of kinship which relies in part on a code of conduct. Clark (1988, 129–39) demonstrates that the principles of ‘honour’ and ‘shame’, widely discussed by Mediterranean anthropologists, rarely entered discussions of the ideals of family behaviour. When asked whether ‘honour-crimes’ were ever committed on Methana, Methanites were horrified at the thought, emphasising that they themselves were proper Greeks: ! – well-behaved, civilised people. Only uncivilised people, like those from the Mani or Crete, resorted to the behaviours I mentioned, they said2 . As Clark (1988, 134) states, it was not so much ! [timi] (honour) but kali sira within a family (effectively, behaving like ‘proper’ family members should) which was highly rated. Clark’s exposition of the concept of kali sira is critical to understanding many aspects of the meanings of their landscapes to Methanites. Later in this work, we encounter historical events which indicated for Methanites what can happen in a family without kali sira. When Methanites described their immediate family, the term spiti would often be used, as in [to spiti mas] – our house(hold). Spiti also had a wide range of meanings, including specifically a family which had kali sira (Clark 1988, 156, 189). More usually it could refer to a structure in which people lived, as well as being virtually interchangeable with the word family, and could also indicate a family line: interchangeable usages directly paralleling the meanings found in the ancient Greek words oikia and oikos (Liddel and Scott 1973, 1203–5). The household on Methana has traditionally incorporated more than the nuclear family of parents and unmarried children. Threegeneration households containing a married couple, their children, 119


and the parents of one of the couple (usually the man) have been an enduring arrangement on Methana in the past. Such households are frequently known by anthropologists as stem-family households. In 1974, in the main study community, 33 percent of households contained members of both the parental and the grandparental generation, although in a number of instances the children of the younger couple were resident elsewhere (Forbes 1982, 469–76). Even in 1987, when ‘modern’ ideals were well established on Methana, 24 percent of households were of the stem type (Clark 1988, 214). Apart from examples in which three generations lived together in the same house, there were other examples of an elderly couple or a widowed individual living in the same village but in a separate house from that of a married child. Although living in different houses, often it was difficult to decide whether they were two independent but cooperating household organisations or a single one with two separate bases within the village. A specific example was a married couple living in their own house, immediately adjacent to the house of the wife’s parents. The younger couple worked some land which, technically, belonged to the older couple, along with their own. But the produce was shared between the two households. The older couple also helped out with important agricultural tasks when the husband of the younger couple, a merchant seaman, was away from home. A single small flock of sheep and goats was kept in the old couple’s yard, but a member of either household might take them out to graze. Sometimes one household cooked for both: plates of cooked food were brought to the other house at mealtimes so that each household still ate separately. Should this example be considered a stem family or two separate nuclear families? The issue of how to label such households is not restricted to Methana (e.g., Segalen 1984). In part it relates to a particular stage of the domestic cycle when the older generation are still alive and moderately active and have not passed over all control of economic resources to the next generation. Essentially, the ‘problem’ involves how to impose an externally developed academic classification system (is it household type i, or ii, or iii?) onto a complex economic and affective arrangement reflecting the particular exigencies of personalities, abilities, and economic resources of the individuals involved. 120


The web of rights, obligations, and relations becomes even more complex when one’s livelihood depends, whether wholly or partially, on working land which is in many senses ‘part of the family’. It is virtually impossible to classify such a mixture of residential pattern, economic relations and affective relationships in one simple classificatory system (Hammel 1984). Nevertheless, situations in which domestic units lived separately but worked a single enterprise seem to have had a long history on Methana. Methanites conceptualised the classification of two physically separate households comprising a married couple and the parents of one of them in a rather different way. Clark (1988, 190–1), noting that the word ‘family’ (ikoghenia) was an ambiguous term, used differently according to context, indicates that Methanites themselves linked the issue to the norm of the stem family and the moral dimension of the importance of good relations within a household. Nevertheless, most people included the parents of one of the couple living in a stem household as part of their ‘family’. One village informant included her in-laws living in the main spa town of Loutra as part of this category because she and her husband still followed their directions. The grandparental generation were thus included in the category of ‘family’ not so much because of the blood relationship but because they were integrated within the affairs of the married couple and their children. The family was thus distinguished from ‘relatives’ – cousins, aunts, and uncles related by blood (Clark 1988, 190–1): ‘relatives’ managed their own households’ affairs independently of one’s own family. Methanites’ use of the term ‘family’ therefore allowed them to decide whether an older couple and their married children living in adjacent houses were one stem family or two nuclear families. The example given earlier was considered by Methanites to be a single stem family. Another example was the Veliotis family (Clark 1988, 180–9). The elderly couple lived in a house adjacent to that of their son and his wife and family for many years, but the three-generation group had kali sira: the household was therefore considered a single family. By contrast, in another house, relations were poor between the older couple and their son and his wife: each couple ran its affairs as separately from the other as possible, including their farming and cooking, although in the same house. One household member insisted 121


they were two separate families living under one roof (Clark 1988, 190). Thus, Methanites prioritised moral principles – the importance of good relations within the domestic group – in defining the family, rather than degree of relatedness (blood), the numbers of roofs involved or precisely where people lived. Methanites talked of a relatively distant past – probably the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – when elderly couples would live and work together with several married sons and the sons’ families. They said parents tended not to pass on their property to their children, especially male children, while they themselves were still living. Hence, their children could not run their own independent households and livelihoods, even when they were married. Instead, the elderly couple ran the family enterprise, with married sons entirely dependent on them. In those days, daughters would move on marriage to their husbands’ households, and sons would bring their brides to live in the parental home. Methanites described the situation with the formulaic phrase (five brides) to indicate an old couple with several married sons all living as a single family. The impression repeatedly given was that all the married sons and their families lived under one roof (Clark 1988, 221). Despite these assertions, the census records from 1879 do not support Methanites’ claims. The census-takers carefully indicated individual domestic units living together in a house by assigning a different number to each house in a village. Sometimes these single domestic groups included individuals who were not part of the nuclear family or even stem family. Some examples from a single village are illustrative. One household included, along with a couple and their five children, the husband’s widowed mother and someone who was probably the wife’s widowed mother. Another contained a couple, their two small children, an old woman with a different surname – probably the wife’s mother – and a teenage brother and sister with yet another surname, whose relationship to the others is unclear. A third household contained a widow, her oldest(?) son with his young wife, three additional unmarried sons, three unmarried daughters, and a girl of ten years with a different surname whose relationship is again unclear. The census-takers evidently took great care when documenting residents of houses who were not direct members of the nuclear family 122


or stem family, yet in the seven villages for which complete census data for 1879 could be found, there is no example of more than one married sibling living in the same house with his or her parents. A single example where more than one married brother shared a house is equally carefully indicated. Two men with the same surname and father’s initial – almost certainly brothers – and their families, are listed for a single house. Other men with the same surname and father’s initial as these two lived in houses on either side. The census therefore indicates that four brothers and their families lived in a row of three adjacent houses. This was not an example of the situation claimed by Methanites, however: none of these men had a parent living with him. Clark (1988, 221) was also unable to document more than three examples of several married brothers living under one roof: even these households separated when family numbers increased. Despite the repeated claims that several married brothers lived under one roof in the old days, such an arrangement broke a basic cultural principle. As one octogenarian told Clark: Inside one house it is impossible for three married brothers to live together. Who would be in charge? There must be one nikokiris (household head) or they will argue. (Clark 1988, 221)

The disjuncture between Methanites’ repeated claims of several married brothers living together in the old days and other evidence contradicting them lies in Methanites’ definition of a ‘family’ as a domestic group of up to three generations in which all members worked as a single unit. There is no reason to believe that Methanites were entirely mistaken in their descriptions. In all likelihood, one married son continued to live with the parents as part of a stem family. However, the norm was for families of brothers to live in separate houses. While their parents were alive, oral histories suggest that they often worked as a single economic unit, even if not as a single residential unit in one house. However, as is explored in Chapter 8, at this period it would seem that sons other than the one who lived with his parents (usually the youngest) were usually able to build their own houses immediately adjacent to the parental home (see Clark 1988, 221–3). These clusters of separate houses therefore seem to have functioned as unitary multifamily compounds, with several married sons working 123


as a single extended family household although living mostly as nuclear family domestic units, at least as long as the parents were alive. Methanites’ descriptions of these multifamily units conceptualised them as having a shared domestic domain but the extended domestic space so described was primarily conceptual. Reality was a series of social links between the separate domestic spaces of individual houses. The extent to which villages have been composed of clusters of houses containing closely related kin is discussed in Chapter 8. Here, two examples will suffice. In the 1879 census, house 42 in Meghalo Khori contained an eighty-two-year-old man, his wife, his youngest son, his son’s wife, and the younger couple’s five children – nine inhabitants in all. Adjacent houses 43–45 contained three other sons with their families, totalling a further twenty people (see table 8.2). In house 9 in Kaimeni Khora, another eighty-two-year-old lived with his wife, his son, his son’s wife, and his three grandchildren. In houses on either side of them lived two older sons, one with four children, the other with five, as indicated in table 5.1. Large family sizes and small houses explain why married brothers rarely shared a home. Clarke (2000a, 117–19) gives dimensions of 2.5 × 8 metres and 3.7 × 12 metres for two old-style houses with mud roofs (20 m2 and 45 m2 , respectively). The restricted floor areas would have been further reduced by the necessary appurtenances of rural households, such as trunks containing clothes, blankets, and other items; a large kneading trough for bread making; other food preparation equipment; and at least some of the paraphernalia needed for making textiles. In addition, there was probably a large granary chest containing the household’s substantial wheat supplies because storage space built at a lower level below the floor was generally limited (Clarke 2000a, 119). Little floor space would have remained to accommodate all the members of a large family (see also Clark 1988, 230). Small wonder that other married children, apart from the youngest son, lived in separate houses. OTHER RELATIVES

The third quote at the beginning of this chapter highlights the importance of relatives beyond the family for rural Greeks. Methanites, like 124

table 5.1. A sequence of closely related households HH Number

Surname

Name

Father (or Husband)

Age

Status

8 8 8 8 8 8 8

Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias

Anastasios Bilio Konstandinos Ekaterina Gheorghios Andonios Khristos

Konstandinos Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios

49 42 19 15 11 5 2

Wife of Anastasios Son Daughter Son Son Son

9 9 9 9 9 9 9

Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias

Konstandinos Ekaterina Dhimitrios Marina Ekaterina Konstandinos Marigho

Konstandinos Konstandinos Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios

82 72 36 27 9 7 3

Wife of Konstandinos Son of Konstandinos Wife of Dhimitrios Daughter Son Daughter

10 10 10 10 10 10

Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias Gkodzias

Gheorghios Stamata Konstandinos Ioannis Maria Athanasios

Konstandinos Gheorghios Gheorghios Gheorghios Gheorghios Gheorghios

41 31 14 7 4 1

Wife of Gheorghios Son Son Daughter Son

Comments Son of head of Hh 9

Father of heads of Hh 8, 10

Son of head of Hh 9

HH = household

125

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table 5.2. Greek kinship terms in regular use English Term

Greek Term

great grandfather, great grandmother grandfather, grandmother father, mother uncle, aunt husband, wife, spouse brother, sister, siblings male cousin, female cousin first, second, third cousins son, daughter nephew, niece grandson, granddaughter father-in-law, mother-in-law ‘son-in-law’, ‘daughter-in-law’ ∗ siblings of one’s spouse, male and female co-in-law, male and female wife of husband’s brother husband of wife’s sister baptismal sponsor wedding sponsor

propappous, proghiaghia pappous, ghiaghia pateras, mitera thios (barbas)∗ , thia andras, ghineka, sizighos adhelfos, adhelphi, adhelphia exadhelfos, exadhelfi prota, dheftera, trita exadhelfia ghios, kori anipsios, anipsia enggonos, enggona petheros, pethera ghambros, nifi kouniadhos, kouniadha simpetheros, simpethera sinifadha badzanakis nounos, nouna koumbaros stephanos

∗

See discussion in text.

most Greeks, reckoned kinship bilaterally. That is, they acknowledged relatedness equally through their mother’s and father’s relatives in the same way as that found in ‘standard’ western European and North American kinship systems. Hence, the majority of kinship terms in English have direct equivalents in Greek. Grandmother and grandfather, grandson and granddaughter, aunt and uncle, nephew and niece, first cousin, second cousin and third cousin, all have their direct equivalents in Greek (see table 5.2). There is no linguistic distinction in any of these terms between one’s mother’s and one’s father’s side of the family (see, e.g., Aschenbrenner 1986, 46–7; Just 1991, 121; for a full list of Greek kinship terms, see Andromedas 1957). Not all terms for affines (relatives by marriage) had identical equivalents in British or American usage. The parents of one’s spouse, petheros and pethera (father-in-law and mother-in-law, respectively), and the siblings of one’s spouse, kouniadhos and kouniadha (brother-in-law and 126


sister-in-law, respectively), are closely similar usages. However, the terms ghambros (‘bridegroom’) and nifi (‘bride’), used by all members of the family into which a man or woman marries, highlight the affinal status of these ‘arrivals’ into a family. Thus, the husband of a daughter, a niece, a cousin or a sister will be referred to as o ghambros mas (literally ‘our bridegroom’). The phrase i nifi mas (‘our bride’) can be used by the same range of relatives. These terms indicate the husband’s and wife’s relationship not simply with each other but with an extended network of each other’s blood relatives (see also du Boulay 1974, 147–8). Furthermore, marriage does not simply involve a relationship between a person and his or her spouse’s immediate family. Other relatives are also affected by the marriage, as reified in kinship terminology by use of the terms simpetheros and simpethera (male and female ‘co-in-law’, respectively). These terms are regularly used as a form of address to each other between the actual parents of a married couple and also by other close kin. Other terms without an obvious British or North American equivalent also highlight the importance of the wider relationships created by a marriage. Sinifadha defines women who are married to brothers: because the families of several brothers often resided in the same village, this relationship was an important one and was frequently close. Husbands of sisters are defined by the term badzanakis. Perhaps surprisingly, given the emphasis on patrilineal kin to be discussed later, the relationship between badzanakidhes (plural of badzanakis) on Methana could be very close. EXTENT OF THE KINSHIP GROUP

The standard Greek terms for great-grandfather and great-grandmother, propappous and proghiaghia, were very rarely used on Methana3 . On occasions, the phrase o pappous tou pappou mou (literally, ‘my grandfather’s grandfather’) would be used to mean great-grandfather. However, the standard Greek terms for other relatives were regularly used by Methanites in discussions of kin (Table 5.2). On Methana, the limits of the group of people considered to be significant blood kin stretched as far as second cousin: that is, descendants of great-grandparents. Marriage between first cousins was considered incestuous. Between second cousins, it was considered highly undesirable and virtually never 127


occurred. Marriage of third cousins was allowed and was often considered favourably (discussed later). The exogamous (out-marrying) group consisting of consanguines (blood kin) extending bilaterally (i.e., through both the mother’s and father’s lines) to second cousin was generally described by Methanites as the soi, a word likely to be of Turkish derivation (Herzfeld 1983, 158) but very variable in meaning throughout Greece. Although Greeks in many rural communities use soi to define a bilateral kin group, in the community which Just (1991, 121) describes, the bilateral kin group was termed ikoghenia (family). Clark (1988, 242) notes significant differences in the definition of the word soi in three Greek dictionaries, but the common theme behind all of them was ‘origin’. Du Boulay (1974, 144–5) suggests that in Ambeli in Evvia, the term syngenis (relatives) was virtually synonymous with soi: both terms extended beyond second cousins. On Methana, third cousins would be considered syngenis but definitely not of the same soi. The term soi in Methana usage is best translated as ‘kindred’: a group of kin related to an individual equally via the mother’s and father’s sides. Especially in the past, when large numbers of Methanites stayed on the peninsula and lived by agriculture, the computation of who was inside and outside the bilateral kindred was crucially important for finding marriage partners because there was a preference for marriage partners from one’s own village, or at least from Methana. However, the term soi was also used to describe a different kind of group, with the same generation-depth as the bilaterally defined soi, but restricted to the male line, so it shared a common surname. Because this kind of group was defined agnatically (i.e., through the male line), I term it an agnatic soi (see also Just 1991, 121) to distinguish it from the bilateral soi described in the previous paragraph (for a directly comparable situation in the western Peloponnese, see Aschenbrenner 1986, 48–50). The agnatic soi, like the bilateral soi, also included second cousins but excluded third cousins. Although, with the partial exception of Campbell (1964, 300–1), strictly patrilineal kinship groupings were not highlighted in earlier ethnographic writings on rural Greek communities, more recent studies have noted sporadic examples (Herzfeld 1983). Just (1991, 121) indicates that the term soi was defined agnatically in Spartohori. 128


Aschenbrenner (1986, 48–50) identifies an emphasis on patrilineal kin in a western Peloponnesian community, those with a shared surname forming monolithic surname groups manifesting a community of interest and mutual loyalty. All families within these groups are linked by kinship ties, some as remote as third cousin: significantly, third cousins define the prohibited limits of marriage. Although Aschenbrenner does not use the term, the groups bear a number of similarities with the agnatic soi on Methana. Herzfeld (1983) explores other examples of patriliny in Greece, indicating that despite the dominance of bilateral kinship reckoning in ‘standard’ Greek kinship terminology, a significant number of Greek communities associate aspects of patriliny with the term soi. Use of the term to describe both a bilaterally and an agnatically defined kin group has not been widely identified in rural Greek communities, but Herzfeld (1985, 52) notes a Cretan community in which soi is used under some circumstances to refer also to a bilateral kindred. Already by the later nineteenth century, households in Methana villages tended to be located in clusters of immediate kin (see also Aschenbrenner 1986, 91; Herzfeld 1983, 157). Furthermore, although in past generations Methanites preferred marriage partners from their own village, for reasons outlined later, it was frequently necessary to find brides in other villages. Brides, particularly those from other villages, found themselves in a community in which their husband had lived since birth, in regular contact with his own kin, and often under the same roof as his parents. The bride was thus frequently an outsider to the village, and certainly to the family, where she was very much under the control of her husband’s mother. Additionally, as Aschenbrenner (1986, 48) notes in the western Peloponnese, there has been a pervasive male dominance in the family and in general social life. For example, the wife assumed some of the husband’s family’s identity by taking his surname and by the fact that her own children also had his family’s surname and belonged to his agnatic soi. Ultimately, too, she would be physically incorporated with her husband’s agnatic soi when she was buried among her husband’s relatives in the cemetery after her death (see Chapter 8). In addition to the passive elements of incorporation, the wife who lived with her husbands’ parents entered a house which, as a built 129


structure, acted as a critically important physical monument to a patriline which had inhabited the house over the generations. In her reproductive capacity, the woman of a house ensured that the link with the past had a future via her children. The spiritual well-being of the house was also her responsibility: she maintained the holy corner where the family icons were kept and ensured that the little oil lamp in front of them was lighted. Women were also primarily responsible for representing the family before God, both in stricter adherence to the dietary rules of the Greek Orthodox church than the household’s men and in more assiduous attendance at church services (Clark 1988, 281). Within the house, too, the senior woman, who had usually also married into the household as a young woman, was in a very real sense the embodiment of the household as a social entity. Du Boulay (1974, 133), in describing a community in Evvia, has gone so far as to claim that the woman is the house. At first sight, it might be thought that the agnatic soi on Methana was identical to the surname groups described by Aschenbrenner (1986, 49), in which all who share the same surname form a single kin group. For example, when I told a man from another village whom I met in the interior of the peninsula where I lived, he replied that he knew the village well. ‘I took a wife from the Nikolidhes’, he said, mentioning one of the surnames found in the village. In naming a common surname, he made it plain that he was describing a patrilineal kin group, not a bilateral one. On another occasion, I was visiting another Methana village: an inhabitant, on learning where I lived, passed disparaging comments on a particular surname-group in the village. In Chapter 7, I present a man’s description of the founding of his village. His statement, ‘the first [inhabitant] was Veliotis’, using merely a surname, defined both an individual and an agnatic soi which still existed in the village. He then proceeded to list a further three surnames, again without baptismal names, completing his description by stating that the whole village developed from this small handful of individuals. In his short description, he encapsulated the origins of both the village and the agnatic soia which comprised its population, but he was unable to give baptismal names to those founding ancestors. Likewise, he was unable to assign a definite century when the events had occurred nor the number of generations back from himself. 130


On another occasion at a wedding, the father of one of the newly married couple, well filled with wine, lost his temper with a female affine, a member of his wife’s kindred, married and living in another village. ‘I fuck your soi’ he said. To which the woman replied, laughing off the insult: ‘And what soi am I? Khiotiko soi’, using the surname of her natal family in the man’s own village, and the maiden name of the man’s own wife. In other words, although the woman ‘belonged’ at one level to her husband’s family, her immediate reaction was to identify herself in terms of her agnatic soi of origin, using a surname label. Although Methanites used the bilateral soi for computing degrees of relatedness in the identification of potential marriage partners and a variety of other matters, they mostly referred to the agnatic soi when using the term as an identifier of a distinctive kin group. The use of a surname to identify an agnatic grouping, however, did not signify that all who shared the same surname shared the same identity. In the main study village, three major surname groups and two smaller ones were all identifiable in the register of male births from before 1860. When discussing kinship with the inhabitants, I would sometimes refer to a man or a household with the same surname, asking if they were related. The reply would be either a term for a relative (e.g., brother, cousin, uncle, with the exact connections of the last two normally being explained) or else the statement

(a different soi). In other words, on Methana, those who shared the same surname did not automatically form a kin group. Surname groups as such did not share a common identity: agnatic soia within a surname group did, based on blood relationships in the patriline. The way in which surname groups could contain more than one agnatic soi, each with its own identity, can be seen in Clark’s (1988, 391–5) description of certain marginal individuals in Liakotera. Two of her three examples shared a paternal grandfather who had been the only person in the peninsula’s history to have deliberately killed a man (Clark 1988, 394). Villagers noted the connection, explaining that these individuals broke the accepted behavioural rules because of ‘bad blood’ from the paternal grandfather. There were other soia which shared the same surname but not the same reputation. Similarly, the cemetery of the main study village was divided into blocks of graves which ideally contained graves of individuals who all shared the same 131


surname, but each major surname group was divided into two or more separate sub-groups, reflecting the realities of the separate agnatic soia within surname groups (see Chapters 8 and 9). Herzfeld’s (1983, 163) observation that in Greece the patrilineal group is a component in how people are defined is very much at the heart of the preceding paragraph. Problematic behaviour was ‘explained’ by the fact that those concerned came from a direct line – an agnatic soi – containing a problematic ancestor. Finally, in the exchange between host and guest at the wedding, the woman identified her soi as a self-signifier, linking herself to past generations: by using a patrilineally applied surname, she did so agnatically rather than bilaterally or affinally. There is a good reason why the bilateral soi should not be associated with identity. Being bilateral, it linked a unique group of siblings to the relatives of a specific man and woman who were their parents. Thus, a particular bilateral soi was defined by Ego, who shared it only with his or her full siblings (see also du Boulay 1974, 144). Even the parents of those siblings had different soia: the mother and father of a group of siblings each had a soi which they shared only with their own siblings. By contrast, a patriline was a monolithic social unit which was not Ego-based: it was not specific only to Ego and his or her siblings. It incorporated a specific set of people who could readily identify themselves as a patrilineally related group descended from a number of brothers in the grandparental generation and who could equally well be readily identified thus by outsiders. Hence, it was the agnatic soi which served the purpose of identifying where a person ‘belonged’ within the community, not the bilateral soi (see fig. 5.1). The agnatic soi in twentieth-century usage on Methana was therefore about identity, especially personal characteristics, both physical and in terms of character and behaviour, and the expectation that they would be passed through the generations. Methanites, being practical farmers, recognised that a plant with especially good or bad characteristics could be expected to pass them on to succeeding generations. When sorting and saving seed of wheat for sowing in the following year, Methanites removed the small seeds to ensure that the coming year’s crop also had large seeds. If they found a plant with especially desirable characteristics, they would save seed. Similarly, when 132


5.1. Two kinds of kinship systems.

replacing aging animals, Methanites would choose offspring from sheep or goats which produced large amounts of milk because of the likelihood that the next generation would retain this characteristic. In the same way, members of an agnatic soi were believed to share the same inherited characteristics, good and bad. To believe that characteristics are derived only via the male line is to assume a form of monogenetic transmission as found in Abrahamic traditions 133


of an active male element and a passive female element in procreation (Bryant 2002, 517, quoting Delaney 1991, 1995). I did not discuss theories of procreation in any detail with Methanites, although repeated references to ‘changing the cock’ both in the farmyard and in bed did indicate their views. However, Herzfeld (1983, 163) identifies just such a contrast between an active male principle and a passive female principle in the generation of the self elsewhere in Greece. My impression was that although Methanites acknowledged that people could inherit characteristics from their mothers, it was expected that they inherited identifying characteristics primarily through their fathers. The agnatic soi on Methana was thus a kind of descent group: a small lineage. Western industrialised societies generally compute who is and who is not related, bilaterally, through both parents. However, many societies around the world ignore connections either through the mother’s line or through the father’s line when identifying kin. Unilineal descent groups, tracing their identity either through the male or through the female line but not both, are well known ways of organising people in large numbers of non-Western societies: they are regularly described and discussed in chapters on kinship in introductory anthropology textbooks (e.g., Kottak 2002, 198–201; Lewis 1996; Peoples and Bailey 2000, 138–47). The principle of unilinear descent can unite whole tribes such as the Nuer of Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1940) or relatively small groupings. However large or small descent groups may be, though, recruitment to them is, inevitably, by birth. It is accepted without question by anthropologists that members of lineages relate themselves to fellow members by tracing their links back to a common ancestor, generally known as an apical ancestor, because he or she stands genealogically and historically at the apex of the lineage as its originator (e.g., Kottak 2002, 198–9; Lewis 1996, 152). It is a fundamental belief among most anthropologists that unilineal lineages identify themselves and their members through a common ancestor. Traditional societies with unilineal kinship systems in Africa, North America, and the Pacific have been discovered to work on this principle. It is via peoples from these parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, that much of anthropologists’ basic thinking about kinship has been derived. 134


In many societies worldwide, lineages, especially if small, may act as a mobilising force for a range of activities, such as cultivation and warfare, for example. They may also own property in common. In Chapter 3, I discussed how the foundation of a number of villages on Methana in the early nineteenth century was accomplished in part via the arrival of groups of families all sharing the same surname. Clearly, at that point the agnatic soi was the primary mechanism by which the movement of these refugees was organised. During the twentieth century on Methana, the agnatic soi had few of the properties frequently associated with unilinear kinship systems, but the examples previously noted indicate that it could have at least a common identity, characteristics and reputation. Furthermore, in common with all other unilineal descent groups, agnatic soia were descended de facto from a common ancestor. Because second cousins constituted the limit of the agnatic soi, the common ancestor was the father’s father’s father: the great-grandfather. Just such a four-generation patrilineal lineage is illustrated in the example diagram of a unilineal descent group in Peoples and Bailey’s introductory anthropology textbook (2000, 140). Methanites had no trouble identifying all their second cousins, apart from those descended from people of previous generations who had gone abroad and not returned. Although second cousins are the descendents of a common great-grandparent, Methanites generally had little or no idea of the identity of the common ancestor from whom they and their second cousins within either the bilateral or the agnatic soi were descended. Even the common ancestors’ names were generally unknown. Furthermore, when discussing how they identified the members of their soi, they did not even show an awareness of a concept of an apical ancestor from whom all members of the group derived. To my frustration, there seemed to be a conceptual and genealogical void beyond the grandparental generation when I asked them how they knew that certain people were inside the soi and others were outside it, yet they could identify descendents of common ancestors they did not recognise. After reading an earlier draft of another chapter of this book, an informant whose father had emigrated from Methana early in the 135


twentieth century confirmed that when she visited Methana her relatives had considerable difficulty remembering kin before their grandparents. Her father’s mother’s side of the family did remember her great-grandfather’s name with particular pride. Although the reasons for it were unclear to her because of the language barrier, my informant gained the impression that there was something especially memorable which helped to explain why this great-grandparent was remembered. His descendents on Methana also claimed to remember the name of this man’s wife: however, the name that they gave for her differed from that listed in the 1879 census. GREEK KINSHIP AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL KINSHIP THEORY

When I was a student, my lecturers struggled to inculcate in me the essential fact that members of lineage-based societies around the world could work out who belonged to their own lineage and who did not because they could identify the ancestor or ancestors from whom the group was derived. In the blank inability of Methanites even to understand why it should be necessary to know who their ancestors were before the grandparental generation, I met a fundamental denial of one of the basic rules of anthropological kinship theory. Methanites, of course, were untroubled by such matters: they readily identified their second cousins pragmatically as the descendents of sets of first cousins (see du Boulay 1974, 144, for a similar situation in Evvia). Thus, a person would know from the simple process of growing up who his mother’s and father’s first and second cousins were. The children of these first and second cousins were automatically his or her second and third cousins, respectively. Under these circumstances, knowledge concerning one’s great-great-grandparents or even great-grandparents was irrelevant. One aspect of this discussion which concerned me was Herzfeld’s (1983) observation concerning the variability in the way that which kinship is computed in contemporary Greece. Additionally, with the one exception noted by Herzfeld (1983), I was unable to find another ethnographic work which described the soi as being both bilateral and patrilineal in different contexts. Was this usage restricted just to 136


Methana? I therefore asked several Greek academics in Britain what they understood by the term soi. My informants were generally from urban rather than rural backgrounds, although most had parents or grandparents who came from villages. The origins of their families were very diverse: from the Black Sea to the Peloponnese. Despite the wide differences in backgrounds, I received a reasonably consistent series of answers which confirmed that Methanites were far from unique. The first definition I was given was always a bilateral kindred. However, when I asked the right question, a significant majority, although not all, agreed that in a different context the term soi could be used to define a patriline. Finally, they almost all stated that the phrase (literally, he is/they are from a soi) indicated that a person or people were from a noteworthy family group, generally identified by a surname, and therefore ultimately defined as a patriline. It was also apparent that in most cases, people could not identify ancestors before their grandparents, although a number stated that they thought this might have been because of mobility in previous generations. We have seen that Methanites broke the ‘anthropological rules’ concerning the formation of kinship groups and how members identified themselves as belonging to them, by ignoring the apical ancestors who should by rights be the raison d’être for the existence of the whole group. These ‘rules’ have been constructed by anthropologists over many years of study and have been found to work reasonably well throughout the world. The fact that Methanites did not ‘recognise’ them therefore raises an important issue in the wider field of anthropology. The genealogical ‘rules’ used by anthropologists derive from Rivers’s ‘genealogical method’ published in 1910 (Bouquet 1996, 44–5). It has recently been argued that Rivers’s work itself derives from a distinctively European cultural tradition, dating back at least to the eighteenth century, as a way of visually representing pedigrees4 . Using a picture of a tree as a way of visually representing pedigrees, the original ancestors were depicted at the base of the trunk as the roots, with the most recent generation at the top. Such ‘family trees’ by their very nature presupposed an original ancestor: many were graphic demonstrations of the derivation of a particular personage, often biblical, from a specified ancestor (Bouquet 1996, 44–54). The apical ancestors depicted 137


in anthropological kinship diagrams thus derive conceptually from the ‘radical ancestors’ depicted at the bases of family trees constructed in previous centuries. In sharing the same cultural roots with the graphic device of the family tree, anthropological kinship diagrams also automatically presuppose an apical ancestor. Anthropological kinship diagrams, far from being a form of culturefree ‘graphic shorthand’ (Bouquet 1996, 43), are therefore themselves artefacts of western European cultural concerns. An essential part of those concerns, the necessity of identifying an original ancestor to give meaning to succeeding generations, is thus also inherent in the devices anthropologists use to describe kinship among all the peoples in the world. Although large numbers of peoples can indeed identify a specific apical ancestor, whether human, mythical, or semi-mythical, and can recite all the links to him/her/it, such an ancestor is not a sine qua non of a kinship system, as the situation described for Methana shows. Nevertheless, because of the culturally bound nature of kinship diagrams, it is difficult for anthropologists to conceptualise a kinship system which does not depend on an apical ancestor, much as it is difficult to conceptualise a tree without roots. More recent work on kinship has sidestepped the overriding focus on ancestry and intergenerational links connecting the living with the living via the dead. Since the 1970s, several anthropologists have concentrated on the theme of siblingship as a principle of social order commensurate with principles of descent. This new approach is a radical departure because it focuses on relations among the living, concentrating on bonds of the same relative generation. These bonds constitute ‘key’ (‘core’) social relations in all societies (Peletz 1995, 350). Carsten (1995) describes a Malay society which manifests a number of similarities to the situation found on Methana. Of particular relevance here is her observation that members of the community had little interest in maintaining a memory of long-dead forebears. Relations between second or third cousins were known and understood but were reckoned horizontally, in terms of siblingship, rather than vertically, in terms of descent. The phenomenon is linked to the lack of concern for the origins of the villagers in this society (Carsten 1995, 319). Such ‘genealogical amnesia’ (Geertz and Geertz 1964) is related 138


to the social context of constructing a sense of shared identity in a community formed largely of migrants of disparate geographical origins. That phenomenon is in turn connected to features of population mobility inherent within the political context of the Southeast Asia state (Carsten 1995, 326–9). The nub of Methanites’ system of identifying members of both the bilateral and the agnatic soi was that it was primarily concerned with siblings and cousins – that is, members of the same generation (see also du Boulay 1974, 144–5, 150–1). These defined the limits of the kindred in exactly the same way that ancient Greek sources define the kinship group known as the anchisteia (Demosthenes 43, 57; Demosthenes 47, 71–2), that is, without reference to a great-grandparental apical ancestor who would in almost all cases not have been alive when Ego was born. Foxhall (1995) notes that the ancient anchisteia, as a bilateral kindred, emphasised the ‘actualisation’ of kinship relationships in their practical aspects, that is, production and reproduction, and social relations in daily life (see also Peletz 1995, 350–1, 354). These are very much the aspects of the bilateral soi emphasised by Methanites. The agnatic soi, on the other hand, was like the ancient Athenian phratry and genos. It has been particularly linked to issues of origin, birth, and heritage, as in the primary meaning of the ancient Greek word genos (Patterson 1998, 65–6). In ancient Athens, membership of such patrilineal groupings was formalised because it was especially important to one’s identity as a citizen, and for certain individuals it entitled them to take on critical roles within Athenian society, such as priesthoods and priestesshoods. Twentieth-century usage on Methana also related the agnatic soi primarily to issues of identity. Identity was defined, not vis-à-vis one’s bilateral relatives of the same generation, but with reference to previous generations, in exactly the same way as they kept seed from desirable plants or bred from desirable animals – the term soi would be used on occasions to denote a strain of wheat or a breed of animals. Once again, Methanites were not unique: Herzfeld (1983, 163) emphasises that despite considerable differences in the functioning of agnatic soia in different rural communities in Greece, patrilineages are above all else a component in the social definition of the self. 139


Societies such as those of Native North Americans or sub-Saharan Africans present Europeans with a satisfyingly obvious ‘otherness’ which traditionally has been at the heart of the discipline of anthropology. Indeed, the foundations of anthropologists’ understanding of kinship systems worldwide, especially ‘descent theory’, have been heavily dependent on studies of sub-Saharan African societies. It is above all in the study of unilineal descent systems that the recognition and identification of an apical ancestor has greatest meaning, and it was classic works like Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) study of the Nuer of Sudan which laid the foundations for understanding how such kinship systems functioned and were conceptualised by their users. The Afro-centric nature of this area of anthropology can readily be seen in the sections of a recent anthropological encyclopaedia. Under the sub-section on ‘unilineal descent’ in the substantial entry on ‘Kinship’, with two exceptions all the authors referred to have been African specialists (Good 1996, 312–13). Similarly, in the entry under ‘Descent’, seven of the sixteen references are by African specialists (Lewis 1996, 151–4). By contrast, in the entry under ‘Cognatic Society’ (i.e., bilateral kinship systems), there is only a single reference to Africa (King 1996, 106–8). Significantly, Peletz (1995, 350) identifies studies in Oceania, Southeast Asia (e.g., Carsten 1995) and lowland South America as highlighting the importance of siblingship. Greek culture, although clearly distinct from that of western Europe, shares numerous elements with that of western European societies. The internal tension between the ‘western-ness’ and the ‘unwestern-ness’ of Greek culture is eloquently explored by Herzfeld (1987). Elsewhere (Herzfeld 1983, 159), he has commented on the problem of a tendency to use specifically Africanist definitions when discussing Greek kinship. This problem has been compounded by a tendency among anthropologists in Greece to treat the term soi as though it were a strict definitional kinship term – again, a habit inherited from the wider world of anthropology. In reality, it is probably better to understand soi in the same way as the ancient Greek word genos in its wider sense – origin, birth, heritage or natural kind – rather than to a specific kinship grouping. In essence, then, if we were to base our expectations of the dynamics of Greek culture on theoretical approaches which have 140


been strongly influenced by the results of anthropologists’ studies on other continents with very different cultural traditions, we should not be surprised to find contradictions. The evidence presented here indicates, first, that rural Greek communities cannot be neatly fitted into normative statements about ‘the Greek kinship system’ in the way in which anthropologists have generally characterised small tribal societies. Studies such as Aschenbrenner’s (1986) and Herzfeld’s (1983) (and others referred to by Herzfeld) indicate the variability of the ways in which kinship is actually practised in Greek rural communities. Anthropologists have tended to characterise kinship systems as either bilateral or unilineal: on Methana and in some other parts of Greece, as apparently in ancient Athens, a bilateral system of defining kin seemed to cross-cut or intersect with a patrilineal system. The difficulties which traditional anthropological ways of viewing kinship impose on the understanding of the system are removed if the bilateral soi is conceptualised as primarily structured by intragenerational bonds which are related to the actualisation of kinship in everyday lives. By contrast, the agnatic soi is structured via intergenerational bonds and is related to the social definition of the self. The lack of clear generational depth of the agnatic soi on Methana beyond the grandparental or possibly the great-grandparental generation seems to be offset in part by the ways in which dwellings monumentalise those links back through time (see Chapters 7 and 8). Greece, and more broadly the Mediterranean zone, is not subSaharan Africa: we should not expect to be able to force Greek culture and social institutions into a sub-Saharan African – nor yet a Native North American nor Australian Aboriginal – mould. One purpose of the brief references to the ancient Athenian kinship system has been to demonstrate that the particular organisation and computation of kin noted for Methana in the last century or so have not been some sort of ephemeral social anomaly: as Herzfeld (1983, 158) observes, the Greek kinship system seems to have remained essentially unchanged over more than two millennia. If we accept Greek kinship structures and how Greeks understand them – in all their variety – on their own terms, we can add to our understanding of the ways in which kinship is used as an organising principle worldwide. 141


MARRIAGE ALLIANCES

For Methanites, marriage, or more particularly betrothal before marriage, made a boy or a girl into a proper adult – a status which everyone who was physically and mentally sound was expected to attain. Aging spinsters and bachelors were considered automatically to be of a weak mind. The lack of a full adult status for unmarried adults was emphasised by use of the word – little girls – for the three elderly spinsters who appear in a later chapter. In mixed-sex company, joking about sexual matters was acceptable in a wide range of social contexts, but only if all present were married, or at least engaged. Thus, during my first fieldwork period, when I was a young married but childless research student, I was with a group of elderly women, all related, plus a younger male relative of theirs, an unmarried sailor some years my senior. The women were discussing and joking about birth control over glasses of wine: the conversation varied between the light-hearted and the uproarious. They suddenly stopped when one exclaimed that the subject was inappropriate because of the nature of the company. They were concerned because of the unmarried sailor, despite his age, the reputation of sailors, and his status as a relative. After that, conversation was restricted to more decorous subjects. On another occasion during the first period of fieldwork, I was in the company of a number of young couples, either newly wed or engaged. The conversation started decorously enough, but then one of the company checked carefully to make sure that all present were married or engaged. Once this was ascertained, the conversation rapidly turned to matters sexual. It included discussion of the benefits for one engaged couple of the man marrying a girl from another village. In that situation, the young man was allowed to visit his fiancée in the evening and stay overnight with her. It then moved on to what was going to happen when the young couple were married and sleeping in the second room of the young man’s parents’ house. The floor was known to be weak. There was much speculation as to whether the timbers would withstand the onslaught of the couple’s nocturnal callisthenics. It was decided that it really did not matter if the floor gave way. There was an olive press in the storeroom underneath, 142


and continuing on the press-bed would spice up the experience even more! The whole family was concerned with marrying off a son or daughter because the amount of dowry or potential inheritance allocated to one child affected the amounts available to the others. In the 1970s, marriages were mostly arranged, although decisions over prospective spouses were not generally considered to be the prerogative of any one person. A boy and girl choosing each other without parental intervention very rarely happened, and parents considered it likely to lead to complications. Quite often, young people of marriageable age would attend local saint’s day festivals in other villages. At least part of the reason for their attendance was the chance to identify possible marriage partners. In the event that a young man or woman saw someone who took their fancy, they would make further enquiries to ascertain other aspects: the reputation of the person and the family, and the potential size of dowry or inheritance, for instance. On other occasions, parents might take a strong hand in identifying a suitable partner. In discussions over the choice of partner and the subsequent negotiations between families over the bride’s dowry (if matters progressed that far), it seemed that generally all parties within the family who were directly involved had an effective veto if they decided that matters were unacceptable. The primary consideration when families were contemplating a suitable marriage partner for a son or daughter was to ensure that they were outside the soi (kindred). Theoretically, second cousins could marry if they received dispensation from the bishop, but in practice this does not seem to have been an issue. In addition, as noted earlier, a marriage placed whole kinship groups into an important kinship relationship. In recognition of this, more than one marriage between two households was forbidden. Thus, according to Methanites, two brothers from one family could not marry two sisters from another family. One informant noted disapprovingly that her female first cousin had married the male first cousin of her husband. By rights, she said, this should not have happened. Beyond considerations of avoiding marriage with stipulated relatives, the primary consideration in negotiations between the two families was an approximate equality between the dowry of the prospective bride and the inheritance expectations 143


of the prospective groom. That having been said, both sides in the negotiations tended to attempt to minimise the amount promised to their own child while trying to extract the maximum possible from the other family. Other factors also intruded in considerations of suitability as a marriage partner. Significant health problems, physical disability, or an unattractive appearance affected a person’s chances of finding a spouse. Those with an attractive personality and good reputation were likely to find a spouse more easily than others not so well blessed. People who were physically attractive also had improved chances, though one girl was criticised for turning down an otherwise suitable candidate for a husband because she considered that he was not handsome enough. A number of young women who were slow in getting married were said to have repeatedly vetoed choices of potential husbands suggested by their families because of unrealistic expectations of a marital partner. In the later twentieth century, an ideal marriage was generally considered to involve partners of approximately equal ages or in which the bride was not much younger than the groom. On the other hand, it was expected that a young woman with very poor dowry prospects might make the best of her difficult circumstances by marrying a much older man who was relatively wealthy. Similarly, Clark (1988, 351) describes an actual case in which a poor man with six daughters and two sons arranged a marriage for one son with a relatively wealthy widow eighteen years his senior. Finally, the reputation of the family was a consideration: because a marriage meant an enduring social relationship between the kindreds of the two partners, families with a poor reputation were best avoided if possible. Young people recognised to be problematic in some way could still find a partner. However, there was generally a cost. A girl with a difficult personality, for instance, would normally need a significantly larger dowry in order to find a suitable match. Similarly, a young man who had an unenviable reputation would have to expect to marry a girl with a significantly smaller dowry than might otherwise be the case. However, there was a particular premium on girls with an emollient personality because traditionally post-marital residence was overwhelmingly virilocal. That is, the girl moved into the community, and often the household, of her husband and his family. 144


Especially if a girl was expected to live with her husband in his parents’ household, it was important that mother-in-law and daughterin-law were able to work well together because women did most of the work around the house. Just as a young man’s family looked for a girl who was likely to get along with his mother, so a young woman’s family was concerned that the mother of a prospective husband did not have a difficult personality (for difficulties between these parties, see Clark 1988, 384–7). Constant disputes between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law within the confines of a small house soon became unbearable. In theory, the groom’s unmarried sisters might still have been in the house as well, but a strongly developed tradition stated that all a family’s girls should marry, in sequence of age, before any of the boys. Methanites explained the tradition saying that boys had to work hard to help build up dowries for their sisters. Once a young man got married, he would have no incentive to help provide for his sisters. A married young man in this situation would be caught between providing for his sisters and for his own wife and children. On occasions, one or more brothers might therefore remain unmarried until they were in their late thirties, or sometimes longer if they had very much younger sisters. Traditionally, only the youngest son lived permanently with his parents after marriage. In the post–World War II era, it was generally accepted that a father would start to hand over the running of the farm to his youngest son once the latter was married, and especially once a child was born. At that point the young man’s father would start to be called barbas (literally ‘uncle’ but better translated as ‘grandpa’) and would be expected to take something of a backseat in running the farm. The grandmother, however, generally continued to run the household, with the incoming daughter-in-law as very much the junior partner in the day-to-day duties. The ghiaghia (grandmother) in many households was a figure associated by the grandchildren with discipline rather than indulgence. Uxorilocal residence (the couple living in the wife’s household) occurred relatively rarely. A man living with his wife’s parents was called [soghambros]. This situation generally occurred when a family had no sons. The youngest daughter would normally live at 145


home with her soghambros husband, a situation comparable to the youngest son living with his parents. Soghambri (plural), especially those moving to a different village, were generally perceived to be at a disadvantage in comparison with men living in their own village. They did not have a network of their own kin to call on to help with operations when additional hands were needed and at least initially were unfamiliar with the agricultural resources of their wife’s household. They were thus more under the control of a male of the senior generation – the wife’s husband. Although it was therefore generally assumed that soghambri were normally poor men relative to the status of their wives, who had ‘traded in’ their network of male kin for the opportunity to get a better dowry, this was not always the case. Other factors might be at work. For example, two unrelated men in the same village pooled their resources to set up a modern olive oil press. One man had two unmarried sons, and the other had an only daughter, also unmarried. The younger son of the one man, who had a distinctly more emollient personality than his older brother, married the daughter of the other. The couple lived with the parents of the wife because she had no other siblings. It was assumed that the older brother, who at that stage had yet to find a potential partner, would also be provided with a house: that of his grandfather, with whom his parents lived (Clark 1988, 26). Since the early 1970s, very few couples have stayed on Methana to live by farming. Most children have moved away, primarily to the capital, Athens and Piraeus. For many young women over the last three decades of the twentieth century, their dowry has consisted of an education, although many also have had an apartment in the capital or in Loutra, the spa town. Many young men have likewise had an education and then entered a white-collar job or else learned a skilled trade, such as electrician or plumber. In either case, they have had little need for all the agricultural land on which their parents depended for a living. The attitude of previous generations towards agricultural land had been very different. Although living by agriculture entailed hard work and few luxuries, it provided a living which was generally reliable and was envied by some. Methana’s volcanic soil is much more productive than the heavy clay terra rossa soils of many parts of Greece, and the varied landscape provided a sustainable supply of fuel, grazing, and 146


other products for subsistence. The comparison in the past was with those who had little or no land: poor shepherds or those who lived largely by wage labour, which was often both seasonal and poorly paid and usually undependable. Methanites also used to comment on the harshness of the lives of fishermen, who depended on the vagaries of both weather and consumer markets. It was people such as these that older Methanites remembered dying of starvation during the German Occupation in World War II. In the old days, especially in the interwar years and before, land was a highly desirable commodity on Methana. Dowries, in particular, were often at least partly composed of highly sought-after agricultural resources, such as plots of vines, small irrigated plots, or olive trees. It made sense, therefore, to contract marriages between families living within the same village, if possible. That way there was more likelihood that dowries of agricultural resources would be readily accessible: dowries in other village territories which required substantial travel were distinctly less desirable. However, because of the relatively small size of most villages – the main study community had forty-three households in the early 1970s – the extension of the prohibition on marriage to the degree of second cousin, and the inclusion of fictive kin within the prohibited sphere (discussed later), there were often few possible choices of marriage partners. Nevertheless, on occasions, families went to considerable lengths to ensure marriage within the village, such as the turning of a blind eye to the marriage of the female first cousin of the woman noted earlier to the male first cousin of her husband. The preference for marriage partners from the same village whenever possible further contributed to the semi-reality that the whole village was indeed related as one great family. In situations in which a marriage within the village was impracticable in the past, consideration was given to suitable partners in other Methana villages – the preference was so strong that only two women living in the main study village in the early 1970s were not from the peninsula. For partners in other villages, particular attention was paid to third cousins. Because the parental generation of the potential partners were second cousins, and therefore kin, the families were reasonably well known to each other. In particular, the reputations of the families and the personalities of the two young people and the young 147


woman’s potential mother-in-law would be known, even though they lived in separate villages. So, too, at least in general terms, would the young peoples’ prospects for inheritance or dowry. To be worthwhile as dowry, agricultural resources given to a young woman from another village would need to be reasonably accessible from her new home village. Alternatively, they would have to be resources such as olive trees or almond trees, which were of considerable value but needed relatively little investment of labour, apart from the picking of their fruit. Periodic ploughing under the trees was also necessary. However, because agricultural land and the trees standing on it could be owned separately, the ideal solution was to allocate as dowry olive or almond trees which were standing on agricultural land owned by someone else, so that the necessary ploughing under the trees would occur when the owner of the land ploughed for arable crops. This expedient avoided the need for travel over considerable distances to cultivate land in another village. If a dowry consisted of a significant number of trees in the young woman’s natal village, it was always possible for a family party to stay for a few days with the woman’s parents, or a brother or other relative, while the fruit was picked. These occasions afforded kin living in separate villages a rare opportunity to socialise, especially in the days before the road was constructed on Methana. Traditionally, an ideal wife from another village would come from a family which had agricultural resources readily accessible from the husband’s village. Vines were particularly favoured for this reason. Many of the largest areas of vines in which people had holdings were high in the peninsula’s interior. Because villages formed a ring part-way up the mountainside, all villagers were constrained to travel to the central area to cultivate them. These vines were thus in theory roughly equidistant from all villages. In practice, because of the rugged nature of the landmass of Methana, some of the areas of vines in the interior were less accessible to some villages. Nevertheless, plots of vines regularly changed ownership back and forth between families in certain villages as highly prized and relatively accessible dowry land. Much the same considerations occurred with holdings of fruit trees such as almond trees and especially olive trees. A household owning trees in the territory of another village would be especially keen to 148


identify a potential husband in that village who would be likely to accept the trees as dowry. Because these trees would in most instances have come to the family via dowry in an earlier generation, there would still be relatives in that village. Any family in which there was a male third cousin was therefore an obvious consideration for a husband. If none were available, a husband who was completely unrelated would certainly be considered. In this way, agricultural property ‘on the ground’ influenced kinship via decisions on the choices of marriage partners. As I describe in Chapter 8, the family histories of the ownership of different plots of land, trees and so forth have been important elements in assigning heightened meaning to these particular sectors of the landscape for Methanites. FICTIVE KIN

Besides reckoning kinship through both male and female lines, Methanites, like other Greeks, recognised fictive kin – koumbari. Clark (1988, 193) indicates that Methanites did not recognise fictive kin either as members of the family (ikoghenia) or as blood kin (singenis). Nevertheless, in some aspects fictive kin were the equivalent of inlaws, if not relatives. For example, koumbari were the only male outsiders who could enter another house when the husband was absent (Clark 1988, 193, fn. 13). Similarly, marriage between koumbari was prohibited, even when no blood relationship was recognised, in a way comparable to the situation with in-laws (discussed later). Finally, in the mobilisation of unpaid personnel for work groups (discussed later), besides blood-kin and affines (in-laws), the only other participants were neighbours – sometimes stated to be the equivalent of blood kin – and koumbari. Later in the chapter, I indicate that work-group participants were mainly affines: as an indicator of their quasi-affinal status, koumbari appear in records of work groups almost exactly as often as members of brothers’ and sisters’ families combined. Neighbours were involved less often. In the Greek Orthodox Church, a child has a baptismal sponsor – nounos (male) or nouna (female)5 – the equivalent of a godparent in many Western Christian churches. There is also a sponsor in the marriage service – the koumbaros stephanos – chosen by the groom. The 149


wedding sponsor is somewhat the equivalent of the best man in standard British and American weddings: during the marriage service, the sponsor is supposed to keep the rings for the married couple. Every married person was therefore sponsored twice, once at baptism and once at marriage. The phrase ‘we are koumbari’ can relate to a sponsorship relationship either at a baptism or at a wedding. As with marriage, sponsorship engenders an important relationship not simply between the sponsor and the person being sponsored but also between the two families concerned. Those who are koumbari are considered to be the equivalent of blood kin or affines in a number of senses. The term is extended to refer to parents, brothers and sisters, the children of the original koumbari, and their spouses when they marry. There is a customary prohibition on marriage between those who are koumbari, even though there may be no kinship link by blood (see Friedl 1962, 72). Ideally, the relationship between a family and the families of baptismal and wedding sponsors of its children should continue through the generations. As one informant told me, the koumbaros stephanos expects to be asked in due course to baptise a boy so that later on that boy will choose his nounos or another member of the nounos’ family to be koumbaros stephanos at his wedding. On another occasion, the presence of an apparently unrelated man helping another as part of a large work group was explained to me by the fact that the pair were koumbari. They said their pappoudhes (grandparents) were koumbari, and the relationship had been kept up ever since. However, the ideal of continuing the koumbaros relationship was frequently not maintained. Sponsors might or might not be chosen from existing kin, but because of the importance of the link, great care was taken when deciding whom to ask to be a sponsor. The situation was in a number ways comparable to that described by Friedl in a Boeotian village, whose inhabitants make use of the possibilities of the koumbari system in such a way as to parallel their search for affinal kin (in laws). Just as the people of Vasilika select marriage partners for themselves and their children with an eye to the augmentation of material resources and social prestige, so they try to find koumbari whose wealth and position will be a source of potential help for themselves and their children. The similarity in functions of the two types of relationships is paralleled by their similarity in structural effects. Just as affinal 150


connections preclude the possibility of marriage between any of the relatives of the two elementary families involved, so do koumbari connections. (Friedl 1962, 72)

Unlike Friedl’s Boeotian example, many Methanites chose sponsors from among kin (see also du Boulay 1974, 164, for Evvia): many families within the main study village were in a sponsorship relationship with each other. The existence of sponsors within the village was common enough that it was customary for sponsoring families to give a young godchild in the village a loaf every time they baked bread. The loaf was to ensure that the child grew strong. Methanites were aware of the conflicting considerations between the utility of having urban links and local links when it came to choosing koumbari. A quote from my notes from the first period of fieldwork illustrates the situation. At the large work group mentioned earlier, the man for whom the work was being done commented to me on his koumbaros relationship with another villager: Evripidhes said it was good to have your koumbaros in the same village – then if a situation like today [mixing and laying concrete by hand with a large labour force] came up, you can call on him. But if your koumbaros is in Poros [a nearby island] or Athens, then you can’t call on him at such a time. (Direct quote from field notes, personal name changed)

On another occasion I was talking to a man about his choice of nounos for his baby son. He said he had chosen a close relative from a neighbouring settlement. When I expressed some surprise that he had chosen a relative living on Methana, he explained that many people chose comparatively high-status people in places like the capital to be koumbaros. But, he said, what use was that when you needed someone to help you in work groups? More frequently, sponsors would be kin or non-kin resident elsewhere, often in Athens or Piraeus. These people could provide useful urban links, such as finding urban buyers for agricultural produce, especially olive oil. Distant relatives were a frequent choice. By making them into koumbari, people strengthened their ties and kept them within the kin group, as the equivalent of close blood kin and affines. By no means were all sponsors chosen from among kin, however. One heavily pregnant woman who was taking the ferry to a maternity 151


hospital in the capital gave birth during the journey. The captain of the ferry requested that he be the baby’s baptismal sponsor, and the request was accepted. Not all koumbaros relationships involved calculations of the financial or other benefits of the relationship. The koumbaros stephanos of one couple had given summer employment to the young woman in his shop in the spa town. The relationship had worked well, and she had worked for him for several summers. So when she got engaged, he asked if he could be the koumbaros stephanos, and the groom agreed. NEIGHBOURS

In later chapters, I note that Methanites tended to believe that those whose houses were in close proximity should be kin, and that, ideally, even those neighbours who were not closely related to each other should behave as though they were. Because of the complex patterns of family continuity through generations, intermarriage and koumbaros relationships, it was generally possible to identify at least distant kinship links, even if outside of the soi, between virtually all villagers. Frequently, households would have multiple distant links with each other through both husbands and wives. These more distant links – for instance, second cousins – were generally not widely referred to on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, as long as those households living close by each other were on reasonably friendly terms, they would be more likely to emphasise that they were neighbours rather than distantly related kin within the soi. Occasionally, Methanites stated that a good neighbour was better than a member of a kin group because the neighbour was close by to give help if needed, whereas kin who were further away could not lend support so readily. In the analysis of work groups that follows, it can be seen that neighbours were a significant category of people mobilised to help in various tasks. They were far more likely to be involved in work groups than brothers. KINSHIP OBLIGATIONS

Members of a kindred and affines were all expected to participate in the life-crisis rituals – baptisms, engagements, marriages and the extended 152


series of ceremonies associated with deaths – of fellow members. The obligation increased with the closeness of the link. In a later chapter, I describe a dispute between brother and sister which was so severe that the brother did not attend his sister’s funeral. This was considered extremely bad behaviour. The duty to attend included members of a kindred and affines living away from the community. In addition, close relatives frequently participated in the crucial preparation and organisation phases prior to ceremonies: members of kindreds who lived close by, especially those in neighbouring houses, were most likely to be involved. The involvement of other kin, and even unrelated or distantly related neighbours, in a household’s activities was also a regular occurrence in more mundane contexts, such as agricultural tasks which needed more labour than could be provided by household members. It was also visible in more occasional tasks such as house construction and in a wide range of ad hoc tasks (see, e.g., Clark 1988, 294–6). Clarke’s (2000a, 120) example of a house-construction work group gives a flavour of the diverse connections called upon: an unrelated builder, the owner, his father, his sister’s husband, and a distant cousin. Occasional tasks such as house construction tended to require relatively large numbers of participants. Some agricultural tasks – for example, vine digging and the vintage – were also generally most effectively accomplished with the help of a number of hands from outside the household. Especially for agricultural tasks, the additional labour from outside the family was provided by a well-established system of mutual assistance –

! (allilovoithia). If a person helped another family, it was assumed that the favour would be returned. An analysis of all work groups documented during the initial fieldwork period indicates a wide variability in the links to the household head among those recruited, although they were overwhelmingly along lines of kinship and affinity. However, 6 percent chose to emphasise the fact that they were primarily neighbours, although as noted earlier, there were often recognisable kinship links between neighbours. A further 9 percent of participants emphasised primarily links as koumbari. The following list of the different types of links called on for mobilising work groups includes all types of activities, but the majority were for agricultural activities (Table 5.3). 153


table 5.3. Links between household head and non-household members in work groups

Neighbours Koumbari Co-parents-in-law (sympetheri) Link via brother Link via sister Link via wife Link via daughter in another household Link via son in another household More distant kinship links Affinal link Blood link via mother Blood link via father Total number of cases:

No.

