Ancient Asine

We return to the main road, about 450 m along which we see to the left of a tight bend the hill of ancient Asine. The small taverna on the right is housed in the building used as the storeroom of the Swedish excavations in the 1920s.

We walk alongside the fortification walls to the east, for about 120 m, in order to reach the gate of the ancient city. After the works carried out in the recent NSRF project, the ancient gate is in use again, as the main entrance to the archaeological site, while the access ramp on the northwest side of the walls serves visitors with impaired mobility.

The main gate to the city was at the point where the walls met the rock face. A square tower to the north afforded additional protection. A large part of the interior of the tower was destroyed by the operation of a lime-kiln in Venetian times. The gate was formed during the Hellenistic period, when the ramparts ringing the hill were constructed. However, its final aspect is due to repairs and alterations with material in second use during Roman, Byzantine and Venetian times. In its final phase, access was along a paved ramp ending at a monolithic threshold 2.15 m long. The gate was closed by a double wooden door, which was secured inside by bolts slotted into the side walls. Visitors passed through the gate into an inner room and perhaps via some steps entered the walled city.

The gate was badly damaged during the Second World War. Today, the paved ramp has been reconstructed and a metal staircase beyond the inner room bridges the height difference to the archaeological site.

Just beyond the gate, on the left, is the ticket office and shop of the archaeological site. This is housed in a single-room stone building of the Second World War, which was reconstructed as part of the NSRF project. During the Occupation it served as a kitchen. In the recent works three stoves for cooking food were uncovered on the wall opposite the entrance. The yard in front of the building was paved.

The small white church in the archaeological site is dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin (Koimeses tes Theotokou). It is a simple single-aisle church possibly built on the site of a three-aisle basilica. Remains of walls parallel to the long sides of the church, to north and south, perhaps belong to an earlier phase of the monument. In the recent works, two unfurnished burials were revealed between the church and the parallel wall to the north. In the course of digging trenches for laying utilities networks, outside this wall, pottery dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth century was brought to light, as well as plaster fragments which perhaps come from the coating of the walls of the earlier church.

On the feast of the Dormition, 15 August, people from the surrounding areas throng the forecourt. The church is a dependency of the church of St Demetrios in Asine.

The forecourt of the church of the Dormition of the Virgin was delimited to south and west by small rooms and semi-open-air spaces in L-shaped arrangement. The rooms served the needs of the church and of the local Ephorate of Antiquities, but were originally for accommodation of the faithful. In recent years the west wing had suffered considerable damage and some walls had collapsed.

In the framework of the recent NSRF project, part of the west wing was reconstructed to house the multimedia hall of the archaeological site, in which there are digital applications relating to the history of ancient Asine. On the site of the northernmost room of the wing, which had collapsed in the past, a sheltered space was created, open towards the Lower City and the Bay of Tolo. On this side, texts and illustrations inform visitors of Georgios Seferis’s wanderings through Asine in the 1930s.

From the shelter visitors have a general vista of the area dubbed the Lower City by the Swedish excavators. Today, in place of the dense remains of different building phases, standing to considerable height, which were uncovered in the 1920s, there is a large open trench in which only very few ancient remains are visible, a consequence of the Italian presence and the ravages of time. With the exception of the small Roman bathhouse in front of the multimedia hall, the rest of the antiquities have been totally destroyed or survive at the lowest level of their foundations, presenting a piecemeal picture which barely corresponds to the diachronic habitation in the Lower City.

It was here that the Asine of Middle Helladic, Mycenaean, Hellenistic, Roman and Late Roman times developed. Very meagre traces of activity in Early Helladic and Geometric times have also been revealed. By following the path around the Lower City, visitors can now see a pilot restoration of the Mycenaean ‘House G’ to the north, the ‘wellhead’ of a Hellenistic cistern once incorporated in a contemporary house to the west, and remains of the Middle Helladic ‘House B’ and the Late Roman bathhouse to the east.

The largest house of the Mycenaean settlement of Asine, the so-called ‘House G’, was brought to light in the north part of the Lower City in the 1920s. The core of the house was a hypostyle hall with two central columns and an antechamber, features that class the building as of megaroid type. It acquired its final form with the addition of rooms around the central hypostyle hall, forming a complex of rooms with intensive use in the Middle and Late LH IIIC period. Indeed, the complex that extended to the east of ‘House G’, the so-called ‘House H’, is now considered – after recent processing of the plans and daybooks of the old excavations – as an extension of it, with continuous use into Geometric times.