%

8 12 4 3 10 42 31 0

6 9 3 2 7 31 23 0

11 3 12 136

8 2 9

When kin links of a more distant kind were involved in mobilising work groups, there was a slight tendency for links to the household head through blood to be preferred over links via the household head’s affinal kin (11 percent versus 8 percent). This is perhaps as one might expect in view of comments on the bias towards patrilineality noted earlier. The reality of the situation, however, was that because many wives originated from outside the village, affinal kin were themselves frequently based outside the village and therefore not immediately available to help in work groups. A surprising feature of links among close blood kin and affines was the lack of emphasis on a patrilineal dimension in work groups. The majority of kinship links mobilised seem to have been through women rather than through male kin. Thirty-one percent of all non-household participants in work groups were primarily linked via the wife of the household head: in other words, these were affinal links to an agnatic soi other than that of the household head. In addition, there were occasional examples (listed in the table under ‘co-parents-in-law’) of the parents of each marriage partner working together without the presence of either of their children. A further 23 percent were linked to the household head via his married daughter. In this case, although 154


daughters often helped directly, they were often accompanied by their husbands. The links in work groups through in-laws rather than blood kin are all the more surprising given the local saying recorded by Clark (1988, 192–3) which heads this chapter: pumpkin for meat and in-laws for relatives. As Clark indicates, the message was that in-laws are no more kin that pumpkin is meat: they both lack blood. Pumpkin was not considered to satisfy hunger in the way that meat did, and in-laws were not considered to provide help in the way that kin did. By contrast, close male blood links among work-group participants were very few. No cases of fathers being helped by married sons who lived in independent households elsewhere in the village were noted. The number of cases of brothers helping each other was only 2 percent: substantially less than the numbers of cases of either koumbari (9 percent) or neighbours (6 percent) helping each other. It is evident, therefore, that in this case the ideology was substantially at variance with practice. One of the rare examples of a brother of a household head helping in a work group was also an exceptional case. The household concerned was headed by a soghambros, who spent more than a year in the United States visiting his son and helping him as a building worker. While he was away, his wife ran the family farm by herself because they had no children living with them. Normally, her daughter, living in a nearby village, and the daughter’s husband and sometimes her husband’s brother would help. On one occasion, though, when work was needed on vines high up on the mountain, she sought help from her husband’s brother who still lived in his natal village. The vines in question were her husband’s inheritance: the plot was directly adjacent to her brother-in-law’s own plot. She was therefore asking him to work on vines which had originally been in his family. The link between the former family ownership of agricultural land and personnel in a work group can be identified in another case. Two men, Aristotelis and Sophoklis, decided to work jointly on their respective plots of vines some six hours’ walk away on the Plain of Trizin. Phroso, Aristotelis’ wife, was Sophoklis’ sister. The two plots were adjacent to each other because one belonged to Sophoklis as part of his inheritance and the other was given to Phroso as dowry when she got married. Aristotelis’ and Sophoklis’ families frequently 155


co-operated in various tasks. However, the fact that the vine plots were adjacent to each other because they were (adhelphika) (belonged to siblings) was stated in explanation of why the two men should be going to work together on their respective plots of vines. Because it was less easy to mobilise work-group personnel living elsewhere, most of the personnel were drawn from within the village itself. The heavy emphasis on virilocal residence meant that many female blood kin were no longer resident in the village, and the natal families of many women living there were located elsewhere. Thus, the high proportion of links via women in work groups is even higher than it might seem because by no means all women’s families were available to help under normal circumstances. The situation therefore clearly represents in some form the reality of wider aspects of relationships between households within the community, but the reasons for it are not easy to explain. Although brothers tended to compete with each other over inheritances or other aspects of property ownership, decisions on dowries for female children were usually made well in advance of decisions on male children’s inheritances (discussed later in this chapter). This fact may partly explain the differences in the ways in which brothers related to each other and to their sisters and their families. However, a family’s scattered holdings had considerable historical and affective significance, over and above their productive significance, as indicated by the examples of plots of land which were owned by siblings. The links to family histories via agricultural land in the form of dowries may therefore also have been an important element in the mobilisation of personnel to participate in work groups. Whatever the full explanation of the high levels of links through female blood kin and in-laws in mobilising work groups, they demonstrate the importance of bilateral kindreds for the smooth functioning of household economies as well as for life-crisis rituals. Moreover, the participation of fictive kin and neighbours in work groups reified their position within a group of kin, despite an ideology to the contrary. Participation in work groups was a public affirmation of good relations between families. Similarly, the repeated absence of expected participants might indicate strained relationships. The mule track down the mountainside to the main study village was highly visible from the 156


village itself. During the period of the vintage, teams of mules and donkeys could be observed as they collected loads of grapes and delivered them to households in the village for pressing into wine. Because mules especially were visually distinctive, it was easy to identify different households co-operating to harvest grapes. The composition of these groups was keenly studied by villagers: in a small community, it is always important to know where good relationships exist and where they are difficult. Similarly, during the period of vine digging, there was considerable interest in who was digging with whom. Work groups placed such relationships into the material context of the productive landscape in a clearly visible way. NAMES AND NAMING

On Methana, as in Greece generally, baptismal (personal) names have a particular part to play in linking the generations. When a couple marries, one of the expectations of their respective parents is that the couple will name their children after their own parents. Methanites talked about grandchildren ‘taking’ their grandparents’ names. A significant contributor to the vital importance of names within Greek culture is that members of the Greek Orthodox faith celebrate name days rather than birthdays. The great majority of Methanites’ baptismal names were those of saints: only a very small minority had names deriving from pre-Christian Greece, such as Aristotle or Pericles. Everyone with a saint’s name celebrated his or her name day annually on the day set for that saint’s celebration by the Greek Orthodox church. Name days were important social events: Methanites emphasised that to maintain good relations with everyone in the village, I should visit the houses of everyone who had at least an adult celebrating a name day. Grandparents and grandchildren who shared a baptismal name had a particularly close bond in also celebrating their name day together. In naming, as in other aspects of kinship, there was a bias towards the patriline within the context of a bilateral kinship system. The normal procedure was that a first child would take the name of the father’s parent of the same sex. The first boy would be named after his father’s father and the first girl after her father’s mother. The second boy would be named after his mother’s father and the second girl 157


after her mother’s mother. The naming of subsequent boys and girls was generally considered to be a matter left to the preferences of the parents. Children effectively memorialised grandparents by taking their names because the older generation then ‘lived on’ in the memories of younger generations. Many elements of the landscape discussed in this book represent aspects of monumentalisation and memorialisation. Traditionally, the grandparental generation knew that their houses and holdings of land and trees, which they had maintained and improved, would be handed down to succeeding generations. In this way, as described in future chapters, these material elements of their way of life became monuments to themselves. But the tradition of naming children after grandparents made actual people very much part of the monumentalisation process as well. Unsurprisingly, the desire for memorialisation in this way was very strong. One man explained the anomalous fact that his only son was not named after his own father as follows. My informant was one of several brothers, whose first children of each sex had taken his parents’ names. His wife’s father, with whom he lived as a soghambros, did not have any male children. Under these circumstances, my informant’s oldest son was named after his maternal grandfather instead of his paternal grandfather. The aspect of memorialisation in the handing on of names to future generations can also be seen in the rare occasions in which children are given their own parent’s names. Normally, Methanites would say dhen kani (it isn’t right) to name children after their own parents. However, if a parent dies before a child of the same sex is baptised, then the child will be named after the parent. In this way, the dead parent can be assured of memorialisation. This naming tradition also contributes to understanding the nineteenth-century population documents. Using the register of male births, I could connect the informant who stated that Methana had only been resettled after the expulsion of the Turks (see Chapter 3) directly to a family member who had been an adult at the time of the village’s founding and thus accept with greater certainty the validity of his claim. In the census of 1879, except for households headed by widows, the name of the oldest male who was still competent usually appears first in each household. Generally, his name is set out thus: surname, followed by baptismal name, followed by a father’s baptismal 158


table 5.4. Examples of naming in the 1879 census. HH Number

Surname

Baptismal Name

Father (or Husband)

Age

Status

35 35 36 36 36 36 36 36 37 37 37 37 37 37 37

Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias Kolias

Gheorghios Ekaterini Anastasios Maria Gheorghios Marina Pavlos Nikolaos Petros Stamato Gheorghios Bilio Vasilios Ekaterini Maria

[Blank] [Blank] Gheorghios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Anastasios Gheorghios Petros Petros Petros Petros Petros Petros

82 77 49 45 26 17 14 3 40 34 16 13 10 7 4

[Blank] Wife [Blank] Wife Son Daughter Son Son [Blank] Wife Son Daughter Son Daughter Daughter

Note: The names in bold indicate grandfather and grandsons HH = household

name or an initial letter. Immediately below is an entry for his wife, if living: her husband’s surname, then her baptismal name, then her husband’s baptismal name. Below this again, children are listed in the same format. In this situation, it is generally a safe assumption that a male child sharing his father’s father’s baptismal name was the oldest. The excerpt in table 5.4 from the 1879 census exemplifies the situation: The three adjacent houses, numbered by the census-takers 35 to 37, were inhabited by three closely related families. Anastasios Kolias heading household 36 and Petros Kolias heading household 37 are evidently, on the basis of the father’s name, sons of Gheorghios Kolias in household 35. This is confirmed by the fact that in each case their oldest sons are also called Gheorghios. Occasionally, a younger son bears his paternal grandfather’s name: the normal explanation is that the oldest son had died and another child, born subsequently, had been given the same name. Because of the heavy official emphasis on the head of household and his father in these documents, it is rarely possible to identify whether second male 159


children are named after their mother’s father, nor whether female children are named after either grandmother. Methanites also used nicknames – (paratsouklia; sing. paratsoukli) – as an unofficial but vital naming system (Clark 1988, 415– 16). Every adult male had a nickname of some sort. On Methana there was a relatively restricted range of baptismal names – partly the result of name-recycling between grandparents and grandchildren. Because village populations generally also had only a handful of official surnames, frequently shared by substantial numbers of households, the chances of more than one person having both the same baptismal name and surname were high. Nicknames were therefore essential for distinguishing individuals who shared both the same baptismal name and surname. For example, on one occasion a man from outside Methana arrived in the main study community asking for a person using baptismal name and surname. Because there were three men with the identical set of names, he was asked to give the paratsoukli: Rockefeller, Solon, or the President. As Clark makes clear (Clark 1988, 393, fn. 14: 415–16), nicknames were assigned to males. The only women with nicknames in Liakotera were highly anomalous and were ‘not proper females’ (Clark 1988, 415). Proper women (i.e., married and with families) took their husbands’ nicknames. Children took their fathers’ nicknames until such time as they might acquire their own. Nicknames were frequently scurrilous or worse and were never used to their owners’ faces except as an overt insult. They originated from a wide variety of situations. Some derived from personality traits or particular behaviours, such as ‘Headlong’, derived from the Albanian word for ‘fast’. ‘Slurper’s’ name incorporated the insinuation that he drank too much. ‘Knife-assassin’ simply had the same baptismal name as a knife-assassin in a popular song. Some names resulted from casual (or otherwise) comments which lodged in people’s memories. One man, returning to Methana with a large sum of money, described himself as being as rich as the Greek equivalent of Rockefeller: the name instantly stuck. Another person was named after his goat because he asked about it in a letter home. The boy who was born on a boat received as a nickname the name of the boat’s owner, who became his nounos (Clark 1988, 415–16). Yet another 160


man was nicknamed ‘Grandpa’s Son’, as the result of an exclamation by a soghambros who was trying to work out all of his wife’s relatives. When he realised how the man fitted into the kinship system, he exclaimed: ! – he’s your grandpa’s son! Ever afterwards the man so described was called ‘Grandpa’s Son’. Other nicknames derived from former occupations: for example, ‘Resin-tapper’, ‘Agricultural Guard’. Another man’s nickname related to former dynamite fishing activities. This name distinguished the man from his first cousin, who shared identical baptismal and surnames, nicknamed by reference to his strange mother. In everyday conversation, nicknames were far more regularly used to identify individuals than surnames. So, for example, when I was in other villages on Methana, I was often asked what house I lived in and who owned it. Frequently, if I gave the baptismal name and surname of my landlord, my interrogator would look blank, although nobody else had that combination of names. However, if I gave the paratsoukli, there was almost always instant enlightenment. Nicknames could be inherited. In default of some memorable incident, character trait, or occupation, sons would retain their father’s nickname. One son of ‘Headlong’ seemed likely to keep that nickname simply because he had the same temperament. The other son, with a very different temperament, was regularly identified (at least in more polite company) by reference to the name of his wife in whose father’s house he lived because she was the only woman with that name in the village6 . Both sons of the original ‘Rockefeller’ who lived in the village, and his grandsons, were identified by that nickname. A man whose nickname referred to a particular type of Turkish sword also inherited it from his grandfather. I never met any example of a nickname handed down through more than three generations. Given the difficulties Methanites had in remembering generations prior to that of the grandparents, it is unclear whether any did have longer histories. The most significant features of nicknames were their social definition of the individual and their tendency to pass patrilineally through the generations until supplanted by another with more immediate relevance. In other words, aspects of masculinity and intergenerationality, combined as patrilineality, were directly related to the social identity 161


of the self. Just (1991, 121) notes that the inhabitants of Spartohori associated shared ownership of a nickname with the definition of an agnatic soi. Although Methanites made no direct linkage between a soi and a shared nickname, the element of shared identity given by nicknames was derived agnatically rather than bilaterally. DOWRY AND INHERITANCE

The second quotation at the beginning of this chapter indicates that for the families being described, their holdings and wealth derived mostly from the family groups in which the married couple were reared (Aschenbrenner 1986, 44). Property owned by Methana families also derived very largely from previous generations, via dowry and inheritance. Traditionally, ownership of farm holdings has been handed down the generations, theoretically at least to male offspring via inheritance and to female offspring via dowry. The overriding principle has been that all children should receive shares of equal value, although not all assets were divided equally. By definition, a dowry should be given to a daughter on marriage, whereas inheritance indicates transfer of resources on the death of a parent. However, there has been a great deal of flexibility in the application of both these aspects of the property-transfer system on Methana. In particular, for much of the twentieth century, daughters frequently did not receive their full share of the family’s assets at marriage and sons did not generally have to wait until their parents’ deaths to receive some of their share. In the allocation of resources to succeeding generations, individual areas of land and of fruit trees have frequently been divided among several siblings, male and female. The result is a pattern of family land holdings which are in most instances widely scattered across the landscape, as exemplified by Barba Thanassis’ household’s farm (fig. 5.2). The whole Methana landscape could thus be conceptualised as a patchwork of interlocking ownerships belonging to different families. Although smaller than the average, Barba Thanassis’ household’s farm was fairly typical of holdings of agricultural resources in the 1970s, with plots scattered over about 7 kilometres, and with an altitudinal range from near sea level to almost 550 metres. In addition to owning eighteen separate plots of arable land, the household owned 162


5.2. Barba Thanassis’ fragmented landholding.

vines in five locations and a number of fruit trees on land owned by others (discussed later). When asked to give a full list of his household’s property, he found it difficult to tally up all of the household’s different landed assets as an abstract exercise: he kept remembering additional plots of land and clusters of fruit trees which he had forgotten when he made the initial list. An inability to remember all of the assets together is perhaps not surprising, given their number and their wide distribution. It was certainly not the result of failing mental faculties: Barba Thanassis was still fully in command of all his faculties and actively engaged in running his farm when I revisited him some twenty-five years later. Rather, Methanites tended to focus their attention selectively on the parts of the farm on which work was needed at any particular time. Thus, during the olive harvest, they would easily be able to list all their olive trees but might struggle to remember all their fig trees. Their inability to remember all of the items in their scattered ‘portfolio’ of assets ‘on command’ could cause problems for their heirs when they were arranging their estates. This is evident from the incident described in 163


Chapter 8, when three sisters met to discuss a substantial patch of vines forgotten by their father when making his will. Although the fundamental concerns for transmitting assets to succeeding generations on Methana have changed little over more than a century, the details of their application have changed considerably (Clarke 1998). The ways in which assets were transmitted to succeeding generations on Methana were highly complex, involving a combination of the national legal structure which has itself changed over time and through local custom and the exigencies of family demography and relative wealth. Fuller descriptions are given in Forbes (1982, 131–57) and especially in Clark (1988, 143–9, 330–52; Clarke 1998). Here, I concentrate primarily on outlining the system for the transfer of resources (e.g., houses, land, fruit trees) on Methana to succeeding generations because it places ownership firmly within a kinship context. Before the system of property transfer can be explained, however, it is necessary to outline the pattern of the ownership of resources. Agricultural resources, such as arable land and fruit trees, have always been owned by individuals, but certain important assets could be owned jointly: houses and cisterns in particular could be owned by several people. The same was true for threshing floors, but by the time of the first fieldwork period, they were not regularly used because most threshing of cereals was done by a threshing machine. Wells, found only near the coast, could also be jointly owned. The difficulty with jointly owned assets was in organising their upkeep. Thus, a well with a mule-driven water-lifting device was jointly owned by two brothers, but only one used it regularly. The other did not wish to pay to maintain something he did not use, and the brother who did use it was unwilling to cover the costs on behalf of both of them. So the machinery fell into disrepair. Shared ownership of an open cistern (loutsa) was an issue between two other brothers in a long-running dispute (see Chapter 7). Because trees and the land on which they grew were conceptualised as separate assets, when an estate was divided between heirs, fig, almond and olive trees in particular were divided up separately from the land on which they stood. Cultivation of the land, which was necessary for full productivity of the trees, thus depended on the owner of the 164


land ploughing for arable crops. As noted earlier, however, such an arrangement could be used to advantage for maintaining fruit trees given as dowry (generally olive trees) in another village despite the distance, if the land underneath was cultivated for crops by someone else (generally a relative) who owned the land. Certain use-rights cross-cut the ownership of resources by individual households. Unlike most communities in mainland Greece, uncultivated waste land on Methana was not owned by the community as a whole (Forbes 1982, 134; Koster 1997, 142–4; Koster and Forbes 2000, 263–4). For traditional farming communities, the uncultivated landscape has been an essential resource, providing a wide range of essential elements for the support of rural life, especially grazing, certain foods, and wood for fuel, construction and farm equipment (Clark 1976, 1997; Forbes 1997; Koster 1997; Koster and Forbes 2000). On Methana, all land, including pine woods, scrub-covered hillsides and even bare rock and dry riverbeds, has technically been owned for as far into the past as anyone can remember. Methanites commented that their ancestors divided up the uncultivated landscape among themselves so that they could make terraces on which to cultivate crops. The explanation makes sense in the context of an influx of refugees settling in a largely empty landscape. Methana’s geology may have been another factor: the soil is unusually fertile and deep compared with many areas of Greece. Hence, even exceptionally steep slopes could potentially be transformed into cultivable land. Any system of land ownership in which every household must depend only on the resources available from its own small area of holdings is likely to be very inflexible. Methanites overcame this inflexibility by allowing common use-rights on their privately owned property for certain purposes. Some of these rights operated only at certain times of year. The system was a customary one, not backed by national law, so it was primarily dependent on the good will of all: it was potentially open to owners of privately owned land to take to court owners of livestock which grazed their property and to claim damages from them. In each generation, some difficult individuals refused to allow others the customary use-rights. However, they and their property were known to other villagers who made sure that they avoided these areas. 165


Although all areas of scrub were technically owned by individuals, in the study community, those on the mountainsides above villages were available for common grazing and brushwood cutting, unless marked by their owners with piles of stones as no-go areas. In contrast, the limited areas of scrub below villages were usually reserved for their owners alone to exploit. It was also customary for the stubble remaining after the cereal and legume harvests in May and June to become common sheep and goat grazing once the crop had been removed. All fields left uncultivated during the previous year also became common grazing after the harvest. Stubble and fallow then remained as common grazing until fields were cultivated in the autumn or until a new flush of weeds had developed in fallow fields after the autumn rains. All uncultivated agricultural land was then private grazing until the end of the following harvest. In the past, these customary rules were essential to maintaining stable relations between households within village communities. Clark (1988, 136) notes that disputes over animals grazing on others’ land had the potential to get out of control. Although honour killings over infidelity or defilement of sisters or daughters were completely foreign to Methanites, the only murder on Methana and a few near-murders resulted from disputes over animals grazing on others’ land. The observation supports Clarke’s contention noted earlier that, contrary to the wealth of literature on Mediterranean concepts of ‘honour’ and ‘shame’, this level of violence did not occur in association with infidelity or the defilement of a household’s women: ‘Methanites fought over fields, not fornication’ (Clark 1988, 136). The cultivated area around each village was traditionally divided conceptually into two separate vertical series of blocks of land which were essential for accommodating the two-year rotation cycle for cereals (Forbes 1982, 221–6). Although there was no visible division between the two blocks, their extents were known to all villagers. By co-ordinating the planting of cereals in one sector of the landscape, Methanites ensured that there was a large area available for use as common grazing on the stubble after the harvest. In the sector not under cereals, in any year there was often a considerable amount of fallow land where households grazed their animals on their own terraces from winter until the harvest, at which time all uncultivated terraces became common grazing. Animals straying into patches of legumes growing 166


in the non-cereal sector inevitably caused damage, but it was not considered as serious as damage to the cereal staple – wheat – on which households depended for their subsistence. The fallowing system thus alternated areas of private winter–spring grazing and common stubble grazing. Although olive picking from the trees only started after midOctober, Methanites traditionally pressed windfall olives from midSeptember onwards. At this time, common pasture rules were in force, but there was little for sheep and goats to eat (Forbes 1998, 21–2), so livestock grazing near olive trees were especially prone to eat the fruit. Traditionally, therefore, animals were banned from grazing where olives grew from mid-September until the end of the olive harvest (normally mid-winter). Once again, Methanites blended customary usage with national law to achieve a workable solution to their particular needs. Another example related to the need for grazing in the autumn, when there was least available. Annual weeds, the mainstay of winter grazing, only germinate after the first substantial autumn rains, which might be as early as October or as late as early December, even in a relatively normal year. Once there had been an appreciable rainfall, some households would plough a few furrows round the edge of a few of their terraces known to produce a good flush of wild plant growth, in which they sowed barley: the rest of the plot remained unploughed. There was thus no ambiguity concerning the status of the grazing at the transitional period because the terrace was now technically under cultivation. Greek law provided stiffer penalties for owners whose animals grazed another’s cultivated crop than for trespassing on natural grazing, so others kept their animals away from such nominally cultivated areas. It can be seen, therefore, that making a living on Methana was dependent on a complex conceptual pattern of private ownership over-ridden by customary common use-rights, some seasonal, some year-round. This itself was achieved by blending the national law and local customary usages. The resulting matrix of rights of access to productive resources thus inevitably modified the reality of the patchwork of ownerships across the landscape. Not only were a household’s own holdings widely scattered, normally in small discrete patches, but the 167


areas which it was able to exploit fluctuated from season to season as other people’s properties were opened or closed to common access, and from year to year as the workings of the rotation system were co-ordinated in the landscape. Despite the system of customary use-rights, farming on Methana was primarily dependent on ownership of land, fruit trees, cisterns and so on transmitted through the generations. As noted earlier, the primary principle for transmission of assets was that each child should receive a share of equal value. This was managed in a wide variety of ways, and equality of shares was not always achieved, as carefully documented by Clark (1988, 330–8). As documented in later chapters, houses were not simply residences but important monuments to patrilines. The patrilineal factor resulted from the principle of virilocal residence. As long as there was at least one son, inheritance of the house would pass through the male line: generally, it would be allocated to the youngest son. Only if there were no son would a daughter inherit a house. However, the parents had to ensure that the inheritance of the house was properly arranged if it was to happen smoothly. The surest way to accomplish a smooth transmission was for the parents to write a will, expressly stating who should inherit the house. An alternative was to leave the children to respect their wishes after their death (Clark 1988, 333–4). For various reasons, smooth transfer of ownership of houses (and other property) did not always occur. A family in kali sira was likely to manage the transfer of assets in a very different way from one which was not. Badly managed transfers of assets to the succeeding generation could transform them into monuments to what happens when a family was not in kali sira. For example, because of the failure of several brothers to agree on the ownership of one parental home, the family of the only brother to continue residence on Methana lived in a tiny lean-to building attached to the unoccupied house (see Chapter 7). The arrangements made for the division of parents’ assets varied considerably. In the 1970s, it was my impression that wills were rarely written: most parents expected their children to respect their wishes concerning the division of their property. By the later 1990s, however, wills seemed to be a more common occurrence. When parents did not leave detailed instructions for the distribution of their property, it was 168


sometimes possible for all their heirs to reach an agreement over the division. More normally, all elements of the property were divided up into as equal portions as was possible. Thus, a substantial block of terraces might be divided up into two or more portions, a single large flat terrace might be divided, and groups of fruit trees might also be divided. Lots were then drawn to allocate the different portions to the various heirs (Clark 1998, 333–4; Clarke 1998, 28). The present patchwork of ownerships in which the owners of adjacent plots are often relatives has evolved via the repeated division of the different assets through the generations. The principle of shares of equal value in the estate, but not necessarily equal in all respects, meant that the kinds of resources received by different siblings could vary widely. Thus, parents might ensure that some children received primarily money and others primarily land, and yet others might be given an education. In practice, the values of the resources received by different siblings might also vary noticeably because of the necessary strategies employed by parents to ensure that all of their children obtained respectable marriage partners approximately commensurate with the family’s status (Clark 1988, 335–50). Despite the ideal of the equal value of assets for all heirs, therefore, Methanites recognised that reality was frequently otherwise. As one Methana inhabitant told Clarke (1998, 31): – exact balance and equal measures do not exist anywhere. Although the transfer of assets to male children is generally considered as inheritance, the situation relating to property transfer to sons during the later twentieth century was not especially different from that for daughters. The norm during the 1970s was for parents to allocate at least a portion of their property to their sons when they married, often keeping just a small portion for themselves. Occasionally, elderly parents might hold onto a substantial portion of their property, but they were the object of considerable criticism (Clarke 1998, 28–9). In Chapter 7, I discuss an elderly couple who had large amounts of land but refused to hand it over to their sons. As a result, one of their sons was a soghambros – a relatively low-status position – because he had very little property to contribute to the household. The other side of the coin was that none of the children of the selfish old couple were prepared to live with them or even to care for them in their extreme 169


old age. This was a good example of a family which was not in kali sira. The problem, as the father-in-law of the soghambros noted, was that when people lived until they were in their eighties, a regular occurrence on Methana, their grandchildren were of marriageable age and needed assets so as to be able to contract a good marriage. If grandparents did not hand on most of their assets to their children as they got older, it meant that their grandchildren suffered because these assets were not available for them in their turn when they got married. A girl would not be able to find a husband with good prospects if she had only a limited dowry, and a young man would not be able to find a girl with a substantial dowry if his immediate prospects of obtaining property were limited. Thus far, nothing has been said about childless couples. The ideal was for them to adopt a child, male or female, of a close relative of one partner who had several children and who could not provide good prospects in the form of dowries and inheritances for any of them. Oral histories suggested that in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, the majority of such children were male and were often adopted before puberty. In the later twentieth century, the tendency was to adopt girls, most of whom seemed to be teenagers. The adopted child traditionally lived with her or his adoptive parents, in due course bringing a spouse to live in the house and ultimately inheriting the estate of the adoptive parents. The adopted child would frequently continue to keep quite close contact with her or his biological parents but lost any right to a share of their estate. Thus, the system of adoption had several advantages. It ensured that childless couples would have someone to look after them in their old age, that their house and property would be handed on intact to succeeding generations, and that they would be memorialised thereby. At the same time, it meant that there was one sibling less in the adopted child’s original family to share in the patrimony. In a period just remembered by the oldest Methanites, some of the details of the property transmission system were rather different. Daughters received dowries when they were married, but the parents generally kept full control of all the rest of their property until their deaths. Hence, sons, with no property of their own, were completely 170


dependent on their aging parents. This situation probably underlay the stories, discussed earlier, of households in which a group of married brothers supposedly all lived together with their parents. The nonagenarian Barba Nikos, who appears in Chapter 8, while describing the situation when he was a child, commented on the selfish way in which the whole family was organised to suit the wishes of his grandparents. He told a story of his grandfather consuming a plate of fish – something of a luxury – all by himself. As a small child, he tried to scrounge a little bit by making meowing noises like a cat but was signally unsuccessful. Memories and stories of the old days when parents retained control of all their property not handed to daughters as dowry were evidence, for Methanites, of the manifold evils of (ekina ta khronia) – the old days. A ruined house in the main study village, discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, stood as a monument to the selfishness of elderly parents many decades previously, who neither relinquished control over their assets nor provided for their orderly transmission to their children. Since the 1970s, few young people have wished to make a living primarily from agriculture on Methana. The potential for dispute over agricultural resources on Methana has therefore diminished. Other types of property are now much more highly prized. Potential building land near the spa town or elsewhere close to the coast has remained desirable. Agricultural land on the Plain of Trizin has also remained desirable: it has retained its value as agricultural land because it can be cultivated by machine and because of the potential for irrigation as a result of the high water table (Clarke 1998, 27). Some of the most desirable assets in more recent years, however, have been property in the capital. Over many years, astute Methanites have invested any spare cash in building plots in Athens or Piraeus (Clarke 1998, 27). Providing a daughter with a building plot was often a way of ensuring that wealth given as dowry could be registered in her name and was thus not at risk of the groom selling it and taking the proceeds (Clark 1988, 342). In several instances, Methana families were able to find the additional money to build on them. Apartment construction was a way in which sons as well as daughters could be provided for. Such property has allowed sons and more especially daughters in past generations to leave the peninsula and make lives for themselves in the 171


city. It was less common for boys to receive such assets as inheritances: more usually, they received an education which made them eligible for a white-collar job, or they were set up in a skilled trade. Before the decline in agriculture on Methana, providing a livelihood for some sons and daughters outside of farming was usually done to ensure that those who stayed on the peninsula did not need to divide agricultural assets into too many shares (Forbes 1982, 150–3). It would seem that parents generally made sure there was no ambiguity over the transmission of urban properties to their children. I certainly heard of no examples of disputes between siblings over their ownership. The lack of interest in farming on Methana and the strong preference for most younger people to have urban lifestyles has had a considerable effect on dowries in particular. In the past, many daughters would receive agricultural assets – land, vines, trees and so forth: provision of a house was generally considered the responsibility of the husband. As Clark (1988, 342–3) notes, by the last quarter of the twentieth century, daughters tended to receive apartments or houses in the town of Loutra or in the capital, and the furnishings to go with them (see also Clarke 1998, 30). The high cost of rented accommodation in the capital meant that owning a place to live was a major contributor to an urban family’s livelihood. Methana families no longer needed to consider how much land a potential husband’s family owned, but rather what kind of job he had, what his income was, and what his retirement benefits were likely to be. Similarly, because few sons wished to stay on Methana, parents had to provide an education so that they could find a comparable marriage partner themselves (Clark 1988, 342–3). In the past two or three decades, therefore, having a house and agricultural property in a village has been of little interest to most of the children of villagers. After marriage, many have lived somewhere other than Methana, mostly in Athens or Piraeus. Alternatively, they moved to Loutra, where they have been involved in a skilled trade or in the tourist industry. Some of those who live and work in Loutra during the summer have still worked their land, or that of their parents, during the winter months, but for most young Methanites land, vines and olive trees have been of little interest as dowry or inheritance. Agriculture has become a provider only of a subsidiary income, and 172


land has lost much of its value unless it can be sold for potential building plots for holiday homes. CONCLUSIONS

This chapter has discussed two major aspects of kinship. One aspect is the ‘family’: as reproductive unit, as productive team, as moral concept epitomising harmonious relations, and as a conduit through which the resources to support a new family are passed via dowry and inheritance. The other aspect is the broader canvas of other related families, defined both as bilateral kindred and as patriline. Although the family has been at the core of a villager’s social world, there have always been occasions when its labour resources have been insufficient for a particular task. As we have seen, agnates and, above all, close affines were overwhelmingly the preferred choice for providing these additional forces. Work groups involving labour-exchange arrangements between all kinds of kin for agricultural activities placed these relations between related individuals firmly within the productive landscape of vineyards, fields, and trees on Methana. They also acted as public statements of good relations between members of a kindred and their affines. The bilateral soi (the kindred) was therefore closely linked to ‘real-world’ issues of social relations, production and reproduction. It was thus also clearly differentiated from the agnatic soi, which was primarily about identity and belonging. The conclusion of the main part of this chapter with the transfer of property across the generations brings it to where it began, with a focus on the family. Although there has been substantial discussion here of wider aspects of kinship and marriage, it is the family which has always been very much at the core of both life and livelihood on Methana. It has been the economic team which has made a living from the countryside, ultimately reliant on its own resources of personnel, animals, and holdings of land, trees, house, cisterns and so forth. The family has also ensured the future personal and economic well-being of its younger members by endeavouring to increase its economic base, by overseeing their choices of marriage partners and by organising for the orderly transmission of its economic resources 173


to those younger members in due time. However, there are numerous reasons for considering the term family to relate primarily to a three-generation unit, not the nuclear family to which the majority of people in Western societies are accustomed. This is a statement of conceptual truth, whether or not a particular household contained three generations under a single roof. Several lines of evidence support this argument. First is the ideal of the stem-family household of a married couple plus their children and the parents of one of the married couple. As noted elsewhere (Clark 1988, 214–19; Forbes 1982, 127–8, 455–64), although the stem family seems statistically never to have existed in the majority of households, it was an important cultural ideal. The fact that it was numerically not the predominant type is explicable primarily by the realities of changes during the domestic cycle, such as when the senior generation died before the youngest son married (Clark 1988, 215–17). Families with no sons tended to make alternative arrangements for someone to live with them and thus to ensure a new three-generation household. Those with daughters but no sons would arrange for a soghambros to marry one of their daughters. Those with no children at all adopted a relative’s child. These substitute arrangements emphasise the way in which the cultural principle of the stem family took precedence over other important cultural principles. Where a soghambros was brought in to marry a daughter, the principle of virilocal residence on marriage was over-ridden. In the case of adoption, someone who was not a member of the ‘family’, in Methanites’ terms, and who was not blood kin to one of the married couple, was brought into the family. Second, Methanites themselves tended as a matter of course to include grandparents in a stem family as part of their concept of ‘family’. This definition could also incorporate an elderly couple who did not live under the same roof: because of the often close links between a couple and at least one set of parents, they could still consider such a separate domestic unit as part of their ‘family’. In the more distant past, when several married brothers worked together under the control of their elderly parents, the binding link of the group was again a series of dyadic relations between each married couple and the grandparental 174


couple, rather than directly between brothers. With the death of the grandparents, these multifamily arrangements generally dissolved. Third, the low level of labour exchanged between brothers, and even between brothers and sisters, supports the previous point. Links among blood kin horizontally within generations were relatively weak. Frequently, when the links in exchanged labour were via a wife’s blood kin, they were with the wife’s parents. A fourth line of evidence is the way in which grandparents ‘gave’ their names to their grandchildren. Such an arrangement, and the high cultural, personal and religious value placed on the sharing of names, even in cases when the grandparents concerned were not part of the same household, again concentrated family links vertically and ensured close bonds between grandparent and grandchild. The way in which there was generally a lack of ability to identify generations prior to the grandparental generation is a fifth line of evidence. It had no relevance and so was not remembered. The stark contrast between the complete lack of knowledge concerning previous generations acts as a foil to the importance of ties with grandparents which was discussed earlier. Sixth, Methanites were aware that if the grandparents retained control of all their assets until their deaths, the grandchildren would suffer because of the lack of assets to provide for them on marriage. Pragmatically, it would seem that in much of the twentieth century, the senior generation tended to pass on particularly agricultural property at roughly the time when their grandchildren were approaching marriageable age. Such actions indicated the economic ties between grandchildren and grandparents. It is noticeable that the links across the generations within the stem family are in direct contrast to the emphasis on links within generations in the bilateral soi discussed previously. This obvious difference only serves to highlight the importance of the stem family. Essentially, the bilateral soi is defined by one’s grandparents’ siblings. Those siblings produced all of one’s parents’ siblings and first cousins, who in turn produced all of one’s own siblings, first cousins and second cousins. The conceptual ‘glue’ that connects these three generations of the bilateral soi is the intergenerational links within one’s own 175


family, including one’s grandparents – that is, within the three-generation family. Because only full siblings share the same bilateral soi, this is the only viewpoint which has any relevance. Yet again, we can see that by defining the soi horizontally as an extension of the stem family rather than vertically, there is no necessity to identify generations prior to one’s grandparents.

176

6

THE PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE

Me shidet të hamë (may we eat with health). (Saying at the end of threshing wheat)

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses how settlements may be viewed within their landscapes as both historical and especially economic artefacts. In so doing, it views the situation as though through a series of increasingly powerful lenses. Initially scrutinising the patterning of all the ‘traditional’ communities within the peninsular landmass and the reasons for their placing, it continues by discussing how individual villages fitted within their own sectors of the productive landscape, focusing first on the community as an undifferentiated whole and then on its constituent households. Finally, at its most detailed level, it considers individual plots and the polysemy of their meanings for their owners. Underlying much of the discussion is the issue of humans as rational decision makers and actors, as seen through archaeological, geographical and cultural anthropological approaches. In all these disciplines, humans are assumed to be rational animals. The difficulty lies in the existence of more than one kind of ‘rationality’. Within social-cultural anthropology, there is a further issue of differences between the ‘rationality’ of the people being described and the author’s ‘rationality’. For archaeologists, the foundations of their discipline are inherently materialistic. Not surprisingly, therefore, much of archaeologists’ thinking concerning human behaviour is also materialist in one way or another. It has a strong focus on economic behaviour and how humans make 177


a living, often involving the application of energy-efficiency models. Least effort models have strongly influenced archaeological thinking in recent decades. They equate ‘rationality’ with the most efficient (i.e., economical) uses of labour and time by treating a site as a central location whose inhabitants exploited the surrounding landscape in a way which minimised the effort expended. In the context of the study of economic behaviour, social-cultural anthropologists demonstrate their fundamental belief in human rationality very differently. The long-running debate over the kind of ‘rationality’ expected in economic behaviour is the stuff of introductory texts in social anthropology (e.g., Ferraro 1992), and indeed of whole monographs (e.g., Sahlins 1974). Whereas one school of thought emphasises that the basic rules of economic rationality apply in all societies, ‘substantivists’ have argued that economic ‘rationality’ in non-Western societies must be seen as secondary to the ‘rationality’ of the social system as a whole (e.g., Ferraro 1992, 150–1). Other anthropologists have criticised the assumption that behaviour is in any way controlled by rational economic thought and action (e.g., Bourdieu 1977, 29–30). In more recent years, some archaeologists have also questioned whether ‘efficiency’ was necessarily part of rationality in past societies (e.g., Bradley 2000, 86–7; Witcher 1999, 13–15). Ultimately, ‘rationality’ is connected to ‘meaning’. The theme of this book is that the meanings of their landscapes for Methanites have not been fixed but depend on their context. THE METHANA SETTLEMENT PATTERN AS PART OF A DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Usually, settlement patterns grow slowly over centuries. New settlements spring up as people react to changing circumstances, while other settlements shrink or are relocated. These developments are themselves generally affected by the locations of other, existing settlements. Very rarely does landscape and settlement pattern represent a single historical ‘event’ as was the case on Methana. In this context, two questions emerge. First, why, in the 1820s, did settlements come to be located in particular places within the landscape? Second, what is the appropriate way to understand the location of individual settlements 178


and their resident communities vis-à-vis their surrounding agrarian landscapes? The patterning of settlements in relation to each other and the relationships of settlements to their landscapes have attracted attention over many years. Towns, villages and cities do not occur randomly in their landscapes but are located, for instance, in defensible locations or at strategic positions relating to natural features, transport networks and so on. The factors behind choices to live in one place rather than another therefore provide important historical, economic or social information. However, understanding the primary reason behind the location of a particular site may be difficult because of the wide range and multifactorial nature of the possible causes. These observations certainly hold true for Methana. Water is essential for human survival, but Methana possesses only one spring, on the north side of the peninsula, which was only available to the village of Palea Loutra because the others were too distant from it. Sources of running water did not, therefore, affect settlement locations. Wells close to the coast provide alternative sources of water. Although brackish, their water was previously regularly used for watering livestock and for washing, and occasionally for drinking in emergencies, but the main source of drinking water has traditionally come from cisterns filled by rainwater. The use of cisterns has freed Methana’s inhabitants from being tied to particular sources of water in their environment. Although a discussion of the historical development of cistern use is beyond the scope of this book, by the medieval period, huge vaulted cisterns were being constructed, such as those at the refuge site of Profitis Ilias (Koukoulis 1997b, 93). It is therefore probable that by using cisterns, Methanites have for centuries at least been able to consider almost any part of their landscape for settlement without being tied to fixed water sources. Methana’s nineteenth-century settlement pattern consisted of a concentration of villages about one-third of the way up what is, diagrammatically speaking, a cone. Within a landmass with a maximum height of 740 metres, they are virtually all located in a zone ranging from about 100 to 250 metres above sea level. Six of the ten agricultural villages were located at the intersection of the steep slopes of the interior with the more gentle slopes that run down to the sea. The others were also 179


located close to these same steep slopes, beside small areas of flat land with deep fertile soils, in locations invisible from the sea. The traditional view of settlement and population in Greece during the period of Turkish occupation has been that they were concentrated in mountainous areas, whereas the lowland zone was largely depopulated because of centuries of oppressive Turkish rule and endemic piracy which affected both shipping and settlements (Bennet and Voutsaki 1991, 380–1; Clark 1988, 62–3; Frangakis-Syrett and Wagstaff 1992, 439, 442). Recently, however, this view has been challenged (Frangakis and Wagstaff 1987; Frangakis-Syrett and Wagstaff 1992). Statistical analyses have shown that in 1830 the Peloponnese’s population concentrated in the height zone below 100 metres was significantly greater than expected (Frangakis-Syrett and Wagstaff 1992, 443–6). Although not explaining why the zone’s population was so high, the authors suggest that high population concentrations in particular height zones can on occasions be related to agricultural factors. They also admit that the retreat-from-the-coast hypothesis may be supportable in some instances (Frangakis-Syrett and Wagstaff 1992, 443–6). In light of this research, the location of settlements in the 100- to 250-metre zone on Methana could reflect the efficiency of exploiting the local landscape from a settlement rather than safety considerations. The villages’ locations allow the effective exploitation of land both below and above them from a single base. During the 1970s, few farmers seemed to have land more than one hour’s walk from their village, although a few had land up to six hours’ walk away on the Plain of Trizin (e.g., Clark 1988, 58–9, 226). The fact that villages were only approximately one-third of the way up the landmass could likewise be explained in terms of the most time-efficient exploitation of the peninsula’s total surface area. Because it is very roughly cone-shaped, it had a considerably greater surface area available for exploitation in its lower zones than in the upper part. Hence, least-effort models relating sites with their landscapes would predict that villages would be closer to the lower part. The arguments in the previous paragraph make sense for a number of archaeologists and human geographers, part of whose theoretical impedimenta is a concern with energetic efficiency in matters 180


concerned with subsistence. Methanites themselves, however, explained their settlement pattern in very different terms. The difference of views presents us with a classic ethnographic dilemma. It is well known in social-cultural anthropology that native explanations, for example, of particular phenomena including those which are rooted in the past or in the natural environment, need not be ‘true’, ‘correct’ or ‘accurate’ in scholarly, academic terms (see, e.g., Forbes 1992, 97). Although they may contain important cultural meanings for the population, they may on occasions be interpreted as essentially myths which provide easily understood and straightforward explanations for what are in reality very complex and possibly otherwise-incomprehensible phenomena. Ethnographers are well aware in these circumstances of the dichotomy between what has variously been defined as the ‘native model’, the ‘ethnomodel’ or the ‘emic explanation’ on the one hand, with the ‘anthropologist’s model’ or the ‘etic explanation’ on the other (e.g., Geertz 1983, 56–9; see Barnard 1996, 180–2). Many ethnographic studies have found it convenient or necessary to present informants’ own explanations (the ethnomodel) of a phenomenon first, then ‘re-explain’ them in terms of ‘what is/was actually happening’ (the anthropologist’s model). Although some anthropologists have attempted to avoid what can seem a very condescending treatment of non-Western views and transcend the apparent gap (e.g., Herzfeld 1985, xi–xviii, 8–19), it is evident that, in many ethnographic field situations, ‘reality’ sometimes diverges between the viewpoints of the host community and the visiting anthropologist. It is tempting here, when explaining why certain parts of the landscape were chosen for settlement, to presuppose just such diverging ‘realities’, privileging the Westernised ‘academic’ explanation. Nevertheless, it is always dangerous summarily to dismiss indigenous traditions without investigating them for underlying ‘objective truths’. Many oral traditions emphasised the fear of attack ‘in the old days’ when villages were first established on Methana, especially from seaborne pirates, although a date other than ‘in the time of our grandfathers [i.e., ancestors]’ was impossible to obtain. Methanites also recognised that five of the ten ‘traditional’ villages were founded behind rocky knolls, or comparable features of the landscape, so that the 181


original communities were invisible from the sea (Clark 1988, 62– 3; Forbes 2000c, 214). In addition, all traditional villages, whether or not visible from the sea, were positioned at the bases of steep, rugged slopes, giving ready access to the broken landscape of the interior (see fig. 3.6). Methanites said that villages were deliberately situated in these locations to allow easy flight into the interior at the first hint of marauders. Other traditions emphasised the fear of attack. The inhabitants of a village located behind a volcanic knoll stressed that prior to the twentieth century, no houses could be seen from the sea (see also Clark 1988, 62–3). The one whitewashed house visible to passing shipping in the 1970s was built only after the fear of attack had passed. Furthermore, before the relatively recent introduction of the whitewashing of house exteriors, unwhitewashed houses in local stone would have blended inconspicuously into the rocky hillsides (Akritas 1957, 78–80; Clark 1988, 62–3). Although the inhabitants also believed that the houses were hidden among high scrub vegetation even in the later nineteenth century (Clark 1988, 181), it is unclear whether this is historically accurate. Exactly the same statement was made about the village of Prosimni (Berbati) in the northern Argolid during the Turkish period (Hahn 1996, 443). Historical correctness is less important here, however, than Methanites’ strongly held belief that insecurity was the major factor in settlement location choices (Forbes 2000c, 218–20). Archaeological and historical records corroborate Methanites’ beliefs. The later medieval settlement pattern, with its refuge site containing several large cisterns, more than 600 metres above sea level on the precipitous peak of Profitis Ilias, demonstrates an over-riding concern for security (Koukoulis 1997b, 93–4). Panaghitsa, the other main settlement site in the late medieval period, became the only true village in the early Turkish period. Its position at more than 400 metres’ altitude again suggests seaborne attack was a major preoccupation (Koukoulis 1997a, 99; Forbes 1997a, 103–5). As noted in Chapter 3, the later move to the location of the present village of Meghalo Khori at somewhat below 200 metres elevation seems to signify that the perceived threat of attack was significantly reduced. Nevertheless, having feared attack from the sea for several hundred years, it is unlikely that the inhabitants abandoned all caution. Whatever the reality of potential 182


attack at the time, it seems certain that Meghalo Khori’s location, well back from the coast and with easy access to refuge in the mountains, reflects continued fear of seaborne marauders. Wagstaff and Frangakis-Syrett’s (1992) statistical height-zone analysis is not readily amenable to considering more complex factors such as positioning within the landscape for invisibility or ease of flight. Furthermore, because other villages in this same zone were established while war raged across the country, their founders would undoubtedly have had heightened security concerns. The historical context of villages’ founding, therefore, and Methanites’ explanations for villages’ positions, lend substantial weight to the security argument. Stories of ambaria also highlight serious concerns over security. In the distant past, many households seem to have owned one of these extra-mural storage structures hidden in the landscape away from villages. They are fully discussed in Chapter 7. Some still exist: although not definite, a nineteenth-century date seems likely. They held most of a household’s food supplies, so that if robbers came to village houses, they would find in them only food for immediate consumption (Forbes 2000c, 217). The archaeological record also contradicts the idea that the zone of nineteenth- and twentieth-century villages on Methana is in some way a ‘natural’ or ‘obvious’ position for the founding of villages. Archaeological survey indicates that this was the zone least regularly chosen in some 8,000 years of settlement: that most regularly chosen is the coastal zone, below about 100 metres, especially during the prehistoric and early Iron Age periods (Gill and Foxhall 1997; Mee and Taylor 1997). From the Classical period (480–323 b.c.) onwards until the early Turkish period, there was a significant level of settlement high in the interior (Forbes 1997a); Gill et al. 1997; Koukoulis 1997a but little in the intermediate zone. The earlier discussion concerning settlement location and timeefficiencies in exploiting the landscape assumed a single base of operations. However, agriculturalists’ use of field-houses (kalivia, spitakia) in post-medieval Greece to extend the range of their agricultural activities is well known (e.g., Bennet and Voutsaki 1991, 374; Cherry et al.1991, 360; Forbes 2000a; Wagstaff and Augustson 1982, 110; Wagstaff and Cherry 1982, 154–5; Whitelaw 1991, 419–24), 183


and their use on Methana in the centuries prior to the Greek War of Independence is discussed in Chapter 3. The practice allowed the exploitation of extensive land areas in periods when the population was concentrated in a single settlement (Forbes 1997, 105). Moreover, despite the apparently ‘optimally efficient’ settlement pattern, in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, a number of Methana households still owned and used kalivia on the peninsula. Twentieth-century Methanites related the use of kalivia (fig. 6.1) on Methana primarily to the use of cattle, the dominant traction animal for ploughing until the end of the nineteenth century. Cattle were considerably slower and less sure-footed than the mules that replaced them, so they needed much more time to negotiate the peninsula’s steep rocky paths. Moreover, with large families and without chemical fertilizers at that time, arable areas needed to be larger. Blocks of land were also generally larger then because fewer generations had divided them, so the use of secondary bases was more effective. During periods of intensive agricultural work, previous generations would take their livestock and live for several days in the peninsula’s interior. Most of these secondary bases existed as isolated structures, but there were also two small hamlets of kalivia, both now abandoned. A few kalivia were also built close to the coast, mostly in the earlier twentieth century, associated with intensive irrigation agriculture. The evidence therefore indicates that there was nothing ‘inevitable’, from the point of view of the economics of exploiting the landscape, about the locations of villages in Methana’s 100–250 metre zone. To the contrary, it is much more reasonable to accept Methanites’ own view that safety from attack was the main reason for the locations of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘traditional’ villages. METHANA COMMUNITIES IN THEIR LANDSCAPES: ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACHES

In this section, I examine the relationships of villages with their surrounding areas and with other villages. As noted earlier, scholars investigating how past landscapes surrounding settlements might have been exploited have used geographical approaches incorporating least-effort 184


6.1. A kalivi (field-house) (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

models (e.g., Chisholm 1970). From the 1970s, least-effort models have been widely applied via site location analyses in many contexts (e.g., Higgs and Vita-Finzi 1970; Bintliff 1988), sometimes coupled with central place theories of site territory formation. They have been described as ‘still the most useful analytical tool for the initial investigation of [site] distribution’ (Bintliff 1988, 132). ‘Site catchment analysis’ studies have attempted to show the resources, especially in the neighbourhood of past settlements, potentially available to inhabitants, and how dependence on such resources would have determined broader settlement distributions. The approach’s underlying rationale is that humans prefer to minimise the energy expended to complete tasks successfully – sometimes described as Zipf ’s Least Effort Law (Zipf 1949). Thus, settlements are assumed to be situated close to the most regularly exploited environmental resources: those at considerable distances are assumed to have been little used or irrelevant. Delimiting an area with boundaries equidistant between a site and each of its neighbours has been an especially popular site catchment analysis approach for analysing prehistoric sites. The resulting Thiessen 185


polygons are treated as ‘site territories’ (e.g., Clarke 1968, 509–10; Bintliff 1985, 198). Alternatively, circles of standard diameter are drawn round sites on a topographic map to define ‘site territories’ incorporating differing types of terrain (e.g., Sturdy 1975, 81, 89). More sophisticated applications have combined both approaches (e.g., Bintliff 1988, 133–4) or employed concentric circles to indicate zones of decreasing intensity of land use (e.g., Higgs and Vita-Finzi 1972, 31), sometimes modifying the circles to take account of pedestrian travelling time in different terrain types (e.g., Jarman and Webley 1975, 201–21). Although the reconstruction of ‘site territories’ and the application of ergonomic/least-effort approaches were most popular during the processualist era, some archaeologists still consider them important research tools. Bintliff (2000) employs both while rebutting the usefulness of phenomenological approaches for understanding Boeotian settlement systems. These theoretical models are most convincing, however, when applied to flat sheets of paper, or at least relatively flat landscapes. Although least-effort distance models may account for time and energy expended in travelling uphill, they rarely consider the realities of descending steep, rocky paths, especially if work animals are involved. A laden pack animal travels at a considerably slower rate on steep paths than the average undergraduate or postgraduate student wearing high-tech footwear, often employed to monitor such factors in fieldstudy programmes. One of the benefits of the ‘learning-by-doing’ approach to ethnographic research was the experience of leading pack animals on mountain paths. Even sure-footed mules and donkeys must negotiate descents on uneven paths with considerable care and deliberation, especially when carrying a full load. In least-effort and time-travelled models, the most efficient direction to travel in a steep slope environment is horizontally. Theoretically, therefore, timetravelled-dependent site catchment areas in mountainous zones should be elliptical, with the longer dimension arranged horizontally and the shorter dimension arranged vertically. Even this observation ignores the reality of geographical factors, such as deep gullies and ravines, which can make strict application of this observation inoperable, if not fatal1 . 186


Archaeologists’ and geographers’ least-effort and time-dependent ‘site territory’ models do not readily explain the Methana settlementpattern or the relationships between settlements and their surrounding agrarian landscapes. Because of the close proximity of many villages in the 100- to 250-metre zone, any approximately circular ‘site territory’ would overlap considerably with neighbouring ‘site territories’ while leaving a considerable amount of the landscape, especially near the coast and in the higher parts of the peninsula, outside the theoretical boundaries. In reality, all parts of the landscape were exploited from village bases, with most households owning plots at considerable distances both below and above their villages. The Methana ‘site territory’ pattern was not circular or polygonal, as per classic time-travelled-dependent locational analysis studies, but a series of roughly pie-slice shapes. Even in the 1970s, and more so prior to that period, households exploited a suite of plots within these ‘pieslices’ which ran from near sea level to high in the mountainous interior (e.g., Clark 1988, 227, 229; Forbes 1982, 149; see also fig. 5.2). These ‘pie-slice’ territories were not simply an exogenous academic model imposed onto the landscape: Methanites recognised that certain sectors of the landscape ‘belonged’ to particular kinotites (communes – administrative units, normally comprising two or three villages). Within these territories commune administrations might apply local by-laws, such as restricting common grazing at certain times of year. The administrative boundaries between communes were well known, normally following highly visible geographical features with a vertical axis in the landscape: deep ravines running from the interior down to the sea or the crests of the more pronounced lava flows which run down-slope at irregular intervals. The locations of villages part-way between the highest land and seashore ensured that inhabitants could efficiently exploit the peninsula’s full altitudinal range from a single base. But, as noted, we cannot assume that least-effort, distance-minimisation models in any way explain the original reason for the choices of settlement locations some 150 years previously because the use of kalivia could have extended the choices in settlement sites as well as the range of land exploited. Furthermore, distance-minimisation models cannot easily incorporate the 187


patchiness of agricultural resources. For example, cultivating irrigated vegetables was the most intensive agricultural activity for Methanites. Least-effort models would therefore predict that irrigated areas should be closest to villages. However, because irrigation depended on wells close to the sea, irrigated plots were generally 20 to 30 minutes’ walk from villages. Some households dealt with the problem by constructing kalivia; others did not bother. Vine cultivation was also very labourintensive and so, according to least-effort models, should be close to villages. However, deep soils suited to vine cultivation were generally only available in scattered pockets, many in locations high in the interior, more than 30 minutes’ walk from villages. The locations where individual households had vines were not predictable because they were dependent on the historical vagaries of dowry and inheritance. Distance-minimisation models also do not account for the effect on settlement decisions of the pre-existing religious landscape and the newcomers’ needs for a place of religious worship close to settlements. The evidence is elaborated in Chapter 9: here, it is sufficient to note that choices of village locations seem to have been heavily influenced by the positioning of pre-existing churches. The preceding discussion therefore highlights four major issues relating to least-effort and time-efficiency assumptions in the spatial analysis of settlement patterns. First, the circular or sub-circular ‘settlement territory’ model reliant on such assumptions does not fit that found on Methana. In archaeology, it is always possible to argue that missing sites explain certain inconsistencies in the fit between theory and data, though archaeologists are well aware of the problems of using negative evidence. When knowledge of the total settlement pattern is assured, as in this ethnographic case, it is not possible to fall back on ‘missing sites’ (e.g., Bintliff 1988, 135–40) as an explanation for lack of fit. Likewise, the ethnographic data indicate that site territories genuinely exist on Methana, governmentally and administratively. However, the rationale of territories’ boundaries is not primarily based on factors of distance but rather reflects the landscape itself, the wide range of micro-environments within it, and the needs of farming households to exploit this micro-environmental breadth for their highly 188


diversified agrarian economies. The importance of some of these factors is explored later. The second issue is the fact that it would be all too easy to present a map showing the twentieth-century settlement pattern of agricultural villages treated in vacuo, without recourse to ethnographic or historical data. It would not be out of the question in archaeological research situations to use such a settlement pattern as an ethnoarchaeological model for discussing archaeological data. In such a scenario, the locations of farming villages part-way up the altitudinal range might readily be interpreted as resulting from least-effort considerations in the minds of the original founders. A landscape-exploitation pattern allowing the population to reach the highest and lowest parts of the peninsula from a single base ‘makes sense’ in these purely ‘economic rationality’ terms, tempting the scholar to say ‘look no further’. Information presented earlier in this chapter and in Chapters 7 and 9 indicates the danger of taking such an ahistorical approach. Third, the resources provided by broken landscapes are not neatly zoned or distributed in large blocks. They tend to be widely scattered in small patches, making it impossible for all (or any) households to relate efficiencies of distance with the labour requirements of different crops. Additionally, whether households have plots of a particular crop, such as vines, close by or at a considerable distance could be highly variable, being governed by the exigencies of the system of dowry and inheritance. The normative, community-level analysis employed in site catchment studies cannot consider the realities of individual households’ land holdings (discussed later). The final issue is that rationalities other than those relating to distance-minimisation can be seen to have been operating in the context of choices for positioning new villages on early nineteenthcentury Methana. In addition to the religious dimension briefly mentioned earlier, security seems to have been more important than leasteffort and distance-minimisation in the exploitation of the landscape. This is not to argue that Methanites failed to recognise any effects of distance from the village on the way they have worked the land. Nevertheless, other rationalities have taken priority in the way the human landscape has been laid out and exploited. 189


THE METHANA LANDSCAPE AS A VERTICAL ECONOMY

Mountainous regions, particularly alpine environments, are widely recognised for their environmental diversity. Rhoades and Thompson (1975) have even argued that communities in the world’s alpine environments on three continents – Andes, Himalayas and European Alps – share a wide range of socio-political features related to their diversity. Although not rivalling the world’s alpine zones, Methana contains a remarkable environmental diversity for such a small landmass, for the same reasons that alpine settings do: the combination of height and steepness, affording an exceptional range of altitudinal micro-zones set over a short distance (Rhoades and Thompson 1975, 543). Methana is far from unique in its wide environmental diversity: the Mediterranean island of Pantellaria is very similar, although the social and agrarian backgrounds are very different (Galt 1979). Of all the varied micro-environmental factors influencing farming decisions, altitude was most important because it directly affected temperatures – hence, growth rates – and soil moisture because reduced temperatures at higher elevations resulted in lower evaporation rates: dews and fogs, as well as possibly slightly higher rainfall levels also seem to have contributed to the indicators of higher moisture levels (see also Forbes 1998, 21). This observation clearly interrelates with the fact that vertical axes of village ‘territories’ overrode considerations of least-effort and distance-minimisation. Other micro-environmental factors included the wide variability of soils: their depth, fertility and especially water-retentive capacities (see Clark 1988, 54, fn. 5); steepness of slope and thus width of terraces; shelter – or lack of it – from drying winds; aspect; and whether areas are cast in shadow from other features in the landscape (Forbes 1982, chap. 11; Forbes 2000b). Within this broad range of micro-environments, Methanites traditionally exploited a prodigiously wide range of crops and crop varieties, each of which had its own set of environmental tolerances (Forbes 1976). The management of crops has been complex, as might be expected given their great diversity and the wide range of micro-environments provided by the peninsula. The different temperature tolerances affected the ability of certain crops, or crop varieties, to grow 190


successfully at different altitudes. Lemons, for example, were restricted to coastal locations because of their sensitivity to frost and because water for irrigating them was only available close to the sea. Olives and almonds were also only grown at lower altitudes. Above about 400 to 500 metres, olive trees will not produce fruit: the majority were grown below about 300 metres. Almond blossom, appearing in February, is very vulnerable to cold weather, so almond trees, too, fruited more reliably when grown at lower elevations. Figs will grow well high in the interior of the peninsula, but they mature late there. Trees growing close to the coast were essential for fresh figs for sale because the earliest fruit brought the highest prices. However, families’ restricted labour-supplies could only pick limited amounts of figs at any time. Fig trees were therefore grown at a range of altitudes, so a sequence of trees could be harvested over an extended period. Vines tolerate a wide range of altitudes: they have been grown from sea level to more than 600 metres. Deep soils were most important for determining their successful cultivation, so the number of suitable locations was limited and widely scattered. In the 1970s, many of the most important vineyard areas were concentrated in small basins at higher altitudes in the interior, though some areas at lower elevations also supported vines. Certain other crops, such as pears and plums, which did not tolerate high temperatures, were grown at higher altitudes by preference. Of the arable crops, peas were sown close to the coast because farmers depended on their early maturation in spring for good prices for this cash crop. Vetch, an important hay crop, could tolerate a wide range of growing conditions but was often grown at relatively high altitudes, partly because of the need to grow crops which were less temperature-tolerant at lower altitudes. Because it will grow on poorer soils than most arable crops, it was frequently grown on the poor soils and narrow terraces found in steep zones above villages. Wheat and barley will grow at a wide range of altitudes, but barley tolerates lower rainfall and poorer soils. Likewise, oats were grown primarily for hay and so were generally cut before the seed set, which made the crop less susceptible to the frequent late-spring droughts. Both were, in any case, grown as animal feed, so a shortfall in their production was less critical than for wheat, on which humans depended. For these 191


complex reasons, which cross-cut biological characteristics and the priorities of farmers, barley and oats were generally grown on soils too poor for wheat growing. Most wheat was grown on good land, generally at relatively low altitudes. Several varieties were sown, each suited to slightly different environmental parameters. Some required soils of considerable depth, with high moisture levels. Other special varieties produced well on poorer soils but needed to be grown close to the village because they tended to lose their seed easily in transportation on mule-back. Although much wheat was grown at low elevations, it was acknowledged that excellent crops of cereals could be obtained from high-altitude land, as happened earlier in the twentieth century. In recognition of this fact, two villages which traditionally exploited large amounts of highaltitude cereal land were nicknamed ‘Russia’ and ‘Canada’ because, especially in the days before chemical fertilizers, they used to produce larger amounts of wheat than other villages. Of the differences in soils affecting choices of crops grown in particular locations, depth of soil and soil-particle size were the main factors involved. Through years of experience, farmers knew the finest details associated with every plot they owned. One farmer commented that government agricultural advisors could not tell him anything that was really useful, like how thickly or thinly to sow cereal seed on his plots: every plot was different, and the amount of seed therefore differed accordingly. He knew the correct amounts, but no (stranger, outsider) could know (see also Clark 1988, 54, fn. 5). Too much seed sown for the capacity of the plot’s soil would result in stunted stalks and little seed; too little seed sown would result in heavy heads but over-long stalks, which fell over, thereby losing much of the crop. Perhaps the most noteworthy of all arable operations which exploited micro-environmental differences was the growing of crops throughout the hot, dry summer months in [xerika bostania] – unirrigated vegetable plots (Forbes 1982, 436–51). The system depended on winter rainfall in the sub-soil providing a soilmoisture reservoir: careful working of the soil minimised evaporation of soil moisture so that plants continued to grow through the rainless summer months. Hence, xerika bostania could be grown only on areas of deep, clayey, water-retentive soils free of any trees which would 192


take most of the soil-moisture reserves to support their own growth. Most of the clothes that the older generations wore during the 1970s were made from home-spun and home-woven cotton, grown in this way. An impressive variety of fruit and vegetables was also grown by the same method. Some farmers planted tomatoes at the backs of north-facing terraces because they benefited from the increased shade. Other species, such as broom-corn millet, being much more tolerant of drought, might be sown even under trees such as almonds, which cast relatively little shade but whose roots drained the soil-moisture reservoir. The planting of tree crops to take advantage of specific soil types was a more permanent indicator of adjusting to soil differences. Farmers noted that olives preferred deep but free-draining soils in locations close to the sea. However, almonds and, above all, fig trees, also grew best in these soils and locations and were less tolerant of heavy soils than olives. Therefore, although both economically and ideologically more important than other tree crops, olives were frequently relegated to locations with relatively thin or heavy and poorer soils because they were more tolerant of adverse growing conditions. In the past, olives were grown even in the rocky jumbles of lava-flow ridges flanking vertical extents of agricultural terraces. Farmers who owned that part of the hillside had grafted domesticated olives onto wild olives growing in situ in the seemingly soil-less tumbled masses of volcanic boulders, producing the effect of an area of olive trees growing in an uncultivable landscape. These trees, growing in near-impossible positions, produced generally small crops: only their exceptional level of adaptation to and tolerance of poor growing conditions allowed them to survive at all. However, because with the exception of the carob, other species of crop tree were less tolerant of these conditions, the limited areas of better soil were made over to other kinds of trees. The pattern of crops, both annual (arable) and perennial (tree crops and vines) in the agrarian landscape therefore reflected farmers’ decisions to grow crops that would flourish in or at least tolerate particular sets of micro-environmental conditions. Certain sectors of the landscape would be heavily planted in almond trees or in olive trees, for instance. In other sectors, broad terraces would be free of trees to allow the growing of xerika bostania. Sections of a hillside might likewise be 193


sown predominantly either in barley or in wheat by their owners, reflecting the influence of the soils and other factors on farmers’ decisions. These agrarian manifestations of particular micro-environmental features were the result of similar decisions by all the households which owned land in these areas, informed by their knowledge of the conditions which best suited different species or varieties. Much of the Methana landscape could therefore be ‘read’ as a series of agrarian ‘texts’ which highlighted underlying messages about the minutiae of micro-environmental differences in each small area. The ‘readers’ were other farmers, who, knowing the same ‘language’ or ‘character-set’ of crop-tolerances and the ‘lexikon’ of environmental variables on the peninsula, could understand the messages being sent out by particular crop choices fine-tuned to minor micro-environmental differences. Perhaps the best way to define the agrarian landscape experienced by Methanites in this way is as a nuanced landscape. Although being progressively abandoned by farmers during the last four decades or more of the twentieth century, the sorts of low-yielding olive ‘groves’ in seemingly impossible locations were a reminder to Methanites of a much more intensive exploitation of the landscape in the past and the harsher conditions and more precarious livelihoods that previous generations endured. A number of farm households which had abandoned poorly yielding olives were progressively replacing them with olive trees grown on more productive land where tree crops were previously not grown, as the pressure of population on land fell. This steady reorganisation of the agrarian landscape is not merely a phenomenon of the last few decades. Methanites noted that ‘in the old days’ – probably the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – there were extensive areas of vineyards close to the coast. During the later nineteenth century, some of these were grubbed up and replaced with lemon trees irrigated from shallow wells (Miliarakis 1886, 208, 210). In the interwar years, more low-altitude vineyards were grubbed up and replaced by other cash crops irrigated from new, deeper wells dug with the aid of explosives (see Chapter 3). These trends highlight the fact that despite the preceding observations on the tailoring of particular crops to specific conditions, the landscape itself did not predetermine where crops should be grown. 194