The finds from ‘House G’ point to multiple activities in its interior. Numerous objects probably for cultic use were found in association with the built bench in the northeast corner of the hypostyle hall. Among these are a kernos, a stone axe, figurines and the famous clay head of the ‘Lord of Asine’. The hearth located in the opposite corner of the room served both cultic and domestic needs, as did the many cooking vessels. Some of the spaces were storerooms. Last, the finding in the same context of a mould for casting dress pins points also to the practice of manufacturing activities.

Shortly before the tour around the large excavated part of the Lower City ends, to the southeast is a wooden staircase which leads towards the foot of the acropolis. To the left of it, a rock-cut passage ends at a tripartite underground cistern. The passage was opened during the Italian Occupation, when the cistern was used as a storage space for military equipment, in order to connect it to the neighbouring trench. The west wall of the cistern was destroyed, in order to create the access to the arsenal.

The cistern was 9.40 m long and of maximum width 1.70 m. It comprises three chambers, the central one of which, 5 m deep, is the largest. In the ceiling there was a ‘wellhead’. The floor was laid with pebbles and sloped downwards into a settling basin, in which the sediment collected. Two smaller side chambers were added to the central one, increasing the capacity of the cistern to 23 cubic metres. Successive coats of hydraulic plaster on the walls waterproofed the cistern. On the surface near the ‘wellhead’, a rectangular basin had been built.

We continue up the wooden staircase, pass by the machine-gun emplacement on the right, and end up at the entrance to a manmade cavern at the foot of the rock of the acropolis. The cavern was created by Italian troops during the Second World War, in order to serve as a bunker and storage space. Its interior now houses a small exhibition about the Second World War in the Argolid, with informative texts, illustrations and mementoes of the period.

We return to the main pathway and to the southeast side of the Lower City. Preserved here to the level of the low foundation is a building representative of one of the most important periods of ancient Asine. This is ‘House B’, which is dated to the final phase of the Middle Helladic period. At the time of its discovery, its walls survived to a height in excess of one metre.

The house is of irregular, rather trapezoidal plan and has 13 oblong rooms. Its foundation/socle was strong, built of stones, while the superstructure was of mudbrick. The narrowness of the rooms meant that the building could be covered by a flat roof. In all probability there was an upper storey too. Indeed, it seems to have housed more than one families, as there are multiple entrances and several spaces inside the complex for food preparation and storage, so that each family kept a rudimentary degree of autonomy.

The house was part of a small coastal community of 380-500 inhabitants, which developed initially in the area of the Lower City and later spread to the foot of Barbouna Hill, due to the increase in population. The houses were independent units with narrow alleys between them and courtyards.

The propinquity of the small bathhouse to the Middle Helladic ‘House B’, which is almost 2,000 years earlier, is just a small indication of the longevity of habitation in the Lower City of Asine, as the first excavators ascertained almost every day. The bathhouse was built in the late fourth-early fifth century AD, in the same period as three other houses of the same orientation in the Lower City, which are no longer preserved. It comprises four main rooms, aligned on the North-South axis. The warmer chambers were to the south, so as to exploit to advantage the exposure to sunlight, particularly in the winter months. The complex had a rectangular hall to the north, which has been interpreted as a disrobing room (apodyterium). Next came the chamber for the cold bath, with two individual bathtubs, to the east (frigidarium). This was followed by the small chamber for the tepid bath (tepidarium), thus making a smooth transitiontothelast visitable space of the complex, the hot bath (caldarium), in which two individual bathtubs had been installed. Later, it seems that one more room was added to the west of the tepidarium, which has been interpreted as a chamber for dry-heat perspiration (laconicum).

The caldarium was heated by the usual system in Roman times of channelling hot air in the basement and the walls of the chamber. The fire was lit outside, to the south of the complex. The hot air circulated under the floor, between low pillars (pilae) supporting it (hypocaust) and behind the walls through ducts (tubuli) and the gap created by the tiles with corner bosses (tegulataemammatae), which were set at a distance from the main body of the wall.

The bathhouse is small and probably accommodated no more than five bathers simultaneously.