Instead, there was an interplay between the ‘givens’ of the environmental variables and the tolerances of the different crop types and crop varieties on the one hand, with the changing parameters governing farm household decision making on the other. These parameters have been diverse: fluctuating prices of particular agricultural products, changing levels of demand for land, and changing household labour forces as family sizes have reduced over the generations. Alongside the abandoned olives already noted, the material remains associated with changing allocations of specific crops to particular sectors of the landscape (e.g., abandoned wells, grape-treading floors and kalivia) act as historical ‘texts’ within the landscape, reminding Methanites of the ways in which making a living by farming has changed over a century and more, and the parts of the landscape in which this change has been most intense. Aspects of this issue are discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. THE CROP ROTATION SYSTEM IN THE LANDSCAPE

An important feature of most agricultural regimes worldwide is the necessity for a scheme of crop rotation. On Methana, farmers built their crop-rotation system into the landscape (see Chapter 5). The system worked on a two-year cycle, although not with a simple alternation of cereal and fallow stated by several writers on recent or ancient Mediterranean agrarian history (e.g., Bloch 1966, 30–5; White 1966, 71–2; Halstead 1987). By custom, a village’s land was divided into two roughly equal halves. Every year, one was set aside for cereal cultivation; the following year, the other portion was cultivated in cereals. In the main study community, the portion of the arable landscape allocated to cereals each year was arranged in a vertical strip within the ‘pie slice’ which comprised the village ‘territory’ (see Chapter 5), especially in the zone from the sea up to about 500 metres. In higher parts of the peninsula, the pattern of crop allocation within the rotation system was harder to deduce, partly because the landscape was even more broken than at lower elevations but aggravated by the much greater abandonment of plots, which caused the established rotation system to break down here. 195


Most of the agricultural landscape consisted of blocks of terraces running like giant stairs, one above the other. The normal name in Greek for such a block was (skala), meaning a flight of steps. Because of the highly broken volcanic landscape, each skala was usually restricted in size, with terraces often less than 100 metres long horizontally, and with no more than twenty to thirty terraces from bottom to top. Skales (plural of skala) would be separated from their neighbours on each side by old lava flows forming steeply descending rocky ridges or by chasms carved out by seasonal torrents. Above and below, other natural features such as rock outcrops formed boundaries. Within a skala, a number of households usually owned plots, ranging in size from one terrace or, rarely, part of one terrace, to a substantial number of terraces. Very occasionally, a single household owned a whole small skala, but usually what had been skales in single ownership became divided between several households through the working out of the dowry and inheritance system in subsequent generations. Because cereals were by far the most important arable crop, the sector of the landscape allocated to cereals had few uncultivated plots in it. Wheat was much the largest crop within this category, because even in the 1970s almost every household was self-sufficient in this staple. Nevertheless, oats and barley were also important as fodder crops, especially for hay and seed, because virtually every household also kept animals. Generally, only if land was particularly poor or household members were incapacitated (usually due to old age) would plots within the area allocated to cereals be left uncultivated. A roughly similar-sized series of vertically arranged skales was set aside for other crops, primarily legumes, of which the most important was vetch, grown for fodder. Peas, broad beans, yellow split peas, and one or two other leguminous crops were also grown in smaller quantities. In addition, choice areas of the non-cereal sector were cultivated with xerika bostania. The ‘two-field system’ on Methana was therefore not a simple arable-fallow system, but a cereal–non-cereal one. In keeping with previous comments, the kinds of crops grown in the non-cereal area changed over time. Farmers stated that ‘in the olden days’ – probably early in the twentieth century – far more broad beans and chickpeas were grown for human consumption, but little if any vetch for animal 196


fodder was cultivated. In the 1880s, the geographer Andonios Miliarakis noted with surprise that farmers rarely left land fallow but grew large amounts of unirrigated cotton (Miliarakis 1886, 209–10). A significant proportion of the sector annually set aside for noncereals, however, was left fallow – for instance, land of poor quality or that was difficult to cultivate because terraces were narrow. Fallow areas provided another vital resource: grazing. Their use as grazing also explains in large measure why each community co-ordinated its areas under cereals and non-cereals, reifying the crop-rotation system in the landscape. Because virtually all households owned draught animals and at least a few sheep and goats, areas for grazing were essential. However, households’ plots were small and widely scattered, without fencing to restrain stock from wandering onto other households’ land. Grazing animals were always attended, generally by one of the household’s women: any straying animals could be dealt with through the expediency of shouts or, if necessary, well-aimed stones. Nevertheless, sheep and goats, being no respecters of property boundaries, were always likely to make a break for better grazing, especially if tempted by standing crops. Under Greek law, the owner of animals that grazed growing crops could be sued, so trying to graze animals on one’s own small plot without causing damage to adjacent standing crops always risked litigation. On the other side of the coin, when grazing damage to crops did occur, if was often impossible to prove whose animals were involved, and even successful litigation would not restore a ruined crop. In addition, frequent litigation would have disrupted community life and made cooperation difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, owners of neighbouring plots were frequently kin, their adjoining plots being the result of the division of previous generations’ property via the property transmission system (see Chapters 5 and 8). Leguminous crops and xerika bostania, even those for human consumption, were considered less important than wheat, which in the form of bread, constituted the largest single item in Methanites’ diet. The greatest damage from wandering livestock, causing the greatest chance of litigation or worse, was therefore the grazing and trampling of growing wheat (see Chapter 5). The annual division of the landscape between a cereals sector with very limited fallow, and a 197


non-cereal sector with substantial fallow areas for grazing largely avoided such potential difficulties. An additional factor built into the system was the tradition of allowing common grazing on stubble areas. As noted in Chapter 5, most households allowed free grazing on their land once cereals had been harvested. Sheep and goats could therefore graze on relatively extensive consolidated areas of cereal stubble. These provided a reasonable grazing resource, at least for a month or two, and ensured that livestock could be grazed well away from the non-cereal areas of the landscape in which xerika bostania were grown during the summer. For although xerika bostania were less crucial for households than wheat fields, they were highly attractive to livestock at a time when there was minimal green grazing. Furthermore, substantial areas of xerika bostania were traditionally cultivated in melons for sale in the local market to generate much-needed cash. Grazing damage to these could therefore engender serious disputes. The working of the two-field system on Methana, therefore, was not solely aimed at the necessary rotation of crops. It also accommodated the needs of households for segregating crops and household stock in a landscape where households owned small, scattered plots. For highly diversified, subsistence-based economies, households needed to own plots in a wide range of micro-environments to suit the growth parameters of the extraordinary range of crops grown. In as broken and diverse a landscape as Methana, it would have been impossible for any household to have owned a unified, consolidated holding covering the necessary range of environmental factors – soils, altitudes, aspect and the like. Households therefore owned a large number of small plots scattered over a wide area, often from near the sea to high in the interior. The necessity of owning plots in both cropping sectors produced by the rotation cycle, to ensure that they could grow cereals and legumes every year, further increased the scatter of small plots across the landscape (Forbes 2000b). The level of plot scattering for individual households on Methana is discussed in Chapter 5. I have argued elsewhere (Forbes 2000b) that ownership of numerous small plots scattered over a wide micro-environmental range was advantageous for households engaged in largely subsistencebased agriculture. The partible property-transfer system of dowry and 198


inheritance ensured that households continued to maintain broad ‘portfolios’ of plots in both crop-rotation sectors over the generations. SITE ‘TERRITORIES’ VERSUS HOUSEHOLD ‘TERRITORIES’ AND THE PROBLEM OF APPROPRIATE ANALYTICAL LEVELS

The focus on individual households returns the discussion to the issue of ‘site territories’ raised earlier. As noted, communities on Methana have recognisable areas over which they exercise jurisdiction and control, but they do not form the sorts of ‘site territories’ identified by geographers and archaeologists in locational analysis studies, whose identification of ‘site territories’ has been primarily an economic exercise. On Methana, ‘site territories’ were a reality in political/ jurisdictional but not economic terms. Although almost all the owners of land in the area adhered to the division of the landscape into two sectors around a village to take account of the two-year rotation system (e.g., Clark 1988, 285), they did not work that land as a single unit. And although the agrarian landscape displayed certain broadly recognisable patterns and regularities, these were not imposed on it by a single decision-making body. Instead, these patterns and regularities were produced by decisions made by independent households, but irregularities in the patterning existed: the result of individual households making different decisions concerning the exploitation of their plots. An example noted earlier was the existence of plots left fallow in areas where surrounding plots were sown. Similarly, certain small areas might have different crop trees, such as almonds and figs or almonds and olives, intermingled because different households had made different decisions on how to expand their ‘portfolio’ of resources. Significantly, not all plot owners were even inhabitants of the community which had jurisdiction over the ‘site territory’. Some households owned land, trees or both in the ‘territories’ of other villages – generally, property originally allocated as dowry. The dichotomy between the community and the household as units of analysis exposes a major problem for archaeologists attempting to reconstruct and understand the human behaviours which are the end-point (or the starting-point, depending on viewpoint) of the 199


interpretation of the archaeological record. The discipline of socialcultural anthropology, from which archaeology has derived many models and ideas about the behaviour of pre-industrial and non-Western peoples, has, historically, focused on normative approaches. Thus, it has emphasised as one of its central tenets the study of culture or of society. In application, this has traditionally involved fieldwork in one or more communities, from which has been derived a picture of the general rules governing specific aspects of behaviour of ‘a tribe’ or ‘a people’. The approach has served the discipline well over a long time for understanding many aspects of different societies – political, religious and, above all, kinship systems have been very amenable. The focus on a whole community in anthropology also finds its reflection in archaeological emphases on ‘sites’. On most archaeological ‘sites’, the totality of the material is not subjected to analysis via excavation or even via surface-artefact collection. Yet, what is retrieved is often treated by archaeologists as representing the totality: it is generally ‘the site’ which constitutes the basic unit of analysis when relating past humans to their surrounding environments or landscapes. Within the site, the basic unit of analysis tends to be the individual ‘feature’ – pit, post-hole and so forth. It is generally not individual dwellings – the closest that the archaeologist can usually come to recognising households – that are treated as the basic unit of analysis. Concentration by anthropologists on norms as ‘rules’ of behaviour verbalised by informants has not been without its critics, even in the areas of the discipline where they have been most obviously useful (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1977, 18–28; Goodenough 1956). Anthropologists’ ‘discovery’ in the 1950s of cultural ecology as a way of investigating human populations’ interactions with their environments (e.g., Steward 1955, esp. chap. 2) also led to a dissatisfaction with strictly normative, community-based approaches. The rise in anthropological interest in human–environment relations precedes but closely mirrors the archaeological ‘discovery’ of site-catchment analysis as a way of understanding interactions between past human communities and their local environments. Significantly, some early cultural ecological studies concentrated not on whole communities but rather on the interrelationships between the organisation of individual households and the exigencies of making a living by farming (e.g., Netting 1965). 200


It is only relatively recently, however, after a boom in studies of how people wrest a livelihood from their landscapes (e.g., Netting 1971) that significant numbers of anthropologists and development economists have come to realise that the household is a critical unit of analysis in many contexts, including farming (e.g., Barlett 1980, 546–7; Netting, Wilk, and Arnould 1984). Even in the 1980s, Netting, Wilk and Arnould (1984, xxii–xxiii) felt it necessary to present a detailed argument in favour of treating the household, rather than larger social units, as a fundamental unit for analytical purposes: Pooling and sharing of resources, food processing, cooking, eating, and sheltering from the elements tend to take place in the household, which has therefore become a standard unit of analysis for ecological and economic purposes. . . . Any primary group that has become so ubiquitous in social surveys must necessarily be used in further research if we have any hope that our interdisciplinary understandings can become cumulative.

It is important, therefore, not to rely too heavily on normative, typological, or evolutionary statements based at the level of ‘a people’ or ‘a community’ for analysing and understanding how human populations relate to their environments in making a living. In these contexts, the fundamental decision-making unit is generally the household, making operationalised decisions based on its own complex internalised parameters and needs. I am not proposing, however, that higher level ‘black boxes’ should be replaced with lower level ones for the purposes of analysis (see, e.g., Clark 1988, 32) – the household, after all, is composed of individuals, all of whom may have rather different agendas. Study of decision making at the level of the individual within the household is possible and can be revelatory, as Clark (1988, 19–48, 369–416) demonstrates, yet her work focuses primarily on households rather than individuals as the primary units of production, reproduction and consumption. Furthermore, as her highly instructive description of a ghrinia (grumbling, dispute) scene makes clear, in a number of contexts, Methanites themselves consider the household to be the primary unit of action, not the individual (Clark 1988, 371). Communities are essentially aggregates of household decision-making units. To return to the issue of working Methana’s landscape, at an economic level as opposed to the political-jurisdictional level, the correct 201


unit of analysis must be the household, not the community. This was the social unit which made decisions on how to exploit the landscape, as Clark’s thesis (1988) and other works (e.g., Clarke 2000b; Forbes 1982) make abundantly clear. Villages on Methana did not function economically as corporate groups, owning and working productive property as a single collective unit. Households functioned in this way because they owned and controlled the productive property which they received from the parental generation via inheritance and dowry and made decisions concerning its exploitation for their support. This is not to say that villages in other parts of the world can never be corporate groups. But even where villages act economically as corporations, owning productive resources as a unit, as for example in the Swiss Alps, human-ecology studies have found it necessary to focus on households (Netting 1979, 1981). Households’ landholdings on Methana consisted of numerous small plots covering a substantial area of the landscape, not consolidated blocks. In the main study-community in the 1970s, the average number of plots per household was twenty, many less than 1,000m2 in area, dotted widely but discontinuously across the landscape in diverse micro-environments (Forbes 2000b). Villagers stated that the original settlers in the village had claimed substantial tracts of scrub-covered hillside. Significantly, from the start, these tracts were organised vertically. Households progressively transformed them into skales of terraces. However, over time, through the partible property-transfer system, these tracts were divided between heirs, and some portions were re-allocated to other households when women brought their portion of the property with them as dowry on marriage (see also Clark 1988, 58–9). Further re-allocation occurred from time to time as owners sold off property for various reasons, such as emigration or having incurred large debts (e.g., Clark 1988, 208, 378). Despite complaints that moving between widely dispersed plots necessitated considerable travel time, Methanites maintained this complex pattern at least in part because it ‘worked’ within the broader agrarian system on the peninsula. Exploitation of a broad ‘portfolio’ of many species of trees and of arable cultigens and cultivars required ownership of plots over a broad altitudinal range. The need to alternate the growing of cereals and legumes on plots while simultaneously 202


accommodating grazing animals meant that it was also essential to cultivate plots in different areas within particular altitudinal bands. As discussed elsewhere, the scattered holdings of plots also ‘worked’ because they resulted in a significant reduction in the risk of severe crop failure, while also allowing households’ finite labour supplies to be applied strategically via scheduling (e.g., Forbes 1982, chap. 11; Forbes 2000b; Clark 1988, 287–93). All of this was achieved through the inheritance system. Thus, in a very real way, their agrarian way of life was rooted in their household histories, and the kinship system more generally. Viewed in site-catchment-analysis terms, therefore, the village did not ‘control’ a territory because economic decision making and ownership of the landscape were not vested in the community as a whole. In these terms and at this level of analysis, individual households owned identifiable ‘territories’. Each household thus controlled what is perhaps best envisaged as an archipelago of plots, arranged predominantly on a vertical axis, consisting of small patches of the landscape which it owned and exploited independently for its own support2 . Household members moved between these widely scattered ‘islands’ of their ownership to conduct agricultural tasks over the course of the year. INDIVIDUAL PLOTS AND THEIR MEANINGS

To the outside observer, the agrarian landscape of Methana, composed of carefully constructed terrace systems, planted in diverse species of crop trees, and criss-crossed by paths and mule tracks, presented itself as a single unified entity – ‘the agrarian landscape’. To the households of the inhabitants, however, it consisted of the ownership ‘islands’ of special meaning – ‘our land, our vines and our trees, on which we depend for our livelihood’ – set within an undifferentiated ‘sea’ of others’ fields, others’ vines and so on. The meaning for households and individuals was not simply economic but also affective. Clark (1988, 294) describes people who had left Methana ensuring that their fields did not become overgrown with scrub by allowing relatives to cultivate them. Several times farmers would describe growing a crop such as barley, for which they had no real need, on fields which they rarely cultivated and which were surplus to their economic requirements, 203


explaining that it was just to ensure they did not revert to scrub. " (I feel sorry for the fields) was one explanation. Sotiris Petronotis (see Clark 1988, chaps. 5 and 6), an elderly farmer, took his sentimental attachment to one section of his property further than most. He owned half of a complete skala of vines high up on the mountainside, the other half being owned by his brother. It was largely surrounded by uncultivated scrubland, having been hewn out of the wilderness by his father, himself, and his three brothers in their young days. In later years, he had further extended it. He spent much more time on it than other villagers considered economically rational, had planted a number of cypress trees around the perimeter, and treated it in some ways as a kind of garden and retreat. Villagers made occasional snide remarks about his attachment to the area, noting the similarity of the plot surrounded by cypresses to a cypress-bordered cemetery (see Chapter 9). They would sometimes say , – ‘he has gone to the cypresses’ – a phrase normally used for burial in the cemetery, when he went to work there. In view of the discussion of the cemetery as the ultimate place where a villager ‘belonged’ in Chapter 9, the equation of the man’s favourite plot of land with his plot in the cemetery had multiple levels of significance. Nevertheless, there was a level at which villagers considered his behaviour understandable, if eccentric. Other elderly villagers were more eccentric. These ‘islands’ of property, therefore, had more than simply economic meaning: the way of life that they supported, however difficult, was also valued. It represented self-sufficiency and a basic level of security (see also Clark 1988, 167). Yet again, they also had kinship and historical meaning. They were inherited from parents and, before them, from grandparents, some of whom may have actually constructed the terraces or planted the trees. As part of the division of the estate, some of the land was passed down by the grandparental generation to uncles and aunts, and from them in turn to their children, who would be one’s own first cousins. Thus, one’s own plot would in many instances be bordered, or even surrounded, by the plots of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. The propinquity of these relatives’ plots to one’s own in the ‘sea’ of the productive landscape was explained by the historical fact of the origin one shared with them. The cluster of plots all owned by members of one’s kindred (soi) became a physical reminder 204


of one’s own links with the past as well as of one’s kinship links with living members of the community. In a very real way, ownership of a plot in a cluster of plots all belonging to members of the soi gave a Methanitis ‘roots’ genuinely in the soil. This aspect of the productive landscape is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. CONCLUSION

This chapter has placed the population of Methana within its productive landscape. In so doing, it has viewed the situation as though through a series of lenses of increasing power. Initially, it scrutinised the patterning of all the ‘traditional’ communities within the peninsular landmass and the reasons for their placing. It continued with a discussion of how individual villages fitted within their own sectors of the productive landscape, focusing first on the community as an undifferentiated whole and then on its individual constituent households. Finally, at its most detailed level, it has considered individual plots and the polysemy of their multifacetted meanings for the people who owned them. The academic viewpoint has also changed over the course of the chapter. At the beginning, analysis was from the standpoint primarily of the landscape archaeologist or human geographer, for whom the individual has little significance. As the chapter progressed, the standpoint has increasingly become that of the ethnographer, presenting the real-life decisions of real-life people. By the end, the emphasis has become the emotive reactions of individuals to their plots and the way plots helped place individuals within historical and kinship nexuses – about as far from the economic determinism of site-catchment analysis as it is possible to travel. The unifying thread is the realisation that the landscape, with its varied features, whether village locations, place names, productive fields, particular crops grown, or abandoned trees and structures, was full of ‘meaning’ to Methanites. All these items were, in effect, part of an overall ‘text’ in one way or another, features in the landscape being like ideograms. Through their parents, grandparents, and other older Methanites, people learned the meanings of these ideograms. Yet, as with language, many of the ‘words’ derived from individual items 205


in the landscape were polysemic and were usually context-specific. Depending on context, they told Methanites about the historical past of the peninsula as a whole and their historical identity as Methanites, how their lives differed from those of previous generations, productive differences between one part of the landscape and another, how they and their ancestors were connected with the productive landscape and had made an impact on it, and even the likely future of the landscape.

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7

THE HISTORICAL LANDSCAPE: MEMORY, MONUMENTALITY AND TIME-DEPTH

HF: And when did this happen? Barba Nikos: Didn’t I tell you? 1500, 1600. Now we have 1900? – 1500, 1600, 1700. (From an interview with a nonagenarian, July 1998)

OF TIME AND TIME-DEPTH

Methanites recognised that their landscape is covered with traces of past human activity. Some are archaeological sites, like Methana’s ancient city, named Paleokastro – the Old Castle – for its well-preserved encircling walls and acropolis-like position. Methanites believed that a much smaller ancient acropolis-like site was the seat of a particularly brutal Agha (Turkish landowner). However, the latest archaeological material on this multiperiod site is medieval and thus pre-Turkish (Mee et al. 1997, 146–8). At the other end of the temporal scale, reminders of the past included abandoned kalivia and numerous water-storage structures – cisterns and loutses (open cisterns) – many still in regular use, scattered across the landscape. In addition, there are approximately three dozen churches of varying ages, many at substantial distances from settlements. Several retain vestiges of wall paintings in a primitive style (see fig. 9.2) and some also have ancient tiles of a type unknown over the last two centuries or so (fig. 7.1) (Koukoulis 1997b). Finally, there were the older houses in villages which also acted as monuments to past people and times. Methanites could not date most of these reminders of past human activity: for them, the past was largely an undifferentiated blur, a 207


homogenised block of time, comparable to the homogenisation of the sequence of ancestors prior to grandparents discussed later in this chapter. Reminders of the past, and the narrations of events which occurred in the past, were simply related to ekina ta khronia – literally ‘in those years’, that is, the past. In descriptions of the very deep past, the phrase ekina ta khronia, palea-palea (‘in those years, old-old’) might sometimes be used. At best, Methanites distinguished between paleo (old) and arkheo (ancient). The term # (prin Khristou) (‘before Christ’) was also used for things considered very old, but its real meaning was vague. A Methanitis describing the founding of his village said it occurred: ‘prin Khristou – when there were only five or ten people living there’. He later clarified the statement as meaning 200 or 300 years ago. Another Methanitis described a church he considered to be particularly old as prin Khristou. Thus, the deep past and the recent past, although partially differentiated, were telescoped into each other rather than having the carefully graduated chronologies of years, centuries, and millennia used, for instance, by archaeologists and historians. Methanites’ lack of an evenly graduated chronological timescale for the past affected significantly their view of ‘history’. For example, it allowed them to incorporate a variety of what anthropologists call origin myths into what they considered their own genuine history. Because there were no ‘proper’ timescales, in academic terms, there was no concern about where to place a particular incident in a historical sequence – there was no necessity to place its oldness in relation to other historical accounts on Methana. Thus, potentially awkward questions about when in the past certain events might have occurred could not be raised. These considerations meant that a number of accounts of ekina ta khronia which outsiders might consider fictitious, or at least of dubious historicity, were not considered so by Methanites because they did not recognise that the accounts did not ‘belong’ chronologically. Another factor assisted the incorporation of ‘myths’ into Methanites’ ‘history’: the meaning of the Greek word for ‘history’ – istoria. Meaning primarily ‘a story, a tale’, it does not distinguish ‘real events’ from ‘fiction’. An example of what Western academics would consider myths being what Methanites considered ‘real’ events is the istoria 208

THE HISTORICAL LANDSCAPE

7.1. A medieval church. Above: the west end, showing ornamental tile work in masonry. Below: the east end, with Byzantine tiles still in place on the apse (Source for both: Koukoulis 1997b).

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explaining the two names of the peninsula’s highest peak, called in Albanian Hjonëzë – ‘Bride’ – and in Greek Khelona – ‘Tortoise’. The two names are probably homophonic variants of each other: other examples of the phenomenon exist on Methana. The story involves a queen, who had leprosy, whose royal residence was on the highest peak of the peninsula1 . She was wooed by an Egyptian king, who wanted to make her his bride. He brought her a large golden tortoise as a gift. The two toponyms for the same place, with two different meanings, were thus explained, while incorporating a significant landscape feature into Methanites’ own history. The istoria also emphasised that although other Greeks considered Methana insignificant, at some time in the past, necessarily undefined because the past was not exactly measurable, it was so important that it had its own queen, and the powerful king of Egypt was prepared to visit it. Needless to say, no documentary or archaeological evidence supports this istoria. This story formed the backdrop to another istoria, considered by all Methanites to be absolutely true, about a clandestine excavation by mysterious individuals, described as foreigners, although of variable nationality. They visited the peninsula at some undefined time in the past, going to the peak with superior knowledge about the golden tortoise’s location which Methanites did not possess, without telling anyone their intentions. Aided by this knowledge (variously, a map, a machine, radar), they uncovered the golden tortoise, absconding with it without informing anyone. As a non-Methanitis Greek indicates, no Methanitis knew the strangers’ intentions, nor saw the excavation, and the excavators never divulged their actions to anyone, yet Methanites insisted categorically that they know that the incident really happened (Akritas 1957, 85). ORAL TESTIMONIES AND THE MEMORY OF PAST EVENTS

This chapter discusses how Methanites have viewed past time in the context of how they have perceived their landscape; how the past did and did not have meaning for them, and how features in the landscape have acted as ‘prompts’, reminding them of their store of knowledge about their own pasts in different contexts. The events that occurred 210


on Methana between 1821 and 1830 form the chapter’s background. As noted previously, in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, there had been only a single settlement on Methana, as had been the case for several centuries. Then, in less than ten years, an influx of refugees during the War of Independence resulted in a massive change in settlement pattern, when seven further villages were founded, approximately doubling the peninsula’s population. We know of these momentous events today primarily through the activities and, above all, writings, of western Europeans who visited Methana in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition, the French Scientific Expedition to the Morea recorded Methana’s villages and their populations as part of the Greek state’s first census. Methanites themselves contributed to this historical reconstruction via the records of the mitroo arrenon, the register of male births and the censuses conducted later in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, these records were required by authorities external to the peninsula, and the evidence in them only gives indirect support to the historical picture presented in Chapter 3. Finally, the overall picture painted here is also presented by another non-Greek, the present author. Methanites themselves had no generally accepted history, oral or written, concerning the establishment of the new villages and demonstrated little concern about their pre-Methana origins (see Chapter 3). They acknowledged that, as speakers of an Albanian dialect, Arvanitika, their ultimate origins ought to lie many hundreds of kilometres away in Albania. But they had no idea when Arvanitika speakers appeared on Methana, nor where they had lived previously, nor the circumstances under which their own ancestors arrived (Forbes 2000c). Indeed, the experiences of Methanites serving on the Albanian front during World War II who met Albanians emphasised the differences between the two forms of the language. Their ultimate link with Albania was therefore viewed as tenuous, and mostly ignored. One partial exception to the lack of any memory of pre-Methana origins concerns the peopling of the village of Kaimeni Khora noted in Chapter 3. The oral record lacks corroborating evidence or details of those involved, but that is irrelevant: Methanites’ knowledge is ‘true’, being based on tradition passed through the generations, like 211


the story of the golden tortoise. In this case, however, there is some independent evidence of at least one family grouping containing five or six males deriving from Psara (see Chapter 3). There is no tradition that Kypseli was founded during the second decade after the end of the War of Independence. The evidence is based largely on inferences drawn from various documents, suggesting that the original settlement was composed of three small groups of close kin plus a single family, all from beyond Methana. Methanites had a strong group identity as Methanites. The sudden arrival of the ancestors of many present-day Methanites was obviously a major event, both of itself and in terms of explaining how they ‘belonged’ in their landscape. Anthropologists know that people in many parts of the world maintain quite detailed records of major events such as population movements – some from several centuries previously. Why did Methanites not have such a record? The possible argument that the events which Methanites experienced in the nineteenth century could not be recorded because they were illiterate is untenable because the histories recorded by anthropologists elsewhere are frequently oral histories retained by non-literate societies. The work of Vansina (1965, 1985) and others has demonstrated the value of oral traditions as historical documents, particularly among non-literate peoples around the world. Although exact chronologies are rarely achievable, it is evident that many peoples can record events at least as far back as the 150 years that had elapsed between 1830 and the initial period of fieldwork, and often much further (Vansina 1985, 187–90). The range of topics is also limited, but tales of migrations are consistently represented (Vansina 1985, 119–20). Almost every community worldwide has some form of tradition about its own origin, wherever that is placed in time or space: traditions of origin reflect a people’s or community’s world-view (Vansina 1985, 21–4, 133). KINSHIP AND HISTORY: THE EFFECT OF NAME RECYCLING

Chagnon’s detailed study of kinship among the Ya˛nomamö of the Amazon Basin, documenting lines of ancestors with a time-depth of about 150 years – some six generations – is a good example of the use of 212


oral histories. The memories of ancestors and relatives enabled him to reconstruct the frequent and complex movements of individuals and villages during that time period (Chagnon 1997, 80–3). The Nuer, via their segmentary kinship system, can also frequently trace back ancestors some five or six generations (Evans-Pritchard 1940, 199). Furthermore, there is in both ideology and to some extent in reality a connection between the level of relatedness of different Nuer lineage segments and their geographical distribution (Evans-Pritchard 1940, chap. 5, esp. 247). In general, genealogies are a key means by which non-literate peoples link themselves to their origins and their landscapes, as well as linking individuals to each other (Vansina 1985, 182). Almost all Methanites were illiterate in the nineteenth century, as documented in the 1879 census returns2 : personal oral testimonies indicated that most were illiterate or barely literate up to World War II. Given the importance of oral history among non-literate peoples, the lack of any oral tradition of a major population movement to Methana needs explanation. A recurring feature of oral histories is that key events, especially large-scale public events such as wars and migrations, continue to be remembered, even if uncoupled from linear time (e.g., Vansina 1965, 116; 1985, 24). Other non-literate peoples have oral historical traditions dating well back into the past – many date back some six generations, or at least to the grandfather’s grandfather – about 150 years. So why should a major migration that occurred barely 150 years before my initial fieldwork be unremembered on Methana? Does the lack of a record of arrival on Methana contradict the reconstructed history of its settlement, signifying that most villages were founded long before the War of Independence, their origins having been forgotten because of the lapse of several centuries? Many Methanites assumed that their villages had existed far longer than 150 years, but their ‘proofs’ dependent on the dating of what are evidently old houses normally foundered on logic and human generation spans. For example, on my most recent visit to Methana, a Methanitis whom I had not previously met offered me hospitality in his house while I was walking through his village. I told him that I was interested in Methana’s past. Drawing my attention to the rough, smokeblackened, and evidently old roof timbers, he informed me his house 213


was 400 years old. When asked how he knew, he calculated 100 years each for three generations back to his grandfather, including a century for himself (in his sixties or early seventies), and stated that it was old in his grandfather’s time, so added another 100 years. The issue of lack of credibility in generation spans associated with houses is discussed in Chapter 8. However, the meaning of the Greek word eona (century) has additional meanings besides a time span of exactly 100 years. Within the Greek Orthodox liturgy, it means simply ‘age’, as used by English-speaking Christians in a phrase like ‘from age to age’: in ancient Greek, it regularly meant ‘life-time’. Although my host used the phrase ‘four hundred years’, it would seem that, while I think of a century as an exactly graduated span of 100 years, his concept was considerably more flexible, being essentially a combination of a generation and a lifetime. I discuss Methanites’ concept of time towards the end of this chapter. Another Methanitis, describing the origin of the village of Liakotera, also dated it well before the early nineteenth century. However, while Clark’s version indicates that a man called Apostolis Veliotis from another village married into an already established household as a soghambros in about 1819, Barba Nikos’ version named ‘Veliotis’ as the village’s founder: other families joined him later. He also dated the village’s foundation considerably earlier than Clark’s version does (discussed later in the chapter). These differences between Liakoterans in their accounts do not detract from the main thread of Clark’s description at this point. Both versions clearly date the foundation of the village before the War of Independence, while highlighting the problems of deriving accurate chronologies from oral historical accounts. In view of the discrepancy between the oral and documentary evidence for villages’ foundations and previous observations on the existence of oral histories in other parts of the world, the failure of Methanites to maintain any form of reliable oral record of their own history needs some explanation. That explanation seems to be complex (Forbes 2000c). One element lies in the naming system: because names are ‘recycled’ from grandparent to grandchild, generations prior to grandparents are readily forgotten because they lack distinctive names. By contrast, a number of sections of the Hebrew Scriptures contain 214


long recitations of families over many generations. These lists, originally derived from oral testimonies, could only be memorised because individuals in each generation had different names. Genesis 5 is especially instructive because only first-born sons are recorded, along with the ages of the fathers when these sons were born (most being completely incredible even in the age of Viagra). In this way, the ancient Hebrews could build time-depth into long genealogies. Although Greeks have a word for great-grandfather (propappous), as noted already, Methanites almost never used it, generally having no knowledge of their great-grandparents. In conversations, it was evident that some were unsure how many siblings their grandparents had had, or even how many siblings their parents had had, especially if there were several and some had emigrated at a relatively young age. Methanites’ lack of knowledge of their great-grandparents is especially significant because the soi (lineage) included second cousins. Anthropological kinship theory emphasises that blood relatives are linked via a common ancestor. For second cousins, the common ancestor is a great-grandparent (see Chapter 3), yet Methanites computed a secondcousin relationship by identifying both parties’ parents as first cousins and, occasionally, the grandparents of the parties as siblings. Similarly, third cousins were identified as the children of second cousins, not common descendants of a great-great-grandparent. These observations clearly indicate how completely memory of ancestors ceases more than two generations above that of the speaker. It is therefore not surprising that by the later twentieth century, virtually no one could connect his or her ancestors with the period of the War of Independence, some six generations previously. However, during the 1970s, one elderly man informed me on two separate occasions that Methana’s settlement occurred in the aftermath of the War of Independence, in a deserted landscape. My field notes state: Barba Andreas said that before the 1821 war Methana was deserted: so were [the nearby island of ] Aighina and other places. Only after that period was Methana settled. The people who had previously been on Methana had fled at the coming of the Turks. [Barba Andreas] said that Methana was deserted at one stage and people came from Albania to settle it. Here they found the ancient churches with 215


the flat tiles [actually of Byzantine date – Koukoulis 1997b]. The Albanians didn’t have any tiles themselves so they built their house roofs of mud, on venja [ juniper] poles.

Unfortunately, Barba Andreas was forever telling stories, some derived from the stock heroic stories of the last few centuries of Greek history, others hopelessly garbled melanges, mixing elements from the biblical Old Testament and ancient Greek mythology. I therefore recorded the information but felt unable to believe it. Some elements of the story (e.g., the complete abandonment of Methana and Aighina) were, in light of further research, manifestly incorrect; others, such as settlers coming directly from Albania, seemed highly unlikely (Forbes 2000c). However, on examining the register of male births some twentyfive years later, I identified Barba Andreas’ grandfather registered as a father in 1851 because of the system of recycling names. Barba Andreas and his younger brother were the only two men of their generation with their surname on the peninsula. The man identified as Barba Andreas’ grandfather had the name, Andreas, and was the only father with that surname in the period up to 1878. The oldest sons of both Barba Andreas and his brother had the same name as one of ‘Andreas senior’s’ sons, born in 1867. The story recorded in the 1970s was therefore almost certainly derived from Barba Andreas’ grandfather, who was alive at the time of the War of Independence. Additionally, archaeological research has dated several churches as significantly earlier than the War of Independence (Koukoulis 1997b), further substantiating the story. However, if one man did maintain the memory of the settlement of Methana, why not other elderly informants? The answer seems to lie in what Methanites consider relevant or important elements in their past. Methanites generally linked what academics consider as ‘history’ (in its broadest sense) primarily to individuals, not depersonalised ‘events’. For Methanites, as for many Greeks, history was personalised. Thus, in his history of Methana, Athanasiou (1998) focuses particularly on individuals and families. Similarly, a third of a history of a neighbouring region (Tsimanis 1975) catalogues local nineteenth- and twentiethcentury luminaries and the historical narrative consists primarily of the 216


7.2. Fabvier’s War of Independence fort – the Kastro Phavierou (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

experiences of individuals. Furthermore, when people in the region demonstrated highlights in the book, they usually chose sections on people. For Methanites, many ‘histories’ have been personal or family histories rather than community histories (see Chapter 8 and later in this chapter): the embedding of histories in kinship systems is common in oral history studies (Vansina 1965, 155–7). Because Western academics tend to see history as ‘events’ or ‘trends’, whereas Methanites preferred to see history as stories about individuals (see also Herzfeld 1987, 201), the expectation that local oral history would record ‘population movements’ associated with the War of Independence is almost bound to be erroneous. Significantly, almost the only local feature associated by Methanites with the War of Independence was a fort on the isthmus connecting the peninsula to the mainland (Mee et al. 1997, 164–5). Named Kastro Phavierou (Fabvier’s Castle), it foregrounded the French Philhellene Fabvier who is thought to have built it, not the momentous events with which it is associated (see fig. 7.2). 217


In retrospect, my questions about village origins as ‘events’ were meaningless – and received meaningless answers. Questions about the origins of surname groups produced more meaningful results. Thus, in the extract from the conversation with Barba Nikos later in this chapter, the question ‘When did the first Petronotis [his surname] come to the village?’ generated a meaningful answer in Methanites’ terms. Similarly, when I asked an old man where the Nikolidhes (his surname group) came from, he said they came from Asia Minor but previously their name was not Nikolis. Another informant, whose father was a Methanitis but who grew up away from Methana, was aware of very different origins for her father’s father’s and father’s mother’s agnatic soia, although both were considered to have arrived from elsewhere. Thus, the surname ancestors of my informant’s great-grandfather on her father’s mother’s side were said to have come from northern Greece to escape Ottoman persecution. It was unclear how many generations had elapsed between the original ancestor and her great-grandfather. Significantly, in view of discussion of the relationship between agnatic soia and issues of belonging discussed in Chapter 3, the great-grandfather identified was in the direct agnatic line3 . Meaningful oral histories concerning the peopling of Methana should therefore be sought primarily within a kinship context. The patriline, generally identified via a surname, allowed a direct (uni)lineal connection to a distant past, uncluttered by the complexities of bilateral kindreds. However, the lack of generation depth before grandparents, and Methanites’ conception of time-depth, meant that extensions of patrilines beyond grandparents lacked any foundation in a graduated timescale. The recognition of histories of the origins of Methanites rooted in patrilines focuses attention on another issue. In line with the anthropological literature on oral histories, I initially envisaged the arrival of displaced people on Methana as an undifferentiated ‘population movement’, expecting a shared historical account. That expectation was borne out to some extent by the tradition of the founding of Kaimeni Khora village by Psariote refugees. However, the nineteenthcentury documentary sources indicate those arriving on Methana after 1821 came mostly in small groups of families linked primarily through patrilineally related males. These groups seem to have arrived from various places so lacked any shared history in their origins. The separate, 218


sometimes overlapping or even conflicting oral histories presented do not, therefore, reflect confusion on the part of Methanites but rather varied historical memories embedded in individual patrilines. Thus, an understanding of how Methanites have experienced the history of their landscape and their own roots in it can only be gained through an understanding of the place of kinship in their lives. It emphasises Vansina’s (1985, 182) observation: genealogies can be a key means by which peoples link themselves both to each other and to their origins and their landscapes. ORAL TESTIMONY, ‘OFFICIAL’ HISTORY AND LOCAL HISTORY

Another element in the explanation of the lack of oral testimony may lie in the connection with the War of Independence. At one level the events of the period do not ‘belong’ to Methanites because they have been ‘taken over’ by national ‘History’, controlled by the Greek state itself. In addition, the state has had a long-standing policy of expunging non-Greek elements from official ‘History’. Hence, as with other groups, like the Sarakatsani (Herzfeld 1987, 57–8), there has been little encouragement to record any aspect of the place of Albanian-speaking Methanites in the mainstream of Greek ‘History’. The tensions between ‘local’ histories-cum-stories and ‘official’ History in the context of Greece are explored enlighteningly by Herzfeld (1987, 57–8, 201). These answers alone, however, do not explain why elderly individuals in the 1970s had no idea of their origins. The explanation may also lie in the broader cultural milieu (see Vansina 1965, 170). As for many peoples around the world, history for Methanites performed an exemplary function (Vansina 1965, 106). For Methanites, life in the past was a time of evils, hardships, and ignorance4 : their positive emphasis has been on the future, via the concept of (prodhos) – progress. In 1998, I had a long talk with a Methanitis in his nineties, primarily about the old days. He talked in particular about what life was like when he was young: he stated that times had changed greatly for the better since he was young and that they continued to change for the better. Many of the features of the landscape which acted as historical 219


‘prompts’ were reminders of the hardships of the past. He also commented on the stories old people used to tell, but ‘we’ (most young people of his time) never paid much heed to them. In this aspect, he seems to have differed from Barba Andreas, whose stories appear earlier in this chapter. There is a political dimension to histories. Carsten’s (1995) study of a Malaysian island, settled like Methana by migration from disparate areas in the recent past, indicates the importance of forgetting. Few people knew their fellow villagers’ origins or could recall their own genealogies beyond two or three generations. This ‘genealogical amnesia’ can be explained partly because relationships such as those between second and third cousins were readily explained by reckoning horizontally, in terms of siblingship (Carsten 1995, 319–23) just as on Methana. It can also be linked to the fact that identity and place are closely associated (Carsten 1995, 329), as previously discussed in Chapter 2. Demographic mobility is part of the political history of Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms: forgetting the diverse origins of the villagers thus becomes a way of developing a shared identity of belonging to a particular place (Carsten 1995, 326–9). The close similarities with the Malaysian situation suggest that on Methana, too, a forgetting of diverse origins was instrumental in engendering a shared identity as Methanites. Finally, as another element of forgetting, their belonging on Methana may have been so central to Methanites’ lives that after three or four generations, they could not imagine their families could have lived anywhere else. Lowie’s (1917) study of Great Plains Native American groups is a comparable example. The Nez Percé tribe have a tradition describing the adoption of horse riding – a European introduction. The Assiniboine had no such record. Three generations after its adoption, the horse was so central to them that they could not imagine a horseless past; hence, they assumed its existence since the time of creation (Vansina 1985, 118–19). In Chapter 2, I discussed the very powerful condensation of people and place found in many societies. On Methana, the strong sense of identity with the landscape that people felt may explain their lack of a concept of origins elsewhere. Their keen sense of belonging within and integration with the landscape may have made it hard for them to 220


imagine that their roots in their patridha – homeland – might be relatively shallow. Methanites’ sense of historically deep-rooted belonging has not always made research comfortable. I discussed the origins of the present Methana settlement pattern at a conference on the Greek island of Poros, not far from Methana. The mayor of one Methana village in the audience was not prepared to accept the idea of a post1821 origin, although he could not demonstrate that they were much older. That Barba Andreas apparently uniquely retained his story can only be explained by his special enjoyment of stories about the past and a liking for retelling them in his anecdotage. His brief story about the past just happened to be one from many in his store. In the more general context of Methanites’ notions of ‘history’, he did not connect his story to his own grandfather, the probable source, but the story incorporates a number of standard topoi of Methanites’ stories, including the fear of Turkish attacks and the ignorance of people in the past, who did not have tiles for their houses. $ – ‘they didn’t know any better in those days’ – was a regular refrain in Methanites’ descriptions about ekina ta khronia. Another story also concerned a familiar topos: a raid on a village, placed chronologically by an elderly informant in the time of her grandmother. Robbers came to the settlement of Panaghitsa high up in the centre of Methana and tried to make people tell them where their money was hidden. When the people refused, they tortured them by heating the olive oil that was stored there and pouring it on them. This story, if taken at face value, could only be a myth. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century settlement of Panaghitsa consisted of three houses set on a broad natural shelf, about 60 metres higher than the church of the same name. There is no evidence for the existence of a village at the site of the settlement in the earlier nineteenth century: the 1879 census indicates only two families, and there is no evidence of ruined houses adjacent to the present ones. However, in the late medieval and earlier Turkish periods, a village had existed, close to the Panaghitsa church (see Chapter 3). The site, known as Paleokatundi – ‘Old Village’ – was probably abandoned by 1700 (Forbes 1997, 105–6). It is thus possible that elements of the story were true but the story had lost its chronological time-depth through 221


the homogenisation of generations prior to grandparents. Presumably, each teller of the story in succeeding generations placed it in his or her grandparents’ time. Anachronism in oral traditions is a recurrent phenomenon cross-culturally: ‘descending anachronisms’, in which events or situations are made younger, have been well documented (Vansina 1985, 176–8). Just as chronologies can be adjusted in oral tradition, so can geography because oral testimonies are constantly ‘rewritten’, or recast through the generations, to make sense to teller and listener in changed times (Vansina 1965, 1985). Thus the main physical ‘prompt’, the Panaghitsa church, remained associated with the story, but the location of the village site was transposed in this version. THE MEANINGFUL PAST

Methanites’ prevailing view of the past was not a record of events but of a period of evils: insecurity, fear of raids, economic and physical hardships, and ignorance. The greatest historical meaning, therefore, came from descriptions of the way of life in past times and by implication, how much better people’s lives had become. These descriptions had been passed down to the younger generation by older generations, particularly parents and grandparents: many took the form of small remembered incidents which epitomised aspects of the old way of life, which meant that history was very much a personalised, family, affair. An elderly man told a story about the problems encountered in the old houses with flat mud roofs described in Chapter 3. In those days, two-storey houses with upper floors made in the same way as mud roofs, rather than having wooden floorboards were quite common. As described in Chapter 3, the mud on the roofs would crack during the summer, so that when the autumn rains came, water would pour through the cracks. Even after the cracks had been closed by a combination of the mud’s rehydration and by rolling with a heavy stone roller, some house roofs still had persistent leaks. Before this man’s family house was re-roofed with tiles and re-floored with boards, his ancestor had simply allowed the roof to leak rather than closing the 222


persistent crack, making a hole in the mud floor to let rainwater drain into the downstairs storeroom. Several recurrent features of the way in which memory is activated stand out in this story. The story itself, while amusing, reminded people of former hardships and also that the ‘traditional’ houses of the later twenthieth century, which most people took for granted, had not always been in this form. The story also connected the man with his own antecedents as owners. The house in the story provided the kinship and technological contexts in which the story was set – it was also the ‘prompt’ which precipitated the memory. Houses were simultaneously both utilitarian shelters and monuments playing a vital cognitive role in reminding Methanites about aspects of their past which had particular meaning to them. Their function as polysemic historical texts will be further explored later in this chapter. Their pivotal role in kinship systems as monuments to past kin are explored in Chapter 8. Of note here is that virtually all structures in the landscape were monuments to the past which Methanites invested with historical meanings: houses were just one category of structure, albeit a category particularly heavily laden with multiple meanings. In 1998, my attempts to investigate how Methanites viewed their history and to get them to identify when and from where Methanites generally (rather than specific family lines) came to Methana always drew a blank. Because the question had no proper meaning for them, they often answered by talking about the insecurity of the past, often with stories involving raiders: Turks or Ljapidhes, the latter term explained as ‘Turko-Albanians’. The veracity of these attacks is a matter of some doubt, because Dodwell, visiting Methana less than twenty years before the War of Independence, noted that the inhabitants of the village on the mainland closest to Methana ‘said . . . that they were never troubled by the Turks’ (Dodwell 1819, 284). Large amounts of produce stored in houses were proof of this statement: ‘an appearance of plenty which I have seldom observed in the villages of Greece’ (Dodwell 1819, 284). Methanites’ views of the past thus reflected a deep cultural paranoia about the hostile intentions of outsiders in previous centuries. Elderly Methanites, especially, described a range of features in the 223


landscape as being reminders of former concerns over attack from outside. Their fears, bolstered by the material reminders in the landscape, were actively maintained into the twentieth century, as indicated by their abandonment of their villages at the approach of German ships during World War II. Features in the landscape told of other aspects of the past. My attention was repeatedly drawn to installations, buildings and the like, as indicating previous technologies, past farming methods, and, especially, the hardships of the past. In pointing out these structures and describing their uses, construction methods or associated technologies, Methanites frequently connected them to stories or vignettes about people in the past, relating them to very different aspects of life from the present, or else describing particular idiosyncrasies of relatives or ancestors. They frequently ended with the question: , ; (roughly, ‘How could they possibly have lived like that’?) or else ! ! !; (‘What sort of a life was that’?). The structures involved and the ways in which they triggered memories of the past are the subject of the next section. STRUCTURES IN THE LANDSCAPE: MEMORIALS OF PAST TIME

Settlements and their Locations as Historical Monuments Barba Nikos, whose story about the foundation of Clark’s (1988) pseudonymous village of Liakotera was mentioned earlier, told the following story about why his village was located in its particular position. Barba Nikos: Because of the hill rising up between the village and the sea, the people in behind weren’t visible, so robbers would not go there. This is why people went there and put houses there. [He had previously explained that no light from the village could be seen at night from the sea. Because robbers slept during the day and came out at night to steal, they looked for lights.] Who knows what date it was? 1500 it was, or a bit later. Now we have 1900? HF: Yes. Barba Nikos: It must have been 1500 or a bit later. 224


HF: How did the first Petronotis [his surname] come to the village? Barba Nikos: Over there [i.e., at a distance from Barba Nikos’ own house in the village], the first was Veliotis [a surname]. Then [another surname], then [yet another surname], then Petronotis. Four or five people: they filled up the village. HF: Were the Petronotidhes the last to arrive? Barba Nikos: Who knows? Second? Third? HF: And when did this happen? Barba Nikos: Didn’t I tell you? 1500, 1600. Now we have 1900? – 1500, 1600, 1700. HF: Didn’t your grandfather tell you anything about this? Barba Nikos: I was seven when my grandfather died.

Barba Nikos’ story of the choice of village location emphasises the themes of insecurity and fear of robbery while indicating that the positions of villages in the landscape are themselves monuments to the past. Their exact locations are explained by fears of seaborne robbers. Barba Nikos’ village was invisible from the sea. Other villages, although not screened from the sea, were clearly positioned at the junctions of the gentler slopes running down to the sea with the steep slopes leading to the rugged interior, the distance from the sea allowing time for flight to safety should potentially hostile ships be seen. One village had a rocky knoll on its seaward edge named Viglizë – the lookout post. Villages’ positions thus became active monuments to Methanites’ past as they saw it. For example, in Chapter 9, I discuss the choice of Saint Anthony as one village’s patron saint because of fears of rockfalls onto the village from overhanging crags. The reason for choosing such a clearly unattractive settlement site was understandable to the inhabitants because of the safety from attack it afforded. Problems associated with living at particular locations acted as regular ‘prompts’ to Methanites about their past history. Abandoned sites, too, acted as markers to Methanites’ past. The bestknown example of an abandoned settlement for Methanites is Sterna Ghambresë. Set high in the interior of the peninsula, it had nearly a dozen houses in varying states of disintegration. Although two or three were substantial two-storey structures, most were small huts. Sterna Ghambresë is never mentioned in earlier nineteenth-century descriptions of Methana. In the official published returns of the 1879 census, it 225


is included with Makrilongos: unfortunately, the original unpublished census sheets for both settlements could not be found. Apparently always a seasonal settlement, it ceased to function even in this capacity in the earlier twentieth century. Nevertheless, all Methanites knew of its existence. Its very remoteness and abandoned state meant that few Methanites had visited it, although it was situated close to a functioning church (Koukoulis 1997b, 244–5). It was one of the geographical locations with meaning which Methanites would regularly list when asking if I had been ‘everywhere’ on Methana. This remote seasonal settlement represented a monument to a past way of life, when whole families would leave their houses in their villages to spend several days with all their livestock working in the interior. Hence, although a settlement, it was similar to the isolated field-houses (kalivia) which are discussed later in this chapter. The only other small settlement high in the interior of the peninsula, Panaghitsa, already mentioned earlier, consisted of three houses in the twentieth century. The site has been associated with goat-herding for decades. Whether it can precisely be labelled a seasonal settlement is debatable. Apparently, at least one of the households which stayed there had a house elsewhere on Methana, but details are sketchy. The 1879 census records two families with the same surname, but no records of this site exist for the earlier nineteenth century. At least one house was still in use there during my last visit. This settlement also had considerable meaning for Methanites because of its association with the important extra-mural church of Panaghitsa. Like Sterna Ghambresë, its remoteness also gave it a slightly mystical quality. These features help explain the geographical relocation to the modern site of the oral testimony concerning the raid on Panaghitsa described earlier. In addition, the very fact of its acting as a focus for the istoria placed this insignificant house-cluster, apparently founded in the later nineteenth century, firmly into the deep past of Methana’s history, thus giving it a level of ‘belonging’, of embeddedness in the landscape, comparable to other settlements. Other small abandoned clusters of a few houses existed on Methana, especially in the interior. They were somewhat sub-rectangular in plan, lacking dressed quoins, with walls of unmodified stones without any visible bedding. Their masonry style thus clearly differed from that 226


of houses built in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, as described in Chapter 3. They were also generally in a much more advanced state of decay than most abandoned nineteenth-century structures. No research has been conducted on the vernacular architectural styles of Methana houses, so it is impossible to assign reliable dates to different masonry styles. However, it is probable that most of these abandoned small house-clusters date to the medieval or Turkish periods. Unlike the situation with abandoned later nineteenth- and earlier twentieth-century field-houses, Methanites could not say who had owned these houses. One informant associated them with Ljapidhes (predatory Turko-Albanians) who, he believed, inhabited Methana before the ancestors of present-day Methanites arrived but could not say when or how the change-over from the Ljapidhes to his own ancestors had occurred. Once more, however, the explanation indicates the way in which Methanites viewed the past as being full of robbers and fundamentally lacking in security.

Houses as Monuments Houses represent the example par excellence of structures as polysemic historical texts. For this reason, I discuss some aspects of houses as historical monuments in more detail in Chapter 8. Like settlement locations, and unlike some of the abandoned structures still visible in the landscape, to be discussed later, they represented still-functional utilitarian artefacts to which historical meaning has also been attached. That historical meaning is immediately clear in Barba Nikos’ story. His comment: ‘over there, the first was Veliotis’ referred to a house-site some distance from his own, still inhabited by the Veliotis family. Their house represented in a very material way the historical roots of this family. Houses in the past were basic shelters in which people lived. Increasingly in the last decades of the twentieth century, they have come to represent the powers of Methanites as consumers (see Clark 1988, chap. 4 and 5), undergoing modification and extension as Methanites have become integrated into the cash economy. In their utilisation of mostly purchased construction materials imported from elsewhere, they emphasise the significance of Barba Andreas’ statement in his 227


story: the peninsula’s original settlers used entirely local materials, which could be provided by any house-holder. When I was first conducting fieldwork on Methana, several oldfashioned flat-mud-roofed houses remained in use. They were narrower than the grander houses built in the later nineteenth century because the heavy mud roofs were supported only on the relatively short timbers that were locally available – mostly either juniper or fig tree trunks. In either case, they were generally no more than 3 metres wide. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, houses were increasingly constructed using pine timber and ceramic tiles, bought in Piraeus and shipped to Methana, to make a pitched tiled roof. The use of longer imported timber enabled Methanites to build wider structures. Their masonry was also often of significantly higher quality than that of the older houses: the stones used for the arched doorways and windows, especially, were often very carefully dressed. In addition, the more imposing houses built before World War I often bore a construction date and the initials of the head of the household of the time, emphasising that, even a century or so ago, houses were material symbols displaying the identity and relative wealth of the owners. They would have contrasted markedly with the lowlier structures of the earlier nineteenth century. These earlier houses were important in ‘placing’ individuals and family lines, as indicated by Barba Nikos’ story about his village’s first inhabitant: the house referred to was a mudroofed structure at the time of the first fieldwork. Through the addition of a date and initials, however, the rebuilt or newly built houses became more clearly memorials – monuments, not unlike gravestones – to the owners who had them built. On Methana, however, the use of lasting memorials of stone for graves is a post–World War II introduction. Before then, grave markers were of wood, which soon disintegrated and were not renewed. Thus, in the past, houses bearing dates and initials became the lasting memorials to their builders. This aspect is further explored in Chapter 8. The use of dates carved on structures started in the earlier nineteenth century but, prior to the 1860s, it was almost entirely restricted to churches. The church in the centre of the village of Kounoupitsa is the earliest example – 1824 – (see Chapter 3 and fig. 3.6), but other Methana churches bear dates: 1848, 1859 and 1873 (Koukoulis 228


1997b). That the tradition of inscribing dates on structures starts with churches – the most symbolically significant of all the types of structure for Methanites – simply re-emphasises the overt monumentality of dates and initials. Another of Barba Nikos’ stories, located chronologically in the time when he was young, involved the demolition of his father-in-law’s very old flat-roofed house and its rebuilding to a more modern design with a pitched tiled roof, and a width distinctly greater than that of the narrow mud-roofed houses. While helping in the old house’s demolition, his father-in-law asked him to do a particularly dirty part of the work. He refused, saying it was not his own house: the owner should do the job. His father-in-law therefore did that part of the work himself, and in so doing discovered a cache of money in the house wall, hidden by the grandfather without anyone else knowing, for fear of robbers coming to steal it. Had Barba Nikos done the work, he would have had the money instead. Throughout, Barba Nikos talked as though the house he helped to demolish was the same as the one that is there now. Included in Barba Nikos’ story are two standard topoi. One is the discovery – always by someone other than the speaker – of hidden treasure. Aspects of this topos appear in the story of the foreigners who discovered the golden tortoise at Khelona/Khjonëzë and are discussed further in Chapter 9. The other element is the leitmotif of the fear of robbers from outside the peninsula. A further element, particularly relevant here, is the acceptance that old houses were rebuilt to different designs. Simultaneously, however, they were conceptualised as being the same house that previously stood on the site. Exactly the same conceptualisation can be seen in Clark’s (1988, 180–9, 221–3) description of the house histories of the Veliotis family and the Petronotis families. Many houses have been repeatedly demolished, rebuilt, enlarged, and upgraded over the years, but they were considered unchanged in family histories. Houses, or more precisely, house sites, thus became the changing constants which located family lines within villages. As is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, Methanites could most directly link themselves to the landscape of the past on the peninsula by connecting themselves with particular houses and their antecedent kin who inhabited ‘the same’ house. Houses became the equivalent of the metaphorical ‘my grandfather’s axe’ – an implement which has had 229


both head and handle replaced several times but is still considered the original that grandfather used years ago. Such thinking about houses should not be thought merely quaint and impractical: the importance of the house – a very basic structure in the past – was its site, positioned in relation to the other surrounding sites inhabited by other families, which ‘placed’ a household and its history. Constructional elements of older houses also acted as ‘prompts’, reminding people of the old days. Most traditional houses had one or more windows in the long wall opposite the door, which were large enough for a person to get through easily. If robbers were trying to break down the door, household members could jump out of the window on the other side of the house. Similarly, the board floors of traditional houses normally had trap doors in them, allowing direct access via a ladder to the storage area below. These, too, were said to be potential escape routes in case of attack by robbers. Although most Methanites’ comments about escape routes built into house layouts referred to robbers in a distant and undated past, Barba Nikos told a story in which the window escape route was used during the mid-twentieth century. In this story, communist partisans came to the village, led by a Methanitis with a grudge against a close kinsman because of an inheritance dispute. The armed gang went to the house to get the man and his money, but he fled out of the window while they were at the locked door. Stories such as this, whether true, halftrue, or outright fiction, maintained the topos of the threat to security from robbers, by updating them not only to the following century but to a time of well-documented hardships – the period of the German occupation and the succeeding Andartopolemos (Greek Civil War). In addition, it brought in another recurrent thread in Methanites’ local tales and their own family histories: siblings in serious conflict over disputed inheritances. A monument to another example is discussed later. In the 1970s, houses generally contained little furniture: a table and rush-seated chairs, beds for all family members, and one or more large chests filled with bedding, clothes, and other textiles, on which were piled more textiles, covered with a cloth, were the norm. Other items of furniture such as a very low table, and low stools for sitting round it, were less obvious but were normally owned as well. In a few very 230


poor households, the stools and low table were the only seats and table. Most households also owned a huge pine granary chest, usually containing a number of partitions, which had generally been in households’ ownership for many years. Most were kept in ground floor storerooms but were occasionally kept in the living accommodation, if storage space was at a premium. Most were far larger than required by the dietary needs of household members. Of course, as noted elsewhere, households did not simply own enough grain storage capacity for their own annual grain consumption but for the largest expectable harvest, which by definition very rarely occurred (Forbes 1982, 379). Nevertheless, Methanites frequently commented on the fact that their granary bins were now far larger than the grain-growing activities of their households required for storing all their grain. These observations led in turn to observations about the much larger sizes of households in the past. They would say that their pappoudhes (ancestors) in the old days – meaning apparently the days before the interwar years – did not know anything about limiting family sizes: they just let the babies come. In those days, too, people did not have beds but slept on goat-hair mats laid on the floor at night. They repeatedly described all the members of a large family sleeping in one room of a narrow, low-roofed house with their feet toward the fire, being like piglets all lying round a sow. Traditionally constructed houses had a permanent problem with mice and, to some extent, rats: even in the 1970s, virtually all households kept their bread suspended from the roof-timbers above their heads in their houses out of reach of vermin. When everyone slept on sleeping mats rather than beds, it was said, mice and rats were a particular problem for sleepers. Older Methanites repeatedly stated that they would bite people as they slept on the floor, especially their ear lobes! Another very clear element of monumentalisation and memorialisation associated with the contents of houses was the collection of photographs of deceased parents and grandparents, which usually hung in the room of the house used for entertaining. These photographs linked people both with their own ancestors and with the past of their own houses because the people photographed had in most cases lived in the houses that the remembering generation called home. I 231


encountered a particularly good example of how the contents of a house became a memorial of deceased ancestors when I returned to Methana in 1998. A village house had been boarded up and empty in the 1980s because the elderly inhabitants had died and there was no child resident in the village who wished to inhabit it. The son of the elderly couple, a scientist who had worked abroad for many years, took it over when he retired, though he also had another home elsewhere. He thus re-established his roots in the village, making the house something of a shrine to his parents, not only hanging up several photographs of them and of some of the previous generation but also filling parts of the home with items of old farm equipment to remind himself of the kind of life that his parents and grandparents had lived. These examples indicate how houses connected Methanites with their pasts. However, the expectation was that they should also connect people with the future. By ensuring that their own descendents lived in their houses, Methanites could be sure that they, too, would be memorialised and that their houses would monumentalise them in their turn. I was made very conscious of this fact when, in 1998, I visited an acquaintance who was at least in his eighties by that time. I commented very positively on the transformation of his house, but his answer was very downbeat. He said yes, the house was all very fine, but what was the purpose of all the improvements? His wife had died, and he was now entirely on his own because his children were all living elsewhere. There was no one in the succeeding generation who wanted to come to live in it. It was clear from his comments that he was concerned that there would be no one to succeed him in the house and memorialise him in his turn in the house history. In the villages of Methana, inhabited and uninhabited houses were interspersed. Many uninhabited houses were used for housing livestock and storing hay and straw, but some were in an advanced state of decay. Although some uninhabited houses resulted from families moving away, others stood empty, or were used as stores, because the heirs could not agree on their ownership. The stock phrase for particularly problematic inheritance disputes – (forty heirs) – neatly encapsulated a long-running dispute in which the present claimants were the descendants of the original heirs. No 232


one could lay legal claim to property until all claimants accepted a settlement. Agreement over a house’s ownership was harder to achieve if some or all disputants had little real need for it anyway. In such a situation, there was little incentive to settle. In serious disputes between siblings, refusing to settle was a way of spiting another sibling who genuinely wished to gain use of the property. Such wrangling between siblings or cousins was viewed by Methanites as bad behaviour, but as Clark (1988, 382) states of her study community: Of all the activity spheres, inheritance had the potential for some of the greatest gains and losses and the hardest feelings about them. Although the battling siblings resided in separate households, it is important to bear in mind that they were very close kinsmen [sic] who had spent many years in coresidence as they grew up together in their parents’ house.

Clark’s example illustrating her statement was something of a cause célèbre in Liakotera, partly because the behaviour of one sibling to another was considered so appalling. Briefly, however, the story concerns a woman who was promised half of everything that her father owned, including half his house, when she married. Her father continued to live in his own house, along with the woman’s married brother and his family for the rest of his life. But when the father died, she refused to sell her share in the house to her brother, selling it instead to a xenos: a man who was not a relative. Her action was both a breach of the accepted view that family property should be kept within the family if at all possible and a gross insult to her brother. I revisit the issue of keeping family property within the family in Chapter 8 when I discuss a dispute between two brothers over a large area of vines. In that chapter, I also revisit the issue of the way in which the agnatic soi is primarily related to self-identity via connections back in time across generations. For a man, the parental home monumentalises these connections with earlier generations which characterise belonging. Handing on the parental home to one of one’s own children ensures the continuity of this monument to one’s agnatic soi. By her actions, the woman not only effectively made her own brother homeless but also cut him off from his own ‘roots’ of belonging by depriving him of the 233


opportunity to continue the family line in its own house. Even worse, she cut him off from the opportunity to be memorialised in his turn as part of a line of ancestors linked to a house-history. A widow and her family who lived in a small single-storey leanto building attached to the end of a large house provided another example of the problems that could occur when siblings failed to agree over an inheritance. The house, which had stood empty for years, had belonged to her deceased husband’s family. His siblings had no particular interest in the building because they had left the village, but their failure to agree left the only sibling remaining in the village homeless. This family’s only recourse was to build a small dwelling against the end wall of the house: it was little more than a glorified shed when I first saw it. The lean-to had been improved and extended when I revisited in 1998, but the large house against which it was built remained uninhabited. The last example of an inheritance dispute involving a house relates to a building now mostly a tumbled mass of stones. The story is for Methanites an object lesson in bad behaviour and its consequences. The house belonged to a couple who did not transfer any of their estate, apart from that given as dowry, to their children. They had also refused to make proper provision for the disposal of their estate while they were living. Instead, they had continued to keep full control of their property right up until their deaths. When the siblings came to divide up their parents’ estate after they died, there was so much distrust between the brothers that they ended up pulling knives on each other. Because there was no agreement as to who should own the house, it was abandoned and allowed to fall down. Unlike the first two examples, in which those directly involved were still living when the events were originally described, this last incident occurred many decades ago – possibly before World War I, although informants were vague about the date. That the story remained evergreen can be explained in part because oral histories worldwide frequently serve an exemplary function (Vansina 1965, 106). This story served as a warning about what can happen if a household is not in kali sira – ‘good order’ – with members who are mazemeni – ‘cohesive’ (see, e.g., Clark 1988, 155, 158–9). The parents’ behaviour was, for Methanites, completely inappropriate and the root cause of the 234


incident between the siblings. By keeping all their property under their own control, the parents were acting very selfishly, denying their children access to resources needed to provide a decent future for their children in their turn. The irony was that they became memorialised via their house for the worst of possible reasons. During my first spell of fieldwork, Barba Panos, an octogenarian, summarised how elderly people should dispose of their estates. He criticised people who kept all their property to themselves, being unprepared to give much of it as dowries. Hence, they could only marry their daughters to husbands who had little property of their own. The following is drawn almost verbatim from my field notes. If a person lives to be eighty or ninety5 , his children’s children will have been married and if he does not hand over his property to his children, how will they marry off their children? He gave away what he owned some time ago. He said – ‘the old should take charge’ [i.e., they should sort out the disposition of their property before they die]. Similarly he criticised people who refused to part with any land to their sons. His son-in-law is a soghambros [he married Barba Panos’ daughter and was living with him]. His parents are still alive – his father is ninety-six – but they have kept full control of all their land instead of giving it to their sons when they married and had need of it. None of the children lives with the parents, who now complain that none of their children come to see them, while they rent out their land to people who are not their children [i.e., xeni: non-relatives; discussed later].

The incident of the drawing of knives on each other by brothers, which followed from the selfish maintenance of control over their property by the parents, became for the village’s inhabitants a cautionary tale of what happens when family members are not mazemeni and a positive reinforcement to maintain household relationships in good order. For Methanites, a good family shared the qualities of respect, understanding, agreement, good behaviour, tranquillity and generosity (Clark 1988, 155). In a bad family, there was continual arguing, bad feelings, holding of grudges, lying, quarrelling, shouting, physical violence, misunderstanding and a lack of mutual agreement which was thought to run through the generations (Clark 1988, 155, 375). All the bad qualities just enumerated are epitomised in the story. Its exemplary nature helps explain why it remained evergreen after the 235


passage of many decades, but what gave it reality, material expression to the fact that the story ‘belonged’ to the community, was the stillvisible remains of the house where it occurred. The ruins thus became simultaneously a monument to the potential dissolution of households which are not in kali sira and a continuous ‘prompt’ reminding people of the story.

Field-Houses In the fields high above villages, and also, more rarely close to the coast, there were small, normally single-storey, houses, built in the same masonry style as village houses. These kalivia (field-houses) had been unused for decades: many were in an advanced state of disrepair, largely roofless, and sometimes with collapsed walls. Inside many of those in the interior of the peninsula could be found the remains of a grape-treading floor, often occupying nearly half of the overall floor area. These treading floors were very similar in most respects to openair grape-treading floors found close to vineyard areas (described later) but used the side and back walls of the field-house for their sides, with a low wall about 60 cm high at their front, dividing the treading area from the rest of the living area. Outside, some kalivia retained the remains of a rough dry-stone enclosure for the household’s sheep and goats. Kalivia, already mentioned in Chapters 3 and 6, stood as testimony to a very different way of life in the past. By the 1970s, Methanites in their forties or younger would note all the different features associated with a particular kalivi, marvelling at the way in which their parents and grandparents had lived in the past, and comparing it with their much easier lives. Field-houses also acted as ‘prompts’ to Methanites to remind them of the different farming methods practised in the old days – when people ‘did not know any better’, as they usually explained the differences. For example, in the early 1970s when I was examining a small cluster of roofless kalivia, two sisters in their early teens appeared with their family’s sheep and goats. They explained that one of the abandoned structures belonged to their family and proceeded to show me the significant features that were still visible. Of particular interest to them were the remains of a partitioned end 236


of the kalivi, where the pair of ploughing cattle had been stalled. They carefully explained that, ekina ta khronia, people ploughed with cattle, not mules, marvelling that their ancestors shared the insides of their houses with their animals – something almost inconceivable to later twentieth-century Methanites. For these two girls, demonstrating the significant elements of their ancestors’ house, as for younger adults pointing out the different features of other field-houses, there was a distinct element of spontaneous recitation, prompted simply by the ethnographer’s presence, not by any question or statement. It directly paralleled the tendency to spontaneous recitation by plot owners of the ownership of adjacent plots by relatives described in Chapter 8. The element of recitation seemed to reflect the tradition of passing down relevant information from generation to generation at the same time as it highlighted the significance of the features for Methanites. The use of cattle was but one example of the differences between recent times and ekina ta khronia. Another was the treading of grapes on treading floors high on the mountain near the vineyards, rather than bringing the grapes to their houses and pressing them there, as was standard practice in the post–World War II era. I discuss this latter aspect later in the chapter. A few Methanites owned land on the Plain of Trizin. Of these, a proportion owned kalivia there, said to have been built by teams of itinerant masons, possibly early in the twentieth century, though inevitably memories of when they were built were vague. Before a vehicular road connected Methana with the Plain of Trizin, it would take up to six hours for Methanites to walk to their holdings there with their mules laden with all the things needed to work the land. Because of the distances involved, therefore, most people spent one or more nights on their holdings. Whether cultivating cereals or vines, there were periods of the year when several members needed a stay of more than a day. These houses and their associated plots again became ‘prompts’ to older Methanites of the hardships of their younger days. One of the hardships of working on the Plain was the presence of endemic malaria until its eradication in the disease-control programmes of the post–World War II era. It was only a problem during the summer months, but because many households grew cereals there, 237


they were in danger of contracting the disease during a stay of several days on the Plain for the harvest. One woman described contracting the disease there and losing her unborn child as a result. Another woman took her infant son to the Plain with her: he caught malaria and died. The woman had the disease for two years but survived. An old man described his daughter falling unconscious while harvesting. By the 1970s, some people had sold off their holdings on Methana and made their holdings on the Plain the nucleus of a new farming life there. Most other Methanites went there by bus, returning at the end of the day. Very few people stayed overnight: those who did were considered very old-fashioned. By the 1990s, many households had pick-up trucks and small mechanised cultivators, which could be transported to their vines on the Plain in their trucks, or else they paid someone to plough their land with a tractor. The differences between the ease of cultivating under modern conditions and the hardships of cultivating in former times could not have been starker.

Fields and Terraces Personal stories such as these indicate the way landholdings themselves could become foci for istories. I discuss some of the other meanings of households’ landholdings in Chapter 6 and especially in Chapter 8. Because life itself has been supported by agricultural land, it is not surprising that the land should have become a complex polysemic text. However, as is also noted in Chapter 8, ‘meaningful’ land was land owned by one’s own household: the rest of the productive landscape had far less meaning. It is therefore unsurprising that istories associated with land tended to relate to personal experience, as in the cases of the Plain of Trizin reminiscences. Most reminiscences associated with plots of land related to their inheritance histories (i.e., ‘history’ in the academic sense). For example, when Barba Nikos talked about ekina ta khronia, his fund of stories included the istoria of a long broad agricultural terrace a few hundred metres from the coast at Loutra. Barba Nikos, now a nonagenarian, widowed and wheelchair-bound, would stay for part of the year with his daughter who had a house on part of the terrace which was given to her as dowry by Barba Nikos. The land came to Barba Nikos from 238


his mother, to whom it was given as dowry. She was from Dhritseika which, along with the village of Vromolimni, overlooks this coastal area. He could thus trace the ownership history of this plot over four generations, from that of his mother’s parents to his own daughter. Significantly, in terms of what has been noted previously, he did not trace the history back prior to his grandparents. Barba Nikos had other personal reminiscences about the past of the terrace: for example, that he had ploughed the plot when he was young, using a plough team of a cow6 and a donkey. In more general stories about terraces, Methanites tended to highlight the hardships of the past. One old woman commented that in the old days before the introduction of chemical fertilizer, cereals did not produce as well as they did more recently, so it was necessary to sow larger areas of cereals to give families enough to eat. With so much more cereals to harvest in those days, people needed more time for reaping it than the available hours of daylight: pointing to a nearby terrace wall, she said people would insert stout sticks between the stones of terrace walls and hang lanterns on them so they were able to continue harvesting well into the night.

Wells, Cisterns and Loutses In a landscape with only one permanently flowing spring, it was inevitable that other water sources took on great significance. Piped water was first brought to the spa town of Loutra from the neighbouring Plain of Trizin in the 1960s (Athanasiou 1998, 123). By 1970, some villages also had piped water, but water charges were very high, so even Methanites with piped water continued using traditional sources of water as well. Before the introduction of piped water, drinking water was provided either by storing it or by sinking wells. Fresh water was needed above all for drinking by humans, but water was also consumed for other purposes, for example, to wash clothes and in certain aspects of textile processing. But in the past, livestock consumed perhaps the greatest amounts. Draught animals were essential for farming – cattle in the nineteenth century and mules and donkeys in the twentieth century. In addition, all households had sheep and goats in the past: those with large numbers of daughters tended to 239


have substantial flocks of goats because looking after the animals was primarily women’s work, and selling a large part of the flock was a recognised method of raising a reasonable cash dowry. For much of the year the animals were grazed high in the interior, where there were areas of scrub-covered mountainside, as well as adjacent cultivation terraces, some of which were likely to have been under fallow and therefore available for grazing (see Chapter 5; and Forbes 1998, 20, 22). Sometimes groups of children each in charge of their families’ own sheep and goats would gather together to play, disobeying their parents’ instructions to keep a careful watch on their flock and leaving the animals to graze untended (discussed later). Lactating livestock have substantially elevated requirements for water: without adequate supplies, lactation will cease (see Koster 1977, 228–9, 322–3). Because the primary aim of keeping sheep and goats was to produce milk for dairy products – primarily cheese – water was a critical resource. The difficulty for owners of large numbers of sheep and goats was that wells for watering livestock were all close to the coast, whereas the main grazing areas were above villages. Driving animals in one direction for water, then in the opposite direction for grazing, was a laborious business, so any supply of water in the elevated parts of the peninsula was highly prized. Therefore, the few seepage springs in the interior, which only produced a small trickle for a few days after rain, were well known and regularly frequented when running. Methanites commented on how, in the old days, they would drive their animals to these springs to avoid travelling to coastal wells or using precious stored water supplies. Such reminiscences again brought back memories of the hardships of the old days. The only other water available in this part of the peninsula was what had been stored in cisterns and loutses (discussed later in this chapter) by trapping the run-off from winter rainfalls. Accessible groundwater only existed close to the coast but, over the years, a substantial number of wells had been sunk in the coastal zone. Many, especially deep ones associated with irrigated fields, were said to have been dug during the twentieth century with the aid of high explosives. Although the water in these wells was suitable for watering livestock and washing clothes, it was unpleasant to drink, being quite brackish (see Chapter 6). 240


Despite the unpleasantness of the well water, people drank it, though not by choice. In drought years, when sources of stored water failed, people of necessity had to make a fifteen- to thirty-minute trip to the coast with all their animals at least twice a day to water them and collect brackish well water to drink. Poor households, too, often had insufficient cistern capacity for their drinking water supplies to last them right through the summer, even in normal years. Because of the restricted supplies of stored water, any activity requiring water, such as washing wool prior to carding and spinning or even washing clothes, necessitated a journey down steep rocky paths to the coast leading a mule loaded with the items to be washed, plus the large kazani (copper or brass cauldron) and possibly fuel for heating the water. Over the years, a large number of wells had been provided with stone troughs close to them in which clothes and other items could be washed. Other, generally rougher, troughs were made for watering livestock. The volcanic stone of Methana is easily worked in comparison with the intractable limestones of so much of Greece. Nevertheless, each stone trough represented a considerable investment of time and labour. For small amounts of irrigated produce for domestic use, shallow wells near the coast needed only a bucket on a rope, but for more labour-saving watering and larger irrigated areas, a holding tank was needed to generate a sufficient head of water so that the water reached the furthest extent of the plot. Holding tanks were built of local stone but needed a lime mortar bonding. They were lined with hydraulic cement (kourasani) made by the laborious process of crushing old tiles, bricks and other ceramic material, then mixing it with lime putty to make a waterproof coating. A simple pivoted lever device acting as a crane ( gheranaki – a swipe, shadouf ) also improved efficiency in lifting water from the well. Made of locally available wood, it was fitted with a stone counter-balancing weight at the rear of the arm (fig. 7.3). Thus, although the operator had to pull the arm with the empty bucket down into the well, the weight of the full bucket being raised from the well was significantly less than it would have been without the counterweight. The use of a simple swipe for irrigation was only effective for relatively small areas. For larger irrigated areas associated with serious cash 241


cropping and the deeper wells, something more sophisticated became necessary. A machine known as a mangani (plural: mangania) was introduced in the interwar years. Made of steel, it consisted of an endless moving chain of small buckets descending into the water at the bottom of the well and coming up full of water. It was driven round by a mule or a donkey, as described in Chapter 3. The sinking of a deep well and the purchase of a mangani represented a major capital investment, yet considerable numbers of Methanites who had land near the coast installed them. During my fieldwork in the 1970s, however, I did not see a single mangani of the type introduced in the interwar years in use on Methana. Agrarian technology had changed greatly since the 1920s: the production of fruit and vegetables by these essentially nineteenthcentury methods which depended on high labour inputs from large families could no longer compete effectively with produce grown by modern mechanised methods relying on economies of scale. In addition, the introduction of greenhouses in other parts of Greece for extra-early produce and the development of greatly improved transportation links from the more distant parts of the country seriously reduced the advantages for Methanites of their geographical location. A small number of households continued to grow irrigated crops for sale but extracted water from their wells with motorised pumps. Larger numbers of Methanites used small pumps drawing from these wells to grow a few irrigated vegetables for domestic consumption and to contribute to the widespread exchange-networks which existed in villages (see Chapter 8). Many others abandoned irrigation agriculture altogether, saying that in contrast to the old days, returns simply did not repay the work. During the 1970s, the rusting hulks of mangania, their small buckets slowly decaying and falling into the dark, still waters at the bottoms of deep wells, were monuments to the history of Methanites’ integration with the wider Greek economy. It was these especially which acted as ‘prompts’, reminders of how life had changed, and of Methanites’ constant search for ways of making a cash income in a landscape best suited for subsistence agriculture. At the same time, they were a reminder for Methanites that besides being subject to the unpredictability of the weather from year to year, those engaged in agriculture were likewise 242


7.3. A gheranaki (swipe) (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

subject to the unpredictability of the market. By the late 1990s, the former irrigated fields were being increasingly taken over as building plots for holiday homes by the sea, and irrigation agriculture had ceased. The derelict mangania, now frequently almost obscured by the scrub, brambles, and thorny wild creepers which had invaded uncultivated terraces, had become virtually the only reminders of the history of intensive irrigation agriculture, and the sweat and toil associated with it, that had formerly existed close to the coast. In the 1970s, a few Methanites continued to irrigate small plots by gheranaki, though the produce was not intended for sale. These devices, too, prompted significant memories. For example, my statement to a small group of villagers that I had seen a gheranaki being used triggered a story about a Methanitis who had described to the queen of Greece in particularly basic and rustic language how the counterweight on a gheranaki worked. Methanites naturally found the story of his extremely basic vocabulary used in conversation with Her Majesty hilariously funny. But behind the hilarity of the actual story was the reminder of the fact that the spa town of Loutra before World War II, and even in 243


the 1950s, was a highly sophisticated resort. Even royalty repaired to it during the summer: the king of Greece would visit in his yacht (see, e.g., Akritas 1957, 93–4). Yet again, however, this story also seems to represent another Methana topos. Akritas (1957, 93–4) tells a different story in circulation, of a conversation between a Methanitis and the king in which the Methanitis also uses very rustic language. Cisterns (sternes; sing. sterna) were widespread on Methana. They were cylindrical structures with vaulted ceilings, set into the ground so that the paved top with central cistern head was raised about 5 to 10 centimetres above ground level. They were at least 2 metres in diameter and 4 to 5 metres deep, their walls lined with stone and sealed with kourasani (hydraulic plaster). Most had cylindrical cistern heads carved from a single large piece of volcanic rock to leave an opening 30 to 50 centimetres across. All that were well maintained had a hinged and padlocked steel lid which ensured not only that children and other forms of livestock did not fall into cisterns, but also to stop other Methanites from stealing the precious water for their own use. Cisterns were most highly concentrated in and around villages, especially adjacent to houses. This was the preferred position not simply for the sake of convenience but also because they could be filled with water collected from house roofs. This water was considered the cleanest because it had not been collected as run-off from the ground, where there were likely to be animal droppings and similar contaminants. Other cisterns were located in the fields close to the village. These, if well maintained, were fed via a furrow ploughed diagonally across the slope of the land in which they were constructed. The furrow caught run-off during winter rainstorms and led it directly into the cistern via a hole immediately below the slightly raised paved area. To minimise the risk of foreign bodies getting in, well-maintained cisterns had a small sump immediately beside the hole leading into them to trap non-floating sediments. The hole itself was tightly packed with fine twigs to filter out floating materials. Cisterns also existed well away from settlements. There were small concentrations of them at several locations high in the interior. The reason for their construction in these locations is unclear, but in the later twentieth century, they were mainly used for watering herds of goats. Just digging out the hole, however, must have entailed the 244


removal of vast amounts of soil and rock, plus considerable time and effort to transport the lime and crushed ceramic, for the masonry and hydraulic plaster. The lime, in particular, was most probably imported into Methana and would therefore have necessitated transportation from the coast up steep mule tracks to elevated locations of up to 600 metres and more above sea level. It is quite likely that a number of these cisterns started as loutses – open, unlined cisterns dug into impervious bedrock (discussed later), which were ‘upgraded’ to cisterns at some point. The upgrading of loutses to cisterns is certainly said to have occurred quite frequently in the main study village. The carefully dressed heads of cisterns often bore the initials of the original owner and the construction date, thus serving much the same monumental function as the inscriptions on houses (fig. 7.4). However, in the main study village at least, the earliest construction dates on cisterns seemed to be in the 1860s, a decade or two earlier than the earliest construction dates on houses. The explicit element of monumentality involved in placing inscriptions on structures, a practice previously restricted to Methana’s churches, emphasises the element of display involved in building a cistern, as well as placing the owner, via his initials, firmly in the landscape and in posterity. Loutses were the other main type of rainwater-storage structure. Although they were especially common on Methana, they were far from unique to it: the term was widely used in vernacular language in the Peloponnese and even Athens, in the phrase eghine loutsa (‘it’s become a loutsa’) used to describe a variety of things when they were soaking wet. They consisted of large pits, comparable in diameter but generally not in depth with cisterns, dug down into relatively soft but impervious bedrock. They were lined with dry-stone walling to prevent the sides from collapsing but without mortar bonding or kourasani lining and were covered with a framework of stout branches over which a thick layer of spiny brushwood was laid. The covering had two main functions: to reduce evaporation during the summer and to keep animals, children and inebriated adults from falling in. Wellmaintained ones were often fed by a simple furrow made diagonally across the slope of the land which would catch run-off from winter storms and lead it into the pit. Unlike cisterns, however, there were no facilities for removing foreign bodies in the water flowing into loutses. 245


Loutsa water, considered unsuitable for human consumption, was primarily for livestock. Many loutses also provided water for washing clothes, though by the 1970s, they were little used for this purpose. By the use of loutsa water for these purposes, precious cistern water could be kept for human consumption. Loutses were especially common in the vicinities of villages so could be conveniently visited with livestock or clothes without having to travel appreciable distances. Those in fields might also occasionally be used to irrigate a few vegetable plants for domestic consumption during the summer months. However, they could also be found virtually anywhere on Methana where the bedrock was impervious. Those at substantial distances from villages seem to have been used primarily for watering livestock. Methanites acknowledged that such large pits sunk into the ground, especially if not properly covered up, were a dangerous feature of the landscape, whether full of water or not. One of two brothers who had a deep-seated dispute with each other over family property used this argument as a pretext to damage the interests of the other. They shared the ownership of a loutsa in a wide terrace close to the village. One brother used to use the water to irrigate a few vegetables during the summer. The other brother, who did not use it, filled it in, claiming that it was too dangerous to leave open (Clark 1988, 381). A number of stories about the past described people losing their lives in them. One concerned a group of children who had gathered in the upper parts of the peninsula, each one having gone to graze his or her family’s livestock. While they were playing a game, a version of blindman’s buff, one of the children fell into a loutsa and drowned. Another story was told of a woman who was returning to the village in the dark during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, carrying a large container of milk having milked her animals in a fold outside the village. As she was walking by a loutsa, she was set upon by Kallikandzari, half-human–half-animal creatures which come up from below the earth only at this period of the year, bent on creating mischief (Megas 1963, 33–7). They pulled her into the loutsa, drank all the milk and made her swim around the loutsa all night. She finally got out of the loutsa in the morning but died on the path back to the village. 246


7.4. A cistern-head inscribed with a date (Source: Clarke 2000b).

Cisterns appeared occasionally in toponyms, the most notable example being the abandoned seasonal settlement of Sterna Ghambresë – ‘the cistern of the bridegroom’. Toponyms incorporating the word loutsa – for example, Loutses, Loutsezes or Loutsa Godzia – appeared with greater regularity, the majority occurring in the higher parts of the peninsula. Because these open cisterns with simple unmortared stone linings are undatable, it is impossible to say how old some are. Close to the church at Sterna Ghambresë there are the remains, now 247


largely filled in, of two cisterns from which the site presumably takes its name. They are considerably smaller than and apparently quite different in structural details from those in use over the last 150 years. Although little archaeological research has been conducted on the subject of cisterns in post-Roman Greece, they seem to be similar to the circular cisterns at the site of Profitis Ilias, for which a late medieval date is suggested (Koukoulis 1997a, 93–4). By the same logic, some of the loutses from which some toponyms are derived may well considerably predate the influx of refugees after 1821. Whatever the dates of these dangerous yet crucial sources of stored water, their occurrence in toponyms is an indicator of their importance in the landscape in times past. Despite the introduction of running water, cisterns and loutses have continued in use, although increasingly for less essential purposes. However, they have changed their identities from utilitarian – indeed, essential – objects to historical reminders about the days before running water. The memory of those days has become one of hardships, in which people had to use water very sparingly: furthermore, in years when water in cisterns ran out, people were forced to walk long distances for foul-tasting water from wells near the coast. By the later 1990s, most houses had flush toilets, whereas in the past there were no toilets at all: the stable or the fields were used. Now showers are quite commonplace: the oldest generation can remember when personal cleanliness consisted simply of bathing in the sea a few times during the summer but for the rest of the year only faces and hands were washed. By the 1990s, some houses had washing machines – a very far cry from the days when water was drawn from a cistern, loutsa, or well and heated in a cauldron over a wood fire, and the clothes were soaped, beaten and scrubbed by hand. This was a particular hardship in winter, when women might have their hands in the water for a duration of some hours, working outside in temperatures a few degrees above freezing, with a cold, raw northerly wind blowing.

Ambaria Other structures in the landscape which featured regularly in oral testimony were ambaria (singular: ambari). The word normally refers to a 248


granary, storeroom or the hold of a ship. On Methana, ambaria were said by Methanites to be ‘caves’ and ‘holes’ owned by households and hidden on hillsides away from villages. Methanites said that households stored the bulk of their food supplies in them, sealing the openings using cow dung and leaving only enough in their houses for shortterm consumption. Their ancestors kept only enough food in their houses for immediate consumption in case there were raids on villages (see Chapter 3; see also Forbes 2002, 217). However, when the system started, or when use of ambaria lapsed, was outside the timescale of the elderly Methanites to whom I talked: ‘when I was small they were like they are now’, said one elderly man. Many ambaria consisted primarily of natural shelters: their ‘improvements’ to make them more effective had mostly disintegrated. They were therefore not readily recognisable as former stores unless their locations were pointed out and their function explained. Place-name evidence, however, also supported the tradition. The name Ambarëzë, given to a particular steep section of hillside not far from a village, indicated that there had been several ambaria there, although by the 1970s, none were clearly recognisable. One man had cleared out and tidied up an ambari near his village because he thought it important that people could see it and know what it was when they travelled along the path running beside it. He was very insistent that I go to see this particular feature of Methanites’ past. The Methana Archaeological Survey also discovered examples built into the landscape in inconspicuous places in Methana’s interior (Forbes 1997, 109). They consisted primarily of a natural feature, such as a huge overhanging boulder, but in contrast to examples at lower altitudes, a front wall in clearly identifiable masonry had been added, with a hole of a little over a metre square to allow access (fig. 7.5). The masonry style was directly comparable to that of nineteenth-century houses, suggesting that they do not date significantly earlier than that century. Because they clearly existed, it is difficult to deny outright Methanites’ claims that ambaria were built because of fears of raids on villages. Yet it is unclear how real these fears were. As noted earlier, before the War of Independence, houses on the mainland closest to Methana contained large amounts of produce (Dodwell 1819, 284). Presumably, therefore, contemporary Methana was little different. It 249


seems probable that the ambaria were contemporary with or later than the villages founded during or after the War of Independence – a surmise supported by the masonry style of the examples previously discussed. Because no pirate raids are known to have occurred in the Peloponnese after Greece’s independence, the very real fears evidenced by these monuments were presumably related to potential rather than actual raids. Such observations are those of an academic, however, not of Methanites, for whom ambaria acted as another important ‘prompt’ about the insecurities of the bad old days of the past.

Grape-Treading Floors Most vineyards were located in areas of deep soil at considerable distances above villages, where a considerable number of people, often from more than one village, had plots of vines for as long as anyone could remember. For many decades in the twentieth century, Methanites would load their harvested grapes into large panniers, transporting them to their villages on mule- or donkey-back. There, they have pressed them by treading them with bare feet on ! (patitiria; sing. patitiri) – treading-floors – close to their houses, carrying the (‘must’; i.e., grape juice) a short distance to barrels in the storerooms under their houses. The must fermented and the wine developed in these barrels, which in most cases were said by Methanites to have been bought by their parents or grandparents. The weight of grapes pressing down on the delicate fruit at the bottoms of panniers produced a constant slow drip of grape juice oozing from them as they were transported down the mountainside. This was exacerbated by the jolting of the pack animal as it tried to keep its footing on the more difficult stretches of the track. Farmers accepted the small losses of juice because supplies of grapes were large enough and the number of consumers of the wine small enough that it was not a major concern. Transportation of panniers of grapes down the steep twisting mule tracks leading down the mountainside to the villages was a matter which needed a certain amount of planning, even in the 1970s when far more mules and donkeys were available than at the beginning of 250


7.5. An ambari. Above: exterior view. Below: interior view (Photos: Hamish Forbes).

251


the century. Frequently, two or more families would pool their labour for the grape harvest, but the additional pack animals brought by the helpers were the crucial contributors to the pace of the work. Many pickers and few pack animals simply meant long waits with full panniers of grapes while laden pack-trains carefully descended the mountain tracks, offloaded, and returned, a round trip taking nearly two hours from more distant vineyards. By the end of the 1990s, this element of the grape harvest was disappearing as the construction of vehicular roads into the peninsula’s interior allowed the transportation of grapes by pick-up truck. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with fewer mules and donkeys to transport the harvest, many farmers pressed their grapes in isolated patitiria close to several of the vineyards. Low surrounding walls, approximately 60 centimetres high, confined the large piles of grapes, the whole of the inside of these patitiria being lined with the same kourasani used in cisterns (fig. 7.6). The floors themselves sloped slightly towards a hole through one wall at floor level, allowing passage of the pressed juice into a small cistern, usually 60 to 90 centimetres deep, sunk into the earth close to the outer edge of the wall. Most of these installations had been built when cattle were the main ploughing animals, and there were few mules and donkeys available as pack animals. Additionally, in those days there were larger numbers of family members to consume the wine, so losses from transporting grapes were more serious. By pressing grapes beside the vineyard, farmers reduced the need for large numbers of pack animals because only the must needed to be transported. It also avoided the inevitable loss of juice when transporting the fruit in panniers. The must was decanted from patitiri cisterns into touloumia (goatskins) preferably those from billy-goats (i.e., males). Billy-goat skins were both larger, thereby containing a greater quantity of must, and also thicker and therefore less likely to be holed in accidents. Methanites regularly commented on the anxiety involved in transporting the highly valued must in skins. Loss of the contents of a skin was equivalent to losing many tens of litres of wine. If Methanites are to be believed, losses occurred quite regularly. Old touloumia would split at a weak point due to the weight of must inside, and even surefooted mules and donkeys might fall and split the skins they were 252


7.6. The remains of an old rock-cut grape-treading floor near a mountain vineyard (Photo: Mari Clarke; Hamish Forbes).

carrying. But the greatest fear was that a skin would be torn by a stick or branch projecting from the terrace wall which backed the mule track – or even by a jagged rock in the wall itself – if the pack animal walked too close to it. During the grape harvest, some Methanites would repeat the Greek phrase , , (‘harvest, vintage, war’), meaning that these were occasions when every available person needed to be mobilised. In fact, on Methana, because of the vertical differences in the locations of vineyard areas, not all vines ripened their fruit simultaneously, so the necessity for large labour forces was reduced. Nevertheless, the grapes in any particular vineyard area ripened very largely at the same time, so farmers had only a few days’ flexibility in timing when they could pick the fruit. If they picked too early, the sugar content would be too low. If they picked too late, the fruit might well deteriorate. There was also a fear that others would surreptitiously steal a household’s grapes while they were picking their own. These constraints meant that, in large vineyard areas especially, 253


substantial numbers of people all worked at the same time. In the old days when many farmers pressed their grapes close to their holdings of vines, there was even more activity in vineyard areas. Some families would move temporarily to their kalivia close to vineyards, pressing their grapes in the integral patitiria inside the small houses. Methanites regularly referred to the hive of activity associated with the harvest in vineyards as a panighiri – a religious festival. At one level, the use of the word for a festival was meant to be humorous because, unlike the grape harvest, a panighiri involved the wearing of best clothes, dancing, visiting friends and relatives, and, above all, attending a church liturgy, whereas the vintage involved a burst of concentrated hard work. Nevertheless, the time of the grape harvest resembled a saint’s day celebration in certain aspects. I discuss panighiria (plural of panighiri) in more detail in Chapter 9, but here I pick out a few similarities. The first is the way in which large numbers of people converged on one spot out in the countryside, away from any village. Because at least one day of the year was set aside to celebrate every saint in the Orthodox church, there was a special celebratory liturgy once a year in every church on Methana. Villages had their own churches for which panighiria were celebrated, but there were numerous other extra-mural churches set in the landscape well away from settlements where once a year Methanites from several villages would assemble for the special liturgy and for socialising afterwards. The panighiria at a few extra-mural churches had become major panMethana events (see Chapter 9), affording special opportunities for relatives living in different places to get together and catch up on each other’s news. Similarly at the vintage, families from different villages would converge on the larger vineyards at the same time. Another similarity was the joyousness of the occasion. Although the vintage demanded thought and planning and had to be completed quickly, a successful grape harvest was always a happy time. Most vineyard areas contained plots owned by households from more than one village, though frequently the owners from the different villages were related, either affinally or cognatically. The relatedness of plot owners from different villages was the result of the division of households’ plots of vines via dowry and inheritance over the generations. In particular, 254


vines in the interior of the peninsula have regularly been given as dowry to a daughter marrying into another village (see Chapter 8). Workers chatted with each other, eating large quantities of grapes as they worked, and looked forward to the new wine which the grapes would produce. Also, related households from the same village would often pool resources of labour or transport so that the grape harvest was one of the rare occasions during the year when people could gather together with relatives to work, rather than working on their own. The concentration of the harvest into a few days meant that relatives from different villages had the opportunity to meet up: the gettingtogether of relatives is also a primary feature of panighiria. Given the unrelenting pressures of agricultural tasks for most of the year, especially in the days before motorised transport, there were few occasions in the year when relatives from different villages could meet. Additionally, because of the shared history of inheritance of plots, kin from different villages would find themselves working at the same time on adjoining or at least nearby plots of vines. On one occasion, I noted my own next-door neighbour, a soghambros, getting together with his brother who still lived in his natal village, while working on adjacent vine plots – their respective portions of the inheritance of their parents’ land (see Chapter 8). Finally, there was the element of large numbers of people all coming together in the same place at the same time. This has always been a fundamental part of a panighiri but was very different from the day-today round of agricultural chores, generally accomplished by household members working on their own or with perhaps one or two other family members. Methanites’ descriptions of the grape harvest in the larger vineyard areas in the old days as a panighiri was therefore both humorous and meaningful. In the context of the meaning of the landscape for them, it reminded them that what for outsiders would be empty spaces filled merely with the sight of vines and the sounds of bird-song and the wind in the trees became for a few days every year not an empty space but a focus of activity. For this limited period, large numbers of people, many of them relatives who saw each other but rarely, gathered in the one place from different villages, visited each other, called across to 255


each other and, God willing and the harvest being reasonable, had a joyous time. I explore the way in which panighiria make empty spaces into central places in Chapter 9. Here, the intention is to highlight how vineyard areas, especially the larger ones, high on the mountain and at a considerable distance from any villages, have had particular meaning for Methanites because they have acted as a focus for bringing people together from various villages in annual bouts of concerted activity. The particular ‘triggers’ for remembering the hardships and anxieties on the one hand, and the joyousness of the harvest and the opportunities for meeting up with kin and acquaintances from different villages on the other, are the long-abandoned patitiria still to be seen beside vineyard areas and in abandoned kalivia. Although most patitiria were to be found close to present-day areas of vines in the interior of the peninsula, a few examples existed near the coast, nowhere near any vineyards. They also acted as ‘prompts’ for Methanites, reminding them that vineyards had not always been restricted to higher altitudes. As noted previously, in the nineteenth century there were substantial vineyard areas close to the coast. The only clues to their former existence were the remains of the few remaining patitiria in which the grapes had been pressed to reduce the weight of produce carried back to villages by households’ limited numbers of pack animals. There was also one patitiri built right on the shore of a small natural harbour below one of the villages. Only the rear half remained in the 1970s. Rough seas had eroded the front part, but the original purpose of the structure was still readily recognisable. Its position actually on the beach was quite incongruous because it was nowhere near an area which could have been planted in vines. Methanites explained that it had been built many years ago by a man who bought land on the Plain of Trizin and planted vines on it. Because in the old days there were no vehicular roads between Methana and the Plain, the harvested grapes were loaded onto a boat hired for the occasion and transported by sea to the natural harbour below his village. There they could be offloaded directly into the patitiri and pressed, leaving only the must to be transported up the rocky tracks to the village some twenty to thirty minutes’ walk away. Without this ‘prompt’, there would be 256


nothing to remind the village’s inhabitants of this aspect of life in the past.

Churches There are at least three dozen churches on Methana, but only ten villages and the spa town. Most villages possessed at least a main church and a subsidiary church not far from the village, which was the cemetery church. However, many churches exist well away from any village (see fig. 9.1). The foundation dates of Methana’s churches range from the early Christian period (fifth century a.d.) to the twentieth century, but many older churches seem to have become ruined at some point and were rebuilt in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries (e.g., Koukoulis 1997b, 211–14, 239–40, 255–6). Others seem to have been extended during the same period (e.g., Koukoulis 1997b, 214–17, 238– 9, 245–7). Many churches bear evidence of considerable antiquity, in the form of Byzantine-style roof tiles and wall paintings. Neither of these signifiers of antiquity have been treated with particular reverence by Methanites. The wall paintings of some churches have been largely covered with whitewash, and oral testimony indicates that the original painted plaster of others has been stripped off and replaced with ‘better’ modern plaster. Several church roofs have likewise had their Byzantine tiles replaced with modern pantiles. Two churches close to the church of Aghia Varvara still retain their medieval wall paintings, mainly because the bishop has ordered that they be preserved. The only other church to have retained its medieval wall paintings largely intact is Panaghitsa, whose distance from human habitation probably explains why it has not been ‘improved’. Events surrounding church building or rebuilding which have occurred within the lifetime of the grandparental generation were generally remembered, although several versions of the istoria often existed. In particular, the participation of informants, their parents, or grandparents in the construction or reconstruction of a number of churches is retained in oral testimonies. However, Methanites had little idea of the dates of churches built before the later nineteenth century. That Methanites could not date churches by their style of construction 257


is not surprising: even experts in the field of Byzantine architecture experience difficulties (e.g., Koukoulis 1997b, 250–6). What is initially surprising is that the older churches did not act as historical ‘prompts’ in the way that most secular structures did. The story of the finding of the grave of Saint Barbara during the influenza epidemic of 1919 and the subsequent building of her church, told in Chapter 9, is one of the few notable istories associated with churches. Another of the rare widely told istories associated with a church building concerned the naming of the church on Methana’s only genuine promontory, Krasopanaghia. The captain of a ship carrying wine, which was in danger of running onto the rocks of the promontory in a storm, in praying for deliverance, vowed that he would build a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary if he and his ship were saved. Having been saved, he kept his word, and the church was built, its name combining the words for wine (krasi) and the Virgin Mary (Panaghia). Characteristically, though, the istoria failed to mention a date. Another istoria was in the process of developing when I last returned to Methana: the miraculous saving of the church of Saint Athanasios, the focus of a growing pan-Methana panighiri (see Chapter 9), from a forest fire a year or two previously. There was also an istoria associated with the holy well near the important church at Aghios Gheorghios, which remained full of water during a particularly severe drought ekina ta khronia, when other wells dried up. Although not attached to a church building, the story is at least associated with a religious site. Extra-mural churches, as well as those within villages, had immense significance for Methanites. The ways in which Methanites mentally ‘placed’ churches in their landscape and the multiple meanings which churches had as foci for religious behaviour are explored in Chapter 9. In view of the all-encompassing nature of religion and religious behaviour on Methana, it is simply not possible to argue that the paucity of istories associated with churches results from their insignificance. Rather, it must be noted that secular structures were connected in people’s minds to aspects of the human condition. It is noticeable that all of the stories connected with religious sites do not primarily involve the two main themes of most istories concerning ekina ta khronia associated with other kinds of structures in the landscape: the fear of pirates and banditry and the hardships of making a living by agriculture. 258


Instead, they involve factors beyond mortal ken: the term ‘acts of God’ would probably cover them. All also relate to divine intervention in some way. In two stories, the intervening saints are named; in the case of the holy well at Aghios Gheorghios and the saving of the church of Aghios Athanasios, the implication was that either God or the saint had intervened. Two of the stories involved meteorological conditions rather than factors rooted in the human condition; the third, the finding of the grave of Saint Barbara involved a person who had caught an infectious disease. The weather and diseases are both serious forces, detectable by their effects but with undetectable root causes, against which humans are powerless. A forest fire is likewise a natural force. Therefore, superhuman agencies needed to be mobilised. Churches as foci for Christian worship and the mobilisation of divine power were not appropriate ‘prompts’ for the kinds of istories concerning the human condition associated with other structures in the landscape. Churches also belonged to the whole community, whereas the other structures and ‘prompts’ discussed in this section belonged essentially to ‘houses’, or families. This observation returns us to the comments made previously about ‘history’. ‘History’ for Methanites has not been primarily about events, nor about whole communities, but rather about individuals. Neither civic pride nor the power of individual households resulted in a tradition of setting up civic (i.e., secular) monuments in the centres of settlements. Community solidarity was most visibly expressed by the coming-together of members of the community, whether defined as an individual village or the whole of Methana, at panighiria – saint’s day festivals, as described earlier and in Chapter 9. The only exception to this statement was the war memorial, set not in the centre of a settlement but near the extra-mural church which is the focus of the most important pan-Methana panighiri: Aghios Georghios (discussed subsequently).

Cemeteries Discussion of various aspects of cemeteries occurs in other chapters in this work. Here, I wish to explore aspects of monumentalisation and memorialisation associated with cemeteries. By the end of the twentieth century on Methana, they were notable for the large number 259


of stone, often marble, grave-markers. As noted in Chapters 8 and 9, a community’s cemetery was laid out to replicate its kinship system. Husbands and wives were buried in the same grave, and the graves of a ‘house’ (see Chapter 5) were grouped together with the graves of other ‘houses’ in their soi. Along with the surname, the formal Greek word for a house (ikos) might sometimes be found inscribed on gravemarkers. Some more recent grave-markers had a small niche, closed with a glass door, containing a photograph of the deceased. Unlike the situation in many parts of Greece, Methanites did not practise exhumation of the remains of the dead to place them in a community ossuary (e.g., Danforth and Tsiaras 1982). Hence, gravemarkers in cemeteries were permanent. Their use was relatively recent, almost certainly dating to the post–World War II period in most instances. In the cemetery of the main study community, few gravemarkers dated to before 1965. Especially in the 1970s, many Methanites could remember a time when grave-markers were constructed of wood, which rotted away and were not replaced: within a few decades, the identities of the graves’ occupants were completely lost. The contrast of the older system with the later twentieth-century system was very obvious. In the older system, the dead rapidly lost their identity, and memories had little material support. In the newer system, a permanent monument ensured that the identity of the occupant of the grave was maintained. In a number of instances, a photograph of the deceased, generally a copy of one kept by their descendents in the house in which they had lived (see Clark 1988, 268), memorialised the dead more vividly. These photographs were not simply minor ‘extras’ to the grave but significant elements in memorialisation. They were more than iconic: they were icon-like. As such, icon-like photographs placed the deceased cognitively somewhere intermediate in status between that of living, mortal, fallible humans and that of the saints with their own divine powers. The clear link between icons of the saints and photographs of the deceased is brought out by Clark (1988, 122): I asked a number of questions about icons, incense and lighting candles. Maia explained that icons are like photographs of respected loved ones, ancestors. They are reminders of love and respect. The icons show Christians whom 260


to worship since a person cannot see the Lord or the Virgin Mary or their power.

It is evident, therefore, that permanent grave-markers monumentalised and memorialised former family members. But they have done so only for a few decades. Prior to World War II, the cemetery was not a place of monumentalisation and memorial – in those days, Methanites used other ‘prompts’ to remind them of their deceased loved ones. As noted earlier in this chapter, and especially in Chapter 8, in the past, Methanites had very little money as such: other aspects of maintaining the spiti (house and household) took priority in the expenditure of what little cash there was. Under these circumstances, houses and their contents acted as primary ‘prompts’ monumentalising deceased members of the family. As increasing amounts of cash entered their lives, Methanites were able to extend monumentalisation of past loved ones into the cemetery from the house. Yet, the house remained the model: a number of features of monumentalisation originally found in houses were simply transferred to cemeteries. An especially obvious example is the use of initials and a year inscribed over doorways of houses. Exactly the same format, giving the year of death and the initials of the deceased, was used on some simple headstones. Equally clear is the use of the word for ‘house’ (albeit in formal Greek) occasionally found on grave monuments. Another example is the way that houses of the living were generally grouped into neighbourhoods of close kin. So, too, were the ‘houses’ of the dead grouped into ‘neighbourhoods’ of members of the same soi in the cemetery (see Chapter 8). Within the houses of the living, photographs of deceased ancestors had an icon-like status in reminding the occupants of the love and respect due to those senior members of the household who were no longer visible. This monumentalising element, too, has been transferred to the ‘houses’ of the dead. Why should cemeteries not have been traditionally a focus for monumentalisation? Lack of cash seems at best only a partial answer because there was sufficient money in the past to build houses demonstrating both wealth and monumentalisation via high-quality masonry and the inscription over the door. Part of the answer must be that 261


cemeteries did not incorporate the high levels of polysemy found in houses. Cemeteries, like churches, are also not part of the everyday world: their symbolic removal from the landscape of the living is discussed in more detail in Chapters 8 and 9. Here, it is sufficient to note that, like churches, cemeteries were religious structures which were not the focus of memories of the difficulties of the past. Why, then, did cemeteries start to become the focus of monumentalisation when they did? Apart from the explanation, at best partial, that more money has become available, it would seem that changes occurred in the way houses were linked to monumentalisation. In Chapter 8, I discuss the inextricable bond between kinship, ownership and a connection to the past which has traditionally defined Methanites’ origins. Ownership has generally been in terms of property: houses, fields, crop trees and the like. In the past, although it gave Methanites little spare money, their productive property represented considerable wealth that provided them with a livelihood which, if not comfortable, was fundamentally better than that of many Greeks beyond Methana. Methanites’ livelihoods genuinely depended on their productive property, handed down from their forebears. Property therefore had substantial meaning, acquiring monumental significance thereby, and largely eliminating the need for alternative monuments. It seems significant in this respect that the earliest examples of literate memorialisation in the secular sphere, in the form of initials with a date, came not from houses but from cisterns. Access to stored fresh water (rather than the brackish water of coastal wells) in the midnineteenth century was clearly of greater significance even than the kinds of houses people inhabited. Since World War II, and especially since the 1960s, the economic value and significance of land on Methana has declined. Fewer and fewer children have been prepared to accept subsistence gained via unremitting hard agricultural labour as a way of life, while watching others gain higher status jobs providing far higher income levels. An analysis of this change-over from households as producers to households as consumers is a crucial element in Clark’s description of Methana (see especially Clark 1988, chap. 5). The house, as the centre of the productive enterprise on Methana, has therefore lost much 262


of its economic meaning and significance, thereby also losing much of the reason for its monumentality. Monumentality, therefore, has had to be invested elsewhere than in the family property, and because monumentality is about memorialising, the cemetery has become an obvious focus.

The War Memorial A war memorial was erected by the League of Methanites in Athens and Piraeus close to the church of Aghios Gheorghios. The annual panighiri at this church was the most important expression of community identity for all Methanites (see Chapter 9). The monument consisted of a plain polished and inscribed stone. Its opening sentence indicated that it was a memorial to all Methanites who fell in the nation’s wars. Nevertheless, immediately underneath was the inscription: ‘Ioannis Dhedhegkikas from Kounoupitsa’. Most of the rest of the monument was inscribed with details of how the hero and his illustrious band of Methanites fought in the Revolution’s most famous battles and named the famous Greek revolutionary leader Gheorghios Kara¨ıskakis under whom the hero served (fig. 7.7). The existence of the monument, and the way in which the inscription was presented, firmly relate to comments made earlier in this chapter. Although the ostensible function of the monument was to memorialise all Methanites who had fallen in the service of their country, there was a more powerful agenda involved. The monument was self-evidently primarily a way of setting out a very real marker that Methana has its own claim to a ‘slice of the action’ of the most important period in the history of the modern Greek state: the Greek War of Independence. The preamble to the description of the hero’s deeds addressing Greece herself, describing her as the ‘mother of heroes’, can be seen as a counter-blast to the way in which the political centre has tended to control and appropriate ‘official’ History, at the expense of the sense of identity and self-worth which local histories engender. Moreover, like the story of the gold tortoise, it helped to put what has recently been a rather insignificant part of Greece back into the centre of the stage of past Great Events. Nevertheless, in keeping with 263


the notion that history concerns individuals, not impersonal events, the attempt to place Methana closer to the centre of Greek history highlighted a single person. The establishment of this memorial away from any civic centre but in an essentially religious setting is discussed further in Chapter 9, as is the fact that the monumentalisation and heroisation of a son of the village of Kounoupitsa at a location within the area closest to that community allowed that village to claim a special position vis-à-vis other Methana villages. Significantly, there were no Methana-wide legends or tales about Ioannis Dhedhegkikas and the heroic deeds he and his band of Methanites accomplished, nor were there any claims that people’s ancestors had accompanied him. When I asked Methanites from other villages what they knew about Dhedhegkikas, they all claimed complete ignorance of who he was or what he did. The profound ignorance of even the most basic facts about arguably Methana’s most famous son highlights the difference between the public monumentalisation which purported to represent all Methanites and other forms of monumentalisation, which were purely private, being firmly rooted in the spiti and the soi. THE NATURE OF TIME

Both space and time are essentially limitless expanses onto which societies impose their own culturally bounded systems of order and meaning. Moreover, as indicated at various points in this book, the meanings of structures positioned in space are mediated through Methanites’ own concepts of time. Aspects of Methanites’ concepts of time have been noted repeatedly but without detailed discussion of the way in which they have understood time. Yet, it is impossible to understand the structuring of space without understanding something of the way time is structured. Nowhere is this observation more important than when considering memory and monumentalisation. Throughout this chapter and in other chapters, I remark on Methanites’ difficulties in defining time before the grandparental generation. This does not mean, however, that Methanites had an accurate sense of time, in the meaning usually understood in the West, during their own lifetimes. Methanites’ limited abilities to ‘fix’ important events 264


7.7. The war memorial (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

in the past, even of their own lives, form the basis of the following discussion. When I first conducted fieldwork on Methana in the early 1970s, many people did not own watches and had rather vague conceptions of the division of time into twenty-four hours. Older Methanites in particular had very flexible ideas of even what most Westerners would consider the natural divisions of time. Thus, over a period of twentyfour hours, although the normal translation of the Greek word 265


(nikhta) would be ‘night’, in many, though not all, contexts, it was better understood to mean ‘the dark’. Full night-time conditions were described as (mesanikhta) – literally, ‘midnight’ – a conceptually flexible time period lasting several hours. Similarly, the term (mesimeri), literally ‘midday’, was a flexible time period, lasting in the winter months altogether an hour or two, but lasting during the summer from about an hour before noon until mid-afternoon or later – that is, the hottest part of the day. Mesimeri could even be considered an activity in certain contexts: the phrase (‘we are doing the mesimeri now’) indicated that high summer had arrived and people were taking a siesta during the middle of the day. In the early 1970s especially, many people would organise their day by the timetables of the local bus service and the passage of ships to and from the port of Loutra. The local bus, whose timekeeping was far from exact, always sounded its horn long and loud when approaching villages to warn people of its approach. Even those not wishing to catch it would therefore know the approximate time of day from the bus’s horn. On the eastern and northern sides of the peninsula, even those living in villages tucked out of full view of the Saronic Gulf, could usually catch at least a glimpse of passing ferries, not least because most Methanites would be working in the fields in view of the sea for much of the day. Because ferry timetables were known approximately, the different boats regularly passing by also indicated times of day. Thus, a regular question asked by those with poor hearing or eyesight was, ‘Has the bus [or the X or Y ferry] passed yet?’ Divisions of the year, too, were flexible. The basic divisions were ‘summer’ and ‘winter’. The word for ‘spring’ was also used quite regularly, but ‘autumn’ was not widely mentioned. Thus, in conversation it was not immediately clear with a word like (kalokeri) – ‘summer’ (literally: ‘good weather’) – whether a time span from the end of winter to the return of winter was meant, or whether from the end of spring to the beginning of winter, or the end of spring to the beginning of autumn. The word for winter – (khimonas) – was even more protean in concept. In effect, it acted as a conceptual opposite to the ‘good weather’ normally associated with summer. As well as indicating a variable period of the year, it could also indicate a particular combination of weather conditions. Thus, during the summer, 266


people might say in all seriousness, ‘We’re in the grip of winter’ ( ) if the weather was cloudy and rain threatened or a stiff wind arose associated with cool temperatures and cloudy skies. The lack of specificity in defining seasons was not a problem for an agrarian-based community: farmers’ detailed knowledge of the correct conditions for conducting particular agricultural activities meant that they were not dependent for their agrarian decision making on rigid divisions of the year into specified seasons. The ‘natural’ annual cycle of the seasons, however defined, went in tandem with the religious cycle. This was a great deal more ‘fixed’ because the Orthodox Church designates particular dates in the calendar for the major religious celebrations, such as Christmas, Epiphany, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and Easter. The rigidity of the religious calendar contrasted with the conceptual flexibility of the ‘natural’ calendar, emphasising one of the differences between secular time as employed by Methanites and ‘religious’ time. It could legitimately be argued that the division of the year into months of unequal size, on which ‘religious’ time rests, is itself a secular construction. However, this ignores the fact that the Orthodox Church assigns every day of the ‘secular’ calendar year to one or more of the saints, or to Christ Himself. It also assigns one of the days of the week, a humanly constructed passage of time, to God (i.e., Sunday), significantly limiting the secular activities which are considered appropriate to that day. In addition, strict religious observance required abstinence from meat, fish and dairy products on Wednesday and Friday. In these ways, the culturally, therefore humanly, constructed passage of time became rigid religious time. This is even more evident when one considers that the farmer was completely unconcerned whether the work at hand was being conducted on a Monday, a Tuesday or any other day which was not Sunday. To help them know the religious calendar, most Methanites bought a kazamias (almanac) every year. This included a calendar of the days and months of the year, with the relevant religious celebrations associated with each day. Only by consulting such an aid could they maintain a knowledge of where they ‘belonged’ temporally in terms of the secular calendar because the sequence of necessary agricultural tasks was quite outside this method of dividing time. Nevertheless, because 267


their written aid was set out as a religious calendar, what Westerners might consider humanly constructed time became for Methanites ‘religious’ time, by contradistinction to their own lives. Even ‘religious’ time, however, was not entirely rigid. Many saints were celebrated more than once during the year, yet for the purposes of the local community, only one of these days was set aside as an ‘official’ name day for all those who shared their name with the saint. Despite this observation, the over-riding force of rigidity still ultimately remained supreme because the same particular dates remained as the chosen saints’ name days year in and year out. The rigidity of ‘religious’ time would seem superficially to contradict the Christian belief that God’s time is infinite and indivisible, yet as I argue later in this chapter, the two concepts seemed to be directly related. Religious time shared the element of rigidity and exactness with the timescales provided by the local bus and the Saronic Gulf ferries. What seems to link the two spheres, the one religious and the other self-evidently secular, was the fact that they were externally imposed on the everyday world of Methanites. Especially in the 1970s, when most Methanites were dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, the progression of the agricultural year was not dependent on rigid divisions of time. Tasks awaiting completion depended on factors such as weather conditions and the ‘givens’ of family labour supplies, for example, not dates or days of the week. Similarly, ‘work-day’ lengths were highly flexible: people would start earlier and finish later when rapid completion of important tasks was demanded. Stories of hardships in ekina ta khronia, such as using lanterns to extend reaping into the hours of darkness, only served to emphasise the fluidity of the concept of a ‘day of work’. Just as their own practical annual calendar has traditionally been fluid, so also Methanites placed little value on accurately memorising dates or the number of years which had passed since important events. An extreme example of this phenomenon was Barba Nikos’ need to verify which century he was living in. Within people’s lifetimes, passage of time in relation to external events had little meaning. Farmers frequently could not remember even roughly how many years ago significant events occurred within the previous two decades: the introduction of the vehicle ferry which greatly facilitated the transport of 268


agricultural produce to market, and the introduction of peas as an important cash crop were two examples. However, in keeping with the earlier observation about ‘history’ being about people rather than events, they could frequently name the villagers who first experimented with a new crop. Some women could neither remember nor calculate the ages of their own adult children. On the other hand, they had absolutely no difficulty remembering the spacings of their births. The difficulty that Methanites had in remembering ages, including their own on occasions, is visible in nineteenth-century documents. Ages of men in the 1879 census frequently failed to tally with their dates of birth given by the mitroo arrenon, sometimes by several years. It might be argued that a boy might only have been registered in the mitroo arrenon a year or so after his birth; hence, the year given in the register could be expected on occasions to be that of registration, not birth. However, the argument does not easily account for three- or four-year discrepancies, still less why the date of registration makes some males older than the age given in the census. The documents provide evidence that many reported ages were ‘guestimated’ rather than known. At the end of this paragraph is an unsystematic sample, drawn from two villages, of significant discrepancies between the 1879 census and the mitroo arrenon (Table 7.1). For males over age ten and under about thirty, I have listed in the table that follows the first six significant discrepancies discovered between the 1879 census and the mitroo arrenon, omitting inconsistencies of one year, and where the two documents agreed. I considered it unlikely that ages for children under age ten would normally have been forgotten, whereas men with ages significantly greater than thirty would not have been systematically registered in the mitroo arrenon. There were eighty-seven households in the census of Meghalo Khori, and forty-two households for Aghios Theodhoros: in neither case had I exhausted the list of households when I had discovered six substantial discrepancies. I have used a letter only to indicate surnames to anonymise individuals because the actual surnames are not essential to the argument. There were also other features in the census suggesting that many ages given were not accurate. A glance at the age column indicates a 269


table 7.1. Examples of discrepancies in ages reported in the mitroo arrenon and the 1879 census Meghalo Khori Anastassios K. Athanassios M. Khristos D. Anastassios B. Dhimitrios G. Dhimitrios M. Aghios Theodhoros Andonios L. Gheorghios P. Alexios I. Panaghis G. Konstandinos G. Andonios G.