Having completed our tour in the Lower City, we can now make our way up to the rocky summit of the hill, the acropolis. Ahead of us is the monumental stone staircase, which was built by the Italian Occupation forces to facilitate access to the hill. Because the staircase was a safety hazard, it was reconstructed in the framework of the NSRF project, keeping as close as possible to the geometric characteristics of the Italian construction.

In the course of works on rebuilding the staircase and linking it with the routes in the Lower City, part of a Hellenistic press was uncovered. Research was limited to the area through which the walkway for visitors passes. It was decided to install a metal footbridge at this point, so that the workshop installation remained visible.

This press was a new addition to those that had already been found and excavated in the last century, in the Lower City and on the acropolis, confirming the involvement of Hellenistic Asine’s inhabitants with farming activities. Investigations in the building were limited to the southeast part of the room where the fruit was pressed. Preserved to the east is the slightly elevated pressing base, of semicircular plan, and to the west the circular tank, in which the liquid produced was collected, draining down a sloping plaster-coated floor between the two. The use of plaster on the floor and the absence of channels for the liquid to flow through into the tank lead to the hypothesis that the pressing installation was associated with wine-making. Found at a lower level to the north, was the stone base on which the wooden pressing mechanism was affixed. The entire area of the room was covered by terracotta tiles from the collapsed roof. The room extended further to west and north. The wall that gives the impression of bounding the space to the west is later, as it is founded upon the layer of roof tiles, as visitors can see for themselves when they view it from the east.

After ascending the monumental stone stairway, we take the proposed path to the left (north), in order to start our tour around the acropolis hill. In front of us, over the metal bridge, is a small one-room Italian building which has been converted into an exhibition space. Part of the Venetian ramparts of the acropolis form the back wall of the building. The Italians imitated the crenellations crowning the Venetian walls in the height-wise addition of the new wall, so as to camouflage the new construction from the north.

The building now houses a small exhibition with a wealth of textual and visual material, entitled ‘Excavating Ancient Asine’. This describes the excavation process through the example of the Swedish mission toAsine. Excavation tools and objects from the 1920s complement the presentation. Preserved on the back wall of the building are slogans-graffiti of earlier visitors to Asine. Outside the building, opposite the entrance, is one of the sieves used by the Swedish excavators.

We come out of the small exhibition space and continue to the right, along the pathway circling the acropolis. Constantly on our left is the innerface of the fortification walls. The route leads us to the east side of the hill, passing first through the interior of a long and narrow building which has been interpreted as a stoa. When the Swedes unearthed this edifice it was in fragmentary state, as the northeast side had been destroyed during the construction of the Venetian rampart. The interior had most probably been damaged too, by undocumented excavations-digging which appears to have been carried out in the early twentieth century.

The building runs North-South for a length of over 23 m and is 9 m wide. It consisted of a square antechamber to the south and a main hall with two axial rows of four columns. The two rooms communicated through a doorway 2.5 m wide. The excavators characterized the building as a stoa or portico, probably of Roman times, open on the east side. All that remains today are sparse traces of the west wall and the cuttings in the bedrock essential for the construction of such a building.

In antiquity, the access to the acropolis was reinforced and protected by two quadrilateral towers flanking it to north and south. The south tower, which stands to a height of 9.5 m, is to this day the most emblematic monument of Asine. After ascending a few wooden steps beyond the entrance to the acropolis, we come to its upper side. On the right, we pass by the ‘wellhead’ of one of the city’s many cisterns.

The tower was topped by a low parapet, very few parts of which remain in situ. Its floor was paved with large flat slabs of limestone. The sturdiness, the height, features and details of its construction are visible from the external face of the walls. We shall return to these during the tour around the perimeter of the acropolis.

In antiquity, the access to the acropolis was reinforced and protected by two quadrilateral towers flanking it to north and south. The south tower, which stands to a height of 9.5 m, is to this day the most emblematic monument of Asine. After ascending a few wooden steps beyond the entrance to the acropolis, we come to its upper side. On the right, we pass by the ‘wellhead’ of one of the city’s many cisterns.

The tower was topped by a low parapet, very few parts of which remain in situ. Its floor was paved with large flat slabs of limestone. The sturdiness, the height, features and details of its construction are visible from the external face of the walls. We shall return to these during the tour around the perimeter of the acropolis.