Mitroo Arrenon 1849 1850 1849 1852 1853 1848

Census 1847 1847 1852 1854 1857 1846

1850 1859 1866 1848 1853 1850

1852 1861 1868 1852 1855 1847

high proportion of individuals in some villages with ages ending in a 0 or a 5, suggesting a degree of ‘rounding off’, presumably because the respondent was unsure of his or her age, or because the censustaker was assigning an estimated age. The hypothesis that many ages in the census were not exact was tested for people of thirty years of age and older because it seemed likely that, despite the discrepancies already identified, younger people would have had a better idea of their age, if only because fewer years had passed. The proportion of the ages in the over-thirty-years age group ending in a 0 or 5 was then calculated because estimates of age can be expected to have used these figures disproportionately. I term these 0/5 ages: statistically, 20 percent should be 0/5 if all ages were given exactly. In contrast, the overall average for the villages for which returns were available was 39 percent – almost exactly double the proportion expected. Evidently, a significant number of people did not know their exact ages. The data are as follows (Table 7.2). A glance at the proportions of 0/5 ages shows wide variations from one village to another. The small villages of Kaimeni Khora and Meghalo Potami had close to the expected 20 percent of their populations in the 0/5 category (17 percent and 19 percent). At the other end of the spectrum, Dhritseika, another small village, had 71 percent 270


table 7.2. 0/5 ages in the 1879 census: those significantly above 20% suggest many ages were guesswork

Village

Total 30+ years

% 0/5 ages

% 0/5

Vromolimni Dhritseika Kaimeni Khora Meghalo Potami Aghios Theodhoros Palea Loutra Meghalo Khori

106 24 36 32 72 86 153

71 17 6 6 24 36 40

67 71 17 19 33 42 26

of the ages in the 0/5 category. Application of the Poisson Test indicated, unsurprisingly, that for Kaimeni Khora and Meghalo Potami, there was no significance in the deviation of the numbers in the 0/5 group from that expected. Equally unsurprisingly, application of the Poisson Test showed that the chances of there being no significance in the difference between the expected and actual numbers in the 0/5 group for the village of Dhritseika was less than 0.2 percent. For larger communities, the zI Test for Instances was employed to test for the significance of deviations of the proportion of the population in the 0/5 category from the expected 20 percent (use of the Poisson Test and the zI Test follows Langley 1970, 230–53). For Meghalo Khori, there is a more than 10 percent probability that the differences between the actual and expected numbers in the 0/5 group are not significant. In the case of Aghios Theodhoros, that probability is less than 5 percent, and it drops to less than 0.2 percent for Palea Loutra and Vromolimni. Significantly, the census-takers for Vromolimni and Dhritseika were the same people: these are the two communities registering the highest proportions of 0/5 ages. Turning up the power of the metaphorical analytical microscope again, analysis of the gender differences between males and females registering 0/5 ages gives further interesting results. Averaged over all existing census returns, the relevant percentage for males is 36 percent, whereas that for females is 42 percent. However, these figures hide wide variations between communities (Table 7.3). 271


table 7.3. 0/5 ages in the 1879 census: gender differences in uncertainties over ages Village

% of Males 0/5

% of Females 0/5

Vromolimni Dhritseika Meghalo Khori Meghalo Potami Kaimeni Khora Palea Loutra Aghios Theodhoros

56 60 36 18 27 40 14

76 79 18 20 05 43 54

It is noticeable that in two communities (Meghalo Khori and Kaimeni Khora), the proportion of men registered as 0/5 is far higher than that for women. The other communities registered a higher proportion of women as 0/5, the most extreme example being Aghios Theodhoros. The most economical explanation for the extreme variability between communities in the registrations of 0/5 ages, for males and females together, as well as separately, is that ages were frequently assigned by census-takers as a matter of guesswork because presumably many individuals did not know their own ages. That different census-takers would vary in the extent to which they chose to roundup estimated ages to the nearest 5 or 0 would explain the lack of consistency on this matter from village to village. The fact that the villages with the highest levels of 0/5 ages were recorded by the same small team strongly supports this hypothesis. It is harder to explain exactly why there should be such extreme intercommunity variability in the proportions of men and women with 0/5 ages, although the major differences suggest that the gender of the person being aged strongly influenced the ways in which ages were estimated. The two communities in which 0/5 men significantly outnumber 0/5 women (Meghalo Khori and Kaimeni Khora) are especially problematic. Apart from the fact that in other villages, 0/5 women outnumber 0/5 men, for the aggregate of males and females together, there is little to suggest significant levels of rounding up or down, as noted earlier. 272


An important observation concerning the problematic nature of the statistics for Meghalo Khori and Kaimeni Khora is the strong probability that they were registered by the same census team, based in Meghalo Khori. It would explain why they, along with Meghalo Potami, a satellite community of Meghalo Khori, share a number of features. The similarities between the adjacent communities of Dhritseika and Vromolimni, also both censed by the same team, are a comparable example. It is therefore distinctly possible that the census team assigned ages to many individuals rather than recording ages given by family members. Nevertheless, if that was indeed the case, the fact that 0/5 men greatly outnumbered 0/5 women in some communities, whereas the reverse was true in others, suggests that there was a lack of concordance in the principles governing the estimation of ages of men and women between the different census-taking teams. The extent to which Methanites have or have not been able to ‘fix’ accurately on their own or their children’s ages emphasises that time is a cultural construct (Greenhouse 1996, 1). For archaeologists and historians in particular, time, neatly graduated into equal-sized ‘chunks’ of years, centuries or millennia, is the fundamental basis of their disciplines. Their treatment of time makes three very basic assumptions: (1) time is linear – it has a distinct beginning, and it travels ever forwards, never returning to the start; (2) time, being linear, can be measured in much the same way as linear space: the ‘natural’ phenomena of the earth spinning on its own axis and revolving around the sun are the natural and universal bases for measurement in days and years; and (3) time is scientifically ‘fixed’ – that is, it is real (see Greenhouse 1996, 2). Anthropological discussion of conceptions of time can be traced back to the French Sociological School, in the writings of Hubert and Mauss (1909) and Durkheim (1915). Concerns with time in anthropology have returned in recent years. The work of Bourdieu (1990, esp. 81–4, 98–111) and of Gell (1992) has been particularly influential. Greenhouse (1996) relates linear time with issues in legal anthropology, arguing that the development of concepts of linear time is related to the development of centres of political power and the exercise of statecraft. Her point is that linear time dominates the West’s public life because of its efficacy in the construction and management of dominant social institutions, not because it is ‘the only time in town’. 273


She proceeds to suggest that the roots of linear time in the West lie in its popularisation by the church in the active course of conversion (Greenhouse 1996, 23). Munn (1992, 93) notes that anthropological studies of time have tended not to be theoretical examinations of basic sociocultural processes, instead frequently fragmenting into other anthropological dimensions and topics. I plead guilty to that charge in the present discussion because this work is not primarily about time, but about time’s ‘Other Self’ (Munn 1992, 94) – space. I do not therefore intend to delve to any great depth into the treatment of time by anthropologists but to highlight a feature of the construction of time which has been documented cross-culturally: time can be seen as a linear phenomenon or as repetitive – that is, as a circular, or reversible, phenomenon (see, e.g., Munn 1992, 100–2; Gell 1992, 30–6; Jedrej 1996). In a classic essay, Edmund Leach set out the two fundamental aspects of life as experienced by humans, which affect our construction of what we call ‘time’: 1) certain phenomena of nature repeat themselves (i.e., circular time) 2) life change is irreversible (i.e., linear time) Leach argues that these two aspects of time have an obvious incompatibility which must be resolved. The resolution, he claims, occurs through religion: the concept of the soul (Leach 1961, 125–7). However, the apparent incompatibility of circular time with linear time only really arises if it is believed that ‘the same’ winter, or rainy season, or sunrise, or sunset occurs each time, rather than ‘another’ winter, rainy season, sunrise, and so on. In discussing time concepts in Bali, Geertz (1973) presents the idea that circular time is static, a view questioned by Bloch (1977), who develops the idea that humans all share a single concept of time, in which its recognisable cyclical and linear elements can be considered two modes of cognition and communication. Bloch argues that cyclical time is sacred time: linear time is mundane or profane. Gurvich (1961) argues that on a worldwide, cross-cultural scale, time has eight typological variants. Three variants, he argues, are to be found among the ‘peasant class’ worldwide, including types of linear 274


time (retarded time, and enduring time of long duration and slow motion) and cyclical time related to the passage of the seasons (Gell 1992, 60–4). Gell (1992, 94) attacks Gurvich’s views, protesting against the false stereotyping of ‘peasants’ as dilatory and backward-looking – an argument with which few contemporary anthropologists would disagree. Nevertheless, for Methanites, time has certainly had both cyclical and linear elements. The linear element is not retarded or in slow motion, however, but lacks the carefully assigned measure applied to it by industrialised Western societies (see later discussion). To envision how two apparently opposed elements of linearity and circularity relate to each other, I have found the metaphor of a spiral or a vortex a useful, though imperfect, model of the cognitive melding of both elements (see Munn 1992, 101, on this point). A vortex, such as a tornado, has both circular and linear forces which are complementary to each other, both being essential to its identity. The eye will sometimes focus primarily on its cyclic motion, at other times on its vertical aspects. But it is virtually impossible for the human brain, via the optic nerve, fully to comprehend (in that word’s multiple meanings) the whole. Similarly, when trying to understand Methanites’ views on time, it is sometimes preferable to concentrate on cyclic elements and at other times to concentrate on the linear elements. Nevertheless, although the focus may be on one aspect, the other aspect of the entity is always there, even when momentarily ignored. In other words, as with space in terms of landscapes, so with time, Methanites focused on different aspects in different contexts. When Methanites described the hardships and difficulties of life in the past and of their farming livelihoods, they did not conceive of the present year, or any other year, as ‘the same’ year as had previously occurred returning over and over again. The descriptions of the meanings given to the various structures in the landscape make it very plain that Methanites were all too well aware of the changes which had affected their own lives and those of previous generations. Similarly, when discussing farming, they would occasionally describe especially good years; more frequently, they would describe especially bad years. On other occasions, they would compare particular aspects of weather conditions of the current year with general expectations of the weather. They would also measure crop performance of a particular year with 275


their general expectations of crop performance (e.g., Forbes 1992, 92). In fact, common sense alone would predict that practical farmers in a part of the world renowned for its interannual variability (e.g., Forbes 1989, 89–90; Halstead 1989, 72–5) would be most unlikely to have a concept of time in which the new agricultural year was simply the old one returning – a point made by Bloch (1977, 278). In farming, certainly anywhere in Europe, no two years are remotely similar enough to be thought of as identical. At this level, what might be described as ‘practical farming time’ was clearly linear. However, because one year followed another, each one presenting different exigencies to be met by farmers, it was difficult for them to remember in detail what particular sets of events had happened in which year. Thus, although the indigenously derived ‘practical farming time’ was linear, not cyclical, in terms of memory and memorialisation, it was not rigidly organised into years like linear time in the West. On Methana, the ‘recycling’ of personal names from grandparent to grandchild emphasised time’s cyclical element. In this context, the ‘return’ of the name two generations further along the ‘line’ of time can be seen as very much closing a cycle, ensuring simultaneously the loss of the identities of individuals in earlier generations. Yet, the identity loss of these earlier generations does not thereby negate their existence or that earlier time: after all, the existence of one’s grandparents is understood as being dependent on the existence of their own parents and grandparents in turn, and thus dependent on a greater time-depth than can be comprehended by the present generation. This long, long line of ancestors reaches down into the increasingly murky depths of the past, like an anchor-chain descending into the depths of the ocean. The seabed is known to exist – the anchor holds in it – but it cannot be sensed. For Methanites as Christians, their ancestry was ultimately ‘anchored’ in the first humans, Adam and Eve. But, short of diving down to the bottom of the ocean (as impossible for them in a real ocean as for travel back into the past), it was impossible to measure the length of that chain. In discussing the basis of linear time, a number of anthropologists and others have argued that it is based, at least in the West, on the linear aspect of a human life, which ‘travels’ (a spatial metaphor) from 276


birth to death (cf. Greenhouse 1996, 34–9, who argues against such a view). Many anthropologists describe a human’s life as a life-cycle, however. Methanites seemed to agree: a number of houses had allegorical pictures of the life-cycle of a woman and a man. Starting with total dependency within the household as an infant, a series of stages in life were depicted in a circle, returning to total dependency within the household as a decrepit geriatric. Nevertheless, the concern with the dead returning to the world of the living (e.g., vampires) and the emphasis on ensuring that other things associated with the dead stay in the cemetery and are not recycled into the world of the living are important indicators of thinking about death and time (see Chapter 9). The fact that the life-death sequence for Methanites was not considered to reverse itself in this world for individuals with a death-life sequence indicated that their time on earth was not strictly circular in terms of being an endless loop. Despite foregrounding the cyclical element of time in the context of their lifespans, therefore, they did not deny the progressive element of time (see Gell 1992, 73–7, for a comparable example from Bali). Even more significantly, life, while having a circular element to it, was not considered to be cyclical. Death marked an end to life in the community, not a new beginning within it. The way in which the world of the dead – the cemetery – was firmly segregated from the world of the living emphasised for Methanites that time progresses and does not return to its starting point. However, a focus on the cyclical, whether in recycling names from grandparent to grandchild or in the individual’s life-cycle, meant that linear time received little attention. It was doubtless the cognitive eye’s figurative focus on the rotational aspects of time which led at least in part to a lack of focus on the careful gradation of linear time into years, even within people’s own lives. Thus, linear time for Methanites approached, though it did not completely reach its status among the Nuer, for whom in linear time ‘there is priority, there is order, but there is no measure’ (Gell 1992, 22). Priority and order existed in linear time on Methana, but there was only limited measure. Linear time was foregrounded in monumentalisation. Thus, Clark (1988, 180–6) could establish a ‘house history’ for the Veliotis spiti 277


(house/household): she could also tease out, via multiple ‘house histories’, the development of a whole village neighbourhood. My arithmetically and biologically (in a cognitive sense) challenged host could likewise date his house back 400 years, although his means of doing so highlighted the limited level of measure in linear time. A soi, too, in its manifestation as a corporate identity, was also dependent on concepts of linear time. I note in Chapters 8 and 9 how, in recent decades, monumentalisation became established in cemeteries as well as, and increasingly instead of, via houses, and how each soi was physically re-created by the clustering of grave monuments in the cemetery. Through its involvement in monumentalisation, linear time was linked to Methanites’ concepts of ‘history’, with its conceptual basis in individuals and their individuality, rather than ‘events’ divorced from individuals. Not surprisingly, therefore, the unit of measure in linear time was frequently a lifetime (which, as previously noted, was sometimes associated with the word eona, which can also mean ‘century’). Thus, the historical basis of the soi was a number of lifetimes: Ego, Ego’s father and Ego’s father’s father, and the links of these individuals with siblings and cousins. For most humans, the grandparental generation is the backward limit of direct acquaintance with one’s own ancestors (see Chapter 5). At this level of analysis, people can ascribe a unit of measure – the lifetime – as well as the priority and order that Nuer have in linear time. In this way, too, my informant calculating the age of his house used the measure of a lifetime, his own included, even though it had yet to be completed. In like manner, a ‘house-history’ depended on identifying certain individuals who represented particular generations who had inhabited that house. Using this unit of time, the order of the individuals tended to be fixed: priority and order existed. However, as noted in Chapter 8, it would seem that on occasions individuals’ lives could be forgotten, introducing what to Western thinking were infelicities in the histories. The ordering of the sequence of the rest of the individuals remained the same, however. Because of its involvement with monumentalism, and thus with individuals, linear time has tended to be male-gendered. The soi, in its historical manifestation, was primarily patrilineal in its identity. It was also usually identified by a surname inherited through the male line: as 278


noted in Chapter 5, the agnatic (i.e., patrilineal) soi primarily related to origins and historical rootedness. Monumentalised structures in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries (e.g., cisterns and houses) bore inscriptions giving the male household head’s initials and an indication of where the construction ‘belonged’ in linear time – the year it was built. The in-marrying wife of each successive male household head emphasised the cyclical element in each generation. Although they were the primary active agents in linking the present generation with its roots in the past and its continuity in the future, wives were not monumentalised: they did not ‘belong’ in linear time. For this reason, the fact that in the 1879 census five of seven villages had a higher percentage of women with 0/5 ages than men may well be significant. With linear time being primarily male gendered, the need to place women in an exact position within that system would be relatively low. This is evidently not the whole answer to the phenomena associated with the assigning of 0/5 ages because in two villages, more men than women were assigned them. Nevertheless, it may explain the situation for the majority of villages. In contrast to Methanites’ own system of time which had a built-in linear element, time systems external to ‘practical farming time’ were fundamentally cyclical. ‘Clock’ time, as represented by bus and ferry schedules, was external to the rhythms of daily agricultural labours. The exact division of a full rotation of the earth on its own axis into twenty-four hours is regulated by atomic clocks and international conventions, to which national governments, including that of Greece, subscribe. Thus, the appearance of a particular ‘clock’ time of day, whether 3.15 p.m. or 12.00 midnight, ‘comes round’ at precisely the same moment every day. This circularity is even emphasised physically by the convention of assigning a circular face to clocks. Therefore, by focusing purely on the twenty-four-hour day, one can say that 8.26 a.m. today ‘is the same as’ 8.26 a.m. yesterday. Contrary to Greenhouse’s (1996, 23) argument about the church in the West introducing linear time, for Methanites religious time was primarily circular. In strict Christian doctrine, God time has no beginning and no end. Christians have accepted the Hebrew God, one of whose names in Old Testament Hebrew is best translated ‘I Am’. The emphasis on the ever-present Now, rather than the past or 279


future, similarly denies the existence of linear time in God’s kingdom. So, too, does the representation of Christ as the Alpha and Omega – the first and last characters of the Greek alphabet (Revelation 1, 8): the beginning and the end of everything are combined in one persona. These two characters appear repeatedly in the iconography of Methana’s churches. For imperfect mortals on earth, religious time returns unchanged from year to year in the shape of the religious calendar. Thus, for example, the same saint was celebrated on the same date every year, and people therefore celebrated their own name-days on the same date every year. In terms of religious belief, however, the fact that it was the same year returning was even more evident. At Christmas, the same Christ was born under the same circumstances: He was once more a baby in the Virgin’s arms. On each Good Friday, He was again crucified and taken down from the cross. In the villages of Methana, as elsewhere in Greece, His bier was again carried round the village streets. Then at midnight on each Easter Sunday in turn, He rose triumphantly again. When villagers greeted each other on Easter Sunday, saying Khristos anesti (Christ has risen), to which the reply was alithos anesti (truly He has risen), the same Christ as last year had risen again. A feature of truly cyclical time is that it is reversible. The Christian calendar emphasises the reversible nature of religious time at Easter, when Christ dies on Good Friday but overcomes death itself and rises to life on Easter Sunday. Yet again, however, time’s linear element is not entirely absent, even at Easter, the greatest celebration of the Orthodox Christian calendar. For the timing of Easter changes from one year to the next, so that the actual date on which it is celebrated is never the same two years running. The Kallikandzari, noted in this chapter and elsewhere, also symbolise the cyclical nature of the religious calendar, although they are supernatural beings of folk belief with no place in strict Christian doctrine7 . However, they appear in the liminal period bridging the end of the old year and the return of the new. It is a period bounded in a balanced fashion by two major Christian celebrations: Christmas at the beginning and Epiphany at the end. There are six days from the day after Christmas until the end of the old year, then a further six days of the new year, ending with Epiphany on January 6. The 280


dividing line, January 1, dedicated to one of the greatest fathers of the Orthodox Church, St. Basil, is a celebration comparable with Christmas (Megas 1963, 27–33, 37–48). The Kallikandzari emerge onto the earth’s surface from below the earth after Christmas Day and are driven away by the priest’s sprinkling of holy water at the Epiphany service on January 6. During the rest of the year, they stay in the underworld regions – in the pre-Christian religion of Greece, the place of the dead (Megas 1963, 35) – engaged in cutting down the huge tree holding up the world. Their emergence and their activities which disrupt normal human life mark the liminality of the period between the old and new years. Van Gennep (1960), whose magisterial study of rites de passage specifically notes the transitional nature of the twelve days of Christmas, links ceremonies and beliefs associated with the changes of the year to the symbolism of death and rebirth – that is, the cyclical, reversible nature of time (Van Gennep 1960, 178–84). In the liminal period between the old and new years, the Kallikandzari, sometimes depicted as being satyr-like – half-animal– half-human – represent the letting loose of the forces of chaos among humans. According to Methanites, they slept all day and came out at night, looking for signs of light in houses, which indicated places to raid. In this regard, they closely resembled accounts of ‘Turks’, ‘TurkoAlbanians’, and robbers, who were said only to have emerged at night to look for signs of lights in houses indicating places to rob. Such human robbers represented the same kinds of forces of chaos and anomie in the human political sphere which the Kallikandzari represented in the supernatural sphere. Apart from pulling or pushing people into loutses, as noted previously, the activities of the Kallikandzari included raiding houses in which people were cooking meat after dark, usually via the chimney. They also urinated on wild mushrooms, rendering them inedible and again emphasising an important change in the religious cycle. Mushrooms, which grew in considerable numbers in the early winter, were an especially prized food in the forty-day pre-Christmas Lenten fast period, when people abstained from eating meat and also eggs, fish and dairy products. With the end of the fast at Christmas, the re-establishment of meat-eating, and the emergence of the Kallikandzari, mushrooms changed from being a highly prized food to an inedible one. 281


At the end of their stay on the earth’s surface, the Kallikandzari return to the underworld. However, in the meantime, the tree holding up the world has re-grown, and they must once more begin the task of cutting it down. Thus, these chaotic supernatural forces themselves bring about the renewal associated with the beginning of the New Year. They also represent the mirror image to the reversibility of religious time represented by Christ, whose death and return to life are celebrated at the other great period of religious festivities: Easter. The Kallikandzari emerge from the world of the dead, in direct opposition to Christ, who appears on earth from Heaven. But they return to the dark land of the dead on the day of the Epiphany, a religious celebration of light8 and of the purification of the earth (Megas 1963, 48–52). The feast of St. Basil (Aghios Vasilios) is central to understanding the meaning of the Kallikandzari in several senses: his festival on January 1 is at the midpoint of the liminal period during which they emerge on the earth. It becomes the fulcrum balancing the end of the old year, whose period is initiated by the birth of Christ, and the beginning of the new, whose period is concluded at Epiphany by the sprinkling of holy water from a sprig of basil. His name, like that of the plant, derives from the Greek word for a king, in reference to Christ, the King of Heaven. A good king is the antithesis of the chaos and anomie represented by the Kallikandzari. Finally, the Kallikandzari are chased back into the underworld by the sprinkling of holy water from a sprig of basil. Thus, these forces of anomie have been defeated by the power of the personage who in Christian belief is the Light of the World and the King of Heaven: Christ, the ultimately legitimate and perfect ruler of all. As noted previously, cemeteries, as religious places, were comparable to churches in a number of their features. Some of the details of how memorialisation was treated within cemeteries can be explained by considering that they belonged within cyclical – that is, religious – time, in contrast to houses-as-monuments, which belonged in linear time. This observation may explain the kinds of grave-markers and monuments that have been set up in recent decades. Made of hard stone, they were the antithesis of wooden markers, which readily decayed. By their unchanging nature, they represented an attempt to 282


move outside the frame of the passage of linear time. Similarly, the use of photographs of the deceased ‘froze’ them at a particular point in time. The dead therefore remained in the memory as they were in the photograph: they did not grow old as the living do in linear time. Although Bloch’s (1977) argument that cyclical time is sacred time seems on the face of it to fit in well with the previous paragraph’s observations, the ways in which elements of linear time intruded on religious time as experienced by imperfect mortals on earth seriously undermine his idea where Methanites are concerned. His arguments fail equally to fit other aspects of time. The division into twenty-four hours of identical length of the time taken for the earth to spin on its axis is self-evidently cyclical, yet it is secular time. What it shares with religious time, however, is that it is external to the facts of a life dependent on agriculture, in which the exigencies of completing particular tasks take precedence over any form of rigid timekeeping. It also shares with religious time a linear element. Each period of twentyfour hours can also be envisioned as following on from the last, in a sequence of days, months and so on, as well as being envisioned as starting all over again at midnight. Likewise in religious time, although mortals’ focus is firmly on cyclical time, there is nevertheless still a linear dimension. Thus, Easter falls on a different date each year. The element of linear time was evident in the cemetery, too, despite the attempts to move outside it already noted. The dead do not come back to life in this world: the dates of death simultaneously placed the deceased firmly within linear time even as the stone memorials and the photographs attempted to deny it. An element of the mix of cyclical and linear aspects of time helps to explain in part why Methanites have had such a tenuous grasp on their own ages and those of their close kin. It is the name-day of the saint from which a person took his or her name which was celebrated annually, rather than the date of a person’s birth. Because they did not celebrate the dates of their birth every year, Methanites had less reason to remember the year when they were born than do Westerners who celebrate birthdays. For the same reason, with no birthday to celebrate, they did not focus on the linear time element of the expanding distance between themselves and their year of birth. Instead, they celebrated their increasing age via placing it within cyclical, religious, 283


time, by linking themselves with the annual celebrations of ‘their’ saint. Nevertheless, they did not thereby negate the existence of time’s linear element. The standard phrase spoken to people celebrating their nameday was

(‘many years’), thus emphasising that human life is finite by giving the wish that the end be a long way off. Methanites, while accepting the cyclical aspects of types of time superimposed on an agrarian life-style, had difficulty comprehending fully the linear aspects. Thus, while ‘clock’ time had meaning for them in terms of bus and ferry schedules, and the rigid religious calendar was also deeply meaningful, the passage of time in strict hours and years had far less meaning. Hence, although Barba Nikos seemed to understand the concept of a century as a period of 100 years, he was uncertain about the century he himself inhabited. The measurement of linear time into years ought by Bloch’s argument to be primarily a secular feature. Yet, not only does the Church accept that its annual cycle fits into a sequence of years, it even provides the basis on which the sequence is founded by providing its starting point: the year of Christ’s birth. Thus, although in certain circumstances in secular time, the cyclical aspect is emphasised over the linear, so in religious time there are linear elements underlying the cyclical. We return, therefore, to the observation that for Methanites time was not simply either linear or cyclical: both elements were combined. It is a case of where the ‘eye’ of the viewer was focused on the vortex which is time. CONCLUSIONS

It is with the discussion of Methanites’ difficulties in fully accommodating concepts of rigidly gradated linear time, in the form of years, that this chapter comes full circle. In particular, graduated time before the grandparental generation was largely non-existent because memory of ancestors did not generally extend back beyond this point. The recognition of the importance of kinship in conceptualising time will be considered in other guises in the following chapter. Although from the Western academic’s viewpoint the phenomenon of short remembered time-depths can be considered frustrating, it introduces an important element into discussions of monumentality which 284


archaeologists rarely consider: the significance of forgetting as well as remembering. By forgetting their disparate pasts, Methanites were able to conceptualise themselves as autochthonous – hence, as always having belonged to their landscapes. In this way, they fully shared their homogeneous identity as Methanites. Without a rigid linear timeframe, Methanites have needed some other means of linking themselves with previous events, situations, and, above all, people. The various structures in the landscape described here fulfilled this role, acting as ‘prompts’ or aide-memoirs – in other words, monuments – reminding people of aspects of the past which had meaning for them. The fact that Methanites could not place accurate dates in years on most events, people or situations that they were remembering was of little concern to them. The structures gave people the necessary contexts in which to place their memories: their very existence could be taken by Methanites as proof that the events or people associated with them actually happened. In other words, what Methanites lost in terms of accurately locating their ‘roots’ in the past in terms of numbers of years, they made up for by seeing and locating, in the form of the structures, their ‘roots’ in the landscape.

285

8

THE KINSHIP LANDSCAPE

" % % % (we have them from our grandfathers). (Methana saying)

INTRODUCTION

The idea of a landscape representing a kinship system is ancient. To many ancient Greeks, their total life experience, including the visible and invisible worlds, was structured in a reality based on supernatural beings, all related to each other in a complex web of descent and marriage. In The Theogony (the Origin of the Gods), the Archaic Greek poet Hesiod described the world’s creation in terms of the genealogy of the gods. Thus, Night was born of Erebos, the supernatural personification of the realms under the earth. From Night, in turn, were born Air and Day. The Sky, Mountains, and Sea are all described as children of Earth, herself a sibling of Erebos. At a local level, a particular spring, known to Hesiod as the Horse’s Fountain, was created by the flying horse Pegasus, who sprang from the neck of Medusa (the Gorgon) when Perseus, himself a descendent of Herakles, cut off her head. My intention in this chapter is not to show that Methanites’ views of their landscape mirrored those of the ancient Greeks nor to argue that there is an unbroken cultural link between the Greeks of the first millennium b.c. and Methana’s present. The ‘kinship landscape’ described by Hesiod is fundamentally different from the ‘kinship landscape’ to be described here. Rather, the aim is to indicate that both kinship, in the form of genealogy and inheritance, and the physical and supernatural 286


worlds in which people’s lives are set have been at the core of their identities. Furthermore, the ways in which people have experienced their landscapes in both cases were mediated through their own human experiences of kinship. Chapter 5 explores Methanites’ system of reckoning kinship, in which a concern for succeeding generations was incorporated via the cross-generational transfer of property. Here, I investigate, among other aspects, how the transmission of property was also a way of memorialising past generations. At the same time, individual items of property, via the history of their transmission through the generations, could also act as markers indicating the links between living individuals within a soi. In other words, critical parts of the landscape placed individuals within their kinship networks, thereby helping to mould their identities in their own and others’ eyes. KINSHIP AND THE VILLAGE LANDSCAPE

A theme of Chapter 6 is that at one level, the landscape was composed of a patchwork of ownerships: how they linked – and occasionally divided – members of a kindred with each other is the main focus of this chapter. It continues the primary concern with individual households rather than whole communities. But because the focal point of the meaning invested in the landscape is the village, I commence my investigation there, working outwards from the settlement in progressive stages towards the wider world beyond the peninsula of Methana. The patchwork of ownerships was most tightly packed in the village. Village landscapes on Methana consisted of rows of houses along one or both sides of narrow streets running up and down, or along the mountainside (fig. 8.1). These streets, originally no more than tracks wide enough for two mules to pass each other, wound and turned, sometimes even circling back on themselves. Their layout indicated a complete lack of centralised planning in the establishment of houses in most villages. Oral histories and the layout of the streets themselves indicate that houses were built along pre-existing mule tracks in a piecemeal fashion, over considerable periods of time. In some parts of villages, houses might be tightly packed: although almost all had some kind of yard attached to them, where they were tightly packed 287


Threshing floor Cistern Church Inhabited structure Stores, outbuilding, etc. Paths and tracks Vehicular road Garden area enclosure wall

0

100 Metres

8.1. Plan of the main study village.

there was no room for an attached vegetable garden. In other parts of villages, empty spaces between houses along one or both sides of a path consisted of vegetable plots or even small agricultural fields. These features demonstrate how villages grew organically over time. It is evident from house-histories described by Clark (e.g., 1988, 180–3, 221–3) that the village of Liakotera originated as a few small structures widely separated from each other along a track near a small area of vines. This sector of the village was most densely built up and was where the last old-fashioned mud-roofed houses still existed until the 1970s. The village grew through in-filling of spaces between existing houses, as houses were built for additional family members. It also expanded outwards as scope for in-filling was reduced in the sector first settled. Most houses were built to accommodate offspring who married and stayed in the village because it was considered impossible for several married siblings to live in the same house (Clark 1988, 221). To accommodate more than one son, other houses were built around the sides of the basin in which the vines grew. To build a 288


8.2. The growth of the Petronotis neighbourhood in the village of Liakotera (after Clark 1988, 222).

house, however, one had to own a suitable site. It is evident from the clustering of surname groups in the earliest settled part of the village that a very few substantial agricultural terraces owned by two or three households provided land for many of the first houses. As discussed later, lack of a suitable house plot within the core of the village could condemn individuals needing a house to marginalised locations on the peripheries. Clark’s (1988, 221–3) example of a sector of Liakotera (see fig. 8.2) illustrates how villages grew by accommodating additional children. The description also indicates how Methanites mobilised their knowledge of kinship and of their own ancestors to maintain a memory of when, in which order, and under what circumstances each house was 289


built. Thus, house-histories became also kinship histories. The interlinking of the house as artefact, as historical monument, and as material reification of part of the kinship system is critical for understanding the ways in which villages represented kinship landscapes. According to Clark’s version of the story, the earliest house in the sector was built in about 1770. In about 1820, another house was built some distance away for a son. The son in turn helped his own son build another house adjacent to his in the mid-1870s, and his other son married and stayed on in the family home. In the mid-1890s, the son who remained in the family home built another house on the other side for his two sons. After a few years, one of these sons built a separate house near the original structure. This story ‘explained’ the houses in this particular sector of the village and why their occupants were all related. However, the actual historical accuracy of the details of the sequence may be questioned. As described in Chapter 3, the evidence strongly suggests that the village was not founded until after 1821, so an initial construction date in the second half of the eighteenth century needs some special explanation if it is to be believed. In addition, it is important to recognise Methanites’ traditional approach to time and time-depth and their tendency to allocate a century for each generation, allowing 100 years for an individual’s lifespan, without computing any overlap of generations. Even if the initial construction date is accepted, the fifty-year period between the building of the first and second houses and again between the second and third houses is difficult to equate with the time-depth of a single generation. Twenty-five to thirty years would perhaps be more expectable. In view of Methanites’ difficulties in remembering kin before their grandparents (see Chapter 7), it is conceivable that a generation had ‘slipped out’ of the computation of kinship depth in connection with house construction dates. It is also in line with questions raised later about the actual historical accuracy of individual house-histories. Athanasiou’s (1998, 109) description of a family line of priests on Methana indicates how easily generations can ‘slip out’ of the reckoning of ancestors. Athanasiou names the founder of the dynasty as Ilias, stating that he arrived as a priest in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence – that is, around 1830. That priest’s son, who 290


was born, according to Athanasiou’s informant, in 1875, continued his ministry. However, the archival documents indicate that Ilias was born on Methana in 1831. In Greece, sons of priests have frequently themselves become priests. It is therefore likely that Ilias’ father was the priest who arrived on Methana. It seems that two separate generations before the present grandparental generation have been homogenised in the family history, in the way noted in Chapter 7. The original priest’s arrival in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence had been remembered, but other recollections of his identity were apparently so hazy that he had been given his son’s name in the family memory, and thus two generations had become one. The forgetting of generations in the recitation of the neighbourhood’s house-building histories emphasises another theme of this chapter: the link between structures and monumentality. For Methanites, the links between structures and memorialisation related to houses especially, but other structures could also act as important monuments to ancestors. Thus, the family history of the dynasty of priests referred to in the previous paragraph related one of their number not only directly to the building of a number of churches but also to the running of the local elementary school (Athanasiou 1998, 109). Nevertheless, the link is particularly clear with regard to ‘houses’, the term used for dwellings in the village and burial plots in the cemetery, as well as the household, as explored later in this chapter (see also Chapters 5 and 7). The house, like the productive landscape, was a polysemic text. As du Boulay (1974, 138) indicates in her study of a village in Evvia, the house has been not merely a place for habitation but also a monument to the past, a sanctuary for the present, and a repository of the hopes of the future, not least because of its inheritance by future generations of the same family. Whatever its historical accuracy, the story of the sequence of housebuildings described by Clark emphasised an underlying principle for Methanites in recognising the origins of present village layouts. In the past, settlements grew via new houses built for the ‘extra’ children of each generation. It also highlighted the links between the present inhabitants of the different houses of this specific sector by relating them to a common ancestor: the actual number of generations between the present one and the common ancestor had little relevance. 291


Each new dwelling represented the establishment of a new ‘house’ as a line of generations. The missing-out of generations spotlights these houses as both artefact and family line: by failing to remember a generation or so, Methanites highlighted the importance of the line, rather than the exact number of generations involved. The forgetting of generations also confirms the difficulty of remembering one’s ancestors before the grandparental generation. House-histories, however debatable their historical accuracy to the outside observer, served as one of the very few ways in which Methanites could relate themselves to pre-grandparental generations and give themselves deeper roots in the soil of their patridha – their home on Methana. In the past, when suitable house plots were available, people usually built new houses near those of closely related households. Expansion at the edges of villages occurred only when there were no familyowned house-building sites close to existing houses. Hence, close kin frequently lived in a series of houses adjacent to one another. Of course, over the years houses have been bought and sold, although rarely, and then normally passing to close relatives. Also through occasional marriages of soghambri, some houses were occupied by families who did not share their neighbours’ surname, although the household was fully part of the neighbourhood kinship network. Despite occasional exceptions, therefore, sectors of villages tended to be dominated by particular surname groups even in the later twentieth century. As such, these kinship-clusters within the village setting meant that villages become part of the kinship landscape, each small portion of the village often being associated with a particularly closely-knit group of kin. This phenomenon is clearly visible in the surviving original documents from the census of 1879. Each village had its own census-takers, which included the village priest. The instructions to the census-takers on the census-form indicate that they should conduct the registration of all those living in each house on the night of 14–15 April (Khouliarakis 1976, 355): the clear intention is that every house is visited individually. The internal evidence of the original documents strongly suggests that the census-takers walked systematically from house to house down each street in turn. It is not clear, however, whether they went along all the houses on one side and then the other, or progressed alternately from one side to the other. Because 292


settlements had grown organically, there were doubtless numerous gaps in rows of houses, and sections where houses were scattered more thinly. Thus, the census-takers would have been forced to vary their methods of progress to suit the circumstances. Nevertheless, it seems clear that on occasions the census-takers progressed alternately from one side of the street to the other. In one village, for example, households with the surname Kondoghiannis alternate in the list with those called Kondoghianopoulos. The most likely explanation is that the two surname groups had houses in rows opposite each other, rather than a row of houses being inhabited alternately by Kondoghiannis and Kondoghianopoulos families. That census-takers visited houses on alternate sides of a street as they worked was confirmed in correspondence with the daughter of a Methanitis who emigrated early in the twentieth century. My informant’s grandfather was one of three brothers. In 1879, two were unmarried, and the oldest was married and living in a separate house. In the list of households in the census, the entry for the married son’s house is separated from that of his father by that of another household with a different surname. However, when my informant visited Methana in the 1990s, she discovered that the house where her father grew up was one of three in a row, inhabited by her father’s father and his two brothers. Evidently, some time after 1879, another house was built to accommodate the third son. This small vignette of information also corroborates Methanites’ descriptions of sons building new houses close to those of their parents. The 1879 documents do not tell us whether the census-takers started at the middle of the village and worked outwards or whether they started at the outskirts and worked their way progressively through to the other edge. Internal evidence in the documents, and the layouts of the villages themselves, suggests, however, that the census-takers started and ended at the outskirts in several instances. The main study village seems to have originated in the nineteenth century from a straggle of houses along a path, only developing a recognisable centre in the twentieth century (Forbes 1982, 118–19). Similar developmental histories are indicated by the strong element of linearity visible in the layouts of many villages in the later twentieth century (Clark 1988, 55– 6). The natural way to proceed methodically through such settlements 293


is to start at one end and work through to the other. The census evidence from the village of Aghii Theodhori suggests exactly this. The first family listed shared its surname with only two other households in the village. Even in the 1970s, a household with that surname occupied a house right at the edge of the village: quite probably this was the house visited first in 1879. The census sheets, supported by data from the register of male births, indicate the way in which later nineteenth-century Methana villages were composed of a series of kin clusters, or occasionally dominated by one or two kinship groups. This can be indicated statistically by examining the proportion of households on the census lists which were separated from another household with the same surname by four or fewer entries. The approach assumes that census-takers progressed along streets visiting houses on either side as they went: it is self-evidently rough and ready, but gives an idea of the physical closeness of patrilineally related households. The statistics therefore give a reasonable idea of the level of kin clustering in villages at this time. Dhritseika Meghalo Khori Aghii Theodhori Kaimeni Khora Palea Loutra Vromolimni Meghalo Potami

36% 63% 71% 77% 81% 83% 89%

Particular examples from the census make the point more clearly. In the census documents in one village, households with members having the surname Triandaphyllou are numbered 1, 3, and 5 on the census list, whereas those with the surname Gkikas are numbered 2, 4, and 7 (see the following table). In addition, household 5, although headed by a Triandaphyllou, also contains the family of a soghambros with the surname Theodhorou. Other Theodhorou households are numbered 6, 8, and 9. Forty-seven people lived in these nine houses, with seven of these households containing two or three adult generations, married or widowed. Thus, these nine houses – a quarter of the total of thirtyseven households – and their substantial population were occupied by 294


just three surname groups. This example indicates the way in which sectors of villages were dominated by clusters of closely interrelated kin. Some of the interrelationships in this neighbourhood can be inferred from the census details. In table 8.1, the heads of households 6 and 9 share the same first name as well as the same surname – Ioannis Theodhorou. Their age differences – sixty and seventy-five, respectively – are small enough that they may well have been named after the same grandfather, making them first cousins. Household 2 was a four-generation household, headed by a ninety-year-old man and his eighty-seven-year-old wife. Other members included the widow of this elderly couple’s son, her married son, with his wife and two-yearold son. Sixty-six-year-old Anastasios I. Gkikas in household 7 was presumably another son of the elderly head of household 2. The G. Gkikas, whose seventy-five-year-old widow was still living in household 4, would probably have been too old to be a son of ninety-yearold Ioannis because he was likely to have been somewhat older than his wife. He could well have been a younger brother. The seventy-five-year-old Ioannis Theodhorou in household 9 was most probably the father of forty-one-year-old Athanasios Ioannou Theodhorou, the soghambros, in household 5. Athanasios’ father-inlaw, Andonios Triandaphyllou was seventy. The heads of households 1 and 3, with whom he shared the same surname, were both sixty-five. Although not definitively provable, it is most likely that they were his brothers. If this is correct, then households 1, 3, 5, 6, and 9 were all closely related, either through agnatic or affinal links. We can also most probably add household 8, because the sixty-six-year-old head is likely to have been either another first cousin of the heads of households 6 and 9 or possibly a brother to one of them. In other situations, the census documents list several households with the same surname one after the other. So, for example, in Meghalo Khori, the surname Politis is found in households 42 to 45 inclusive (see table 8.2). The eighty-two-year-old founder of this kin cluster lived in household 42 with his married youngest son and the son’s family. Households 43–45 contained other sons with their families. Another son lived as a soghambros elsewhere in the village (household 1). Yet another household with the same surname (number 74) 295

296

297 table 8.1. A neighbourhood dominated by close kinship links

HH no.

Surname

Name

Father [H]

Age

Status

1 1 1

Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou

Nikolaos Ekaterina Mikhail

N N

65 60 24

Wife Daughter

2 2 2 2 2 2

Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas

Ioannis Mardhitsa Ioannis Maria Dhimitrios Eleni

D I ? I I D

90 87 27 22 2 52

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou Triandaphyllou

Anastasios Stamata Nikolaos Eleni Anastasios Andonios Stamata Ioannis

A A N N N N N

65 58 32 31 9 7 4 2

4 4 4 4 4 4

Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas

Ioannis Maria Gheorghios Andonios Ekaterini Ekaterini

G I I I I G

56 50 24 18 19 75

5 5 5 5 5

Triandaphyllou Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou

Andonios Athanasios Ekaterina Andonios Ioannis

I A A A

70 41 30 9 3

Wife Son Son Daughter Widow of G. Gkikas – Mother of Ioannis Widowed Son of head of HH 6? Wife of Athanasios Son Son

6 6 6 6

Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou

Ioannis Paraskevi Dhimitrios Panaghoula

I I D

60 60 27 20

Wife Son Wife of Dhimitrios

7 7 7 7 7 7 7

Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas Gkikas

Anastasios Maria Ioannis Maria Anastasios Maria Ekaterina

I A A I I I I

66 58 42 37 8 3 1

Wife of Anastasios Son of Anastasios Wife of Ioannis Son Daughter Daughter

8 8

Theodhorou Theodhorou

Dhimitrios Maria

66 46

Wife of Dhamianos

8 8 8

Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou

Stamatios A---ki Stamata

35 24 1

Son of Dhamianos Wife of Stamatios Daughter of Stamatios

9 9 9

Theodhorou Theodhorou Theodhorou

Ioannis Stamata Maria

75 55 19

Wife Daughter

I I

Comments Brother of heads of HH 3 and 5?

See also HH 7 Wife of old Ioannis Grandson of 90-year-old Ioannis? Wife of young Ioannis Son Widow of D. Gkikas – mother of 27-year-old Ioannis Brother of heads of HH 1 and 5? Wife of Anastasios Son of Anastasios Wife of Nikolaos Son of Nikolaos Son of Nikolaos Daughter of Nikolaos Son of Nikolaos

HH = household

Downloaded from Cambridge Books Online by IP 83.132.177.223 on Sun Jul 25 03:56:10 BST 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720284.010 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2010

Wife of Nikolaos

NB 3 Marias in same house

Maria only 11 years older than ‘son’ – Dhamianos’ second wife?


table 8.2. A sequence of closely related households HH no. Surname Name

Father [H]

Age Status

42 42 42

Politis Politis Politis

Anastasios Petroula Ioannis

A A Anastasios

82 73 35

42 42 42 42

Politis Politis Politis Politis

Marigho Anastasios ?name Gheorghoula

Ioannis Ioannis Ioannis Ioannis

30 12 10 8

42

Politis

Bilio

Ioannis

6

42

Politis

Irinio

Ioannis

3

43

Politis

Pappa

Gheorghios 45

43 43 43 43 44

Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis

Petroula Irini Maria Malta Athanasios

Gheorghios Gheorghios Gheorghios Gheorghios Anastasios

20 18 15 13 38

44 44 44 44 44 44 44 45

Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis

Maria Ekaterini Anastasios Stamato Nikolaos Gheorghios Ioannis Dhimitrios

Athanasios Athanasios Athanasios Athanasios Athanasios Athanasios Athanasios Anastasios

34 13 11 9 6 4 2 45

45 45 45 45 45 45

Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis Politis

Stamato Anastasios Phlora Ekaterini Ioannis Eleni

Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios Dhimitrios

42 22 19 14 7 4

HH = household

298

Comments

Wife Son of Anastasios Ioannis’ wife Ioannis’ son Ioannis’ son Ioannis’ daughter Ioannis’ daughter Ioannis’ daughter Widowed. No father’s name – presumably son of head of HH 42 Daughter Daughter Daughter Daughter Son of head of HH 42 Wife Daughter Son Daughter Son Son Son Son of head of HH 42 Wife Son Daughter Daughter Son Daughter


may well have been headed by the brother of the head of household 42, although the evidence in the documents is inadequate for complete certainty. In the same village, seven households numbered consecutively 77– 83 contained individuals or families with the surname Andhreou. Households 81–83 were those of three sons of Ioannis Andhreou. Households 79 and 80 contained two sons of Andonios Andhreou. Household 78 was headed by Mikhail Andhreou’s son, and household 77, headed by Anaghnostis Lakou, contained Mikhail’s widow, in her eighties. The exact relationship among Mikhail, Ioannis, and Andonios, all of whom were apparently dead, is unclear. They were most likely brothers, though they could have been cousins. That they shared a common ancestry is further suggested by marginal notes in the census sheets that the children of both Andonios and Ioannis had unspecified connections with the Plain of Trizin. The most extreme example in the census was in Vromolimni. There, ten households – 14–19, 21, 22, 24, and 25 – all had the surname Vlakhos or Vlakhou (the two forms seem to have been used interchangeably). From the evidence of names and ages, it would seem that households 15, 21, and 22 were occupied by three sons of Andonios Vlakhos. Household 18 was headed by a son of Athanasios Vlakhos, and the widow of another son headed household 19. Household 24 was headed by the son of the head of household 25. Even households which did not share exactly the same surname may have been agnatically related. The alternation of the surnames Kondoghiannis (literally ‘Short-John’) and Kondoghianoupoulos (literally ‘Little-Short-John’) in Meghalo Khori has been mentioned previously and is laid out in table 8.3. A derivation of one from the other is quite likely just on linguistic grounds because the suffix‘opoulos’ denotes a diminutive or familiar form of the name ‘Kondoghiannis’. In the nineteenth-century documents, it is evident that there was a certain amount of fluidity in surnames, with alternative spellings (e.g., Kodzas/Gkodzias; Dzinaris/Tsinaris) probably indicating linguistic variability, and more rarely, with entries such as ‘Anastasiou or Gkioni’ and ‘Abatis or Ilias’. In the mitroo arrenon, births registered to men with the surnames Kondoghiannis and Kondoghianopoulos from the mid-1850s to the mid-1870s indicate that oldest 299


table 8.3. Two related groups on opposite sides of a street HH no. Surname

Name

Father (or husband) Age Status

19 19 19 19 19 19

Maphoutsis Maphoutsis Maphoutsis Maphoutsis Maphoutsis Maphoutsis

Ioannis Maria Athanasios Spyridhon Eleni Dhimitrios

Sotir. (?) I I I I I

50 48 32 26 22 16

20 20 20

Kondoghiannopoulos Ioannis Kondoghiannopoulos Marigho Maphoutsis --- akh?

D I D

24 19 46

21 21 21 21 21 21 21

Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Maphoutsis

Sot Sot Sot Sot Sot Sot Ana

42 19 14 11 5 8 62

22 22

Kondoghiannopoulos Pappa Ioannis S Kondoghiannopoulos Gheorghitsa I S

47 43

22 22 22 22

Kondoghiannopoulos Kondoghiannopoulos Kondoghiannopoulos Kondoghiannopoulos

Eleni Spyridhon Effrosini Dhimitrios

IS IS IS IS

16 13 11 8

23 23

Kondoghianis Kondoghianis

Dhimitrios Ekaterini

So D

50 42

23 23 23 23

Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis Kondoghianis

Andonios Gheorghios Marina Petros

D D D D

11 9 6 3

Stamato Spyridhon Maria Ekaterini Eleni Petros Maro

HH = household

300

Wife of Ioannis Son Son Daughter Son Wife of Ioannis Widow of D. Maphoutsis Widow Son Daughter Daughter Daughter Son Widow of A. Maphoutsis Wife of Pappa Ioannis Daughter Son Daughter Son Wife of Dhimitrios Son Son Daughter Son


sons’ names were restricted to Ioannis and Spyros/Spyridhon in both surnames (three Kondoghiannis, two Kondoghianopoulos). Andonis was also a father’s name in each group. The clearest evidence of the relatedness of these two surname groups derives from the entry in the 1879 census for Ioannis D. Kondoghiannopoulos, aged twenty-four, in household 20. In the mitroo arrenon for 1855, the year of his birth according to the census, there is an entry for the birth of Ioannis Dhimitriou Kondoghianis in Meghalo Khori. Because none of the other Kondoghianis or Kondoghiannopoulos households in the census record Dhimitrios as a father’s name, it is evident that in local usage, Ioannis’ surname had changed from Kondoghianis to Kondoghiannopoulos in the intervening years. However, also in 1855, the mitroo arrenon records the birth of Ioannis Andoniou Kondoghiannopoulos in Meghalo Khori, and a number of sons of Pappa Ioannis Kondoghiannopoulos are likewise listed. Andonios Kondoghiannopoulos and his descendents are not recorded in the 1879 census, but Pappa Ioannis’ household is. Because of the confusion which would result, it seems unlikely that local usage would change a surname to that of an unrelated family. Therefore, the name change from Ioannis Kondoghianis to Ioannis Kondoghianopoulos presumably indicates a situation in which this household’s name was ‘regularised’ to bring it in line with those of closely related households. That being the case, it must be assumed that the other Kondoghiannopoulos households had previously also been known by the surname Kondoghiannis. It is possible that this name change stems from recognition that, although originally all these households had belonged to the same soi, the passage of the generations had resulted in the soi’s separation into different kin groups. For reasons not clarified in the census, a Kondoghianis household (no. 21) and a neighbouring Kondoghianopoulos household (no. 20) each contained the widow of a man surnamed Maphoutsis. Adjacent to these two was another household surnamed Maphoutsis (no. 19). The exact relationship of the two Maphoutsis widows with household 19 is unspecified, but both were a generation older than the men heading the households, and, aged forty-six and sixty-two, were of the same generation as the head of household 19’s wife, who was fortyeight. In view of what has been stated already about the establishment 301


of offspring in houses close to the original house, it seems likely that the husbands of the widows in households 20 and 21 had been brothers of the Ioannis Maphoutsis heading household 19. Significantly, the mitroo arrenon records no sons born to the dead husbands. Thus, it is very possible that the Kondoghianis head of household 20 and the Kondoghiannopoulos head of household 21 were soghambri, who married daughters of two Maphoutsis brothers, because there were apparently no sons to continue the household. If the suggestion made earlier concerning the marriage of the daughters of two Maphoutsis brothers were the case, it would provide a context for the man’s change of surname from Kondoghianis to Kondoghiannopoulos. Methanites emphasised that, although rare instances were known, it was highly undesirable for more than one marriage to take place between the same two soia: for example, the marriage of two female first cousins to two men who were themselves cousins was criticised as highly inappropriate. The two wives of the in-marrying soghambri in households 20 and 21 were first cousins. From the ages recorded in the census, it is evident that the man born as Ioannis Kondoghianis married into household 20 after Sotiris Kondoghianis married into household 21. As noted earlier, a likely context for the change of surname from Kondoghianis to Kondoghiannopoulos would be the recognition of the separation of what was originally a single soi into two separate soia. Such a surname-change might well have occurred in the context of Ioannis’ marriage, emphasising that he was not of the same kindred as his wife’s first cousin’s husband. Another situation in which variations on a basic name suggest an origin in a common kindred may be visible elsewhere in the same village. Dhimitrios Mastroghiannis (literally ‘Craftsman John’) appears in household 63: his son Konstandinos was living in household 65. The three sons of Athanasios Meghaloghiannis (literally ‘Big John’) lived in households 67, 68, and 69. Significantly, Athanasios’ oldest son was also called Dhimitrios. Although the recurrence of a popular name such as Dhimitrios could be a matter of chance, its combination with the similarity of the two surnames and the likelihood that all the families lived adjacent to one another hints at a kinship relationship. 302


A few settlements were dominated by a single surname group. An example is the village of Dhritseika, named after the surname Dhritsos. The suffix -eika indicates an area dominated by or owned by a particular family: hence, essentially ‘Dhritsosville’. By 1879, however, only a single household with that surname survived. Palea Loutra in 1879 had approximately one-third of its households originating in possibly just two groups of brothers named Phlambouris, if one includes the soghambros in household 19 as an ‘honorary’ Phlambouris. In the 1970s, the village of Makrilongos was sometimes nicknamed Betseika because of the number of households with the surname Betsis. Unfortunately, records of the 1879 census for the village could not be found. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon to be found in the extant census records from 1879 is the small village of Kaimeni Khora. Of the seven surnames listed at that time, approximately half of all households were named Gkodzias (8 of 17 households). There is evidence that this surname originated with a group of refugees from the island of Psara immediately after the War of Independence (see Chapter 3). Although the mitroo arrenon and census documents are not completely consistent, the eight Gkodzias households in 1879 seem to derive from a group of five or six men of that name. The dates of birth of their offspring range from 1821 to 1843, consistent with a group of relatively young men, presumably brothers and/or cousins and their families, fleeing the consequences of the War of Independence (1821– 30). If this surmise is correct, everyone with this surname in 1879 was probably related at the level of second cousin or closer. They were thus all members of a single agnatic soi. The tendency for households to live near to other close relatives, and often in neighbourhoods dominated by kin members, has been part of the overall kinship landscape of Methanites for generations. But it should not be thought of simply as a mental map – still less an abstract anthropological construct not understood by Methanites. It had great practical significance. During my initial fieldwork in the 1970s, there was constant to-ing and fro-ing between the closely related households of the neighbourhood in which I lived. These visits were an everyday occurrence and for the most mundane of reasons. Frequently, they were simply quick chats as someone was passing to or from the fields 303


or the rest of the village. They might be anything from a few words to a long conversation with one or more people passing along the street and others in a house yard or on a house terrace. Lending and borrowing of minor items took place on an almost daily basis. The borrowing of major items such as agricultural equipment, pack animals, and so forth was also a regular occurrence, as was the pooling of labour for larger tasks, agricultural and non-agricultural. Stories of life in the village before World War II indicated that visits between houses and the interchange of food, equipment, and labour were even more frequent. Women in particular emphasised the social side of the spinning and carding ‘bees’, which took place during the summer months in the old days. A party of neighbours would gather in one house in the evening, working by the light of oil lamps late into the night, talking, singing, and enjoying each other’s company. Passing conversations and regular visits after work were an integral part of the social fabric of the neighbourhood and of the village more generally. They were also an opportunity to catch up on latest items of news, which might include land for sale, changing prices of agricultural produce, the arrival of someone selling or buying produce, an impending wedding, or a recent death. Even snippets of apparently trivial information might be useful: after I had told a neighbour in passing conversation about the small but sturdy mules and horses I had seen on a brief trip to the island of Skyros, he went there to investigate the possibility of buying a mule. Labour, too, would be regularly exchanged as and when particular tasks (building works, major agricultural tasks) demanded more people than a household could provide (see Chapter 5). Thus, an elderly and somewhat disabled neighbour of mine was regularly helped by her kin in the neighbourhood with a wide range of household and agricultural chores while her husband was away for several months visiting one of their sons in the United States. Her daughter and son-in-law lived in another village on Methana. They helped with some of the major agricultural tasks but could not be expected to come to help with all the small chores which needed one or two extra people to complete. Small items of food were particularly commonly exchanged: when one household had a surplus and it was known that others did not, such items would be freely distributed to close kin and friends round the 304


neighbourhood. These exchanges are well described by Clark (1988, 313). Sometimes small-scale resources would be pooled and then shared out. For example, my next-door neighbour had an arrangement with a kinswoman in the neighbourhood over cheese making. The few sheep and goats which most households owned gave very limited amounts of milk towards the end of the milking period – too small sometimes for making into cheese effectively. My neighbour would therefore give her milk to her kinswoman on one day and then receive her kinswoman’s milk the next. They could thus each make a small batch of cheese on alternate days. The regular giving and receiving of food was especially visible with fresh bread. Because each family baked a large quantity of bread (possibly 30 kilograms or more) only every three or four weeks, fresh bread was not regularly available. In summer, when bread went stale in the hot, dry weather after only a few days, most bread was made as (paximadhi), a deliberately dried bread which could be reconstituted by briefly dipping in water. Although far tastier than the description implies, it was not preferable to fresh bread. In winter, bread would go stale more slowly, and paximadhi was not made, but after nearly a month bread would be very stale and sometimes starting to go mouldy. Fresh bread was thus a semi-luxury year-round. After a household had baked (always visible, and often smellable, via the dense aromatic smoke from the burning resinous brushwood in its oven), it was usual to see one or more of its women scurrying to the houses of nearby kin with loaves of fresh bread wrapped in their aprons. Their kin would return the favour when they baked (see also Clark 1988, 313). All these sorts of social intercourse were at their most intensive among close kin but were easiest with those who were closest neighbours. The ideal situation was when close neighbours were also close kin. The importance of having good relations with neighbours whether kin or non-kin was emphasised by villagers: these people were closest to hand should help of any sort be needed. During fieldwork in 1970s, I spent a morning picking tomatoes with one of only two village families which grew them for sale. My reward was some of the luxuriant and much-prized edible weeds growing along the irrigation channels. Some of these I gave to a neighbour as part of the neighbourhood food-exchange networks in which I, too, was enmeshed. 305


He was delighted when it was explained that these were from my tomato-picking activities and I was sharing them with neighbours: ‘that is exactly the kind of thing that neighbours are for’, he said. Statements of principle about good neighbours and good neighbourliness often referred also to kin by comparison. Several times during fieldwork, people referred to neighbours with whom they were on very good terms although they were not related. They would make a point of emphasising the good personal relations despite the lack of a kinship relationship. Occasionally, the observation was glossed by the statement that a good unrelated neighbour was as good as one of one’s own kin. Although these statements emphasised the expectation that people with whom one is on good terms are generally kin, in the mobilisation of personnel for work groups, it was noticeable that many tended to be both neighbours and kin simultaneously (see Chapter 3). The tendency to conflate kinship and neighbourliness (in both its geographical and its behavioural senses) was marked and epitomised by a small incident witnessed during fieldwork in the 1970s. At a public gathering, a heated argument developed between a man and his neighbour with the same surname but from a different soi who were on very poor terms. A man from another village who knew both, but not well, intervened. He told them that kin should get on with each other: heated arguments were highly inappropriate. On learning that they were not relatives, just neighbours, the man intervening stated that kin and neighbours were to be considered one and the same. Another example is Clark’s (1988, 371–2) description of a ghrinia (grumbling) scene between two women who were simultaneously neighbours and affinally linked kin. The dispute’s origin was a perceived lack of proper neighbourly behaviour on the part of one towards the other. The issues initially raised primarily related to lack of proper neighbourly etiquette in giving greetings and visiting and in help with domestic tasks. But it rapidly proceeded to discussion of more general issues of kinship and relatedness, involving the importance of good interpersonal relations. The course of the discussion in this whole scene highlighted the serious problems in everyday living of ‘not speaking’ (i.e., disputes) between households or individuals living very close to each other in the crowded confines of village neighbourhoods. 306


The desirability of having relatives as near neighbours was regularly emphasised whenever people talked about those whose houses were on the edge of the village. Houses on the village’s edge, especially if in any way separated from neighbouring houses, were considered to be locationally marginal, and their occupants were considered socially marginalised by virtue of their location. These houses were described as being (stin akri) – on the edge – of the village. Their position was almost invariably described as resulting from a lack of a suitable house-site located more centrally within the village. The term used repeatedly in describing decisions to build houses stin akri was (anangi) (necessity) – an important concept which excused otherwise inexcusable acts because of factors beyond one’s control (Forbes 1982, 234, fn. 2). For example, the main study village was built behind a volcanic crater, completely invisible from the sea (see Chapter 7). Even in the post–World War II era, only one house could be clearly seen by passing ships. It was built by the father of the senior member of the household. Other villagers regularly commented on how unfortunate he was to have to live so far away, stin akri. They would add, however, that it was because his father did not have a house of his own, and his family owned no land within the village suitable for a house plot. He was therefore forced ( [using the verbal form of anangi]) to build on land he owned right on the very edge of the village. Even greater compassion was voiced for the girl who married the son of the household head, who left her parental home in the middle of the village to live in a house completely isolated from the rest of her family. The actual distance between her marital home and her parents’ home was less than 300 metres, and her younger sister was married to a man with a house only about 100 metres away, closer to the village. Nevertheless, even after about twenty-five years of marriage, her ‘isolation’ from the rest of her kin was still an object of discussion when I visited in 1998. Another example is the much-repeated story of a man who lost his house in a dispute with his sister over inheritance (Clark 1988, 382–3). The details are complex but remembered partly because of the appalling and permanent rift between brother and sister and their father’s irrational behaviour which was one of the causes. The story 307


supports Methanites’ idea that certain families have a history of ‘bad blood’ (e.g., Clark 1988, 378, 394). In part, too, it is remembered because individual houses, as part of the village landscape, represent foci of memories of the histories of the individuals and families that lived in them (e.g., Clark 1988, 383). The fact that the man lost the patrimonial home, which should under traditional inheritance procedures have been his, was only part of the insult perpetrated by his father and sister. What people kept repeating was that he was forced to build himself a small house – up on the ridge – on the very top edge of the village. The physical marginality of those living on the edges of a village might also on occasions be associated with a marginality of personality. The father-in-law of Dhionysios Karas, whose personality and history are described at some length by Clark (1988, 19–26), built his house on the edge of the village due to the lack of a more central house site. In due course, a soghambros married his daughter and joined his household. The incoming spouse was not wealthy, being the son of a widow. His rather difficult personality, not unlike that of his fatherin-law, was such that it was identified in his nickname. His views and behaviour were not generally taken very seriously by other villagers. Elsewhere on the margins of the village lived a man whose strange behaviour, and that of his even stranger wife, were the butt of recurrent jokes and stories in the village and beyond. Not far from them, again in a marginal location, lived three old spinster sisters (see Clark 1997, 881, fn. 13; 391–2, 394) whose eccentricities and difficult personalities were a talking point of all and occasionally a problem for a few. They eventually made international notoriety when a journalist discovered that two of them had ganged up on the third, keeping her locked in a shed because they considered she had dishonoured the family name. Although genuine eccentrics or worse (e.g., the violent individual discussed by Clark 1988, 394) could be found in more central locations in the village, those living on the edges tended to be talked about most. The marginality in location and personality combined in these individuals or households fitted well with the interchangeability of the terms for house and family (see Chapter 5). The 1879 census returns also hint at a coincidence of locational marginality with kinship marginality in the nineteenth century. On the 308


evidence that census takers began and ended their work on the outskirts of several villages, the first and last few entries are likely to be those of households located on the outer edges. Of the first eight and last eight entries for the village of Meghalo Khori, five belonged to households with surnames unique to the village, three are listed as temporarily resident in the Plain of Trizin, and two more shared a surname not found elsewhere in the village. Again, in the 1879 census of the smaller village of Vromolimni, households 2 and 3 have a surname not found elsewhere in the village; the surname of household 4 is likewise unique to the village. The last entry for the village is an anomalous household containing people with three different surnames. In Aghii Theodhori, a village of 41 households, the first five entries contain two households with surnames unique to that community. Similarly, of the last six entries for Palea Loutra, three belong to households with surnames unique to the community. The last entry is a single individual, thirtysix years old, with only a personal name, described in the census notes as being ‘from Turkey’, the only Greek speaker in the community because all the rest were Albanian speakers. It is evident that for Methanites, a village landscape was not simply the layout of houses, streets and gardens. As is the case with the layout of fields, paths and churches across Methana, the village landscape was a place of multiple meanings. At one level, the positioning of the houses of one’s close blood kin, affines and unrelated neighbours with whom one gets on well, represented ‘islands’ within the ‘ocean’ of village houses, to and from which one navigated for all the multiple needs of daily life, social and material. Especially when one lived in a sector of a village dominated by one’s own close kinsmen and women, or in the case of in-marrying spouses, close affinal kin, the layout of neighbouring houses was a reification literally ‘on the ground’ of a section of one’s own kinship system. Because of the strong preference for virilocal residence, either in the husband’s parents’ house or in a house built close to it, over several generations, the kinship system primarily involved was the agnatic soi, defined through male links only. However, just as kinship reckoning recognised both agnatic and bilateral systems, so the exact social meanings of the different houses and their occupants throughout the village were specific to individuals. Thus, for example, in the village 309


of Liakotera, although the men of four households were not on speaking terms because of a variety of disputes, the households’ women continued to visit each other (Clark 1988, 381). At another level, one’s own house was in several senses the place where one ‘belonged’. When surrounded by houses of close kin, one was placed physically as well as conceptually within a section of one’s kinship system. Living in the house of one’s parents, and of the parents of one of them from the previous generation, one was placed very much in a historical context. The house became a material expression of one’s connection with one’s own ancestry and the past. The kinshipdominated neighbourhood in which I lived provided an example. In explanation of the fact that a man who lived elsewhere in the village was closely related to this network, it was explained that the man’s father had grown up in a house in the neighbourhood but had bought a house elsewhere in the village and moved away. The description of the incident implied that it was a denial of kinship solidarity. Indeed, relations between people of my neighbourhood and the household which had moved away were somewhat strained. Clark (1988, 180–9) sets out an example of how a house can connect people with their own past. The senior generation in one house at the completion date of Clark’s Ph.D. dissertation ascribed the original construction of their house to the great-great-grandfather of the present senior male, with a construction date of about 1770 (although as noted later, the actual historical ‘truth’ of this ascription is debatable). The house therefore gave the present generation of owners deep historical roots relating them to the period before Greece was free of Turkish domination. By talking to the occupants of the house, Clark traced a series of changes in the form of the house, associating them with changes in the make-up of the family through time. In other words, the history of the household was directly linked to the history of the house itself. As noted, a man’s house was where he ‘belonged’ in multiple ways, especially when living in the house where his father grew up, and his father before him. The links among a man, his house, and its previous generations of his patrilineal kin gave him roots and a historical identity which was further bolstered if his house was surrounded by those of other agnatic kin. These observations return us to the links among 310


generational time-depth, the agnatic soi, and issues of identity explored in Chapter 5. In these situations, a man’s house became very much a monumentalisation of his historical roots. The importance of houses for ‘rooting’ people with their kin and their past was not limited to men. When my correspondenceinformant whose father emigrated from Methana nearly a century ago finally visited Methana, her relatives showed her the house where he grew up and described the history of what had happened to the house during the twentieth century. In addition, they pointed out the houses of the brothers of her father’s father. In doing so, they reified the pre-existing knowledge of the existence of two brothers of her own grandfather, by ‘placing’ them in their historical contexts. They also automatically highlighted not simply the direct family line but also the wider kin group of which the family line was part, simultaneously emphasising the importance of houses as monuments to a whole agnatic soi rather than a single family line. In view of comments made elsewhere in this book about Methanites’ difficulties in measuring time before their grandparents, a number of features of the house history presented by Clark seem significant. The narrative seems to assume that the house remained unchanged from 1770 until about 1900, when the senior male in the household was born, the earliest description of the house deriving from his earliest years. Although not impossible, it is difficult to believe that the house remained essentially unchanged for 120 years before that time. Unusually, this house history ostensibly covers five generations, but it is notable that named ancestors extend no further back than the grandfather of the senior male: the latter died during Clark’s second fieldwork period. As noted earlier, other lines of evidence suggest that linking an unnamable great-great-grandfather with a date of about 1770 should not be taken too literally. A rough calculation of generation spans implied by the story indicates lengths which are too long to be readily believable (as noted earlier). Thus, an apparent time span of more than 200 years, possibly representing some six to ten generations in reality (depending on age at marriage, etc.), had been reduced to three generations from the point of view of the senior male in the household – in other words, the same generational depth as the agnatic soi. 311


Assigning accurate ages to houses or other structures was also often very difficult. As I note in Chapter 7, I was told that a house was 400 years old because it had been lived in by four generations (the time-depth of the owner’s soi) and that this fact therefore made it 400 years old. In addition, the phrase o pappous tou pappou mou (my grandfather’s grandfather; that is, great-great-grandfather) could be used when people wished to give an indication of great antiquity without being able to measure it in any way. However, on one occasion, when links between holders of adjacent plots were being recited, my informant used the phrase o pappous tou pappou mou (my grandfather’s grandfather) when referring specifically to his grandfather’s father. Such a usage seemed to be fairly standard. In the context of the present discussion, the historical reliability of dates associated with village houses is unimportant. The miscalculation of the age of his house by my informant does not alter the social fact that living in the house directly linked him with several past generations of his own family (whether literally four is likewise irrelevant). For the inhabitants, the antiquity, supposed or real, of their houses and the direct association of the houses with several ancestral generations allowed them to fix where they belonged in space and when in time. Knowledge of the histories of the houses of neighbouring kin also gave direct, material, geographical substance to how they belonged within the wider kinship system. Photographs of deceased parents and grandparents displayed in the house further emphasised the direct connections of the present occupants with those of the past (see Chapter 7). These links with multiple aspects of belonging account for the very real attachment that Methanites have had for their houses. In them, many have spent all of their lives. For many women, who have normally moved to their husband’s house on marriage, the house in which they have grown up and the house in which they have brought up their children were different, but both were full of meaning, not least as monuments to events in their own lives. In fact, as Clark (1988, 268) notes, there was a blurring of the terms and the concepts for the house as artefact, and the family and household as social construct: the same words were used for both. Houses, integrally related to production, have also been the material reification of households’ maintenance, 312


reproduction and socialisation. Traditionally, they have been the place where all the tools, equipment, and livestock associated with farming have been located, as well as where the produce has been stored. They have also been part of the estate of productive resources transmitted from one generation to the next (Clark 1988, 270). On marriage, women started to ‘belong’ to the ‘house’ of the husband. Full ‘belonging’ did not occur immediately: it was a slow process of absorption. Indeed, in Chapter 5, a middle-aged woman identified herself as ‘belonging’ to her soi of origin rather than identifying with her husband’s family. However, by the time they were of grandparental age, many women ‘belonged’ so completely to their husband’s ‘house’ that they might even be called in their absence after his first name or his nickname, though not generally to their faces. Thus, the elderly wife of a Barba Ioannis (‘Uncle’ Ioannis) might normally be referred to in her absence as Barbaioannina. The wife of an elderly man whose nickname (Boumis) referred to his dynamite fishing activities, was generally identified in her absence as Boumina. The completion of the process of incorporation of a woman into the ‘house’ of her husband was when she was buried in the same grave plot as her husband. An example of the strength of the attachment which Methanites expected people to have for ‘their own’ house can be seen in an example quoted by Clark (1988, 382–3). The context is the death and subsequent funeral of the woman who, in an inheritance dispute (described earlier), forced her brother out of the house in which he was born: the way in which that action cut him off from the roots of his identity was described in Chapter 7. At the time when she died in the house to which she moved on marriage, there was a separate ongoing inheritance dispute between her son and daughter. Relations between the two were so bad that although her daughter came to the funeral, she would not come to the small ceremony conducted by the priest in the house afterwards because her brother lived there. Her behaviour was considered to be especially inappropriate because she was slighting the house where she had been born and raised. Another example is the story associated with the ruined house, long abandoned, described in Chapter 7, which had belonged to a couple who kept control of all their property right up until their deaths. The inability of the heirs to agree to division of the property led to 313


them drawing knives on each other and leaving the house to fall to ruin. Out of the multiplicity of meanings for Methanites, that most relevant here is the moral that the house as part of the productive landscape was abandoned because of the failure to arrange for the orderly transmission of productive resources to the next generation: because of the parents’ selfish and improper behaviour, the ‘house’ (with all the multiple meanings and nuances of the Greek word) was destroyed. KINSHIP AND THE LANDSCAPE OF THE DEAD

The ties of kinship did not end with death, and the connections between house and family endured beyond the grave. In Chapter 9, I discuss the position of the cemetery within the wider landscape. Here, I discuss the kinship landscape within the cemetery itself and the ways in which grave-markers monumentalised the dead in much the same ways that houses monumentalised ancestral inhabitants and the living. Because Methanites did not practise disinterment of the dead and removal of their bones to a community ossuary, in a very real sense, a grave plot was the last, and permanent, resting place of a villager on Methana. As in life, so in death, the blurring of kinship and dwelling was visible in the terminology of grave monuments. Thus, inscriptions on some graves used the words . . . , ‘house of . . .’, followed by the family name (see Clark 1988, 268–70). The term represented simultaneously both an individual’s final abode in this world and the household of which the named person was assumed to be the head. The journey of the deceased from his or her home to the cemetery was accompanied by a variety of ritual observances which mirrored many aspects of traditional wedding ceremonies, an underlying ‘given’ of which was the leaving by the bride (more rarely the groom) of the house in which she had ‘belonged’ so far to a new house. The funeral service started with the preparation of the body for its journey to the church in much the same way as the bride was prepared in a ceremony immediately prior to the marriage service before, in most cases, leaving her parental home forever1 . The priest conducted a simple short ceremony at the threshold of the deceased’s house as he or she was about to leave it for the last time. The body 314


was then taken in procession to the church, led by pre-pubescent boys, some carrying lanterns. In much the same way, bridal parties would be preceded by pre-pubescent boys carrying candles. Inside the church, the religious ceremony can be understood as witnessing and sanctifying the deceased’s new status in much the same way as bride and groom were religiously sanctioned in their new status. After the church ceremony, the body was carried out of the church via the west door, at the far end from the altar. Normally, the living enter and exit via a south door in the side of the church, where there is one. In churches with a south door, the west door was normally only used for the egress of bodies on their way to the cemetery. The only other exception to this statement proves the rule: it was used for Good Friday services when a decorated bier representing the body of Christ was carried around villages, entering and exiting the church through this special door. On being carried out of the church, the body was taken in procession towards the cemetery, again led by the pre-pubescent boys, directly mirroring the processions taking bride and groom back from the church. The formal gates in the cemetery enclosure wall can likewise be seen as a counterpart to the thresholds of the bride’s and groom’s in-laws’ houses, which are each visited on returning from the church. A small ceremony would take place before the newly married couple entered the house: traditionally, the new couple would reside in one of these houses for the rest of their lives. In many cemeteries, however, the entry was in the northern side of the enclosure wall. The fact that this was the opposite side to that used in the church, and likewise that houses almost never had doorways on the northern side, emphasised, however, the differences between the worlds of the dead and the living. Finally, a small ritual funerary meal took place in the cemetery in which people uttered the words, ‘God forgive him/her’ – a pale reflection of the wedding feast in which the words ‘may they live’ would standardly be used. For these reasons, the description used by Methanites of dead relatives ‘residing under the cypresses [of the cemetery]’ was both reality and metaphor. The burial of a relative in the cemetery marked the end of physical co-residence in the household but not the end of their existence, any more than the removal of a child from the natal 315


house to another household in the village on marriage marked the end of his or her existence. The kinship relationship was remembered and maintained, not least via the formal photographs of parents and grandparents hung framed on the walls of houses (discussed earlier). Services and ceremonies were held in memory of the deceased and for the good of his or her soul. There also seemed to be an element in these ceremonies of ensuring that the soul had proper rest and did not return to torment its relatives (Clark 1988, 268 and fn. 4). In much the same way, an unlucky marriage ceremony might result in the couple divorcing and one of the parties returning to the natal home. Clark (1988, 392–3) describes exactly such a case in which a daughter left her husband and returned to torment her own parents and sister. The cemetery of the main study village indicated clearly by its layout that kinship relationships continued after death. It was organised very largely by agnatic soi – descent group – and by family (Clark 1988, 268), consisting of a series of small blocks of graves – ‘neighbourhoods’ – heavily dominated by but not exclusively occupied by a single surname group (fig. 8.3). Each block, like a neighbourhood, tended to lie adjacent to one or more others without clear demarcation lines keeping them apart. The ‘home’ of a married woman in the cemetery was not with her parents, in whose house/household she ‘belonged’ before marriage but in the house/household of her husband, whose name she also took on marriage. Most women also moved to their husband’s house on marriage, and so usually lived in neighbourhoods dominated by their husband’s kindred. Just as in life husband and wife shared the same house, ideally surrounded by the husband’s kin, so they shared the same grave, surrounded by the husband’s relatives in death. But also just as in neighbourhoods of the living, even in the idealised neighbourhoods of the dead there were exceptions to the rule. Thus, in the main study community’s cemetery, in one surname group there was a grave with a different surname (surname Z in fig. 8.3), that of a soghambros from a different community. Because he did not belong to any of the village’s surname groups, he became essentially a member of his wife’s surname group. When his wife died, she was therefore buried with the kinship group to which she – and he – ‘belonged’. Although kinship relationships were represented in the cemetery, they were tempered by village geography. Those who were brought 316


8.3. Kinship relationships continuing after death: a village cemetery with kinship ‘neighbourhoods’.

up in the village but went to live elsewhere did not move to a ‘house’ in the village cemetery. This is expectable for a woman or a soghambros who moved to another village on Methana on marriage. They then ‘belonged’ to a different house/household and kinship group on their marriage and thus would be buried with that group. But those who moved away to large cities such as Athens or elsewhere beyond Methana also normally had no place in the cemetery of the village in which they grew up. Just as their household did not belong any longer in the geography of a Methana village, so they did not move on to permanent residence in a ‘house’ in the village cemetery. The organisation of the cemetery thus represented an idealised version of a village neighbourhood – a kinship landscape of the dead. Indeed, occasionally certain aspects of a cemetery might represent reality rather than the ideal. Thus, in the cemetery of the main study community, an isolated pair of graves of a husband and wife lay at the periphery, close to the south-west corner (with surname P, in fig. 8.3) not far from a block of graves of a different surname group (Q). The 317


household concerned lived in a house right at the edge of the village in a neighbourhood whose ‘backbone’ consisted largely of female kinship links associated with the surname to which the adjacent block of graves in the cemetery belonged. This location, at first sight anomalous, still maintained the principle of incorporation within the soi (kindred) because, despite the patrilineal bias, kinship is bilateral and an individual’s soi is reckoned to include both maternal and paternal links. It also maintained the reality of the kinship-dominated neighbourhood in which they resided in life. KINSHIP AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE

The landscape of Methana, as seen from the vantage point of one of its volcanic peaks, was a patchwork of terraces, their stone retaining walls stepping down the steep hillsides towards the sea. Skales – blocks of terraces – were frequently separated from other blocks by rocky spurs of uncultivable lava, especially at higher elevations. Each skala therefore formed an ‘embayment’, hollowed in the middle and curving outwards and forwards towards the jumble of volcanic boulders which formed the dividing lava flows. Less frequently, large skales might be divided by a wall running vertically down the flight of terrace steps. On the more gently sloping land close to the coast, further from the high vantage point, individual terraces wound their way along a contour for 100 metres or more, frequently being divided from others by massive boulders or large stone-piles generated from field clearance. Even on the small areas of genuinely flat land, division into smaller plots was usually evident, the plots being identifiable through their different crops. This was the patchwork landscape as seen by the outside observer. It was the background to other kinds of meanings which the landscape afforded to Methanites. For the inhabitant of the village whose own territory he or she was viewing, however, there was a far more finely divided and significant patchwork, generally invisible to the naked eye but knowable because of the knowledge of the kinship relationships of the people living and working within that person’s village. These kinship relationships explained the division of ownership of the landscape in view. For the insider, the meaning in the patchwork landscape 318


was that of a patchwork of ownerships of land and trees, ownerships gained by members of the community primarily via inheritance from older generations of their own kin. More rarely, they were purchased. Even then, land was generally sold by preference to close kin if possible (discussed later). Clear physical boundaries between ownerships were rarely readily visible. A terrace, known locally as a ‘field’ (), was generally a natural physical unit, separated from those above and below by the retaining walls. Normally, nothing indicated whether someone owned a block of several terraces or one terrace. Skales of terraces might well be divided vertically rather than horizontally. In this situation, the only indicator of the division of each terrace was likely to be a furrow running from front to back, although occasionally a large stone might be used. Villagers only knew a small proportion of all the ownerships of all village members all over their local landscapes. The difficulty of knowing who owned which piece of land was exacerbated by the extreme degree of fragmentation of landholdings on Methana (Forbes 1982, 148–50). According to Greek government statistics, in the main study community in the early 1970s, each household owned on average 3.3 hectares, divided into twenty separate plots: figures for other Methana villages were comparable. Individual plot sizes of 500 square metres and less were quite frequent (e.g., Forbes 1982, 330–3). The ownership of fruit trees separately from the land on which they grew simply exacerbated the situation. To Methanites, the patchwork of ownerships, so finely divided that no one could know them all, was a fact of life. Far from being ignored, however, it often intruded into conversations as small groups of Methanites travelled through the landscape to work in their own fields or those of relatives or neighbours whom they were helping. ‘Who owns that . . . ?’ was a regular question about plots of land or groups of trees as people travelled along roads, paths and mule tracks. This patchwork of ownerships, more often referred to disapprovingly by academics as ‘fragmentation of landholdings’, has been the subject of discussion worldwide. It is generally explained by these same academics on a worldwide scale as having originated from the working-out of partible inheritance over the generations, each new 319


generation of heirs tending to divide the property owned by the previous generation (Bentley 1987; Forbes 1989, 2000b). Methanites readily accepted that each household’s wide scattering of plots of land and trees resulted from division of different plots of the preceding generation’s property by the heirs. They also noted that the broadly scattered patchworks of ownerships caused their households a variety of problems in working them, but there was little that could be done about it because that was the custom. ; & (or ) – ‘what can we do about it [i.e., nothing at all]? It’s what our grandfathers did’ (or ‘they are what our grandfathers left us’) – they would say. Such sayings succinctly linked the present state of their farm landscape with previous generations of their own kin. Each household’s widely scattered landholdings in small plots and isolated small groups of fruit trees represented an ‘archipelago’ of productive resources (see Chapter 6), forming known ‘islands’ in the ‘sea’ of productive land, in much the same way as houses of close kin acted as ‘islands’ of intensified social and historical contact within the village. In this section, I discuss how individual plots in this ‘archipelago’ of land owned by a household reified literally ‘on the ground’ a person’s kinship relationships and that person’s relationship with the past via the previous generations which built and improved the land. Methanites’ traditional ideals relating to the family interwove relationships between older and younger generations on the one hand with the production and transmission of property on the other: Methanites’ ideals regarding the family emphasised the responsibilities . . . of family members. Most important were carrying on the family line through progeny, providing for family members’ spiritual and material well-being, maintaining and increasing the prosperity of the family for the children’s dowry and inheritance, arranging good marriages for children, caring for parents in their old age, and performing the essential rituals upon their death. (Clark 1988, 153)

Methanites recognised that skales of terraces were built by the family of an ancestor, known or unknown. It was said that when people first settled a village – in a time period never properly defined – the founding families claimed blocks of uncultivated hillside as potential 320


agricultural land. A man and his sons would use slack periods in the agricultural year, especially the summer after the harvest and the threshing, to clear an area of scrubland which they owned and to construct terraces on it. The work was arduous and slow, especially in the days before access to explosives. Huge boulders had to be levered out of the ground and manoeuvred into position to make terrace retaining walls. Cobbles and pebbles had to be separated out and deposited behind the larger stones as infilling to stop the soil being washed out through the terrace wall itself. Finally, precious soil had to be shovelled into position to produce a level ‘bench’ in the hillside. Construction of a skala might therefore take much of a person’s lifetime. By the time of the death of the parents, the skala which the sons had helped to build would generally be divided into two or more portions among the heirs along with all other blocks of land and trees (see Chapter 5; also Forbes 1982, 131–57, and esp. Clark 1988, 330–47). As this process continued through the generations, so individually owned ‘patches’ in the ownership patchwork became smaller and smaller, but the original substantial block of land remained visible in ownership terms because it became a ‘neighbourhood’ of contiguous plots of land: for several generations, they would all be owned by members of the same kindred. This phenomenon was apparent on several occasions when I was working in the fields with a household. A family member might point out the household’s own holding of terraces, often noting spontaneously that adjacent terraces in one direction belonged to a brother, whereas those in the other direction might belong to a sister or a first cousin. Beyond these might on occasions be the terraces of second cousins. Sometimes one or more of the cluster of plots would belong to a household in another village because it had been given as dowry to a female heir when she moved to another village on marriage or had been inherited by a man who had moved to another village as a soghambros, and it had remained with the descendents of the household since that time. On other occasions I might be told something such as: ‘these are our olive trees, which were my mother’s dowry – those next to them belong to my mother’s brother’. The second part of the statement in effect certified the truth of the first part: if the olives next to ours 321


belong to my mother’s brother then ours can only have come to us via my mother’s dowry, through the division of my grandparents’ patrimony. Likewise, when I was helping my neighbour to pick grapes in a mountain vineyard while her husband was away in the United States, the faint division between the household’s vines and those of the adjacent owner was pointed out to me. ‘Those belong to Barba Mikhalis who lives in . . . [another village]. He’s my husband’s brother’. Significantly, this sort of information was volunteered by villagers on numerous occasions, without the ethnographer initiating the topic of conversation. In these small incidents, there was a real element of villagers rehearsing their own kinship links with the owners of the property immediately adjacent to their own plot or cluster of fruit trees. Likewise, my simple question, ‘Who owns that field?’, using the standard linguistic formula and pointing to a particular plot would be just as likely to precipitate a flood of information about other plots and the kin that owned them, as well as the plot about which I had asked. The layout of a series of ownerships of adjacent plots was therefore, at one level of thought, a sort of kinship diagram written out on the ground. But, unlike a diagram written on paper, the terrace walls and fields were much more permanent. The fact that the different owners of a skala or a block of terraces were all related, inevitably guided thought to the ancestor, known or unknown, who had originally owned and probably built the complete unit, or at least a major portion of it. Thus, sectors of the landscape with their terrace-walled fields and trees were themselves monuments to their previous owners. Fig. 8.4 is a sketch plan of an area of nine small plots, the narrowest ones being only a few metres wide, all traditionally irrigated by (a swipe, see Chapter 7) from their own shallow wells. The area was divided into eight separate ownerships, some of which were themselves shared between two or more owners. With the exception of the roughly rhombus-shaped plot, which was a terrace at a slightly higher level, the whole area was essentially a single flat field, separation of the different ownerships being simply a furrow with a few large stones along it. One of the plot owners explained that, initially, the whole area had belonged to a man with the same surname as himself. He proceeded to name all the plot holders, all but two of whom had 322


8.4. Sketch plan of the ownerships of an area of small irrigated plots.

that surname. The owner of plots D and E said he acquired them as part of the purchase of a substantial amount of property from his uncle, who sold much or all of his estate before emigrating to America. Over the years, he repeatedly pointed out to me various parts of his property which came via purchase from his uncle. It is another example of the spontaneous rehearsal of the kinship links associated with particular plots of land or groups of fruit trees. This example highlights the way in which property, even when sold, should be kept within the soi if at all possible. Simultaneously, it highlights the way in which items of property became monuments to deceased relatives. The information on the kinship links of the plot owners came from a number of discussions with this man and other Methanites. In Chapter 7, I note that some Methanites were unsure of all of the siblings of their grandparents or even of their parents. Those whose identities were least secure had left Methana, especially for the United States and Canada, never returned, nor maintained links with their families. But with the passage of time, even those remaining on Methana from previous generations became on occasions difficult to place in the correct kinship position. I faced this problem when working out the 323


kinship system which this small area of plots represented. When I attempted to calculate the kinship links of two first cousins, the owners of plots C and D, with the owner of plot A, the owner of plot C and the owner of plots D and E both stated that the owner of plot A was the son of a brother of their respective fathers. That made him another first cousin, as they were to each other (see fig. 8.4), which made sense, ‘on the ground’, because all five adjacent plots, A, B, C, D and E, would then be owned by first cousins. But an elderly nonrelative, who provided considerably more detail on the background of plot A’s owner, indicated that he was actually the youngest brother of the two cousins’ fathers. It would seem that the two first cousins had ‘re-arranged’ their kinship links with the man, making him a first cousin rather than an uncle, possibly because he was only some twenty years older than the senior of the two cousins. This ‘re-arrangement’ of kinship to fit in with the observed facts – in this case, literally on the ground – is directly comparable to the missing-out of generations associated with houses noted earlier. It also highlights the way in which Methanites thought of relatives in terms of intragenerational links, rather than identifying kinship via an apical ancestor, as discussed in Chapter 5. Because plot A was directly adjacent to plots B, C, D and E which were owned by first cousins, my informants assumed that he was another first cousin, rather than working back through the generations to identify his ‘real’ kinship position. Essentially, therefore, every plot and every fruit tree placed people’s identity within a landscape, but at the same time they placed them within a nexus of kin and a historical process of the transmission of property from one generation to the next. This interconnection between a household line and its land is noted by du Boulay (1974, 138–40) in Evvia, although in Methana the bulk of the land did not always come from the male side of the family: There is a very specific sense in which the past history of the family is linked with the land for it is from the male side of the family that the bulk of the land is inherited, and the particular aspect of possession which makes land so precious to the Greek villager, over and above that of sheer material wealth, is the implication of that land with his ‘grandfathers’, who toiled in it and made it what he possesses during his lifetime. (du Boulay 1974, 139) 324


The way in which some Methanites thought of these portions of the productive landscape quite overtly as monuments can be seen in the case of Sotiris Petronotis, mentioned in Chapter 6, whose half of a skala, constructed by his father with his four sons, was surrounded with cypresses and made very much a garden. Sotiris and his younger brother had later inherited it all between them. Sotiris had a very clear vision of the terraces that he had built in numerous parts of the landscape as being monuments to himself. He continued to construct terraces in various places until well beyond retirement age, including extending the terraces in his favourite half skala, even though his household was one of the wealthiest in the village and there was little need for additional arable land. In any case, some of his terraces were in quite inappropriate places for arable agriculture. On one occasion, he persuaded me to accompany him to see a , a wonder or miracle: ‘you have never seen anything like this’ was the bait, which I took. Insisting that I bring a camera, he took me to an area of terraces which he proudly informed me he had constructed entirely by himself. He wanted me to take photographs of them, evidently wanting a permanent record of his work. But a major reason for having me there was also to help him move some exceptionally large boulders which he could not manage by himself and for which no help was forthcoming from the rest of his household, who did not see the point of his manic terrace-building. This was a lasting monument to himself and his skill in terrace building that would live on for future generations. It was, to borrow a phrase from the ancient Athenian historian Thucydides, in every sense a ktema es aei (a possession [or piece of property] to last for ever). Sotiris’ sense of terraces as monuments to himself and former generations also became the cause of a permanent rift between himself and his younger brother, who owned the other half of the favourite skala just mentioned. The younger brother did not tend his half skala as well as Sotiris, which concerned Sotiris when he talked to me about it in the early 1970s. Because the younger brother was childless, he also had no direct descendents to whom to leave the land. Sotiris therefore had his heart set on obtaining his younger brother’s half so as to be able to leave the whole area to his own descendents, from himself. However, 325


the younger brother sold his half to someone else, apparently without offering to sell it to Sotiris. This led to appallingly bad relations between the two brothers. The sale occurred prior to the mid-1980s (see Clark 1988, 381), but Sotiris had still not forgiven his brother when I visited him in 1998. The real unpardonable crime, according to Sotiris, was that his brother had sold his land to a ‘stranger’, someone from outside the soi (see also Clark 1988, 381) instead of keeping it inside the kindred. As fewer and fewer people have made a living from agriculture on Methana, cultivable land has been progressively abandoned. Uncultivated terraces became invaded by regenerating scrub and collapsed retaining walls were not repaired. Although abandoned plots were economically useless for agriculture, people continued to maintain emotional ties with them, as I learned via an example in 1998. While I was visiting a house in the main study village, two sisters who had married into another village came to visit the widowed sister living in the house. Over a meal, the widow turned the conversation to what to do about a substantial patch of vines their deceased father had owned. It had been abandoned, along with most other plots in its vineyard area, for several reasons, including attack by the vine pest Phylloxera. It was said during the discussion that other people were claiming as their own completely abandoned land for which the owner or owners were unknown, and no one could contradict them. The widowed sister suggested marking the plot to indicate that it was still owned. Talk turned to the fact that the sisters’ father had not written anything in his will about ownership of these vines: having assigned heirs to most of his property, he had forgotten this patch. Because it had not been allocated to any one of them, they were joint heirs. Even though none of them wished to cultivate it, the sisters wished to maintain ownership of this plot as part of the family inheritance. The discussion neatly encapsulated the way in which ownership of land connected people directly into their own kinship past. This plot also brought together sisters now living in different villages because the inheritance was uncertain, and therefore a joint decision was needed. It seemed that although none of them wished to cultivate it at present, it might turn out later to be useful to them or their heirs, and, furthermore, 326


they still maintained an emotional attachment to a piece of ground connecting them with their deceased father. These examples indicate that Methanites experienced a very real linkage between kinship and the pattern of landholding on Methana. The phenomenon was a direct counterpart to the situation found in the village landscape. Fields took on a monumentality directly comparable to the monumentality of houses discussed earlier in this chapter. Those who moved away from the village without inheriting productive property remained unmemorialised in the productive landscape, as also in the village landscape and the landscape of the dead. Although they were brothers or sisters and/or cousins of villagers, who were born and brought up in the village, they would not be remembered by future generations because they had no fields or trees to pass on to them, no house to be remembered by, and no monument in the cemetery. Of the emigrants, only those who, like the uncle mentioned by my informant, had left property continued to be memorialised clearly within the kinship system, emphasising once again the monumentality of productive property. KINSHIP AND THE WIDER LANDSCAPE OF METHANA

The link between kinship and the ownership of land over the generations also lies behind the recognition of close bonds between certain villages on Methana but not others. Methanites recognised that there was considerable variability in the intensity of relationships between different villages. Each village would tend to have few contacts with some villages while maintaining close relationships with others. Thus, the village of Kounoupitsa maintained close links with the adjacent villages of Makrilongos and Palea Loutra but not with Kypseli. Geographical proximity, however, was not always a determining factor. Kypseli had regular contact with the adjacent village of Aghii Theodhori, less than half an hour’s walk away, but also close relationships with Makrilongos and Palea Loutra, which were actually beyond the village of Kounoupitsa by the modern road running around the sides of the peninsula. Likewise, Kypseli had close relationships with the village of Vromolimni, which was considerably more distant than Aghii 327


Theodhori by the modern road. The lack of warmth in relationships between certain villages and close ties between others were recognised by Methanites, although no very clear reasons for it were forthcoming. Were these different levels of social interaction between communities merely the result of historical accident or did they have a more fundamental reason? Undoubtedly, historical accident may have played a part, but there were underlying structural reasons also. Methanites often talked in terms of the people of one village having little to do with certain villages yet close links with others. However, as noted in Chapter 6, villages have never been corporate groups. ‘Close relations between villages’ actually consisted of a series of kinship links between households. ‘Close’ or ‘not close’ relationships between communities were most visible through levels of visiting, especially at critical times during the year such as village patronal saints’ day festivals (panighyria). Individuals’ name-day celebrations were also occasions when kin and friends from other villages would visit. The connections among kinship, churches and patronal saints’ day festivals are explored in greater detail in Chapter 9. What ultimately controlled the number of kinship links between communities was the availability of cultivated land – especially highquality cultivated land – relatively accessible to the inhabitants of both. The vertical organisation of households’ landholdings on Methana meant that some of their land tended to be in the highest, central portion of the landmass. In this central portion were several areas of vines. Vineyard areas were dependent on locations with flat or gently sloping, fertile and deep soils, which were at a premium in the rugged volcanic landscape and so were highly prized. They tended to be filled with small plots of vines owned by many households. Because of their limited availability, plots of vines were traditionally valuable parts of dowries for women and inheritances for men. The locations of these vineyard areas in the highest central portion of the Methana landmass were reached by several of the multitudinous mule tracks which criss-crossed the peninsula. However, because of the extremely rugged nature of the landscape, certain upland vineyard areas were more easily accessible from some villages than from others, despite the fact that they were locationally roughly equidistant from all. 328


As previously noted, despite a traditional preference for marriages within villages, suitable marriage partners were not always available. In an overwhelmingly virilocal system, if marriage partners were from different villages, valuable property, such as plots of vines, which was roughly equidistant from several villages, was eminently suitable as dowry for out-marrying daughters. Before World War II, when population pressure meant that all arable land was precious, arable land in the centre of the peninsula was also given to out-marrying daughters as dowry. These exogamous marriages resulted in exchanges of visits between the parents and their daughter and between cousins, in-laws and so forth in what would be distant villages if travel were along the zone where villages are located. Instead, however, most links between these horizontally distant villages were traditionally via the mule tracks over the highest parts of the peninsula which connected all the villages. Through the generations, these links have been reinforced by further marriages contracted between households in the same limited number of villages, with control of plots of fertile land in the central portion of the peninsula being handed back and forth between households in the same few villages. Traditionally, besides vineyards in the central part of the peninsula, irrigable land close to the coast was also in short supply and highly prized. Significantly, of the five soghambri in the main study community, two were from outside Methana. Of the other three, two had inheritances which included vines in the centre of the peninsula, and the other owned an area of irrigated land close to the coast below his natal village, adjacent to the main study community. Accounts by Methanites indicate that, historically, marrying-out was far more prevalent among women than men, but it is difficult to identify out-marrying women in the nineteenth-century documents, which depend heavily on surnames and fathers’ names. For the same reason, however, the movement of soghambri between villages is readily visible. I therefore examine the evidence for the links between the villages of choice for exogamously marrying spouses and ownership in the productive landscape through the minority, male side rather than the female side. Although, theoretically, choices for males might not be the same as for females, in fact the documentary evidence for soghambri largely mirrors twentieth-century trends for women. 329


The movement of soghambri primarily to villages whose cultivable areas bordered on each other is visible in the nineteenth-century documents. Many surnames were restricted to or at least heavily concentrated in a single village. Their occasional appearance in other villages is almost certainly explained by the existence of soghambri. The links between Palea Loutra and Kaimeni Khora are particularly clear. The agricultural land areas above each of these villages meet each other: the path connecting them runs through a large upland basin full of vines. In the twentieth century, a number of women moved between the two villages on marriage. In the documents, the surname Phlambouris occurs predominantly in Palea Loutra (discussed earlier) but the mitroo arrenon up to 1879 also records sons born to three men with that surname living in Kaimeni Khora. One of these is recorded as living in Palea Loutra at the time of his first son’s birth but in Kaimeni Khora when his second son was born two years later. There is also a record of a Phlambouris living in Kounoupitsa, another village adjacent to Palea Loutra. Here, again, the first son is recorded as being born in Palea Loutra, whereas the second son was born in Kounoupitsa four years later. A substantial nexus of kinship links is visible between Vromolimni and its satellite village Dhritseika, as well as with Meghalo Khori. Here, the property ‘glue’ which binds them was not vineyards high in the centre of the peninsula but arable land between the two sets of communities. Many households in these villages exploited highly desirable arable land on the largest area of flat land on Methana, the ‘plain’ of Throni. A considerable number of households in these three communities share surnames in the nineteenth-century documents. Thus, the surname Pallis is found in Vromolimni, Meghalo Khori and its satellite, Meghalo Potami, as well as in Makrilongos. The surnames Pandelis, Anaghnostou, Kolias and Korovesis are also found in Meghalo Khori and Vromolimni. Merkouris occurs in Dhritseika and Meghalo Khori. Lazarou occurs in all three villages and in Panaghitsa high up on the mountain. Another major area of vines in the centre of the peninsula had plots owned by many households from Palea Loutra and its sister village Makrilongos, as well as from Kypseli and Vromolimni. This probably explains why the substantial number of households with the surname 330


Triandaphyllou on Methana are found only in the villages of Palea Loutra, Kaimeni Khora, and Vromolimni in the documents to 1879. Households from the village of Kypseli have had a history of plot ownership in vineyard areas where substantial numbers of householders from Makrilongos and Palea Loutra and from Vromolimni also owned vines. This fact helps to explain the close links between these villages. Although the nineteenth-century documents do not indicate the movement of soghambri between Kypseli and the other villages mentioned here, Methanites explained that considerable numbers of women moved between these villages on marriage. Indeed, it was stated that kinship links between Kypseli and Vromolimni ensured that several households in Vromolimni survived the hungry times of the German occupation during World War II. Many Vromolimni households were quite poor, but inhabitants of Kypseli, where soils were more fertile, were able to help out their less fortunate relatives. THE KINSHIP LANDSCAPE BEYOND METHANA

The landscape outside Methana could also be visualised as a series of ‘islands’ where kin (including more distant kin) reside. These might be ‘landed on’ when need arose. However, property, though sometimes implicated, was not always such a fundamental factor in relating Methanites to this wider landscape. In the days before World War I, a number of the poorest Methanites sold off their possessions on Methana and bought poor-quality agricultural land outside Athens cheaply. Following the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece after World War I, this land was sold off as building land at a substantial profit in Athens’ expansion to accommodate refugees from Turkey. Because Methanites had already established themselves in this area, it became a focus for later migration as well. Even before this, the 1879 census-takers in Meghalo Khori noted a number of individuals who had left Methana and were in domestic service elsewhere. Most had gone to Athens or Piraeus, though others were on the islands of Poros and Ydhra. Links with other parts of Greece, especially Athens and Piraeus, therefore already existed in the later nineteenth century. By the interwar period, considerable numbers of Methanites were leaving the 331


peninsula because pressure on land was acute and increasing numbers of opportunities were opening up elsewhere. So, for example, of Sotiris Petronotis’ three brothers, one went to run a small transport business in the capital, another moved to a farm on the adjacent mainland, and Sotiris and his youngest brother stayed on Methana. Similarly, a number of women found husbands living in Athens or Piraeus. Some parents built a house or even a small apartment building in Athens or Piraeus as dowry for one or more daughters (see Chapter 5). Sometimes the land itself had been bought as a speculation in a previous generation. By providing a home for one or more daughters in the city, parents guaranteed that these children would move away from home. Contact between parents and married child was usually maintained by frequent visits, usually several times a year, during which parents would bring village produce. Urban-based children in their turn might sometimes bring manufactured items which were not readily available on Methana on visits to their natal village. Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, some Methanites began buying up relatively large extents of land on the Plain of Trizin. The Plain was malarial and very under-populated (Miliarakis 1886, 195), so the land was cheap. This land has been used by some Methanites as the basis of a life made outside the peninsula. Some women received Plain land as dowry when they married men who lived close to the Plain. Sometimes, as in the case of Sotiris Petronotis’ brother, the Plains land would be given to one or more of the sons so they could make a living outside Methana, thus reducing plot-division on the peninsula. All these people living beyond Methana, but related to Methanites, provided potential links for a wide variety of purposes. It was quite normal in the 1970s to see Methanites boarding the ferry to the port of Piraeus carrying large amounts of village produce for children or siblings living in the city. Quite common, too, was the sight of a Methanitis with several 17-litre drums (tenekedhes) of olive oil. Sometimes a city relative would arrange a buyer in the city for Methana households’ surplus olive oil. Sometimes the kinship links used by Methanites to connect themselves with the world beyond the peninsula were quite distant. Some examples help make the point. 332


In the 1970s, a village girl married a wholesale merchant working in the central fruit and vegetable market in Piraeus. Methanites were always concerned that they were not being given a fair price by their chosen merchant for the fruit and vegetables which they sent to this market via the ferry. So, after the marriage, a neighbour of the girl’s family, who was also a relative, switched his allegiance to the newly acquired affine. The rationale was that now that this wholesale merchant was a relative by marriage, he would treat all relatives of his parents-in-law fairly – as members of his family – in a way that others would not. An example of how more distant kin could be used as important contacts occurred when there was a record olive crop. A small group of related households in the main study village suspected that the press was rushing the job to keep abreast of the amount of olives and not extracting all the oil possible. Because the oil press in a neighbouring village, where they also had kin, had the same problem, they decided to send their olives to a press several kilometres beyond the Methana isthmus, because a relative of one of the households owned the press. The closest relationship was via the son of a sister of the mother of a woman in one of these households who married into another village on Methana (i.e., a first cousin), who had moved to a village on the edge of the Plain of Trizin. Although only very distantly related to most of these households, it was to his oil press that they all sent their olives to be pressed. Similarly, a household wanted to obtain octopus. The household head’s cousin, who also lived in the village, had a neighbour who had a brother living in Aegina, a major fishing centre. They arranged through these links that the Aegina brother would bring some octopus with him when he came to visit his Methana brother for the annual celebration of the village’s patronal saint’s day. METHANITES IN A LINGUISTICALLY RELATED LANDSCAPE

In the past, Methanites spoke a dialect of Albanian as a first language, particularly in the home: it has probably been spoken on the peninsula for several centuries (Koukoulis 1997a, 93). The 1879 census noted the 333


language spoken by each household: Albanian was almost universally the language recorded. Until after World War II, Greek was for most Methanites a second language, and even in the 1980s, some older Methanites were noticeably grammatically insecure, with a limited vocabulary, when speaking Greek. Methanites were far from unique among Greeks in having Albanianspeaking origins. In numerous areas in Greece, both close to Methana and distant from it, the inhabitants have traditionally spoken Albanian. Methanites could not explain when and under what circumstances Albanian speakers arrived on Methana or in any other part of Greece. Nevertheless, they assumed an unspecified form of relatedness with all other Greeks who spoke Albanian. Most Methanites did not travel widely in Greece, yet they were very aware of the many parts of the country where Albanian was still spoken or had traditionally been spoken. They were also aware that significant differences existed between the Albanian dialects in many of these areas. On several occasions, I was given a detailed list of these regions. Methanites were also aware that their form of Albanian was very different from that spoken in present-day Albania, distinguishing between Albanian dialects spoken in Greece – Arvanitika – and the language spoken in Albania – Alvanika. In the later 1990s, a number of Methanites, in keeping with a widespread trend in Greece, employed illegal Albanian immigrants as labourers and, like most Greeks, greatly disparaged them while at the same time exploiting their services. Methanites recognised a common origin with Arvanitika speakers in other regions of Greece, although they could not define it. The link with Alvanika speakers was considered far less close – even embarrassing, like a distant relative with a bad reputation whom one does not wish to mention. This attitude was particularly marked when I visited Methana in the late 1990s, when illegal Albanian immigrants were a widespread phenomenon. The common yet unknown origin of Arvanitika speakers gave Methanites a kind of kinship with them which was directly comparable to the way in which people recognised a common ancestral origin in a soi. The soi extended to the degree of second cousin, which meant that the common link of all members was a great-grandparent. However, as noted in a previous chapter, few Methanites knew even the name of the great-grandparent who formed the common link. 334


The way in which Methanites would list Arvanitika-speaking areas in much the same way as identifying places where they had relatives, or reciting the different relatives who owned neighbouring plots of land, highlights the way in which landscapes linked them with their kindreds as manifestations of historical facts. CONCLUSIONS: A GREEK LANDSCAPE WITH RELATIVES

In this chapter, I have examined one aspect of the polysemy of Methanites’ landscapes: how the landscape has been differentiated into patches of greater or lesser significance for individuals and households. I likened these patches of raised significance to an archipelago of islands raised above the otherwise undifferentiated ‘sea’ of houses, cultivable land, other villages on Methana, or the wider world of land, towns and cities beyond Methana. Of primary significance was connection with those within one’s own kindred – the soi. But as the distance beyond one’s own community increased, so the links’ assigned significance became more tenuous. Outside Methana, rather distant kinship links might acquire a significance they lacked on Methana. The ultimate distant ‘kinship’ link, shared ownership of Arvanitika, linked them with distant parts of Greece. Underpinning these islands of significance was the inextricable bond among kinship, ownership, and a connection to the past, which defined one’s identity. On Methana, ownership was generally in terms of property: houses, fields, trees and so forth. These were solid material facts tying people to their pasts via a knowledge of how these items were transmitted to them, while they simultaneously tied people to the present through links to living kin via shared ownership of previous generations’ property. This property therefore became endowed with monumental significance. Those who moved away and did not leave property to future generations rapidly disappeared from memory. In the past, when most Methanites were very cash-poor, the monumentality of inherited property was a substitute for the monumentality of a permanent grave-marker. With the increasing amounts of money available in the last few decades, at a time when the economic significance of houses and land had greatly diminished, Methanites began to invest resources in installing permanent monuments in cemeteries. 335


Throughout the chapter, the focus has been on households and the decisions made in them over the generations, rather than viewing the settlement as a whole. Of course, there have been shared cultural principles guiding these decisions. But it is a concentration on the level of the household as a decision-making unit which allows the ethnographer, as outsider-within, to understand what the landscape has meant to Methanites. Of all the aspects of ‘belonging’ for Methanites, one stands out above the others: the house. The word for ‘house’ has been especially polysemic, used for a physical structure or artefact, for a household, and for a multigenerational line of kinship. By its cognitive status, it has also become a physical memorial to a line of mostly male ancestors, with occasional exceptions: soghambri. The importance of the continuation of the ‘house’ into the future on Methana also allowed its inhabitants to break deeply embedded cultural rules: of masculine succession if there were no males in the succeeding generation and the importation of an ‘outsider’ to become a member of the family by adoption in the absence of children. The physical concept of a house as a structure, therefore, became a metaphor for units of production and of reproduction. It also became a metaphor for a patriline, via its historical association with past household heads. This in turn connected the house with the ‘house’ of the dead in the cemetery, where the remains of those who inhabited the house became located within their respective soia. Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995, 19) note that kinship is about ‘sleeping together . . . living together, eating together and dying together, not just about bed, but also about house, hearth and tomb’: exactly what the ‘house’ on Methana was also about in all its senses. In this way, spiti became a complex set of social relationships between the members of the living and the dead community. Present discussion of the multiple meanings of the ‘house’ in the discipline of social-cultural anthropology, and increasingly in archaeology (e.g., Chesson 2003; Joyce and Gillespie 2000), owes much to the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1982, 163–87; 1987, 149–94) on the idea of ‘house societies’, in which he identified a wide range of societies which use the word for a house to define a social grouping which transcends a substantial number of different, often conflicting or mutually exclusive, kinship categories or traits traditionally identified 336


by anthropologists cross-culturally. Lévi-Strauss (1982, 174) defined the house as ‘a corporate body made up of both material and immaterial wealth, which perpetuates itself through the transmission of its name, its goods and its titles down a real or imagined line, considered legitimate as long as this continuity can express itself in the language of kinship or of affinity and, most often, of both’. Summarising LevisStrauss’ concept, Thomas (1996, 282–3) states: on all levels of social life, from the family to the state, the house is . . . an institutional creation that permits compounding forces which, everywhere else, seem only destined to mutual exclusion. . . . Patrilineal and matrilineal descent, filiation and residence, hypergamy and hypogamy, close and distant marriage, heredity and election: all of these notions, which usually allow anthropologists to distinguish types of society, are reunited in the house. (Lévi-Strauss 1982, 184)

Given the use of the term ‘house’ on Methana to indicate a complex body of social relationships, it might be tempting to argue that Methanites represented a ‘house society’ in Lévi-Strauss’ terms. For recent and modern societies, Pine (1996) has argued that LéviStrauss’s claim that ‘house societies’ are a transitional form between kin-based and ‘complex’ societies can be applied more widely. She extends the concept to ‘post-feudal, peasant Europe’ (Pine 1996, 444, author’s emphasis), arguing that a house society organisation was maintained among the Polish Górale in the late twentieth century (Pine 1996, 444). Support for the idea that Methanites represented a ‘house society’ could be drawn from the fact that, as noted in Chapter 6, concentration on households rather than communities had greater explanatory power. Moreover, concentration on ‘the house’ illuminates elements in the working-out of the kinship system which do not comfortably fit the standard categorisation of Greek kinship as a system based on bilateral kindreds. Kinship relationships through males and females were not equally weighted, as would be expected in a true bilateral system. Thus, children inherited the father’s surname, and paternal grandparents took precedence in the naming of children. Furthermore, the term soi could mean a patriline as well as a kindred: an agnatic soi included females born into it, but their children belonged in their father’s soi, 337


ignoring links through the female line. The construction of histories of houses-as-dwellings on Methana was also primarily a patrilineal concept: generations reaching back into the past were remembered via males, and later nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century male household heads had their initials inscribed on new or rebuilt houses. Thus, houses represented monuments to males, allowing future male heads to link themselves back to the individual memorialised in the inscription. These patrilineal aspects of ‘houses’ are confronted by du Boulay’s (1974) exposition of the pivotal role of women in the spiti in the village of Ambeli on Evvia. While observing (du Boulay 1974, 17) that ‘the house as a physical structure is deeply linked with the identity of the family . . .’ – as on Methana – her view as a female anthropologist is that it is the in-marrying woman ‘who “holds the house together” (syngkrati to spiti). . . . It is the woman who, as they say, “remembers” (thymate); and therefore it is she who, in keeping alive the memory of the dead, thus symbolically reveals the continuity of the kindred’ (du Boulay 1974, 131). Du Boulay continues: It is because of these various strands of relationship between the woman and the house that it is not enough merely to say that the woman is necessary to the house, so much that she is the house – that she embodies by her actions the symbolic aspect of the house and, as such, represents in her own person the history and continuity of the family. It is because of this that not only is the word ‘house’ (spiti) used interchangeably to denote either the physical structure or the family who live or have lived in it, but may also be used to indicate the mistress of the house. . . . ‘Without the housewife’, the villagers say, ‘the house cannot function’. (du Boulay 1974, 133)

Although it is impossible to say that Methanites’ views precisely matched those of Ambeli’s inhabitants, the importance of women for the life of the ‘house’ was summed up one day by a woman describing the plight of a near neighbour, whose young wife had to spend some months in hospital. The woman said she felt very sorry for him: a woman without her husband could manage the house and could work in the fields as well, but a man without his wife in the house simply could not manage on his own. The women of a ‘house’ also looked after its religious well-being. Women, especially older women, kept strictly to the rules on fasting 338


throughout the year (see, e.g., Clark 1988, 121). They were also in charge of the holy corner of the house where the family icons were kept and ensured that the little oil lamp in front of them was lighted. Methanites considered regular attendance at church liturgies an essential religious duty but not necessary for every person: every ‘house’ should send a representative. At the most important religious festivals, when services might take several hours, some households would organise ‘relays’ of representatives. However, for normal Sunday liturgies, it was predominantly the women, especially older women, who would go to reaffirm the religious well-being of the ‘house’ in the eyes of God. Even in cases when ‘relays’ of representatives were organised, women typically spent a far longer time in church than the men (see also du Boulay 1974, 58). For Methanites, the word spiti in all its polysemy incorporated a variety of principles which cross-cut each other in terms of anthropological categories: bilaterality and patrilineality, the latter acknowledged to be dependent for its continuity not simply on the reproductive powers of women from outside the patriline but on their historical function of linking the spiti with its own patrilineal antecedents. Underlying the context-specificities, however, is evidence that women were in a number of ways seen as active agencies within a ‘house’. They held it together in the present and ensured its continuity as part of an unbroken sequence into the future, not least via their reproductive role. They also acted as the primary agency in maintaining good relations between the ‘house’ and the supernatural – another essential for the long-term well-being of the spiti. Men, on the other hand, had a more passive role in the ‘house’. Whereas the in-marrying woman was the house, as du Boulay (1974, 133) notes, men simply were. By this, I mean that because of the general rule of patrilocal residence, combined with the use of patrilineally inherited surnames, men provided the major link of the ‘house’ with the past: they were the roots of a ‘house’ in history, as is clear from this chapter and Chapter 7. And although the expectation was that the male line would continue to be associated with the physical structure of its particular house in the future, it could only happen if the in-marrying woman actively ensured it, both via reproduction and via her active agency of remembering – of linking the future with its past. 339


Thus far, the observations on the very different roles and contributions of men and women to the spiti seem congruent with LéviStrauss’ model. In the past, however, when considering the future of the descendents of the spiti as family, the estate of productive resources, not the house-as-dwelling, had primary significance, as indicated by an old saying reported by Clark (1988, 228–30): ! (‘house as much as you can fit in, estate as much as you can’). In other words, the house was simply a shelter: it did not matter if people were crammed into it. The important factor was maximising the agricultural resources for transferral to the next generation. As Clarke (1998) makes clear, through several generations, Methana families have worked, planned, schemed, and even indulged in trickery to ensure the continuity of their estates to male and female children. Lévi-Strauss himself recognised that the representation of social relations in material form may appear in shapes other than the house but failed to develop it (Thomas 1996, 282–3). However, the agricultural resources owned by a family were not inherited as a single estate but (in theory) brought together in approximately equal proportions from separate, unrelated spitia by both partners, as dowry and inheritance. As described at the beginning of Chapter 5, the family is the only enduring social group. Hence, the quasi-unitary estate of the parents was in due course dissolved, and the resources were dispersed to the heirs in their turn, forming their contributions to the setting up and support of new, separate, independent families and spitia. A major problem with discussions which employ the ‘house societies’ model is that many commentators do not clarify whether they are simply using it as a heuristic device or whether it is intended as a descriptive, ‘total-system’, all-or-nothing typology (Watanabe 2004, 159). Watanabe (2004, 164) points out that Lévi-Strauss, as the premier proponent of alliance theory in opposition to descent theory, sought to ‘corporatiz[e] (however precariously) alliance itself at the expense of unilineal descent ideologies, corporate descent groups, and even prescriptive marriage rules, a development he then historicizes as the transition from kin-based to state-ordered, class-stratified societies (Lévi-Strauss 1982, 186)’. 340


Watanabe proceeds to argue (2004, 164) that ‘the opportunistic corporatism of the house model results in such a generic residential household that even ethnographers have to wonder if “in the end, the problem is not one of discovering which societies are ‘house societies’ but of which ones are not” (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995, 18)’. Watanabe (2004, 159) argues that descent, alliance and residence are all useful ways of thinking about societies, as long as they are not objectified into total system models: using the analogy of a Maya weaving, he indicates that descent, alliance, cognation, affiliation and residence are brocaded in the social weave, like figures directly incorporated into a decorated textile. ‘One array never eliminates the other, but different societies define in different ways when, if at all, which set of such relations will come into play for what set of actors’ (Watanabe 2004, 165). Another difficulty is Lévi-Strauss’ failure to provide ‘in-depth examination of the everyday interactions and processes by which the tensions of conflicting rights and obligations – the within-house and between-house relationships – were manifested and negotiated to present some “outward face of unity”’ (Gillespie 2000, 32). This reflects his concern with comparative models of general societal types (Watanabe 2004, 164). It is thus very much the view of social groupings as seen from the outside, far removed from the viewpoint of observers like Aschenbrenner (1986, 40–6) and particularly Clark (e.g., 1988), who see the dynamics of spitia as from the inside, not as societal types but as groupings of real individuals, taking different statuses and roles at different times and in different contexts, in acting out the contingencies of daily life. Thus, for Methanites, the ‘house’ was not a transcending or a melding together of conflicting anthropological constructs (patriliny, matriliny, bilaterality, endogamy, exogamy, etc.) but a foregrounding of a variety of different traits, features, and principles which were not all used simultaneously but separately as cognised in different social, economic, religious and other contexts. Ultimately, houses-as-structures are the material focus of domestic units, which are exceptionally complex dynamic entities incorporating productive, reproductive, affective, politico-jural, hard economic and ideological considerations, as well as issues of memory and identity. Small wonder 341


if externally generated anthropological categories do not all lie comfortably under a single roof. I have indicated that not every aspect of all the polysemy of the spiti was on display at any one time. The apparently conflicting anthropological constructs thus did not usually come into conflict because they worked in different spheres: all the different meanings of the ‘house’ were context-specific. This is to say no more than that the ‘house’ was in many ways a microcosm of the landscape as a whole because the main argument of this book is that although the landscape held multiple meanings for Methanites, being context-specific, they were not all brought into play at the same time.

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9

THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

‘1685, 5th of December, day Wednesday. I, the priest [name illegible] I worshipped Saint George’ Signature: ?Stamatis (Koukoulis 1997b, 222). (Graffito by the head of a painting of Saint George in a Methana church)

This chapter examines the religious landscape and its meanings for Methanites. That landscape primarily involves Methana but also to a lesser extent the areas of the adjacent mainland and increasingly, areas of Greece further away. The religious landscape consisted primarily of more than three dozen churches that Methanites encountered. Although not evenly spaced across the landscape, they amounted to more than one church for every two square kilometres (fig. 9.1). Although all ‘proper’ communities had one or more churches, over the centuries a number of ‘extra-mural’ churches have been built on Methana, as elsewhere in Greece, as an act of devotion, well away from any settlement. In most cases, the reasons for their initial construction have been forgotten, yet the churches have remained in use. In addition, because of the tradition of building and venerating extra-mural churches, even where settlements have been abandoned, the churches have not usually been allowed to decay, remaining as a meaningful spiritual focus integrated within the landscape. For Methanites, the religious landscape has been in some ways the most enduring of all the peninsula’s aspects. In the 1990s, the importance of locales throughout the peninsula where religious buildings existed has been re-emphasised at a time when the focus on the rest of the landscape as a means of making a living is rapidly fading. The religious landscape has significantly affected the ways in which humans have reacted to other aspects of the landscape and to each other. 343

Villages: A. Loutra B. Vromolimni C. Dhritseïka D. Meghalo Khori E. Meghalo Potami F. Kaimeni Khora G. Makrilongos H. Palea Loutra J. Kounoupitsa K. Aghii Theodhori L. Kypseli M. Sterna Ghambresë (deserted) N. Panaghitsa Churches: 1. Aghios Nikolaos 2/3. Aghios Gheorghios

4. Aghios loannis o Theologhos 5. Aghios Dhimitrios 6. Aghios Konstandinos and Aghia Eleni

7. Ta Isodhia tis Theotokou 8. Taxiarkhai 9. I Zoodhokhos Pighi 10. I Kimisis tis Theotokou 11. Aghios Andonios? 12. Evangelismos tis Theotokou 13. Aghii Pandes 14. Aghii Theodhori 15. Aghios loannis o Prodhromos 16. Aghios Sotiras 17. Aghios loannis o Prodhromos, 18. Aghii Asomati (Taxiarkhai) 19. Panaghia I Odhighitria (Panaghitsa)

20. Panaghitsa 21. Aghios Pandeleimonas 22. Aghios Dhimitrios 23. Ypapandi tou Khristou 24. Aghios Nikolaos 25. Aghios loannis 26. To Ghenethlion tis Theotokou 27. Aghios Eleftherios 28. Profitis Ilias 29. Aghios Konstandinos and Aghia Eleni 30. Aghios Andonios 31. Aghios Athanasios 32. Aghios loannis 33. Profitis Ilias 34. Krasopanaghia 35. Aghia Varvara

Note: Where churches have no number, the patron saint is unknown.

9.1. The distribution of Methana’s churches.

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9.2. Byzantine wall paintings in a small Methana church. The saints look down on worshippers from the vault of the church as though from the vault of heaven (Source: Koukoulis 1997b).

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LANDSCAPE

In Greek Orthodox religion, a church is sacred space, the mirror of the Kingdom of God and also the house of God: a visible projection of the spiritual world into the world of humans. On entering a church, humans enter the presence of the Divine (Campbell and Sherrard 1968, 200, 202). Thus, in a very real sense, all churches on Methana mark God’s presence visibly both in the landscapes of settlements and, via extra-mural churches, in the ‘empty’ countryside. Churches place God in some of the most inaccessible parts of the peninsular landscape as well as within settlements. The enduring nature of the religious landscape has been imparted by the obvious antiquity of its churches. Many contain wall paintings or used to before their rebuilding or restoration. The paintings are generally in a primitive style and often poorly preserved: both features emphasise their age (fig. 9.2). Elements associated with the styles of 345


church construction, such as the ancient Byzantine tiles on some roofs, very different from traditional pantiles, also highlight their antiquity (Koukoulis 1997b). Although most Methanites did not share the concept of deep but measurable time normally found in the West (see Chapter 7), they were aware that these ancient churches derived from a time well before any events in their own family histories. They recognised that previous periods in Greek history stretched back with increasing depth to the period of Turkish rule, the period of western European domination, the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Constantinople, the life of Christ, and, before the Christian era, to Alexander the Great and as far back as the poet Homer. At this level, they had a sense of cultural history, although few could place these periods in correct chronological order. Despite their recognition of a deep historical past, the shallow generation depth of the soi meant that Methanites could not connect their own family pasts with any except the most recently built churches (see Chapter 7). When asked about the ancient churches, Methanites would state ! (that’s the way we found them) or ! (that’s the way our ancestors found them). Because of their lack of a sense of historical time-depth, therefore, Methanites did not conceptualise the religious landscape of churches distributed across the peninsula wholly as a series of human artefacts constructed by previous generations. Rather, although understanding that they were built by humans, Methanites had a sense of these churches as part of the ‘givens’ of the local environment and very much integral to it. The sense of churches as part of the environment may also explain why major church restorations less than 150 years old have been forgotten. Although the rebuilding of two churches at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century is still remembered, Methanites had little idea of the rebuilding of many others. Chandler, however, visiting Methana in the 1770s (1776, 219; 1817, vol. 2, 247), commented on the ruined churches he observed. The lack of any obvious church ruins in the later twentieth century and the large number of well-maintained churches indicates that they have been rebuilt even though no clear memory of rebuilding remains. 346


In many ways, therefore, the permanence and longevity of the churches in the religious landscape acted as a foil to the restricted generation-depth of kinship systems and the histories founded on them. Furthermore, because most churches dated to before readily computable time, they were all effectively coeval. Their importance one against another not being age-dependent, the relative importance of different churches was based on other criteria. More than a dozen extra-mural churches or, more rarely, groups of churches, were widely distributed from the coast to high in the interior. With few exceptions, the names of their patron saints applied equally to churches and adjoining parts of the landscape: ordinary speech did not distinguish between the church itself and the surrounding several hectares of countryside. Methana was thus dotted with small ‘islands’ where the countryside was named after one saint or another, the supernatural thereby becoming inextricably embedded in the matrix of the landscape itself. For example, the most prominent cape on Methana was named after the Virgin Mary, to whom the church there was dedicated. The section of the coastal area around the church of Saint Nicholas, below the village of Palea Loutra, was likewise named after the saint, and the medieval stronghold set on a pinnacle was named after the prophet Elijah, whose church was rebuilt there in the later nineteenth century (discussed later in this chapter). The use of the name of a nearby church’s patron saint to define a sector of the landscape may well go back centuries. Koukoulis (1997a, 93) notes that a sixteenth-century Greek portolan (pilot book) refers to the cape of Saint George on Methana, identifying a cape near the bay of Aghios Gheorghios with its small Byzantine church dedicated to Saint George on the north-east of the peninsula, an important anchorage and landing place in times past (Miliarakis 1886, 209; Forbes 1997, 111). The extra-mural church of Aghios Athanasios, set high in the interior, gives another example of an aspect of religion embedded in the Methana landscape. Methanites considered it had been built in the later nineteenth or early twentieth century. Although not discussed by Koukoulis (1997b), it shared a number of similarities with other churches which he dates to the Turkish period, but its roof shows evidence of having been rebuilt within the last century or so. It seems probable, therefore, that the ‘building’ of the church consisted of 347


re-roofing and refurbishing a pre-existing derelict church. Of greatest significance here is that a section of mountainside covered in Aleppo pines was assigned to the church to cover the costs of its maintenance and upkeep. Although no longer practised on Methana, the tapping of pine resin was widespread until at least the 1960s. In those days, there was an annual auction for the right to tap the pines on the land assigned to the church, the highest bidder contributing to the church the sum which he had bid, then selling the resin on the open market, thereby making money and doing his pious duty simultaneously. Some ancient churches were associated with cemeteries, as cemetery churches for specific villages. It is unclear whether they were originally built as cemetery churches, but the likelihood is that many were not. They were a partial exception to the idea that churches, especially ancient ones, were an integral feature of the local landscape. Most communities had a special church associated with their cemetery, which was not the church used for regular worship. Although they and their cemeteries existed physically within the landscape, they were both visibly and conceptually set apart from the rest of it (discussed later in this chapter). THE SUPERNATURAL IN METHANITES’ LIVES

Almost all Methanites belonged to the Greek Orthodox faith, apart from a few families of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were mostly shunned by others. For most Westerners, it is hard to understand the way in which Methanites’ faith, particularly in the older generation, has been so all-encompassing: not restricted to church worship on Sundays but completely embedded in their everyday lives. For example, the religious calendar dictated certain aspects of what the faithful may and may not eat, from day to day and from season to season. In the past, most people kept most of these complex dietary rules, and although they have increasingly been ignored, they have certainly not been abandoned completely. House layouts also reflected the importance of villagers’ faith. Every house had a sacred corner in which hung various icons and in which an oil lamp burned all night, illuminating them (see Clark 1988, 116–23, for a fuller discussion). Furthermore, people’s annual personal celebrations were not birthdays but name-day 348


celebrations – the day of the year set by the Orthodox Church for the celebration of the saint from whom they took their name. The growing and preparation of staple foods and the very act of eating them were all accompanied by use of the sign of the cross. Clark’s (1988, 117–18) description of the way in which the spiritual entered into the most mundane aspects of growing wheat and making bread neatly sums up the situation: Before critical activities in the production of wheat and in making bread, people crossed themselves three times. They crossed themselves at the beginning and the end of the first day of sowing. When the last area of the wheat was reaped, they left wheat standing in the form of a cross, which they cut and made into two sheaves. They bound the sheaves together in the form of a cross. In the past women made crosses of straw which they hung in the house for its well-being. A woman always made the sign of the cross three times in the flour over the starter dough for bread. She crossed herself again before and after she kneaded the dough. After putting the dough in the round stone oven, she made the sign of the cross three times in the triangular doorway using the long wooden paddle with which she had placed the bread inside. Bread made to offer to the church (prosphoro) was impressed with a cross design, before baking, using a wooden stamp. At the dinner table, before cutting one of these large round loaves of bread, a man made the sign of the cross on the bread three times quickly with the knife.

In Chapter 7, I described the way in which the liminal period at the end of the old year and the beginning of the new was ended by the celebration of Epiphany, a central part of which involved the blessing of holy water and its sprinkling with a sprig of basil. Traditionally on Methana, farmers would obtain holy water from the priest, go into their fields, and sprinkle it on representative patches of crops to ensure a good harvest (see also Megas 1963, 48–52). The Epiphany ceremonies blessing the waters, especially the sea, were conducted not in a church but on the shore, involving the throwing of a cross into the sea. In these ceremonies, the supernatural was incorporated into the wider landscape of seashore and cultivated fields. Notwithstanding the all-encompassing nature of Methanites’ faith, the primary focus of religious behaviour involved regular liturgies traditionally performed in villages’ main churches every Sunday, though 349


as numbers of priests have dwindled, so has the frequency of church services. A church service to the best of human abilities re-creates the Divine world because churches are the mirror of the Kingdom of God and a visible projection of the spiritual world into that of humans (Campbell and Sherrard 1968, 200–4). As such, the Divine ‘landscape’ of the church during the liturgy engages all the senses. The icons, the decorated icon screen (iconostasis) and other decorations engage the sight. The singing and chanting of large parts of the liturgy engage the ears. The smell of burning incense engages the sense of smell. It is in villages’ main churches that the religious calendar’s major holy days were celebrated, weddings and baptisms solemnised, major high points in the political calendar were celebrated, and last respects were paid to the dead before their burial in villages’ cemeteries. On the name day of the patron saint of every village’s main church, a particularly important religious festival was held, the panighiri. After a special liturgical celebration, the whole village held open house to visitors from other villages. The panighiri was one of the most important days in the whole annual round, involving the preparation of special foods, and much feasting and drinking. In effect, it was the village’s name day. Other aspects of the belief system were not part of the central tenets of Orthodox faith – for example, significant concern over witchcraft and especially the evil eye. Anything vulnerable, especially if culturally highly valued, be it a young child, a pregnant woman or a milch goat, was likely to have an amulet to ward off the potential effects of the evil eye. The most basic amulet was a blue bead, but other forms existed. People were also very nervous about the possibility that they themselves might cast the evil eye onto someone or something through envy. People who admired babies or talked to pregnant women about their pregnancy would almost automatically spit (very politely!) as a way of warding off any possible effects of unintended envy (see Clark 1988, 139–43, for a fuller discussion). In the same vein, the first of May was associated with fertility: every year just prior to this date, people made new May wreaths to hang on their front doors for a whole year, only replacing them on the following Mayday eve. The wreaths, which were not allowed inside the house, contained a number of plants associated with fertility and 350


good luck, including wheat, olive and almond shoots, and garlic – the latter against the evil eye. Yet, the month of May (Ma¨ıos) was linked via a false etymology with the Greek word for witchcraft (maghia). As such, the month was ‘dangerous’ and, for example, avoided as a month for holding weddings (see Megas 1963, 116–21). The Kallikandzari, creatures representing forces of chaos on the earth between Christmas and Epiphany, are discussed in Chapter 7. Most Methanites were very reticent about explaining these beliefs to outsiders. They often belittled them, claiming not to know why they had arisen, but because they had inherited them, they continued them. Older people in particular firmly believed them, however. Belief was maintained in the 1970s by the Greek state via pictures of them in school teaching materials. No one who was considered in his or her right mind was prepared to ignore beliefs associated with these creatures completely. The reticence about discussing beliefs in the Kallikandzari was even more evident when the subject of other supernatural beings abroad in the landscape was broached. In returning to the main study village very late at night, I heard repeated eerie screams coming from the direction of some ruins. When I enquired what the scream might have been, the man I asked became agitated, saying it was ‘a bad thing’ (ena kako prama). When I asked what kind of a bad thing, he became more agitated, repeating more forcefully that it was a bad thing, noting that I’d said that it came from ancient habitations. Further elaboration was impossible: it was plain that my experience was not explicable in normal mundane, pragmatic terms. Dreams were also associated with the supernatural, many being considered prophetic – encoded messages foretelling the future. Others were considered to be direct communication or instructions from supernatural powers to humans (discussed later in this chapter). Those who could accurately interpret the meaning of dreams were considered especially holy. Methanites were like many in certain sectors of Greek society in maintaining these religious beliefs which in Redfield’s (1941, 1956) terminology are part of the Little Tradition rather than the Great Tradition (see also Stewart 1996). For example, a farmers’ almanac (kazamias) published in the early 1970s contained a seventeen-page section on dream interpretation: the topic took up more print space than the 351


detailed religious calendar for the year, for which most Methanites bought the publication. However, as Clark (1988, 152–3) emphasises, Methanites themselves did not distinguish between ‘central’ and ‘folk’ elements of their religion, any more than they distinguished clearly between Greek Orthodoxy, traditional values and family law. For Methanites, churches, being holy places, had a special position, physically and structurally, in their world. In the Greek Orthodox faith, other supernatural beings besides God (in tripartite form of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) have power in both the lived and supernatural worlds. Mary the mother of God is most powerful, but the saints also wield great power (Campbell and Sherrard 1968, 201). These supernatural beings may be worshipped in their own right, as well as God (see the quotation at the head of this chapter). Every church is dedicated to one of these supernatural beings or powers and so becomes, in effect, a special point of contact with him or her, as well as with God. Not surprisingly, Methanites considered the act of worshipping in a church an act of piety, though one which all people with any claim to be religious undertook regularly. Contributing to the restoration of an existing church, or the building of a new one, was considered an act of special piety. These observations are an important background to the following discussion. THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE SETTLEMENT PATTERN

In Chapter 3, it was noted that with the exception of the present-day village of Meghalo Khori, Methana provided essentially a ‘clean slate’ on which immigrants chose settlement locations during a very limited time span. This fact provides an ideal opportunity to examine the reasons certain site locations were chosen while others were ignored. It has also been noted previously that the locations chosen reflected a need for security from potential attack during a particularly unstable period. Although Methana has a very broken and rugged landscape, it has many potential sites for small settlements, both close to the coast and in the interior. Large numbers of such sites, occupied in previous periods, were identified by archaeological survey in the 1980s (Mee and Forbes [eds.], 1997). Even if land less than 100 metres above sea level were 352


excluded from consideration, because of fear of attack from the sea, there were many other potentially suitable locations for settlements, both in the zone where the steep slopes of the interior meet the gentler slopes running down to the shore and in the interior itself. They have the right combination of safety provided by altitude along with expanses of good quality land, which is not too steep, and have relatively deep soils. Why were some sites chosen and others not, despite being apparently equally attractive in terms of safety and soils? The population that arrived on Methana during the Greek War of Independence found a landscape in which there were considerable numbers of churches, widely distributed across all altitudinal zones. Although Chandler (1776, 219) comments on the neglected state of some, it is conceivable that the small population of the peninsula in the centuries prior to the War of Independence had ensured at least basic maintenance of others as an act of piety. In this situation, the incoming population had no direct ‘historical’ connection with the churches which they found distributed across the landscape, but as Orthodox Christian co-religionists, they would have shared an understanding of the inherent meanings of the architectural styles and the iconography in the churches which they encountered. All but two of the ‘traditional’ villages on Methana appear to have churches close by predating their settlement. In addition, during the nineteenth century, the hamlets of Panaghitsa and Sterna Ghambresë were founded high in the interior of Methana, both near pre-existing churches. A scatter of houses on the isthmus of Methana, mostly associated with work on the important fish traps located just off shore, had also appeared by the later nineteenth century. It, too, had an adjacent church predating the Greek War of Independence (Koukoulis 1997b). The only other seasonal hamlet, Koliani, close to the village of Vromolimni, did not have its own church. The evidence therefore suggests that site location decisions were strongly influenced by the pre-existing religious landscape. Even if only the zone of the junction of the lower slopes with the steep slopes of the interior is considered, there are numerous locations potentially suitable as village sites: some have medieval or Turkish period churches, but others do not. Yet, with the exception of just two villages, only locations close to pre-existing churches were chosen. 353


A population with sincere religious beliefs would have needed a place of worship as a religious focus for their lives. Not surprisingly, therefore, the churches which the incoming settlers found were an important element in decisions involving settlement locations. They provided, in effect, a ready-made resource at least as important as security, good soils, and other factors more normally considered in settlement location studies. Furthermore, in a landscape which would have had limited evidence of human activity, the pre-existing churches would have been an especially conspicuous indicator of past human landscapes. As noted earlier, being co-religionists of the original builders, the incoming population would not only have seen but also accurately ‘read’ the messages of this aspect of the material cultural record left by previous, apparently unrelated, generations. It might be argued that decisions to locate villages close to churches were taken for non-religious reasons: possible economic explanations are explored in Chapter 6. Another possible non-religious explanation might be that the churches were coincidental to locations of preexisting villages with re-usable structures or because these locations were of proven suitability for settlement. This does not seem to have been the case, however. Two or three villages were located at distances up to a few hundred metres from their original churches: where ruins of earlier settlements exist close to churches, they remained undisturbed. For example, the village of Kounoupitsa and the main study village were built at a little distance from their pre-existing churches, hidden by knolls from any view from the sea. In the case of Kounoupitsa, the ruins of a small cluster of (probably medieval) houses were visible around the nearby church. There was also no known example of a present-day village house re-using a pre-nineteenth century one: both the ground plans and the construction styles of the two house types were quite distinct. Furthermore, the tradition of building churches unassociated with settlements means that several churches chosen for new settlements originally had no settlements. I do not wish to argue that religious faith was the only factor guiding village locations of new settlements and that factors of security and an agrarian livelihood were ignored. Considerable numbers of Byzantine and Turkish period churches in other places on Methana were not chosen as settlement locations, although they remain places of worship 354


to this day. Rather, I am arguing that it is impossible to understand why specific positions in Methana’s landscape were chosen without taking religious as well as economic and defence needs into account. In many ‘rational’ schools of thought in Western scholarship, fundamental differences are considered to exist between ‘materialistic’ and ‘non-materialistic’ considerations – an approach highlighted in the school of cultural materialism associated with Marvin Harris and his students (e.g., Harris 1997). It can also be seen to underlie the thinking of many cultural ecologists, whose strand of academic enquiry into relationships between humans and their environment originates in the work of Julian Steward (1955, chap. 2), who identified a ‘culture core’ (material factors) which should be the primary focus of research into human-environment relations, and a superstructural element, including religion, which he considered to be subsidiary to the materialistic core. Many scholars in related fields such as archaeology and geography have also ignored religious factors in the development of human landscapes. In archaeology, at least, some scholars have tended to confuse the belief of most anthropologists (sensu lato) in human rationality, with a belief in purely economic rationality, frequently translated into a concentration on least-effort models (e.g., Zipf’s law; Zipf 1949) to explain archaeological distributions, as noted in Chapter 6. Any thought of the religious needs of populations is usually ignored. An approach which tends to treat humans as primarily mobile alimentary canals with a finely tuned sense of self-preservation fails to understand that for deeply religious populations, the supernatural may be an ineradicable part of the landscape, just as religious behaviour is an integral part of everyday life. The particularities of the Methana situation highlight the fact that societies other than our own perceive their landscapes in a different way and that the supernatural may be an integral part of their landscapes. As a devoutly religious population, Methanites continued to build churches in varied locations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The fundamental importance of a place of worship to each community is evidenced by the way in which new churches were built within a few decades (or sometimes much less) of the foundation of villages. The most spectacular example of this trend is found 355


in the village of Kounoupitsa. Its main church, in the central open space ( platia), was built in 1824. This date places its construction right at the height of the Greek War of Independence. Further church construction had occurred in the villages of Makrilongos and Kypseli by about 1850. Additionally, churches in Kaimeni Khora, Aghii Theodhori, Palea Loutra and Meghalo Khori were either built or substantially rebuilt between about 1850 and 1875 (Koukoulis 1997b). The village of Kypseli provides a different aspect of the way in which Methanites have positioned their churches, both physically and conceptually, in the landscape. The church of Panaghia i Odhighitria (locally known as Panaghitsa, but different from the church of that name high above Meghalo Khori) was for a while the main church (see fig. 3.8). A number of aspects of the masonry style reminiscent of Turkish period churches and a number of parallels with the chapel at Aghios Gheorghios, also originally built in the Turkish period but extended in the mid-nineteenth century (Koukoulis 1997b, 214–17, 243, 245, 246–7) suggest that two carved dates of 1848 indicate a major refurbishment of an existing church. Its position on the edge of the village rather than the centre is also out of keeping with other newly built churches of the mid- to later nineteenth century. The date of 1848 is one year prior to the first recorded birth in the community registered in the mitroo arrenon, strongly suggesting that the work on the church was virtually contemporaneous with the foundation of the settlement, further emphasising the vital importance of churches for Methanites. By the end of the nineteenth century, Kypseli’s population had outgrown the Panaghitsa church. The foundations of the new, larger church were laid out in 1896 on a site in the centre of the village on land previously used for gardens. Oral tradition records that possible dedicatees for the new church were narrowed down to either Saints Peter and Paul jointly or Saint Anthony. Saint Anthony was chosen for a number of reasons. High on the list of reasons was the fact that Saint Anthony had been a hermit: the Greek word means ‘dweller in the wilderness’. Because the centre of the village is built directly under the beetling crags of a spectacular volcanic dome, the inhabitants feared the consequences of boulders from the crags falling onto the village during a hard frost or an earthquake. As a hermit, Saint Anthony had 356


lived among the rocks of the wilderness and was therefore considered a powerful protector against destructive rock-falls. Other reasons for choosing Saint Anthony over Saints Peter and Paul related to factors in the productive landscape. The festival for Saints Peter and Paul falls on 29 June, a very busy point in the agricultural year, coinciding with the end of the cereal harvest and with the threshing period – itself a protracted and exhausting operation in the days when it was done by driving animals around threshing floors. The patronal festival for Saint Anthony occurs on 17 January. Midwinter is a relatively slack time of the agricultural year, thus better suited to holding a major celebration. Additionally, by the end of June, many households’ wine supplies would have been running low, and there would have been an increased risk of wine turning vinegary in the summer months, whereas in January, three months after the vintage, supplies of wine would still have been plentiful. Because the consumption of substantial amounts of wine was an essential element of celebrations, ensuring adequate supplies was a major consideration. In this nugget of oral tradition, therefore, decisions on the choice of personality in the supernatural world as dedicatee of the new place of worship were firmly rooted in the specificities of the landscape. In particular, the threshing operation represented the climax of the agricultural cycle associated with the cereals which were Methanites’ staple diet, and a time of particular anxiety because of the risk of rainstorms soaking the dry sheaves or, worse still, the partly threshed or winnowed crop on the threshing floor. There were, additionally, concerns about theft of sheaves from the stacks waiting to be threshed. This was therefore not a time when people would welcome any interruption in the flow of work. Another element of the landscape involved in the decision was the natural – hence, humanly untamed – landscape. The help of supernatural beings was needed to control possible rock-falls, which were unpredictable and uncontrollable by mere mortals. The final element of the landscape involved here is the historical landscape. The village’s position below beetling crags was chosen because a hill in front screened it from potentially rapacious eyes onboard ships entering the Saronic Gulf. Thus, the village location, a direct result of historical concerns for security, led in turn to other safety concerns which the inhabitants believed only Saint Anthony could address. 357


Panighiria On the name-day of a village’s patron saint (the panighiri), each household entertained visitors from other villages in much the same way as people did when celebrating their own name-days. Special food was prepared: to mark the importance of the day, roast meat was usually provided, unless the day was one on which the religious calendar forbade meat-eating. There was usually also fresh bread – a fact of considerable social significance for households in which bread might be baked only every month or so. Liqueurs and sweets – standard fare for entertaining honoured visitors and guests – were frequently also provided. A large proportion of visitors and guests at village panighiria were relatives of villagers who were living elsewhere, often due to outmigration. In the past, a number of families sold off all their assets on Methana and moved away, mostly to Athens or Piraeus. Other families moved to the Plain of Trizin, where opportunities for more up-to-date farming beckoned. Other people moved away because their parents provided them with a living outside farming – again, often in Athens or Piraeus – so as to keep the division of their property at their death to a minimum. Many others moved away from Methana at marriage, whereas others again simply married into other communities on the peninsula. As noted in Chapter 5, village exogamy was frequent, primarily because of a lack of eligible marriage partners within villages. People who moved away still had kin in their natal villages. The everyday round of farming meant that on normal days households had little time that could be set aside for entertaining visitors or visiting relatives elsewhere. Panighiria, however, as special points in the religious calendar, were days set aside, when normal work should not be undertaken out of respect for the saint. They were therefore an ideal time to see kin in other communities, when they were not engaged in agricultural activities. Families who had moved en bloc, and those who had moved to Athens, were less likely to attend panighiria in their village of origin, although a number would come. But large numbers of relatives and friends living in other villages on Methana would make visits at panighiria. 358


In the past especially, panighiria also provided good opportunities for unmarried people to eye up possible spouses outside their own villages. Traditionally, one of the few opportunities to visit other communities was attendance at panighiria. For example, news spread rapidly when a young man, whose reputation caused him trouble finding a bride, travelled to a panighiri in a mountain village on the far side of the Plain of Trizin. It was widely assumed that he was on the lookout for a bride there, having failed to find one closer to home. Relatives in other villages were an ideal reason for attending panighiria in the hope of identifying a potential spouse. They could act as sources of information on likely partners and also act as a go-between if matters progressed to negotiations with a prospective spouse’s family. More distant relatives in other villages might also provide potential partners as well as a reason to visit another village. If the parents of the two young people were second cousins, they belonged to the same soi, yet the children, being beyond the ‘cut-off point’ of second cousins, were freely eligible for marriage. It was also relatively easy to decide whether a member of the other family was ‘the right sort’ as a potential marriage partner because they were related. Marriages of third cousins were also desirable from the point of view of consolidating the landholding patterns of the new couple (see also Clark 1988, 119 fn. 8, 351). Generally, in cases when third cousins lived in different villages, these plots of land were in areas high on the mountain, roughly equidistant between the two villages (see Chapter 8). EXTRA-MURAL CHURCHES: EMPTY SPACES AS CENTRAL PLACES

Religious piety has ensured that churches outside villages, as well as within them, have been built, rebuilt or refurbished over the last 150 years. Many older extra-mural churches have been provided with modern, usually larger, doorways and windows. Several have also been enlarged by extending them on the western end, opposite the apse and altar (fig. 9.3). The most spectacular examples of new church building, the large churches of Saint Barbara, near the village of Palea Loutra, and Saint George, on the coast below the village of Kounoupitsa, is discussed in more detail later. In the early 1970s, a number of old people 359


told me proudly that they or close relatives had participated in the rebuilding or refurbishing of long-ruined churches at Aghios Nikolaos and Profitis Ilias in their youth (discussed subsequently), or had been involved in building the church of Saint Barbara. On occasions, churches which had long been in ruins were rebuilt, such as the Early Christian period church of Saint Nicholas, below Palea Loutra. Oral histories place the event in the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century, with some men travelling from distant villages to help in the work. Likewise, the church of Profitis Ilias (the prophet Elijah), on a pinnacle above the village of Makrilongos, was built in 1892, partly on the remains of an earlier church (see also Koukoulis 1997b, 94). To have undertaken this work, especially if at a considerable distance from one’s own village, seemed to be commensurate in holiness with a minor act of pilgrimage. Although the church of Profitis Ilias was nowhere near their village, one household from the main study village claimed to have a proprietorial interest in it because a predecessor oversaw the rebuilding operation. The man’s son and grandson continued that interest through their involvement in further refurbishment and repairs over the years. In such ways, while performing their religious duties, Methanites ‘left markers’ in the landscape by their involvement in the construction and maintenance of the sacred buildings which formed the religious landscape. The refurbishment and financing of rural churches by private individuals is not particularly unusual (Murray and Kardulias 2000, 152). Another Methanitis noted that his family owned a wide terrace on which a church stood. Because of their ownership of the terrace, his family had contributed substantially to the upkeep of the church over the generations. Both this example and that in the previous paragraph indicate the way in which people’s interaction with the Divine may be mediated in part through kinship. The latter example also indicates the ways in which the landscapes of religion, kinship and production can all become inextricably intertwined. The building of the church dedicated to Saint Barbara at the locality now named after her was still quite vividly described by older people in the 1970s. The way it came about encapsulates the cross-cutting strands of Methanites’ religious beliefs, the pre-existing religious landscape, 360


9.3. The church of Aghii Asomati (Taxiarkhai), with works in progress (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

and the way in which religious structures became a focus for a shared identity at the supra-village or even pan-Methana level. The site of the church already had two small medieval extra-mural chapels close by, and another Turkish period church a couple of hundred metres away. Close to the small chapels, the rough volcanic cover-slabs of a tomb were visible: one slab had collapsed, and human bones were visible (Koukoulis 1997b, 219–36). Over a span of fifty years, the details of the course of events surrounding the construction of the new church became subject to a great many variations in oral histories. These variations themselves emphasised important cultural features, especially within the area of religious belief. The inspiration for the building of a church here occurred towards the end of the second decade of the twentieth century. One oral historical variant placed the start of the sequence during the worldwide influenza pandemic in 1919. In the fairly full version repeated here, recounted by an old woman who grew up in the village where the process started, it was placed in 1918, associated with a major outbreak of malaria. In fact, malaria was not a disease which regularly 361


affected people on Methana in the past, although it was endemic on the adjacent Plain of Trizin until after the end of the Second World War. Saint Barbara appeared to a woman called Maria in the village of Kounoupitsa in a dream. Maria told the priest about the dream, but he did not believe her. Later, as the priest was travelling from Kounoupitsa to Palea Loutra, he tripped and fell against a tree as he passed the spot where the church is now, losing an eye in the accident. After this, Saint Barbara appeared in a dream to a man called Dhedhegkikas who was sleeping with his wife, telling him to dig in a certain spot, where he would find the saint’s bones, and to build a church there. The man saw her, but his wife never saw a thing: proof that the man had a good soul. Several people stated that the man had his vision while he was seriously ill with an illness which was widespread at the time, although, as noted previously, details of what the illness was vary. In due course, the man went to the place, as bidden, and discovered a grave containing bones. As a result of this miracle, people organised to build a church on the spot where the bones were discovered. Although located away from any village and not used regularly for worship, it is one of the largest churches on the peninsula: larger than the churches which served as places of regular worship in traditional villages. The bones are now in a crypt under the church. In the 1970s, people could still remember Methanites travelling from their villages to help build the church. Although the actual building work was done by specialists, much of the stone for its construction was shipped from the island of Aegina. The main contribution of Methanites was therefore the transport of building stone on pack mules from the coast to the site, a distance of an hour or one and a half hours’ walk. Other people, including those without connections with Methana, came from as far as Piraeus and the island of Poros to participate in the work, which was completed in 1921. Subsequently, after building work on the church had started, Saint Barbara appeared to someone else in Kounoupitsa, called Barba Mitsos. She told him to go by night and dig in another place by himself. But Barba Mitsos was frightened and took his brother-in-law with him. He found an earthenware water jug with charcoal in it: if he had gone alone as instructed, the water jug would have contained gold. Other 362


versions of this part of the story state that gold was discovered, but it turned to dust immediately. In Athanasiou’s (1998, 106–8) account, derived from a former secondary-school headmaster’s written description, the date of writing is not stated, but internal evidence of mention of the present vehicular road (Athansiou 1998, 107) suggests a date in the mid-1960s or later. He states that Saint Barbara initially appeared in 1917 in a vision to a pious old man called Dhimitrios (Barba Mitsos) Dhedhegkikas, who was also known as ‘the Batchelor’, requesting that her remains be dug up. However, no one paid any attention to his descriptions of his vision. There followed a series of amazing and terrifying signs, but no one connected them with his vision. A second vision to the same man from Saint Barbara on 2 December 1917 promised that if he dug in a specific place, she would save people1 from the ‘Spanish’ influenza which was already afflicting the people of Kounoupitsa at that time. He spoke to the priest, who was already suffering from the flu. Because the priest was afraid he might die otherwise, he made no objection to his digging, as requested by the saint. The inhabitants of the village then turned out en masse to dig up her remains, accompanied by the priest, who seems to have miraculously recovered from his bout of life-threatening flu. The men who dug at the stipulated spot discovered the bones of two saints, Barbara and Juliana, but this account makes no mention of any other items found in the grave. It is evident that within less than a human lifespan, the events surrounding the discovery of bones at Aghia Varvara have accreted to themselves several features given special significance within Methanites’ culture and their environment. The importance of dreams as communication from supernatural beings with humans has already been noted. The fact that Methanites have long known that one or more graves existed close to the site of the new church is also doubtless significant. Other elements in the story raise questions about its accuracy as a strictly historical account. In the oral historical account, two men were involved, one called Barba Mitsos, the other with the surname Dhedhegkikas, while in the written account, they are one person. Athanasiou’s version suggests that the man was someone who never married, which automatically implies that he had a special social 363


status (see Chapter 5). In contrast, both men in the other version were married – hence, socially ordinary. In the schoolmaster’s account, despite the apparent certitude suggested by the exact date of the second vision, at very least the dating of the events seems unreliable, because the Spanish flu did not appear in Europe until the late summer or early autumn of 1918, continuing into 1919. The absolute veracity of all the names in the account repeated here could also be considered questionable in one way or another. In the oral historical version presented here, Maria, the name of the woman involved, was by far the most common female name on Methana and was occasionally used as a generic to denote any woman’s name. The name of the man with the good soul, Dhedhegkikas, also happened to be the name of the Methanitis hero of the Greek War of Independence, as previously noted. It was also a name associated purely with the village of Kounoupitsa, which through the building of the church has essentially laid claim to guardianship of a section of another village’s landscape. The name Barba Mitsos (Dhimitrios) should likewise be seen in the context of the existence of a small medieval church dedicated to Saint Dhimitrios at the site, close to which the graves noted earlier were visible. The element of the gold-filled water jug suggests a degree of rationalisation. Water poured from an earthenware jug was an essential element of the burial ceremony. Once brought into a cemetery, these jugs could not leave its confines: they were generally smashed over the grave. The involvement of a water jug rather than another type of container is therefore significant in a story associated with the discovery of bones. The idea of the existence of fabulous wealth hidden in the landscape, which only those with a level of knowledge beyond that of normal Methanites could know, was also endemic to Methanites’ thinking. Indeed, it bedevilled the work of a foreign ethnographer who was constantly asking strange questions about all aspects of the local landscape. The most frequently told story concerned the clandestine removal of the golden tortoise, buried on the highest peak of Methana by foreigners, described in Chapter 72 . The elements found in the golden tortoise story of going to dig up fabulous wealth, by oneself, at night, also echo the Saint Barbara stories. Although I was not told stories about the building of the church of Saint George at Aghios Gheorghios, it shared a number of features 364


9.4. The panighiri at the extra-mural church of Saint Barbara (Aghia Varvara). The people standing outside are worshippers who cannot get inside the packed church (Photo: Mari Clarke; Hamish Forbes).

with the church of Saint Barbara, being a focus for pan-Methana celebrations and larger than any village centre church, despite being built well away from a village. It was also associated with a miracle: in this case, a miraculous well. Services, also known as panighiria, were conducted annually in extramural churches, on the day of their particular patron saints (see fig. 9.4). All were opportunities for the congregation to meet up with people from other villages. Because of the levels of village exogamy on Methana, panighiria at extra-mural churches provided welcome opportunities during the year for friends, relatives, and acquaintances living in different villages to meet. Given the geographical constraints of the location of villages part-way up a roughly cone-shaped landmass, travel to villages on the other side of the peninsula was a timeconsuming business, even were the pressure of work to allow. Churches located high in the interior, however, were very roughly equidistant from all villages. Especially before the construction of vehicular roads, therefore, Methanites from many villages would travel by the many 365


mule tracks criss-crossing the peninsula to worship and meet with those living elsewhere. Attendance at extra-mural panighiria also gave people an opportunity to experience parts of the Methana landscape not visited in the normal agricultural round. As someone who visited a wide range of places in the interior for my research, I was regularly asked what culturally meaningful places I had visited there. A list of places would be fired at me, the majority of which were associated with churches. It was made clear that, having visited ‘everywhere’ on Methana (i.e., a number of places which my interlocutors had not visited), I had gained significant prestige and, when introduced to other Methanites who had not met me, I would often be described in these terms. Evidently, wide experience of the peninsular landscape was a mark of a ‘proper’ Methanitis. The following example indicates how, through journeys to worship in distant churches, Methanites experienced parts of their landscape which they otherwise never visited. The long-abandoned seasonal settlement of Sterna Ghambresë high in the interior of Methana lies on the main mule track between the villages of Makrilongos and Kaimeni Khora. Although its church was visited annually by a number of people, primarily from the previously mentioned villages, for its panighiri, relatively few Methanites had ever been there, particularly in the days when travel on foot or mule-back was the only option. As a way of discovering Methanites’ knowledge of the peninsula, I asked people if they had been to Sterna Ghambresë. One Methanitis who lived in a village at some distance from either Makrilongos or Kaimeni Khora surprised me by saying that he had been there: he had passed it when crossing the mountain to act as psaltis (singer) at an important church service at Kaimeni Khora. The construction of roads linking Methana with other areas made access to panighiria beyond Methana much easier. An especially important off-Methana festival for many Methanites on the adjacent Plain of Trizin was a panighiri on 12 May at a chapel out in the fields dedicated to Saint Epiphanios. It was an instructive example of how an act of religious devotion could sometimes develop important social or economic aspects, or both. Even before the construction of a vehicular road through the Plain of Trizin to Methana, the celebration was 366


9.5. Empty space transformed into a central place: the Moularobazaro. Buying wool after the service at the panighiri at Saint Epiphanios’ extra-mural church (Photo: Mari Clarke).

important for Methanites because a considerable number owned land there: some combined work on their land (especially tending vines) with attendance at the panighiri. The panighiri was treated as a special festival by Methanites, however, because of the attendance of large numbers of transhumant shepherds who overwintered their flocks in the area. The coming-together of large numbers of people provided an opportunity for buying and selling a range of agricultural items, which gave the festival its alternate name of moularobazaro (mule bazaar) – buying and selling pack animals was an important aspect of the post-liturgy activities. Because this was the time of year when the shepherds left for upland summer pastures, they were also eager to sell wool from the sheep shorn in late April. Many Methanites owned too few sheep to fulfill their households’ demands for wool for blankets and knitted items of clothing – traditionally essential items to be amassed in the trousseau of every young woman before she married. They were therefore keen to buy from the shepherds (fig. 9.5). 367


A number of Methanites with land on the Plain rented out to shepherds would meet with them at this time to collect the rent – often paid in wool. In addition, some Methanites had relatives living nearby because a number of Methanites had married into families in the area. Sometimes these were girls from households which owned land on the Plain: with the rising value of land there since the eradication of malaria, this became a desirable dowry. A few Methanites also sold off their Methana possessions and moved to land they already owned on the Plain. The moularobazaro was therefore an ideal opportunity for Methanites to meet up with these relatives and also to buy agricultural products. The social and economic importance of this annual event dependent on a religious celebration was illustrated one year when the panighiri coincided with a very important celebration in the main study community – the mnimosino (memorial service) held forty days after a death. Even distant kin and friends of the family were expected to attend the memorial service in church and pray for the soul of the departed. It was also a mark of respect and social solidarity with the deceased’s immediate family to attend a meal after the church service. Several of those present commented that many people – especially women – who should have been present were missing, having gone to buy wool at the moularobazaro. The practice of travelling to the Plain to the panighiri and moularobazaro indicates the way in which travel tended to be linked with religious observance, but attendance at religious ceremonies tended to be combined with other activities. By the later 1990s, times had changed, and the pastoral products market at the panighiri on the Plain of Trizin no longer existed, but linking travel and other secular activities with visits to religious shrines continued. In 1998, Methanites were describing bus excursions to more distant – and more famous – religious shrines than those on or near Methana. They also often continued to combine secular pursuits in these excursions. However, whereas previously a visit to the moularobazaro was normally associated with supporting the household’s productive economy, in the new excursions consumerism was foregrounded, particularly secular tourism. Nevertheless, a basic pattern remained: knowledge of the wider landscape, 368


whether of Methana, or of Greece, tended to be in terms of ‘islands’ of knowledge focused on religious sites. An element in the preceding discussion, already noted in Chapter 2, is the essential fact of movement through the landscape, whether on foot, on mule- or donkey-back, or in a vehicle. Only thus could Methanites traditionally reach rural religious sites. Contrary to much literary discussion noted in Chapter 2, Methanites’ narratives of attendance at panighiria lacked any foregrounding of the aspect of travel to reach a church. Emphasis was on attendance and worship and on meeting relatives afterwards, indicating that, even in what represented in many ways a mini-pilgrimage, the intervening landscape had relatively little significance in contrast to that of the ‘islands’ of significance, which were the churches themselves. The annual panighiria at three of Methana’s extra-mural churches, considered especially important religious sites, have developed a more pan-peninsular identity. Perhaps significantly, although the sites themselves had churches on them for centuries, all the buildings forming the focus of worship dated back less than 150 years. For the first to be discussed and the least important of the three – the church of the Prophet Elijah – the reasons for the site’s religious significance are unclear, although the tradition of attending panighiria of the Prophet Elijah is widespread in Greece. The other two are considered especially important from a religious point of view because they are miraculous: in the case of Saint Barbara because of the miraculous discovery of her bones and in the case of Saint George because of the existence of a miraculous well close by. The celebration on 20 July of the ascent into heaven by the Prophet Elijah is one of the most important summer celebrations in Greece (Megas 1963, 142), and churches dedicated to the prophet are widely distributed on hilltops, normally at considerable distances from settlements. In these locations, they regularly attract a congregation from several surrounding settlements (Megas 1963, 142–4), as was the case on Methana: the rebuilt church at the abandoned medieval citadel, high in the middle of the peninsula, traditionally attracted a substantial congregation. The very act of ascending the precipitous slope up to the site involved a great deal of exertion, evoking a sense of achievement 369


at having reached the top and contributing to the sense of the worshipper’s piety, both in worshippers and in the minds of non-attenders. Two other saints’ day celebrations on Methana commanded an even greater attendance: Saint Barbara and Saint George. Despite the large size of the church of Saint Barbara, congregations were normally so large that the church interior seemed to have more in common with an Athenian rush-hour bus than an act of piety: a large proportion of the congregation was forced to stand outside during the service. After the church service, many people would go on to adjacent villages to visit friends and relations. Because of the number of visitors, it was customary in the 1970s for many households in the nearby village of Palea Loutra to hold open house and for a bar to be organised, with a band, so that people could dance, like at a village panighiri. Despite the continuing secularisation of most of Greek life in the late twentieth century, the church of Saint Barbara has continued as a major focal point in their landscape for Methanites. When I returned to Methana in 1998 after an absence of more than ten years, one of the pieces of news most commonly repeated was that money had been raised to build cells for nuns to start a nunnery, and I was regularly asked if I had seen the newly built cells, although no nuns were living there. The most important panighiri on Methana was the feast of Saint George. The large church of Saint George and its adjacent older chapel are located on the coast beside a small harbour of the same name, below the village of Kounoupitsa. The chapel seems to date from the Turkish period, though possibly built on part of a larger Byzantine structure (Koukoulis 1997a, 93; 1997b, 217–19). There was no permanently occupied building at the harbour, although a ruined structure seems to be the remains of a small monastery dating to the mid-nineteenth century (Koukoulis 1997b, 214). Why this panighiri should have become the focus of pan-Methana sentiment is unclear: Saint George’s position as Greece’s patron saint seems an inadequate explanation. One indicator of the site’s special status, however, was the erection on this site, by public subscription, of a monument to the Methanitis Dhedhegkikas who distinguished himself during the Greek War of Independence, as already noted. Another was the existence of a well to which were attributed special 370


powers. The site’s lasting significance was indicated by the amount of money spent on beautifying its immediate environs. In the 1970s and 1980s, the area around the church was a bare flat area of fine sand in which a few eucalyptus trees grew. By the late 1990s, the village of Kounoupitsa had landscaped the whole area. Numerous young trees had been planted, the ground had been covered in irrigated lawns, with marble walkways crossing them and the monument to the war hero Dhedhegkikas given a focal place in the new layout (figs. 9.6a and 9.6b). The celebration of Saint George’s day was Methanites’ most important social event of the year. As the day of the country’s patron saint, it has major significance everywhere in Greece. On Methana, however, it took on added significance. Methanites converged on the church not only from all over the peninsula, but from elsewhere as well, small ferries being chartered from Piraeus during the 1970s to bring large numbers of Methanites living in the capital for the celebration. Unlike panighiria at other extra-mural churches, where only representatives of households generally attended, it was customary for whole families to attend, bringing a picnic lunch with them. Significantly, these lunches generally consisted of the kind of fare reserved for weddings and for entertaining guests at a village panighiri. A flavour of the situation can be gained from these extracts from my field diary for 1973. 30 April. Aghiou Gheorghiou [St. George’s day]. Aghiou Gheorghiou should by rights have been before Easter, but Easter was so late this year that it was put to the day after, so as not to precede Easter. The preparations for Aghiou Gheorghiou seemed to be as elaborate, if not more so, than for Easter. The night before, everyone was putting several tapsia [baking trays] of meat and potatoes into the oven. Also, many people made ghalaktoboureko [a milk-based dessert]. . . . Today the bus came past [the village] . . . going to Aghios Gheorghios continuously and was practically splitting at the seams with people almost every time. There was also a vast amount of cars passing, compared with what we are used to. On average, there seemed to be a car every 2 minutes or so [instead of about two every hour]. Lots of people went down on mules, or walked. I saw Barba A . . . walk past the house to the road with a large basket, lined with a napkin and filled with food. . . . Aghios Gheorghios was an incredible sight. The ground was just thick with people and there were about 20–30 cars and lorries parked on the flat 371


area there, and more just off the road at various points [N.B. this was a period when car ownership was virtually unknown on Methana, apart from taxi drivers]. . . . The photographer from Piraeus was there; also an ancient guy with an even more ancient bellows camera, who didn’t seem to be doing much business. A sort of bus-boat (like the ones that take people on the Piraeus-Aegina run) was moored by the sunken ship that makes part of the harbour . . . and another came while we were there. There were 2 caiques moored close by – I’ve only seen one there before. There was a vast array of nasty toys being sold: mostly the horrid plastic variety. There was at least one person selling ice creams. There were two [temporary] restaurants jammed with people. There was a truck selling beer, pop, and some oranges. G . . . took quite a lot of people back in his truck with him from Aghios Gheorghios. He was allowed to do so by the police. (All the police seemed to have moved to Aghios Gheorghios.) . . . There were large groups of people scattered around the Aghios Gheorghios area eating lunch, usually under trees.

It should be apparent from the preceding discussion that churches have traditionally been a major focal point for Methanites, providing an appropriate setting in which to worship God and His saints, an essential activity in their lives. In addition, they were important locations in which to meet people from other communities for the exchange of news and gossip with kin, friends and acquaintances, for the opportunity to identify potential spouses, and occasionally to conduct business. Extra-mural churches, especially, provided a ‘neutral’ ground, often, as in the case of churches in the interior of the peninsula, part-way between all the villages. As such, they formed strategic meeting places for family and friends from different villages. The annual celebrations at the extra-mural churches of Saint Barbara and Saint George, although not in the interior, have attracted the greatest numbers by providing the means by which Methanites have been able to express their pan-peninsular identity. In this landscape, therefore, it was not nucleated communities which have become the ‘central places’ beloved of archaeology and geography. Rather, it was these isolated structures in the apparently ‘empty’ countryside which provided the conceptual focus for what it meant to be a Methanitis. 372


9.6. Empty space transformed into a central place. Above: Saint George’s church in the mid-1980s (Source: Koukoulis 1997b). Below: the same church in the late 1990s, with the war memorial moved to a more prominent position (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

373


Perhaps the best indicator of the ‘central place’ role played by Aghios Gheorghios was the monument to the peninsula’s Revolutionary War hero (see fig. 7.7). The inscribed stone celebrating Ioannis Dhedhegkikas’ life and deeds, and representing a pan-Methana celebration of an ancestor, was described in Chapter 7. The choice of the conceptual central place of Aghios Gheorghios for its erection and the way in which the wording of the inscription highlighted the hero’s identity as a Methanitis emphasised the site’s significance for all Methanites, not simply those from nearby Kounoupitsa. However, like many other monuments discussed in Chapter 7, this one also demonstrated multiple layers of meaning. The choice of a hero of the Revolution for memorialisation in this way also allowed Methanites to ‘place’ themselves at the centre of the momentous episode which led to the birth of the modern Greek state. Nevertheless, Dhedhegkikas was from Kounoupitsa. This fact, and the erection of his monument at a site of great significance for all Methanites which lay close to Kounoupitsa, enabled the people of that village to lay claim to a kind of primacy over other villages on the peninsula. The location of Methanites’ pride in their past in a religious ‘hot spot’ in the landscape is especially noteworthy. A place such as a civic square in the administrative centre of Loutra might have been expected because the memorial was a secular rather than a religious monument. The link among religion, patriotism, and civic pride was made clear at the very top of the monument, however, where it announced in very formal language: ‘For faith and fatherland’. Thus it was that it was initially set up close to a church in the midst of an empty flat expanse of dusty sand beside the sea. Until a few years ago, this empty area surrounding the monument filled up and teemed with people only on the day of the panighiri: only on this one day in the year could one understand why such an important monument should have been set up so far from human habitation. THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE IN THE 1990 s

As times have changed, so has the relationship of Methanites with their religious landscape. Even as recently as the 1970s, for many Methana households most of their material needs were provided directly by 374


their agricultural enterprises: the economic relationship with their landscape was vital to them. By the end of the 1990s, there were few if any households for which this was true. The drop in the wholesale prices of food products relative to other products, and the rapidly rising life-style expectations of generations growing up in the 1970s and later, have meant that small-scale subsistence farming in the unmechanisable Methana landscape has not been a viable economic option in the 1990s. Farming has therefore become for most a secondary or supplementary activity. Large areas of formerly cultivated land have been abandoned to rapidly regenerating scrub, and those still cultivated had little value in financial terms, unless they could be sold as plots for holiday homes close to the coast. For many Methanites in the 1990s, therefore, there was no need to travel to remote parts of the peninsula to work their land because the archipelagos of far-flung scattered plots belonging to them had been largely abandoned. Distant parts of the peninsula were therefore no longer regularly visited as part of the agricultural round. At the same time, changes in the wider economy and culture have had a profound effect. Methanites have progressively changed from being producers to consumers (Clark 1988, esp. chap. 5). The increasing levels of wealth from employment in non-farming activities have allowed Methanites greater ease of access to remoter parts of their landscape than ever before. Whereas previously travel into and across the centre of the peninsula was on foot or on donkey- or mule-back, in recent decades increasing numbers of vehicular roads have been bulldozed up to the central part of the peninsula. Simultaneously, much larger numbers of households could afford a vehicle, allowing ready access to formerly remote places. The interplay between economic and religious activities has likewise changed. Thus, although the annual festival on the Plain of Trizin where Methanites used to travel for the moularobazaro continued, the marketing of livestock products ceased. Methanites believed that much of the money for the construction of these roads came from the European Union as part of its roads programme for improving access in the countryside. Decisions to request funds for provision of rural roads and the locations to be served were said to be in the hands of local community politicians. Other roadbuilding funds came from the Greek government, which also needed 375


to ensure that EU funds were responsibly used. However, decisions to build roads and the destinations to be served often seemed to be a way of influencing voters to re-elect local officials. It is ironic that these roads were being constructed at this time to give access to land which few people wished to farm in the present economic climate. Nevertheless, as of 1998, road construction was continuing. There was already a network of vehicular roads to the middle of the peninsula, with ready access to it from most villages. Although some areas in the centre were traditionally more highly prized than others, much of the land was potentially cultivable and therefore worthy of roads to provide access to it. The routes taken by new roads, and the destinations reached, needed to be ‘meaningful’ in the minds of Methanites if local officials were to influence voters to re-elect them. It is therefore instructive to see what choices were made in the locations to be served directly by rural access roads. Because funding for these roads was earmarked for, broadly speaking, economic development, blatantly constructing roads to give access to non-economic destinations, such as remote churches, was not allowed. Nevertheless, these roads were constructed in such a way as to give easy access to two remote churches while simultaneously providing access to areas of agricultural land. They passed within 100 to 200 metres of the churches, in such a way that a gently sloping bulldozed spur from the road proper provided easy vehicular access to the church itself. Therefore, far more people were enabled to worship at the panighiria at these churches because they were now accessible by car and pick-up truck, so much less time and effort was necessary to reach them. The building, for ostensibly economic reasons, of roads which nevertheless just happened to pass near churches, mirrored earlier examples. The road built in the 1960s and early 1970s to connect all the villages on Methana with the main town of Loutra was vital for modernising and improving life on the peninsula. Yet, as the road winds its way across the landscape from village to village, it just happens to pass close to a surprising number of extra-mural churches and others on peripheries of villages – especially cemetery churches. Nearly a dozen of these churches are directly served by the older road, including the 376


9.7. The road built in the 1960s passes close to extra-mural churches.

modern church and two medieval churches at the important Aghia Varvara site. The road to Kounoupitsa rises as it leaves the village of Aghii Theodhori, heading for the extra-mural church of Zodhokhos Pighi. Making an almost right-angled bend round the church, it gently descends to a low point immediately above the site of Aghios Gheorghios. It promptly rises again to pass immediately beside Kounoupitsa’s cemetery church of Taxiarkhai, located several hundred metres from the village proper, before reaching that village. From Kounoupitsa to the villages of Palea Loutra and Makrilongos, the road first passes close to the churches at Aghia Varvara before dividing, with separate spurs terminating at these two villages. Although this road does not lead directly to Aghios Gheorghios, access was provided shortly after the main road’s construction by bulldozing a track from the road down to the coast (fig. 9.7). 377


Other local government funds have been invested in making the annual services in some extra-mural churches more meaningful to Methanites. At one, Aghios Athanasios high in the mountains but now accessible by road, rough concrete benches and tables have been built for worshippers eating a meal provided from local government funds after the church service (fig. 9.8). Thus, what used to be a service in a remote and little-visited church attended by relatively few Methanites from the villages with easiest access became a peninsulawide panighiri rivalling those of Aghia Varvara and Aghios Gheorghios. Significantly, in view of the symbolic hegemony claimed by the village of Kounoupitsa over the celebrations at Aghia Varvara and Aghios Gheorghios, the ‘new’ peninsula-wide panighiri was organised and funded by another community. The beautification of the area around the Aghios Gheorghios church noted earlier is another example of the way in which religious sites have been made more meaningful to Methanites. When I returned to Methana in 1998, I was repeatedly told of the improvements to the site, including restaurants and shops, and urged to visit. Indeed, the site had become a major recreational focus. The war memorial dedicated to the memory of Ioannis Dhedhegkikas was no longer an isolated stone in an empty expanse of sand but had become a focal point in the landscaped area beside the church. Large numbers of families congregated there, most of whom had driven to the site. Children swam in the harbour’s shallow waters, and numerous pleasure craft were moored there. On the day I visited, a large pleasure craft had been brought to the site on a lorry and was being lowered into the water by crane. Its new owner was from another Methana village which had its own small harbour directly below it. Such was the draw of Aghios Gheorghios as a social centre, however, that he decided to moor it there rather than in his own village’s harbour. Unlike the case presented by Ronayne (2001, 154–7), signposting on Methana is not an example of the ‘commodification’ by national authorities of a heritage landscape relating to tourism. Because of their small size and the limited information which can be presented, road signs provide a distillation of parts of landscapes which those responsible for their erection deem most necessary for travellers. In 378


9.8. Saint Athanasios’ church. The white objects on the road in the foreground and beside the concrete picnicking bench are abandoned party litter (Photo: Hamish Forbes).

theory, at least, they are set up for those unfamiliar with an area, normally directing travellers to villages, towns, and cities. However, on Methana the contents of most road signs were the responsibility of local officialdom. Choices of place-names included on signs indicated 379


places meaningful to Methanites. In fig. 9.9, the signs on the left with English translations indicating archaeological sites were erected by a national authority. The sign on the right, without a translation and pointing towards the upland basin Stravolongos (discussed later in this chapter), was the work of local authorities. On Methana, the main road serving the villages on the east and north sides of the peninsula had signs directing travellers to Methana’s most important sacred sites: Aghios Gheorghios and Aghia Varvara. It is arguable that these sacred sites were largely of interest to Methanites rather than non-Methanites, although Methanites readily emphasised their importance in speaking to non-Methanites. Road signs allowed Methanites to ‘label’ the most significant parts of their landscape for themselves, the people who saw the signs most frequently while travelling along the roads. Thus, the signs became a constant reminder and reinforcement for them of the crucial points in their landscape, even when they were not the traveller’s actual destination. The more recently constructed roads leading into the interior conformed to the same pattern. Signs were sometimes placed where these roads left the main road connecting the villages. However, because there were no villages in the interior toward which to direct traffic, other destinations had to be highlighted on signs. One such road passed a series of important vineyard areas, in particular, the area of Stravolongos. This imposing volcanic caldera, filled with vines until the appearance of the vine-destroying insect Phylloxera, was traditionally of considerable economic importance to several villages, many of whose households owned vine plots there. A sign at another junction included this major economic feature and also the church of Aghios Athanasios, mentioned previously, built on one of the caldera’s sides, but only accessible via a roughly bulldozed spur from the main vehicular road. Thus, although some village names were given, sacred sites often had pride of place. THE DEAD IN THE LANDSCAPE: CEMETERIES

So far, the emphasis in this chapter has been on the way in which Methana’s religious landscape has been integral to the way of life, beliefs 380


9.9. Different signposts point to different places of interest for different constituencies. None directs travellers to a settlement (Photo: Stefanie Moehrle).

and, indeed, history of its inhabitants. Village cemeteries, however, were firmly segregated, and marked as such in various ways. In Chapter 8, I discuss the kinship landscape within cemeteries. Here, I discuss the position of cemeteries within the wider landscape. Their lack of integration into the rest of the landscape, in contradistinction to other sacred structures, clearly indicates the place and treatment of death in the landscape of the living. The ultimate fate of all who live on Methana has been burial in their local cemetery, located close to but outside the bounds of their settlement. Cemeteries with their associated churches, while part of the landscape, were in many ways set apart from it. They were surrounded by a substantial wall, in which there was a single gate. They also contained cypress trees, the ultimate symbol of death, ‘going to the cypress trees’ being regularly used as a metaphor for dying. Although the tall evergreen spires of these trees visually marked the locations of cemeteries from a considerable distance, their dense dark evergreen foliage simultaneously masked a clear view of their interiors. The 381


contradictory features of marking-yet-masking which these characteristic symbols provided was one element among the many that generated the marginal status of this sector of the landscape (fig. 9.10). There was a strongly held belief that once things associated with death and burial had passed through the gate into the cemetery, they should not be allowed to return to the world outside the boundary wall. So, for example, the pottery jug used to pour water during the burial was smashed at the grave to ensure it did not return to the world of the living. Bread and cheese were handed round at the graveside as a ritual meal: any remaining could not be removed from the cemetery, but was thrown away within its confines. Furthermore, although the rule did not apply to living humans, it was freely acknowledged that all humans would eventually make the one-way journey. That things associated with a burial must stay in the cemetery applied, most importantly, to the dead themselves. The undead corpse which rises from the grave, leaves the cemetery, and returns to the land of the living is well known in Greece (e.g., Lee 1941; du Boulay 1982)3 . Methanites were reluctant even to mention such things. Nevertheless, they were ready to voice open concern when an already occupied grave was reopened for a newly deceased person (discussed later in this chapter). The possibility that the previous corpse would not have decayed, thus denying the soul free passage to the next world, was a major concern. In times past, graves would be marked with a simple wooden cross which would rot away. There was thus no lasting monument at the grave. In recent decades, however, as households have had more resources to invest in matters other than increasing their productive property, a tradition has developed on Methana of memorialising the deceased with grave-markers, usually of marble, with the name of the deceased engraved on them. Sometimes they contained a small glass-fronted compartment in which a photograph of the deceased could be placed. Thus, the identities of the dead and their links with the world of the living could be maintained, via the reinforcement of their presence in the memories of their friends and relatives (see Chapter 8). However, many photographs were bleached out in the bright sun, and many grave-markers themselves tended to become broken and untended after a decade or two. In this way, the deceased did not 382


9.10. The cemetery illustrated in fig. 8.3. Above: External view, showing the single entrance. Below: internal view (Photos: Hamish Forbes).

maintain a separate identity in the cemetery forever. The kinship system, too, ensured that the deceased lost their identity. Because of the way in which the grandparental generation bequeathed their names to their grandchildren, past generations lost even the individuality of their 383


names because these tended to be taken over by their grandchildren, as the domestic cycle repeated itself. Cemeteries emphasised the liminal nature of death, and the decomposition of the deceased’s body, within the belief system – hence, the concern over bodies remaining in their liminal state as undecayed corpses. For Methanites, death was the end of their way of life in this world, but belief in an afterlife meant that death and bodily decay were necessary elements in the process by which the soul was freed from its body to enter that afterlife. Kinship ties between the living and the dead continued beyond the grave, however, via the cemetery’s arrangement into blocks by soi (see Chapter 8) and by various memorialising processes, not least by linking them to particular houses. The processes which took place in the cemetery were simply a short intermediate, or threshold, stage in the transition between two states: living and dead. The positioning of cemeteries vis-à-vis villages reified this liminality within the built environment. Cemeteries and the human remains they contained ‘belonged’ physically to villages, but burials were not allowed within villages’ confines. The cemetery was generally on the edge of, or a short distance from, the community of the living, making it simultaneously part of, yet apart from, the village. The same was true for the positions of cemeteries within the wider landscape. The rest of the landscape was regularly or irregularly crisscrossed by humans in their daily, seasonal or annual round of essential activities associated with making a living and worshipping God and His saints. Movement across the landscape was facilitated by the networks of paths and mule tracks and, more recently, by vehicle roads, which almost always interconnected with others (at least conceptually), imparting a strong feeling that one was always moving through the landscape. This was the landscape of the living. The existence of the boundary wall and the single gate on the cemetery emphasised that this was the one part of the landscape which one did not travel through: it was very much a dead end. These facts, and the acceptance that all humans would make the one-way journey to the cemetery, sooner or later, set this small sector of the landscape apart. While it was set within the landscape of the living, it was not fully part of it. Cemeteries were thus very special places linking the population with both the 384


supernatural and, in a very physical way, the landscape because as the final destination of villages’ inhabitants, they physically incorporated them into the landscape. But, in the same way that cemeteries both were and were not part of the local landscape, so the deceased they contained continued to exist, in memory and memorial, as part of the local community of the living only for a restricted time, eventually losing their human identity. The loss of individuality even affected the bones of those deceased. Disinterment of bones and their secondary deposition in a disarticulated state in a community ossuary is a standard tradition in Greece (e.g., Danforth and Tsiaras 1982). Although on Methana this was not the case, a plot in which someone had been buried might be re-used for a close relative within two or three years. The partially disarticulated bones of the grave’s previous occupant could sometimes be seen in the grave-side soil-heap when a body was buried: they were shown scant reverence, simply being shovelled back into the grave on top of the coffin. Indeed, the decayed remains of the corpse were a good sign: as noted previously, an undecayed corpse represented a person ‘frozen’ in the liminal stage of death. Methanites refused to discuss the matter in detail, but from their very strong emphasis that everything which entered the cemetery should stay there and that the dead must make a one-way journey, I received the impression that such an anomalous corpse represented an individual with the potential to return through the cemetery’s enclosing boundary, breaking the rule that the dead must remain apart from the world of the living. Such individuals were thus both the validation of the rule that what goes into the cemetery must not return to the world of the living and its ultimate transgression. The dead had their own special place in the landscape, segregated from the living. Thus, just as burial was simply a liminal stage during which the body decayed, leaving the soul to enter the next world, so the cemetery was positioned liminally within the landscape. THE DEAD IN THE LANDSCAPE: WAYSIDE SHRINES

Wayside shrines (proskinitaria) are very common in Greece, most obviously alongside vehicular roads. Most consist of small enclosed boxes 385


raised off the ground, with a cross on the top. They generally contain at least one small icon and a small oil lamp lit in front of it as an act of religious devotion (e.g., Murray and Kardulias 2000, 153; see fig. 9.11). Most are erected near places where people have died in accidents or as thank-offerings to a saint for the successful avoidance of one. On Methana, the majority seemed to mark locations of fatal accidents, but because no vehicular roads predate the 1960s and traffic on them in the first decades was very limited, proskinitaria were mercifully rare. One or two shrines, however, had been built for other reasons. In one village, one of the oldest examples stood at the junction of the track to the cemetery with the main road. Close relatives of the memorialised person considered the trip to the cemetery too far for them to travel on a regular basis, so they installed a shrine on the road, in sight of the cemetery. They could thus light a small oil lamp in his memory in the shrine, with his burial place in view, more easily than travelling all the way to the cemetery to do the same thing. Those memorialised by shrines were buried in a normal cemetery, not at the site of the shrine. Thus, as in the exceptional case just noted, proskinitaria monumentalised dead relatives. Being located beside roads, these shrines became regular reminders to knowledgeable travellers of the person concerned every time they travelled past the spot. They also prompted others, who might be unfamiliar with the person and the incident, to enquire about them and carry that memory with them henceforth. For example, in 1998, an acquaintance drew my attention to a particular proskinitario as a prelude to explaining that he had set it up to the memory of his grandson who was killed in an accident close to the spot. Proskinitaria, therefore, with their religious items and the associated religious activities, at one level placed the supernatural in the landscape because those who lit the lamps would pray to God and one or more of His saints for the soul of the departed. At another level, though, they placed kinship into the landscape, by being erected by close relatives to memorialise the person and monumentalise the incident which ended his or her life. Thus, Methanites’ experience of the Divine was once again mediated via their own worldly experiences. 386


9.11. Different kinds of proskinitario.

THE SUPERNATURAL AND MOVEMENT THROUGH THE LANDSCAPE

Previous discussion has already highlighted roads and signposts as important elements in the broader issue of movement through landscapes. Signposts, however, were not synonymous with travel to the destination indicated. They merely indicated that a particular named place might be reached in that direction. The traveller might ignore the turning or stop before the named destination was reached. What the traveller could not ignore was the implication that the named place was of special importance, for whatever reason. Furthermore, the signs reinforced the importance of these special sites in the minds of travellers every time they passed, even though they might remain out of sight. On Methana, as noted, those places of extra-special importance which were literally signposted were often associated with the supernatural. Archaeologists searching for examples of the ways in which nonWestern peoples relate to places and spaces are often tempted to consider Australian Aboriginal societies. For example, among the archaeological examples of landscape studies in Bender (1993), one of three ethnographic chapters discusses Australian Aborigines. Tilley (1994, 387


37–54) likewise has an extended discussion of the relationships between Aborigines and their landscapes. The highly complex conceptions of identity and relationships, including religious/mythic, historical, subsistence and kinship issues which are found in Aboriginal societies (e.g., Layton 1995; Morphy 1995; Myers 2000) are part of a rapidly growing ethnographic literature on landscape. Because they represent in many ways the pinnacle of ‘otherness’ from our own Westernised ways of conceptualising landscapes, they have become popular with archaeologists discussing prehistoric landscapes as ethnographic comparanda. Yet, as Bradley (2000, 13–14) emphasises, there is a certain perversity in using accounts of Australia or America for understanding past European landscapes when examples from closer to home are available: their very exoticness may be an obstacle to our understanding. Equally important, anthropologists are by no means unanimous in their understandings of the relationships between Aborigines and their landscapes: Myers (2000, 74) refers to ‘the supposed Aboriginal relationship to land’ (my italics). Many anthropologists consider that, for Aboriginal societies, movement through landscapes has enormous meaning in and of itself – a feature highlighted by Tilley (1994, 41–2, 49). Although individual ‘places’ have great significance, the act of travelling between them is an essential part of placing places within the space of landscapes. The vital conception here is The Dreaming, which constitutes the very framework of Aboriginal society (Myers 2000, 80). Myths associated with The Dreaming frequently encompass the travels of ancestors through a great number of places, with Dreaming-tracks linking several localised Aboriginal groups (Myers 2000, 81). The physical form of the earth itself is explained as the actions of ancestral beings who travelled from place to place. Significant places are locations where ancestors stayed, for however brief a time, on their movements across the landscape (Morphy 1995, 187–8). The ancestral past, which structures knowledge of the landscape, is learned by Aboriginal people during their own movement through the landscape (Morphy 1995, 196). Similarly, on the everyday level, ‘[o]ne’s country is a projection – in a sense – of one’s movements and social relations, of kinship, converted to identity with place’ (Myers 2000, 95). The fundamental importance of the act 388


of travelling is also indicated by mortuary rituals, whose objective is, ‘in part to create a unique route . . . from the place of death [of an individual] to the final destination of the soul’ (Morphy 1995, 203), the journey itself cutting across ancestral tracks (Morphy 1995, 203). On Methana, there was no such integration of movement through the landscape with the supernatural, or with self-identity. In Greece, a ‘journey’ (taxidhi) has special cultural significance: it is conceptually a potentially dangerous undertaking. If one says that one is going on a journey, one is almost always wished kalo taxidhi (good journey). The level of meaning to such a wish has far greater significance than the equivalent of the North American ‘Have a nice day’. However, a taxidhi would normally entail crossing a substantial tract of unfamiliar territory, especially but not exclusively by sea or air. Travel by a Methanitis to Athens across the Saronic Gulf would elicit a kalo taxidhi, but travel across or around Methana would occasion the simple wish na pas sto kalo (literally: go to the good) or ora kali (have a good time). In narratives of attendance at panighiria, the participation at the place is highlighted. The journey to the place is ignored unless something out of the ordinary happened. On return from a liturgy at a rural church, a worshipper might be wished voithia sas (literally: ‘help to you’) but this was the same wish as would be given to someone attending a liturgy in their own village’s church. As already noted, there was a church dedicated to Profitis Ilias (the Prophet Elijah) built on the summit of a spectacular peak with incredibly steep sides, the site of a medieval citadel. The steepness of the path was a challenge even for the fit and healthy: each time I have visited, I have felt a real sense of achievement at reaching the top. Yet, in narratives of attendance at the panighiri, Methanites failed to mention the access unless I had already commented on it. As noted in Chapter 2, movement through landscapes as part of the drudgery of farmers’ quotidian existence has not excited the same theoretical attention as have ‘walkers’ or pilgrims. Methanites’ highly fragmented landholdings necessitated a substantial amount of travel between plots to carry out farming tasks (Forbes 2000b). However, they have not invested this inescapable fact with any great social 389


significance: it was simply a rather unwelcome chore. Thus, if I were walking along a mule track, I would frequently be involved in a conversation somewhat as follows: Methanitis: Where are you going? HF: I’m going to see X church [as an example]. Methanitis: On foot? HF: How else? Methanitis: Why? HF: To see what is there. Methanitis: But it’s a long way – don’t you get tired? HF: I’m still a young man [!] Methanitis: Akh, akh, akh! But it’s a long way! Haide, sto kalo (Go to the good).

Actual movement through the landscape, therefore, did not have particular significance for Methanites, either in connection with normal subsistence activities or in the normal worship of God and His saints. Although these statements hold true for actual movement, certain features associated with the supernatural gave meaning to roads and tracks. As noted, the positioning of vehicular roads was sometimes specifically related to the prior positioning of several churches – an indication of the primary significance of the churches and the secondary significance of the roads. On Methana, churches were significant sui generis, without dependence on movement through the landscape. The setting up of road signs in the last few decades, ‘signposting’ their existence, was eloquent proof of this fact. The cemetery with its mortuary chapel gave enhanced meaning to its access road. The main explanation for this statement is that cemeteries broke the general rule that roads, paths and tracks provided passage through the landscape: cemeteries with only a single gate into the enclosure blocked passage through the landscape, emphasising the finality of death. However, the cemetery itself had the primary meaning: the positioning of the road simply reinforced it. Proskinitaria ostensibly contradicted what has been said so far because they postdated vehicular roads. These tiny religious structures associated with death did not block passage through the landscape like a cemetery enclosure: because the body of the departed was elsewhere, they did not have the same function as a cemetery, although sharing 390


certain overlapping elements. Nevertheless, as with churches, so with shrines, the primary focus of those who went to maintain them was the shrine itself: travel was only a means to an end. An important element in the functions of the shrine was to remind those passing by on other business, especially fellow members of the soi, of a departed soul who needed their prayers. Thus, although proskinitaria in one sense placed the supernatural in the landscape, in another they concerned monumentality and thus, for Methanites, primarily kinship. THE CHANGING IMPORTANCE OF CHURCHES IN THE LANDSCAPE

The increasing secularisation of life readily identifiable in the West generally is also recognisable in Greece. Nearly forty years ago, Campbell and Sherrard (1968, 209, 212) stated that fasting as an integral part of Orthodox religious behaviour had been largely abandoned, local religious festivals had lapsed, and only 2 percent of the Greek population were regular ‘church goers’. The trend has continued. Methanites have not been immune to such changes, although a far higher proportion than 2 percent probably still considered themselves regular attenders at church in the late 1990s. In particular, panighiria at extra-mural churches continued to have meaning for Methanites: the significance of several has increased in recent years, due particularly to important changes in Methanites’ secular lives. One element here was the increase in financial resources available to most of them, including from external sources – the European Union and the Greek state – which provided easier access via new vehicular roads. It also allowed for the increasing monumentalisation of some churches, such as Aghios Gheorghios. Additionally, households in the 1990s had far more resources of their own, widespread vehicle ownership allowing use of the new roads to travel to panighiria with an ease unheard of in the days of rough mule tracks. Increased personal wealth also contributed to the increased monumentalisation of churches, private donations, for example, enabling construction of monastic cells at the site of Aghia Varvara. Additionally, increased disposable income has allowed Methanites to visit other parts of Greece, the primary objective often being to visit churches. 391


With changes in the wider economy and Methanites’ transformation from producers to consumers (Clark 1988, esp. chap. 5), almost no Methanites depended primarily on farming for their support in the late 1990s. Hence, they had fewer economic reasons for maintaining their acquaintance with their landscape while travelling across it during daily farming activities. Acquaintanceship with the wider landscape has therefore become increasingly dependent on annual outings to panighiria at extra-mural churches. Simultaneously, improved access to these formerly remote sites meant more people could attend. These two phenomena combined to give increased meaning to the churches themselves and to attendance at their annual services despite Methanites’ lives becoming increasingly secularised. CONCLUSIONS

This chapter, like preceding ones, has focused on physical features in the landscape and the highly complex and overlapping meanings they have conveyed. Yet, at the core, the material record did not structure religious landscapes for Methanites. Because archaeology is an inherently materialist discipline, there is a strong tendency to identify physical features, natural or anthropogenic, as fundamental elements in landscapes. Yet, as many anthropologists have demonstrated, such tangible elements are only outward and visible signs of underlying principles inside people’s heads. The fundamental principle controlling everything described in this chapter was the highly sophisticated belief system which is the Greek Orthodox faith. Although churches, cemeteries, and proskinitaria placed the Divine in various parts of the landscape, through Methanites’ faith the supernatural was placed well beyond such tangible features. It roamed the countryside during the twelve days of Christmas in the form of the Kallikantzari and was placed in the landscape in the form of the holy water sprinkled to hallow the waters, especially the sea, and also around houses and on arable and tree crops at the end of the Christmas period (Megas 1963, 33, 37, 49). Holy water thus placed the supernatural in the productive landscape and also replaced other supernatural elements (the Kallikantzari) which were banished for the rest of the year (Megas 1963, 37). The supernatural in the village landscape took the form of the May wreath 392


on house doors (Megas 1963, 116–17), and in the productive landscape in summer, it took the form of the cross-shaped patch of standing wheat in households’ last field to be reaped. These are but examples of how people with a deep faith constantly recognized the presence of God and His saints, and also malign supernatural forces, like the Kallikantzari and the evil eye which were ranged against them. The extra-mural churches, critical in structuring the development of local landscapes, at another level acted like hand lenses held up to the sun, focusing God’s power onto sections of the countryside and irradiating them with His increased presence. The subsequent construction of settlements likewise indicated not simply putting houses near a convenient church but the need to be close to that source of supernatural power centred on the church, which has been an essential ingredient in Methanites’ daily lives. Similarly, roads accidentally on purpose passing near several extra-mural churches brought people within the ambit of that protecting power every time they travelled. At the same time, however, Methanites’ relationship to that power was structured by their own experiences of everyday life as exemplified by their worship in churches. In Chapter 5, I noted the pre-eminent position of men in Greek society and the effect it had on the kinship system. It was also mirrored in their positioning within a church: the men stood at the front, closest to the icon-screen, the sanctuary, and the altar, where God’s power is greatest, while the women stood at the back. Similar examples were the ambivalent relationship with death, mirrored in the anomalous position of the cemetery within the landscape and the kinship ‘neighbourhoods’ replicated within it. Wayside shrines, too, although ostensibly religious structures, have been linked to issues of kinship and memory. In every church, the day set aside by the Orthodox Church for the celebration of its own patron saint was a major festival. For extra-mural churches placed in the countryside, it was normally the only liturgy of the year. Panighiria drew large numbers of worshippers to their celebrations, but most of those visiting other villages for the celebrations in their main churches had relatives there. Villagers themselves held open house for visitors from elsewhere, who circulated round the village visiting relatives. For panighiria in most extra-mural churches, worshippers from nearby villages tended to make up the bulk of the 393


worshippers. Those from further away usually expected to see relatives there. The most important pan-peninsular celebrations were those at the churches of St. George and St. Barbara. Many people who lived elsewhere but had relatives on the peninsula returned for these festivals. As noted, so many Athenian relatives attended the celebrations at St. George’s church on Methana in the 1970s that small ferries made trips direct to the place from the capital. Other relatives drove to the peninsula for the celebration in their cars – a major expenditure because of the very high price of fuel at that time. For the panighiri at St. Barbara’s church, households in the neighbouring village used to hold open house because worshippers who attended the liturgy would generally go on to visit relatives afterwards. These examples indicate how Methanites’ relationships with God and His saints have been very much structured by their own experiences of everyday life. They also indicate that perhaps the primary factor in the structuring of that relationship has been their experience of kinship. In the concluding chapter, I explore the importance of kinship in Methanites’ lives as a fundamental principle in the structuring of their experience of their landscape.

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10

CONCLUSIONS: A GREEK LANDSCAPE FROM WITHIN

Every person has the obligation to be interested in the place in which he was born and in which he lives. . . . To know its topography, its history, its progress and everything which relates to it and has any kind of connection with it. (Athanasiou 1998, 9, quoting a Methana schoolteacher)

As an ethnography for archaeologists, this book has presented a case study of a small Greek peninsula. Unlike most ethnographies, the primary focus has not been one or more social or cultural institutions but a tangible material element in Methanites’ lives – the landscape. Yet landscapes cannot exist separately from the humans who engage with them: almost all landscapes have been modified in some way or other by humans. The landscapes of settlement and agriculture in particular are spaces which have been materially structured by human activities. More important, landscapes do not have meaning in and of themselves: it is humans who give them their meanings, which are culturally constructed through the medium of senses and knowledge informed by a person’s culture – as encompassed by the opening quotation to this chapter, with which Athanasiou’s (1998) book on Methana begins. Without those meanings given to them by human groups, they are merely environments. For this reason, an initial ethnographic focus on the material landscape of Methana led inevitably into areas of Methanites’ culture, such as production, reproduction, and the structuring of people’s links with other humans and with the supernatural. At a number of points I have referred, directly or by implication, to the fact that Europe is a Cinderella area both within the discipline of 395


anthropology and as a source of comparators for archaeological studies. Modern anthropology recognises the validity of ethnographic studies in all parts of the world. Nevertheless, historically the discipline has been founded on a fascination with ‘exotic’ societies with ways of life and social institutions which were very different from those found in the industrialised West. As part of that history, many of the discipline’s basic conceptual tools have been developed via experiences in parts of the world far removed from Europe, both geographically and in terms of their life-ways. As an example of the effects of a historical fascination with the exotic, in Chapter 5 I noted in particular that much of theoretical work on kinship systems has traditionally had an Afro-centric slant. Methanites’ agnatic soia were shown not to work in exactly the ways that anthropological kinship theory, developed especially through an understanding of African and Native North American kinship systems, decreed that unilineal kinship systems should work. More recent examples of a continuing strand of fascination with more exotic societies include the heavy concentration on describing and analysing Australian and Pacific societies’ relationships with their landscapes. It is these sorts of societies, along with those of the circumpolar zone, which seem to be particularly attractive to archaeologists as comparanda for understanding the meanings of landscapes in European prehistory. Use of such studies has a salutary effect in making archaeologists recognise that the past can be a very different country from the present. But concentration on extremes of “otherness” can also lead archaeologists into the trap of objectifying such peoples, of keeping them conceptually at a safe distance from ourselves. From there it is a short but fatal step to treating people as less human than ourselves. A study of a European society provides a healthy antidote to the conscious or unconscious tendency to highlight extremes of ‘otherness’ found in the use of ethnographic comparanda. Nevertheless, as this study has shown, European societies are not all just carbon copies of Western Anglophone culture. The dynamic tension between the ‘Western-ness’ and ‘Un-Western-ness’ of Greek culture noted in Chapter 2 serves to remind us that even within Europe, others’ eyes may view landscapes in other ways. Yet, at the same time, the inherent 396


similarities between Greek culture and that of the Western Anglophone world derived from a shared European-ness, make Methanites and their culture easier for us to comprehend as real humans. The ‘like but yet unlike’-ness in comparison with the experiences of most European and American academics allows us to recognise how people in a traditional society relate to their landscapes without the exoticness of their way of life reducing them to the unreality of computer-game figures. The present study of a landscape has highlighted the complexity of the meanings with which Methanites have clothed their steep slopes, crags, fields, villages and holy places. Just as it is difficult to pin down exact meanings for many of the most crucial words used in the Greek language by Methanites, so it is with the meanings of crucial aspects of the landscape. They vary according to context and the viewpoint of the individual at a particular point in time. The polysemy, multivocality, and multivalency of landscapes for Methanites mean that their meanings overlap, elide, interlink, and sometimes conflict. This is not to say Methanites’ understandings of the meanings of their landscapes lacked coherence, any more than their use of key concepts in their language lacked coherence. Rather, their already complex knowledge of their landscapes was fully integrated into a far larger body of knowledge related to numerous other aspects of their everyday life. On any particular occasion, therefore, they would simply draw on those aspects which they needed to foreground a particular issue. It is not surprising, therefore, that Methanites never presented me with a systematised body of knowledge on the meanings of landscapes organised in any clear way. Although a few anthropologists have had a serendipitous experience of being taken aside by some chief (sometimes chiefly) informant and been given a clear exegesis of some complex body of knowledge, no Methanitis explained the meanings of their landscapes to me in this way. Nor do I believe that this lacuna was simply the result of ill luck or poor fieldwork methodology in not meeting the right informant. My experience of Methanites’ understandings of the meanings of their landscapes leads me to believe that their relationships with their landscapes were as visceral as those described for Australian Aborigines and native Fijians in 397


Chapter 2. Meanings, feelings and emotions were therefore often completely intermeshed. Sometimes their intermeshed-ness caused serious breakdowns in close relationships, as exemplified in previous chapters. One difficulty, therefore, has been to translate and describe such ‘gut’ feelings and knowledge which are at the same time superficially chaotic yet in reality coherent, into some sort of a systematised body of information which will pass muster as an academic work, rather than the presentation of a disorganised stream of others’ emotions. The themes which I have chosen to use are therefore a heuristic device, an artificial ordering of what was presented to me as an unsystematised but nevertheless integrated body of knowledge – the ethnographer’s model, rather than Methanites’ own. I have chosen to systematise what I have learned on Methana by dividing it into four main areas: productive, kinship (reproductive), historical and religious. Even here, however, considerations and meanings in one area constantly elided into others: it has been impossible to isolate each area of meaning without repeated cross-reference to the others. Yet, this observation is merely to emphasise the interlocked complexity of meanings which Methanites attached to landscapes. The four essential themes for discussion are also to be found in Clark’s (1988) ethnographic description of household transformation on Methana. Clark additionally included conflict as a separate essential area for discussion: I have chosen not to do so. As Clark makes clear, Methanites’ fundamental familial ideal of kali sira puts conflict, especially intrafamilial conflict, into a very negative category. As I have noted, that familial ethic radiated out to include all members of a community. Yet, as the chapters in the second part of this volume make clear, the kinds of meanings which I have isolated here are all overwhelmingly positive. Therefore, while I could have discussed conflict as a separate isolate in describing the meanings of landscapes, I have chosen to incorporate it within other chapters. It has instead been treated as an indicator of Methanites’ view that perfection belongs only to God: it is impossible for humans to live in perfect harmony, although there is an obligation on them to try. Although each of the four themes has had a major role in Methanites’ experience of their landscapes, I found that I could best make sense of their knowledge of and feelings for their landscapes if I focused 398


particularly on family and kinship. As other anthropologists have discovered before me, there is a widespread tendency to implicate personhood – identity – in place. Kinship is likewise primarily about identity and belonging. Identity has been a central theme underlying much that has been written in the chapters of this volume. As with so many other aspects of this work, on Methana it manifested itself at different levels. At one level, there has been Methanites’ identity as Greeks. This was most clearly evident in the steady drip of references by Methanites to the Greek War of Independence, in which Methanites saw their ancestors as contributing to the throwing-off of the yoke of Turkish political and cultural domination. In the Methana landscape, two features clearly linked its inhabitants to that period. Both had particular significance to Methanites. One was the fortification built on the isthmus by the Philhellene Fabvier, the Kastro Phavierou. Its remains on the isthmus, already clearly visible, had been made still more eye-catching by the painting of a Greek national flag on the masonry (see fig. 7.2) (Mee et al. 1997, 167), emphasising its importance in the nation’s struggle for independence. The other was the memorial to the local War of Independence hero, Dhedhegkikas, set up in the area beside the church of Saint George – the most important place for pan-Methana identity. These monuments in the landscape also emphasised Methanites’ identity as Methanites and the contributions which Methanites made to the war effort and to the construction of present-day modern Greece. Additionally, there have been for many years two extra-mural churches, more recently augmented to three, the annual celebrations of whose patron saints have become emblematic of a pan-Methana identity. The dates of the construction of two of these monuments to pan-Methana identity were, by the later twentieth century, placed back before the days of the grandparental generation. Hence, just as the events of the War of Independence had passed out of graduated time, so the (re)constructions of two of these churches had likewise passed into the realms of homogenised time in which events could not be readily prioritised. And although the date of the exception, the church of Saint Barbara, was known in theory at least to some, the body of stories associated with its construction placed that, too, firmly in the sphere of legend, and thus effectively also outside of graduated time 399


(discussed later). Thus, by the later twentieth century, all these monuments through which Methanites derived their pan-peninsular identity could transcend restricted kinship identities because they belonged outside of the timescales implicated in kinship systems. Nested within the pan-Methana level there was village identity. Each village also had origins which extended back into homogenised time, back beyond the grandparental generation. Although the external evidence indicates that all but one of the villages originated during or after the War of Independence, Methanites’ own view was that their origins were considerably older. The rule of patrilocal residence and the preference for village endogamy ensured a high level of interrelatedness between families within villages and that many surnames were also characteristic of specific villages. These phenomena contributed to the fact that each village was also assigned particular group characteristics by Methanites in other villages. Above all, however, identity on Methana was a matter of being part of a particular kinship group. As indicated in Chapter 5, there were two ways of reckoning kinship: the bilateral soi and the agnatic soi. Methanites’ definition of the bilateral soi emphasised the ‘actualisation’ of the practical aspects of kinship relationships – that is, production and reproduction, and social relations in daily life. The agnatic soi, in which kinship was reckoned only through the male line, was primarily associated with identity. Thus, the latter group could be identified via a common surname. Members were also assumed to share personal characteristics, both physical and in terms of character and behaviour. The study of kinship has been so central to anthropology that it has sometimes been considered the basic discipline of the subject. Yet, kinship is not generally a major focus in European ethnographic studies, where the emphasis has usually been on the family (however defined) rather than wider groupings of relatives. It is normally assumed that societies in which kinship beyond the family plays a major role are more ‘exotic’ than those of Europe: there is a tendency to think of European societies as somehow more ‘advanced’. Kinship, it is often implied, only has a major part to play in more ‘primitive’ societies. It is clear from this study that the family has had a central role in life on Methana but that many aspects of life are only understandable when kinship links beyond the family are built into the equation. 400


The importance of kinship was especially obvious when the landscapes of Methana were examined. The varied elements which have been discussed in this work linked people to each other via a wide variety of meaningful features which stood as monuments to their relationships. Particular emphasis has been placed here on houses and fields, which linked those whose ancestors lived in and owned them. Houses, and the multiple house-histories of kinship neighbourhoods in villages, were particularly important in monumentalising these links. Funerals, which brought together the relations of the deceased, also involved the expectation that the house which linked close relatives would be visited. Panighiria in village churches likewise re-joined those who lived in separate villages but whose ancestors linked them together in a shared identity via the soi. Visits to the households of relatives automatically implicated the act of visiting their houses. Another element explored in this work has been Methanites’ relationship with the past. The fact that they did not conceptualise the past in the way that Western academic historians and archaeologists do should be no cause for surprise. For most Methanites, the past as a measurable period of time with prioritisable events stretched back as far as the grandparental generation. Even in this relatively recent time span (as far as Western historians and archaeologists are concerned), the concept of time in years was hazy: a generation in a house history could be comfortably calculated as 100 years, and whole generations could occasionally be forgotten. For Methanites, the ‘deeper’ past was a period of time in which events could not be readily prioritised; in which the lifetime of Christ was broadly coeval to or possibly postdated the times of founding of Methana villages a few hundred years ago; and in which the queen on Mount Hjonëzë might have rubbed shoulders with the wicked Agha who lived at the site of Ogha, as well as with the ancient Greek poet Homer. The dividing line between the two types of time coincided for most Methanites at the point between the grandparental and great-grandparental generations. This was also the cut-off point for the calculation of the soi, which consisted of all the descendents of a group of siblings in the grandparental generation. Thus, in a very real sense, a person’s links with the past were mediated via kinship. The readily knowable past was limited by the knowable limits of the kinship system. 401


Of course, the most important everyday focus was on one’s own family, often defined traditionally as a three-generation group of a married couple with their children, living with the parent or parents of one of them, working one’s own fields. Yet, the house one lived in and the fields one cultivated all had their associated inheritancehistories. Frequently, both houses and fields were adjacent to those of kin members as a direct result of the same inheritance-histories. These histories therefore directly placed people both in time, anchoring them to the past of the soi, and in space, via the geographical proximity of relatives’ properties. These facts also simultaneously linked them to other members of their kinship group. Similarly, famous ancestors and their deeds in the past were shared with other members of the soi. Houses and fields thus connected the issue of identity and the past with monumentalisation. Houses and their positioning in the village landscape have been a particular focus in this work. These polysemic texts also connected the past with the future, and the productive with the reproductive spheres. Their monumental status was emphasised by the tradition of carving the initials of their original builders along with the construction date. In this way, the house was placed in a line of ancestors (hence, a kinship system) and placed in time. In addition, houses provided the archetype for the increasing monumentalisation of the dead in the cemetery. Fields also monumentalised past generations. That Methanites were very aware of this aspect of the productive landscape was most clearly indicated by the behaviour of Sotiris Petronotis. He had intended to combine his favourite section of terraces with that of his brother so that he could bequeath to the next generation the complete skala he had helped construct when he was young. He also inveigled me into accompanying him to see and record for posterity the fields which he had carved out of the uncultivated landscape elsewhere – and help him make more. The regular recitation of the kinship pattern of ownerships of plots surrounding peoples’ own also recorded the origins of the particular group of fields while simultaneously linking their owners to each other via their shared ancestry. Place, monumentality, and the past have thus all been interconnected for Methanites via the medium of kinship. Although archaeologists 402


have recognised the importance of the first three elements, they have rarely considered kinship as a fundamental principle organising the meaning of landscapes. Prehistorians have concentrated their attention on religious monuments and religious landscapes. It is generally assumed that for prehistoric peoples, as for contemporary traditional peoples worldwide, religion was a fundamental principle not only governing belief but also patterning both actions and meanings in the landscape. Religious aspects of landscape have also been demonstrated to be of great importance for Methanites. For example, the locations of pre-existing extra-mural churches explain a great deal about the very placing of settlements in the peninsula’s landscape. It is evident, however, that the religious landscape of Methana, the placing of churches and shrines within it, and the meanings for Methanites of worship in them are fundamentally different in a number of ways from the other, inherently secular meanings associated with landscape. Although a few small shrines ( proskinitaria) could be found along roadsides in late-twentieth-century Methana, the religious landscape consisted primarily of churches. In Orthodox Christian theology, God, in tripartite form of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and His power are everywhere in the landscape. Churches, built as God’s houses on earth and dedicated to His saints, focused God’s power especially on those parts of the landscape in which they were located. Therefore, while houses, fields, cisterns, and other features of the (secular) productive and reproductive landscape could be treated as monuments related to kinship in the mundane, everyday world, churches were different. Secular features in the landscape, such as those just listed, were all readily recognised as having been constructed by human agency. At one level, Methanites understood that churches were also built by humans: indeed, they would sometimes comment on the part that an ancestor had played in their (re-)construction. Yet, at another level, they had a strong sense of these churches as part of the ‘givens’ of the local environment and very much integral to it in a way that secular structures were not. An indicator of the way in which extra-mural churches especially were integrated into their local landscapes was the normal practice of naming sections of the countryside surrounding churches after the saints to whom the churches were dedicated. 403


Churches were also set aside from other, secular, aspects of the landscape by their relationship to time. The most meaningful aspects of the secular landscape could generally be related to a period of time in which events could be given temporal order. Although a few churches could be placed in this more recent kind of time, most could not. The majority of churches therefore belonged outside of the time span associated with so much of Methanites’ secular lives. The fact that they dated to periods beyond the time-depth of the soi is only part of the answer. Thus, whereas the church of Saint Barbara could in theory be placed in time, the heavy overlay of stories describing the miraculous events associated with its construction placed it firmly in the sphere of legend and thus effectively outside of graduated time. Churches were also different in being monumental, yet not monuments restricted to specified kinship groups. In a few cases, a soi might consider that it had a special relationship to a particular church, but these cases were the exception rather than the rule and, in any case, they were open for all to worship in. Although it is hard to be absolutely certain, it is quite possible that even churches built during the grandparental generation tended to be placed outside measurable time because they were outside the ambit of individual kinship systems. When (re-)constructions were placed in time, it was usually by reference to a relative who had been involved. These differences between churches as the dominant element in the religious landscape and other aspects of the meaningful landscape highlight the importance of kinship in Methanites’ experience of their secular landscapes. Take away the elements associated with kinship and you have removed most of the meanings in the landscapes of production, reproduction and the past. Yet even the religious landscape was given meaning via the medium of kinship. One element in this observation relates to the introduction of proskinitaria to Methana. These quintessentially religious monuments were set up as memorials to close kin by close kin, placing individuals and their fate firmly in a very specific spot in the landscape. Cemeteries, too, were self-evidently religious monuments. But within them they contained specific monuments to deceased individuals set up by family or other close kin. Some of these in their inscriptions used the symbolism of the house, the most potent monument of all to 404


the implication of kinship with place and time. The layout of cemeteries likewise reflected the kinship landscapes of the living among the dead. Churches themselves received meaning via the kinship system – not as monuments but as places set aside for the worship of God and His saints. This observation relates particularly to panighiria – annual saint’s day celebrations. Three such celebrations, all in extra-mural churches, contextualised pan-Methana identity, drawing people not only from all the villages on Methana but from further afield, including those living in the capital whose ancestors came from the peninsula. For the latter, in particular, attendance at the church service was integrated into renewing their acquaintance with Methana relatives. Other panighiria on Methana attracted mostly those who knew that relatives would also be attending, giving them a chance to socialise together after the liturgy. Those who did not expect kin to be present were less likely to attend. Finally, there was a small minority of unmarried people who occasionally attended panighiria in places in which they had no relatives. Even here, kinship was at least potentially implicated: these visits were often used as a way of identifying possible marriage partners. Transcending the various elements discussed here is the question of knowledge. As noted in the Introduction, Methanites’ knowledge relating to their landscapes was vast and, as indicated throughout the second part of this book, highly multifaceted and employed differently in different contexts and as it affected different individuals. I have described it as unsystematised but nonetheless coherent. But the question remains, how do people know what they know: in other words, how is knowledge stored in people’s heads? This is not the place to give a definitive answer to this question: I merely wish to highlight some relevant elements which seem to underlie issues raised previously. In particular, I wish to suggest that the extent of engagement or disengagement in landscapes – our own and others’ – fundamentally affects our understandings of them. It is commonplace in anthropology that ethnographic monographs frequently take a seemingly bewildering array of behaviours and/or beliefs which initially confronted the researcher and distil them into an elegant and satisfying structured system. I have not presented a picture of a tidy mental organisation of Methanites’ vast body of knowledge 405


concerning their landscapes. Although that knowledge comprised a series of logical connections and relationships among individuals and between individuals and material aspects of their surrounding environments, there was nothing in the ways in which Methanites presented their knowledge which indicated that it was neatly structured. To the contrary, I have suggested that Methanites used material elements in their environment as prompts needed to draw out necessary strands of unsorted knowledge relevant to a specific context and that this is what turned their environment into a meaningful landscape. Ultimately, we must ask the question: Are all bodies of knowledge necessarily organised by other peoples in a highly structured form? After all, peoples’ brains are not simply animate replicas of computers with menu-driven software. Nevertheless, one of the basic stocks-intrade of academics is the systematisation of knowledge: science would be impossible without the systematisation of the natural world, and an understanding of languages would likewise be impossible without their systematisation via grammars and syntaxes. Similarly, in archaeology, the beginnings of the modern discipline are often dated to the early-nineteenth-century logical systematisation of a body of evidence (knowledge) by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen into the Three Age System, and social and cultural anthropology are often considered to begin when the world’s different societies and cultures were placed into a framework of Savagery, Barbarism and Civilisation. Nevertheless, not all academics are convinced that non-academics’ minds are arranged in such an orderly manner. As previously noted, Hanson, who is both academic and farmer, sees a fundamental schism between the tidy logical minds of academics and of those outside of academe who prefer action to thought (Hanson 1995, Dedication, and Acknowledgements). The influential anthropologist Victor Turner also had his doubts. In addressing the study of symbolic forms and processes, he observes that whether knowledge is considered systematic or not depends heavily on the standpoint of the anthropological investigator: Where it has been influenced by linguistics or structuralism the stress has been on the eliciting of abstract systems of symbols and meanings from cultural 406


“products” (myths, kinship nomenclatures, iconographic forms, ethnotaxonomies, texts on customs drawn from native informants by questionnaires, etc.). (Turner 1985, 171, my italics)

Elsewhere in the same very long paragraph, he makes explicit his criticism of those who conduct this sort of symbolic analysis while standing firmly on the outside looking in, observing that an exclusive focus on regularities of form, symbol, and content and their presumed congruence leaves out fundamental dimensions. He argues that data gathered by an investigator directly involved with the host community are quite different from those obtained by a stance of detachment. In many real situations, direct involvement will indicate that there is an imperfect fit between various elements, each of which may have multiple alternatives and meanings which can accommodate a range of manipulation, interpretation and choice. Only by becoming an actor in the field of living relationships can the investigator encompass these indeterminacies (Turner 1985, 171–2). In other words, Turner believes that knowledge can be viewed as both abstractly systematised and also as unsystematised (or at least very imperfectly systematised), depending on one’s stance: detached and looking in from the outside (systematised) or directly involved (unsystematised). This observation returns us close to the heart of the issue of the understanding of landscapes discussed in Chapter 2 in which the theoretical stance of the detached observer looking from the outside in (or sometimes the inside out) was considered to contribute a less satisfactory understanding of landscapes than a stance of direct involvement and integration. Perhaps – not for the first time in this book – a comparison with language may help us understand this duality. Every language has a systematic structure of grammar and syntax underlying it. Those who learn their language as part of their enculturation when young do not need to be taught all the rules of grammar and syntax: they develop their competence in these organically with their competence in the rest of the language. For native speakers, the highly systematised underlying set of structures is rarely understood or recognised unless they are formally instructed in the principles. Most do not even know that they 407


intuitively know these underlying structures. Those who gain mastery of languages other than their own often do so through the medium of formal instruction in grammar and syntax. Yet, it is also possible to gain a degree of fluency in another language through learning it from inside the speech community, as it were, without recourse to formal lessons in its abstract structure. This latter learning style is especially important for understanding the social context of language use – something in which knowledge of grammar and syntax will not give competence. Although the degree to which fluency in aspects of culture other than language is structured like language has been an area of debate for decades, the difference in the study of languages between grammatical structure and actual speech is a useful if simplistic heuristic device – an analogy – in this context. The focus of this book has been on the equivalent of utterances – how individuals in a specific geographical and cultural and social context experience their landscapes and the meanings attached to them. And, like speech uttered by a native speaker, Methanites did not need to recognise a consciously learned formal structure organising their knowledge associated with landscape. Attempting to place myself as much as possible on the inside of the cultural context and the local landscape gave me the opportunity to learn something of the ‘language’ of that landscape and thereby some of the ‘literature’ (if you will) that it generated. To have produced a systematised ‘grammar’ of Methanites’ knowledge of their landscape would have demanded a very different style of fieldwork, which would probably have separated me from the landscape itself. Instead, I chose to be involved: hence, my concentration on the utterances of the landscape rather than the rules which structured them. Ultimately, to take this linguistic analogy fully into the world of literature, for most of us, knowledge of a body of literature in a particular language gives a much greater insight into a society and a culture than knowing that language’s grammar without knowing its literature.

408

GLOSSARY

Note: Entries in italics are modern Greek words. Affinal: related by marriage. Agnatic: related on the father’s side. Anchisteia: an Ego-based bilateral kindred known from ancient Greece. In ancient Athens, it extended as far as second cousins. Bilateral: related on both the mother’s and the father’s side. Cognatic: essentially synonymous with ‘bilateral’: descent through father’s and mother’s line. Ego: the point of view of the person who is the focus of the description of a kinship relationship. Ekina ta khronia: in former times. Emic: from linguistics, derived from the term (phon)emic. The insider’s view of her or his own culture: the ‘native view’ as opposed to the outsider’s (e.g., the anthropologist’s) view or explanation. See also ‘etic’. Endogamous: marrying within one’s own group. See also ‘exogamous’. Eona: a life-time, a century, an age. Etic: from linguistics, derived from the term (phon)etic. The outsider’s view of a culture: the view of the anthropologist, for example, as 409

GLOSSARY

opposed to the insider’s (‘the native’s’) view or explanation. See also ‘emic’. Exogamous: marrying outside of one’s group. See also ‘endogamous’. Genos: an ancient Greek term meaning ‘family’. In ancient Athens, the term was used for named patrilineal (see ‘patrilineal’) groups within larger patrilineal descent groups termed phratries (see ‘phratry’). Ghambros (plural: ghambri ): literally ‘bridegroom’ but widely used to mean brother-in-law or son-in-law. Gheranaki: literally ‘little crane’: a shadouf or swipe (see ‘swipe’). Ikoghenia: family. Ikos: an ancient Greek term (usually written oikos in discussions of ancient Greece) occasionally used in modern Greek instead of spiti. See ‘spiti’. Istoria (plural: istories): both a story (fictional or otherwise) and history. Kalderimi (plural kalderimia): a major mule track, originally carefully paved with stone slabs and provided with supporting walls where it crosses sloping ground. Kali sira: ‘good order’. An important social concept on Methana: a family in kali sira is the opposite of a dysfunctional family. Kalivi (plural: kalivia): hut or shed; field-house. Kazamias: an almanac. Kourasani: waterproof plaster made from hydrated lime and finely crushed ceramic material. Loutsa (plural: loutses): an unlined and unenclosed cistern depending on impermeable bedrock for retaining water. Mangani: an animal-driven water-lifting device employing an endless chain of containers to scoop water from a well and lift it to the surface. 410

GLOSSARY

Mazemeni: ‘cohesive’: adjective describing the status of members of a family which is in kali sira (see ‘kali sira’). Mitroo arrenon: register of male births. Must (Greek moustos): the freshly pressed juice of grapes used for wine making. Nifi (plural: nifes): literally ‘bride’ but widely used to mean sister-inlaw or daughter-in-law. Panighiri (plural: panighiria): a saint’s day festival. Papoudhes: grandfathers, often meaning ancestors. Paratsoukli: nickname. Patitiri (plural: patitiria): grape-treading floor. Patrilineal: descent and relatedness following the father’s line only. Phratry: an ancient Greek term: in ancient Athens, phratries were patrilineal descent groups with named founders. Quoin: a stone, generally of large size and often well dressed, used in forming corners of buildings. Shadouf: see ‘swipe’. Sibling: brother or sister. Simpetheros/simpethera: male ‘co in-law’/female ‘co-in-law’, respectively. Singenis: relatives. Skala: a flight of stairs: hence, also a series of terraces, one above the other. Soghambros (plural: soghambri ): a man who lives with his wife’s family after marriage. Soi: a kindred extending as far as second cousin, defined bilaterally or agnatically, depending on context.

411

GLOSSARY

Spiti (plural: spitia): ‘house’, also ‘household’ and ‘immediate family’. Stem family: a three-generation household, consisting of a married couple with their children and the parents or parent of one of the married couple. Sterna (plural: sternes): cistern. Swipe: a primitive crane-like water-lifting device, in which a container was attached by a rope to a counterbalanced arm. Timi: honour: an important behavioural principle in a number of Mediterranean communities. Topos (plural: topoi): a traditional theme or motif. Touloumi (plural: touloumia): a large goatskin bag. Unilineal: descent and relatedness following either the mother’s line or the father’s line, but not both. Xeriko bostani (plural: xerika bostania): unirrigated summer gardens.

412

NOTES

2. landscape studies: from frame-and-tame to visceral feeling 1 See Foxhall (1998) for a comparable critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality. 2 In April I come when I will; in May I sing night and day; in June I change my tune; in July away I fly; in August away I must. 3 Campane dicuntur a rusticis qui habitant in campo, qui nesciant judicare horas nisi per campanas (they are called bells by peasants who live in the countryside, who do not know how to tell the hours except by bells). I am grateful to Helen Forbes for this reference.

3. historical background to the landscape of methana 1 Clark (1995, 514, n. 13), using house histories and oral histories, claims that the small pseudonymous village of Liakotera already contained three main family lines in 1800. At various points in this work, I demonstrate that the ages given to individual houses in oral sources and dates in descriptions of events before the grandparental generation are extremely unreliable. 2 The women of Soulli, rather than surrender to the Turks, danced in a circle on the edge of a precipice, each in turn throwing her baby over the edge. Then each in turn threw herself over the precipice. 3 Note: After 1997 Mari H. Clark changes to Mari H. Clarke.

5. kinship, marriage and the transmission of names and property 1 Large sections of this chapter depend on Clark’s (1988) analysis of Methana households. In particular, it relies very heavily on her description and explanation in chap. 3 (Clark 1988, 115–77) of the crucial concept of kali sira, a behavioural principle which appears repeatedly throughout this work. In chap. 5 (Clark 1988, 251–366), she gives a fascinating detailed insight into the organisation and transformation of Methana households over time. An

413

NOTES TO PAGES 117–239

2 3

4 5 6

understanding of the meanings of landscapes to Methanites would be impossible without an understanding of the organisation and transformation of their households. To be fair, many people, both inside and outside Greece, consider Maniates or Cretans (or both) as archetypal Greeks. Du Boulay (1974, 144) gives the term parapappoudhes for ‘great grandfathers’. When I asked Methanites about great grandparents, I used the term propappous, given in a dictionary, because they never mentioned great grandparents in everyday conversation. They readily understood what I meant. The use of a tree to denote royal genealogies in the late fifteenth-century Nuremberg Chronicle suggests a considerably longer history. The alternative forms nonos and nona are frequently used. This man and the one nicknamed after his bizarre mother were the only examples known to me of men taking a nickname from women.

6. the productive landscape 1 One Methanitis, returning from a neighbouring village after a particularly bibulous celebration, fell over a precipice into a deep gorge at the edge of the road and could thereafter only walk using crutches. 2 The terminology of a vertically arranged archipelago of plots is borrowed from Murra’s (1984) concept of a ‘vertical archipelago’ of ownership of resources in the Andean area. The level of analysis is different, however, because in the Andean case, ownership was vested in kinship groups rather than households.

7. the historical landscape: memory, monumentality and time-depth 1 Impressive ruins of a Late Roman farm exist adjacent to the peak (Mee et al. 1997, 169). 2 Because of time limitations, the column for literacy was not transcribed. Those listed as literate were almost exclusively male household heads: it is possible that ‘literate’ was a shorthand for a male household head in full control of his faculties. 3 In the 1879 census, he is noted as a deceased husband and father. 4 For an example from fictional literature of this rural Greek attitude to the past, see Gotsi 2000. 5 Many Methanites lived to that sort of age. Barba Andreas was in his early eighties when I conducted field research in the 1970s. His cousin, who died at age sixty-five, was described as dying a young man. Barba Nikos was in his nineties when I last talked with him in 1998. 6 Methanites stated that traction cattle were always cows, not oxen (castrated male cattle).

414

NOTES TO PAGES 280–382

7 For beliefs about the Kallikandzari throughout Greece, see Megas 1963, 33–7. 8 One name for Epiphany is Ta Phota – The Lights (Megas 1963, 52).

8. the kinship landscape 1 Rushton (1983, 62–3) specifically discusses the similarities between elements of weddings and of funerals in Greek Orthodox religion.

9. the religious landscape 1 In the account given by Athanasiou (1998, 107), the saint addressed the man using the plural (i.e., polite) form of the Greek word for ‘you’ (). It is unclear from the context whether the saint was indicating that only the man visited in the vision would be saved or a larger number of people. 2 Some Methanites believed that a golden pig with golden piglets still lies buried nearby. Stories of the existence of buried golden pigs are widespread in Greece. 3 Although the Internet is especially full of highly dubious Web sites on vampires, Arthen 1998 is a scholarly discussion.

415

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432

INDEX

agricultural terraces. See terraces agriculture, 54, 57, 61, 68, 76, 79, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 95, 98, 100, 101, 106, 112, 115, 120, 128, 132, 139, 145, 146, 147, 148, 155, 165, 166, 168, 173, 183, 184, 188, 190–199, 203, 238, 242, 246, 255, 268, 304, 321, 326, 330, 349, 357, 367 resources, 17, 79, 147, 148, 164, 165, 171, 172, 175, 185, 340 subsistence, 27, 81, 87, 93, 94, 242, 375 technology, 100, 101, 104, 165, 224, 238, 242, 313 Albanian, 57, 60, 74, 76, 210, 309, 333, 334 Arvanitika, 103, 211, 333, 334, 335 almonds, 148, 164, 191, 193, 199, 351 ambaria, 75, 76, 183, 248, 249, 250 Athens, 51, 80, 81, 84, 94, 139, 141, 146, 151, 171, 172, 245, 263, 317, 331, 332, 358, 389, 410, 411, 417, 423, 424, 425, 426, 428, 430, 431, 432 barley, 88, 95, 167, 191, 192, 194, 196, 203 basil, 34, 282, 349 bells church bells, 30, 32, 33 sheep and goat bells, 33 birth records, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 111, 112, 131, 211, 216, 269, 294, 299, 301, 302, 303, 356 bread, 30, 78, 87, 94, 124, 151, 197, 231, 305, 349, 358, 417 cattle, 58, 184, 237, 239, 252, 414

cemeteries, 129, 131, 204, 257, 259–263, 277, 278, 282, 283, 291, 314–318, 327, 335, 336, 348, 350, 364, 376, 382–385, 386, 390, 392, 393, 402, 404, 405. See also death; ritual: funerary census records, 62, 67, 74, 80, 81, 111, 122, 136, 158, 211, 226, 269, 273, 292, 293, 294, 295, 301, 303, 308, 331, 333. See also population cereals, 57, 58, 76, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 94, 107, 124, 164, 166, 167, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 202, 237, 239, 357 ceremony. See ritual cheese, 87, 95, 240, 305, 382 chickens, 86, 87 Christ, 72, 208, 267, 280, 282, 284, 315, 346, 401 church bells. See bells:church bells buildings, 17, 38, 57, 58, 65, 69, 70, 71, 208, 216, 346, 369 construction, 58, 70, 73, 291, 343, 346, 348, 352, 354, 355, 356, 360, 361, 362, 370 wall paintings, 207, 257, 345 churches, 7, 14, 17, 24, 30, 35, 65, 75, 92, 109, 188, 207, 226, 228, 229, 257–259, 280, 315, 328, 343, 345, 347, 348, 352, 353, 354, 355, 360, 370, 371, 379, 390, 391, 403, 404, 405 extra-mural, 58, 87, 92, 226, 258, 343, 345, 347, 372, 374, 376, 377, 391, 393, 403, 405

433

INDEX

cisterns, 55, 56, 62, 82, 164, 168, 173, 179, 207, 241, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 262, 279, 403. See also water: storage climate, 56 clothing, 103, 124, 193, 230, 239, 240, 241, 246, 248, 254, 367 communication, 83, 90, 92, 93, 274 cosmology, 23, 48, 421, 429 cotton, 87, 193, 197 crop rotation, 195–199 death, 23, 129, 138, 153, 260, 277, 281, 283, 304, 314, 315, 316, 336, 338, 350, 358, 368, 386, 393, 401. See also ritual: funerary; cemeteries disease, 80, 92, 144, 237, 238, 363 Dodwell, Edward, 56, 60, 61, 76, 223, 249 dowry, 79, 88, 104, 117, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 155, 156, 162–173, 188, 189, 196, 198, 199, 202, 234, 235, 238, 254, 320, 321, 322, 328, 329, 332, 340, 367, 368 ecology, 15, 16, 202 cultural, 117, 200, 355 education, 94, 103, 146, 169, 172 electricity, 89, 90 eliteness, 26 elites, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29 environment, 5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 21, 23, 28, 100, 101, 179, 181 European Union, 91, 375, 376, 391 subsidies, 95 family, 47, 48, 118–127, 173, 174, 312, 340, 402. See also household; kinship fieldwork anthropological, 39, 44–46, 62, 64, 83, 97–108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 117 archaeological, 1, 16, 17, 28, 38, 50, 62, 98, 100, 108–110, 114, 115, 183 figs, xix, 84, 163, 164, 191, 193, 199, 228, 371 geology, 15 of Methana, 16, 51–56, 146, 165, 241 goat bells. See bells: sheep and goat bells

goats, 85, 86, 87, 95, 120, 133, 166, 167, 197, 198, 226, 236, 239, 240, 244, 252, 305, 350 goat-hair, 87, 231 God, 9, 24, 35, 130, 256, 259, 267, 268, 279, 315, 339, 345, 350, 352, 372, 384, 386, 390, 392, 393, 394, 398, 403, 405 godparents, 149, 150, 151, 152. See also kinship: fictive kin grafting, 79, 104, 193 grape treading, 57, 58, 81, 195, 236, 237, 250–257 grapes, 58, 81, 107, 157, 237, 250–257. See also grape-treading; wine; vines grave-markers. See monuments: grave-markers grazing, 17, 32, 146, 165, 166, 167, 187, 197, 198, 203, 240 health, 92, 144, 237 Heaven, 282 house, 313 household, 47, 48, 67, 70, 80, 81, 85, 94, 95, 100, 101, 106, 107, 108, 110, 113, 118–124, 154, 159, 164, 174, 195, 199, 200, 202, 203, 231, 260, 292, 304, 308, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317, 324, 336, 338, 341, 398 houses, 7, 24, 33, 38, 62, 68, 72, 74, 75, 82, 146, 164, 168, 172, 173, 200, 223, 227, 229, 230, 231, 236, 278, 279, 287, 288, 290, 291, 293, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 336, 338, 339, 341, 348, 401, 402 architectural styles, 227, 236, 249 as monuments. See monuments: houses as construction, 71, 74, 75, 86, 153 field-houses, 57, 80, 91, 183, 184, 187, 188, 195, 207, 226, 227, 236–238, 254, 256 kalivia. See field-houses roofs, 75, 82, 221, 222, 228, 244 identity, 220, 263, 313, 316, 317, 323, 324, 374, 388, 399, 400 cultural, 6, 42, 395 familial, 132 male, 36 ikoghenia, 118, 121, 128, 149

434

INDEX

inheritance, 33, 45, 79, 117, 122, 143, 148, 155, 156, 162–173, 188, 189, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204, 230, 233, 234, 254, 255, 291, 307, 308, 313, 319, 320, 328, 340 irrigation, 56, 81, 83, 84, 85, 94, 108, 147, 171, 184, 188, 191, 192, 194, 197, 240, 241, 242, 246, 305, 329, 371. See also water kali sira, 118, 119, 121, 168, 170, 234, 236, 398 kalivia. See houses: field-houses kinship, 7, 23, 41, 45, 47, 48, 62, 64, 74, 108, 117, 118–176, 203, 218, 235, 287–342, 360, 388, 399, 400, 401, 402 dispute, 307 disputes, 145, 153, 164, 168, 169, 171, 172, 230, 232, 233, 234, 306, 310, 313, 325, 398 fictive kin, 149–152, 156 system, 118, 126, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141, 157, 161, 200, 213, 217, 223, 260, 286, 290, 309, 310, 312, 324, 327, 337, 347, 383, 393, 396, 400, 401, 402, 404, 405 land, 76, 85 histories, 25 ownership, 7, 25, 45, 93, 108, 148, 149, 155, 156, 162, 164, 165–166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 187, 188, 189, 196, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 232, 233, 237, 239, 246, 262, 287, 307, 312, 313, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 326, 327, 329, 330, 331, 332, 335, 360, 402. See also kinship; kinship: disputes landscape as ethnography, 8 as metaphor, 14 as monument, 42, 44, 45, 322, 325, 402, 403 as text, 12–13, 37, 38, 40, 194, 238, 402, 408 cultural, 10, 14 ethnographic study, 4 four-dimensional. See time historical, 13, 14, 16, 26, 39, 40, 41, 220, 222, 357

movement through, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 36, 319, 366, 369, 380, 384, 386, 387–391. See also travel; pilgrimage painting, 9, 10, 30, 36 phenomenological approaches, 3, 4, 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 43, 186. See also phenomenology post-modern approaches, 21, 28, 37 post-processualist approaches, 38 processualist approaches, 39 religious, 39, 188, 189, 394, 404. See also religion; churches ritual within, 18 smell, 30, 34, 35, 41, 350 sound, 10, 30, 31, 34–35, 41, 255 taste, sense of, 35 texture within, 31, 32 theoretical approaches, 9–49 touch, sense of, 31, 41 vegetation, 25, 28, 31–32, 34, 37, 61, 72, 182 lemons, 81, 83, 191, 194 liminality, 26, 28, 382, 384, 385 liturgy, 35, 87, 118, 130, 214, 254, 315, 316, 339, 349, 350, 365, 367, 368, 370, 389, 393, 394, 405 livestock, 58, 165, 173, 184, 197, 198, 226, 232, 237, 239, 240, 241, 244, 246, 313, 367, 375. See also sheep; goats; chickens; mules; cattle Loutra, 55, 82, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 121, 146, 172, 179, 238, 239, 243, 266, 271, 272, 294, 303, 309, 327, 330, 331, 347, 356, 359, 362, 374, 376, 377 loutses, 245, 246, 247, 248 malaria, 80, 85, 89, 237, 238, 332, 361, 368 marriage, 110, 122, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 142–149, 150, 169, 172, 302, 312, 313, 317, 329, 330, 333, 358, 359, 405 melons, 86, 198 memorialisation, 114, 158, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 291, 312, 327, 338, 382, 386, 404. See also monumentalisation metokhia. See settlements: seasonal mitroo arrenon. See birth records

435

INDEX

monument landscape as. See landscape: as monument monumentalisation, 7, 106, 113, 114, 141, 158, 225, 229, 231, 232, 233, 242, 245, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 277, 278, 279, 284, 291, 311, 314, 327, 335, 386, 391, 401, 402. See also memorialisation monuments, 7, 19, 21, 22, 31, 76, 168, 223, 225, 226, 227, 250, 259, 262, 279, 282, 285, 291, 323, 370, 371, 374, 399, 400, 403, 404, 405. See also houses grave-markers, 228, 260, 261, 278, 282, 314, 335, 382. See also cemeteries houses as, 7, 130, 141, 158, 168, 171, 207, 223, 227–236, 262, 282, 290, 291, 292, 308, 310, 311, 312, 314, 327, 335, 338, 402 ritual, 19, 31, 38, 403, 404 tombs, 5, 31, 261, 314, 335 war memorial, 259, 263–264, 378 mules, 81, 88, 104, 107, 157, 164, 184, 186, 192, 237, 239, 241, 242, 250, 252, 287, 304, 362, 367, 371 mushrooms, 281 names, 136, 158, 364, 382 baptismal, 130, 157, 158, 159, 160, 295 name days, 108, 157, 268, 280, 283, 284, 328, 348, 350, 358 naming practices, 74, 157–162, 175, 214, 216, 276, 277, 301, 337, 349, 364, 383 nicknames, 160–162, 308, 313 surnames, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 128, 129–132, 135, 137, 158, 159, 160, 216, 218, 278, 289, 292–303, 309, 314, 316, 317, 318, 322, 329, 330, 337, 339, 400 oats, 191, 192, 196 octopus, 333 olive oil, 58, 76, 81, 87, 95, 146, 151, 167, 221, 332, 333 olives, 57, 79, 104, 147, 148, 163, 164, 165, 167, 172, 191, 193, 194, 195, 199, 333, 351

oral testimony, 50, 51, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 71, 80, 83, 96, 123, 170, 181, 210–212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219–222, 234, 356, 357 panighiria, 91, 143, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, 263, 328, 350, 359–365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 374, 376, 378, 389, 391, 392, 393, 394, 401, 405. See also saints; churches; liturgy; ritual pears, 81, 191 peas, 191, 196, 269 peasantry. See peasants peasants, 20, 24, 48, 274, 275, 337 phenomenology, 18, 20, 22, 24, 29, 30. See also landscape: phenomenological approaches pilgrimage, 26, 27, 28, 36, 360, 369, 370, 389 pilgrims. See pilgrimage Piraeus, xxii, 80, 81, 83, 90, 91, 146, 151, 171, 172, 228, 263, 331, 332, 333, 358, 362, 371, 372, 417 pirates. See raiders place-names, study of, 13, 14, 25, 40, 41, 57, 60, 66, 68, 205, 249, 347, 360, 379, 380. See also toponyms plants. See landscape: vegetation ploughing, 58, 78, 88, 104, 148, 165, 184, 237, 238, 239, 244, 252 plums, 191 population, 54, 60, 61, 62, 64, 73, 76, 78, 80, 85, 158, 180, 211 post-processualism, 18 processualism, 3, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 186 raiders, 57, 59, 60, 68, 72, 73, 106, 112, 180, 181, 182, 183, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 230, 249, 250, 258, 281 refugees, 62, 66, 68, 73, 74, 83, 135, 165, 211, 218, 248, 303, 331 religion, 17, 19, 32, 33, 48, 73, 130, 281, 345, 348, 349, 350, 351, 354, 355, 358, 360, 386, 392. See also landscape: religious dietary rules, 84, 130, 267, 339, 348, 358, 391 ritual, 18, 21, 26, 38, 39, 152, 156, 281. See also pilgrimage

436

INDEX

baptism, 126, 149, 150, 152, 350 funerary, 23, 153, 313, 314–315, 350, 364, 382, 385, 389, 401. See also death; cemeteries monuments. See monuments: ritual wedding, 126, 132, 150, 314, 315, 316, 350, 351, 371 within landscape. See landscape: ritual within saints, 14, 91, 157, 254, 259, 260, 268, 280, 328, 347, 350, 352, 356, 357, 358, 362, 369, 370, 371, 372, 380, 384, 386, 390, 393, 394, 399, 403, 405 name days. See names: name days settlement history, 19, 54, 56, 62 location, 11, 17, 19, 54, 55, 60, 64, 65, 66, 68, 82, 129, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 187, 188, 189, 205, 225, 226, 227, 307, 308, 352, 353, 354, 357, 369, 376 pattern, 1, 15, 16, 17, 19, 62, 109, 115, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 211, 221, 226, 290, 291, 292, 293, 320, 356, 381 seasonal, 27, 57, 58, 61, 66, 68, 70, 73, 83, 184, 226, 353 settlements, 1, 2, 10, 15, 37, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 71, 72, 73, 74, 86, 177, 180, 182, 184, 185, 190, 224, 225, 226, 244, 291, 303, 352, 353 sheep, 79, 85, 87, 120, 133, 166, 167, 197, 198, 236, 239, 240, 305, 367. See also goats sheep bells. See bells: sheep and goat bells smell, sense of. See landscape: smell soi, 118, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 143, 152, 154, 162, 173, 175, 204, 215, 218, 233, 260, 261, 264, 278, 287, 301, 302, 303, 306, 309, 311, 312, 313, 316, 318, 323, 326, 334, 335, 336, 337, 346, 359, 384, 391, 396, 400, 401, 402, 404. See also names: surnames soil, 51–56, 57, 61, 85, 93, 104, 146, 165, 190, 192, 193, 328, 331

sound, sense of. See landscape: sound spa, 82, 83, 85, 86, 92, 93, 121, 146, 152, 171, 239, 243, 257. See also springs spiti, 118, 119, 261, 264, 277, 336, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342 springs, 55, 56, 82, 179, 239, 240 stone, 31, 54, 58, 72, 79, 166, 182, 226, 227, 228, 244, 362 supernatural, 35, 73, 246, 280, 281, 282, 347, 349, 350, 351, 355, 357, 362, 363, 382, 384, 389, 392 surnames. See names: surnames terraces, 53, 54, 57, 58, 61, 62, 72, 78, 79, 80, 85, 94, 106, 112, 165, 167, 169, 190, 196, 197, 202, 203, 239, 240, 289, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 325 construction, 78 time, 7, 21, 29, 30, 64, 220, 264–284, 290, 339, 346, 399, 401, 404 liturgical, 267. See also liturgy perception of the past, 106, 112, 171, 207, 208, 210, 214, 218, 219, 221, 227, 242, 250, 259, 268, 346, 401 sense of, 72, 73 tomatoes, 94, 193, 305 tombs. See monuments: tombs toponyms, 13, 14, 210, 247. See also place-names, study of tourism, 85, 87, 88, 92, 93, 95, 368, 375, 378 transportation, 58, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 107, 242, 245, 250, 252, 255, 256, 268 travel, 26, 27, 28, 29, 40, 89, 90, 91, 148, 252, 255, 268, 329, 363, 366, 368, 371, 375, 376, 377, 378, 380, 384, 386, 387, 389, 390, 394. See also landscape: movement through; pilgrimage by train, 26 on foot, 26, 327, 369, 375 vegetation. See landscape: vegetation vetch, 88, 191, 196 vines, 57, 58, 61, 66, 68, 73, 81, 85, 94, 104, 147, 148, 153, 155, 157, 164, 172, 188, 189, 191, 194, 204, 233, 237, 238, 250–257, 326, 328, 330, 331

437

INDEX

viticulture. See vines war, 64, 73, 83, 88, 89 Greek War of Independence, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 73, 184, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219, 290, 303, 353, 356, 370, 399 World War I, 61, 83, 85 World War II, 28, 47, 65, 83, 88, 93, 147, 211, 224, 331 water, 55, 56, 82, 84, 89, 90, 166, 167, 179, 190, 191, 192, 239, 240, 241, 244, 246, 248, 262. See also springs; irrigation

storage, 56, 241, 248. See also cisterns; loutses; wells weather, 34, 37, 82, 88, 268, 275 wedding. See ritual: wedding wells, 56, 81, 84, 164, 179, 188, 194, 195, 240, 241, 242, 248, 258, 262. See also water; springs wheat, 76, 88, 94, 95, 107, 124, 132, 139, 167, 191, 192, 196, 197, 351 wills, 168, 234, 326. See also inheritance wine, 87, 142, 157, 250, 252, 255, 357, 411, 417 wool, 87, 241, 367, 368

438

Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape: An Archaeological Ethnography

Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity

Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity

God's Gateway: Identity and Meaning in a Hindu Pilgrimage Place

Direct Action: An Ethnography

Denver: An Archaeological History

An Archaeological Evolution

An Archaeological Evolution

An Archaeological Evolution

Archaeological Surveying and Mapping: Recording and Depicting the Landscape

Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity

Archaeological Surveying and Mapping: Recording and Depicting the Landscape

Archaeological Surveying and Mapping: Recording and Depicting the Landscape

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