The campsite operating to the east of the acropolis, in front of the tower, is on the Karmaniolas property, where an excavation took place in the 1970s. On this plot, part of an important Middle Helladic cemetery was uncovered, consisting of a circular stone tumulus with burials in cist graves and in pithoi (enchytrismoi). From this  find it is concluded that in the later years of the Middle Helladic period there was a group of inhabitants at Asine who had the wherewithal to erect mortuary monuments of this size, thus setting themselves off from the rest of the community.

The results of the excavation on the Karmaniolas plot are significant for two additional reasons. Also brought to light were houses of the end of the Mycenaean period, which continued to be inhabited by the succeeding generations, without any sudden break due to a violent event or abandonment, as happened at other sites, after the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces. Furthermore, in the upper levels of the excavation a few traces of settlement in the period 500-225 BC were found, as well as a number of cist graves of the first half of the fifth century BC.This evidence overturns earlier research findings, according to which Asine had been deserted after the attack by Argosin 700 BC.

The antiquities revealed were backfilled for their preservation.

As we continue our ascent to the acropolis, along the wooden walkway, we see on our left the beach of Plaka at Drepano, spreading as far as the ‘Nisi’ peninsula on the opposite side. According to Zangger, in the sixth millennium BC the coastline extended some 700 m further north.

From this point and as far as the ‘Prince’s Tower’, the path was laid out inside the old Italian trench bunker. On the left, about 70 m beyond the viewing point, a square tower of the Hellenistic fortification wall stands for a height of four courses. It is built in the polygonal system, of local grey limestone. In contrast to the east side of the acropolis, which is easily accessible, the rocky and precipitous west slope of the hill had no need of robust constructions. Here the defensive walls are low and the towers reinforcing them are small. The Swedes named the tower in front of us as the ‘Prince’s Tower’ because Prince Gustaf had participated in its excavation. On its north side, the ‘wellhead’ of yet another cistern is covered by a glass shelter.

We reach the lowest point of the organized route, where we encounter the ruins of a rectangular room measuring 3.5×5.5 m. In order to construct it, the bedrock has been levelled and was actually part of its floor and walls. Where necessary, the floor was filled in with flat stones and coated with plaster. At about the centre of the room a raised circular surface of bedrock has been left, with a rectangular cutting. The floor of the room slopes down towards two rock-cut tanks, 57 cm and 50 cm deep, the first close to the east wall and the second in the southeast corner of the room. Their walls were completed by small fragments of tiles and plaster. Fragments of large unpainted vases were recovered from the bottom of the tanks.

The room is dated to Hellenistic and Roman times. It functioned as a pressing installation for processing agricultural products. In all probability a wooden mechanism for pressing the fruit was affixed to the base at the centre of the room. The liquid released drained down the sloping floor into the two tanks.

A few steps down to the west of the pressing installation is the so-called ‘Terrace of the polygonal wall’, a large – by the standards of the acropolis of Asine – flat area, thus named after the well-built polygonal fortification wall of Hellenistic times. This was built between two crags in order to retain the fill that forms this man made terrace. On the same side a high metal railing has been placed, to protect visitors. The Hellenistic wall is visible only from the road between Kastraki and Tolo. In all likelihood it replaced a pre-existing retaining construction, as remains dating from the Early Helladic and the Middle Helladic period have been found on the terrace.

Preserved on the south east side of the terrace is the outline of a small room, which belonged to a larger Early Helladic house. In Middle Helladic times, two cist graves had been opened in the floor of this house.

On the south side of the terrace, one more pillbox was built during the Italian Occupation. Incorporated in the rocky environment, the building secured full surveillance of the Argolic Gulf. It has a pebbled floor and traces of incised Italian inscriptions (graffiti) are still visible.

Written on the right was the name of the regiment that encamped at Asine and on the left the date on which the pillbox was built, 9 March 1942. Characteristic is the accompanying of this date with that in the Fascist system of reckoning time, according to which 1942 is the year ΧΧ (20), with starting point the year of Mussolini’s march on Rome. Trenches running around the hill and connecting various military installations ended at the pillbox.

Before we begin our descent from the west side of the acropolis, we shall make a detour from the main route, in order to visit one more pressing installation of Hellenistic times. Just beyond the viewing point with the semi-circular bench, a dirt path, of steep gradient at the start, leads southeast to the pressing installation, about 70 m away.

When it was discovered, it comprised consecutive spacesat different levels on the hillslope, extending for a length of over 13 m.

Today, the space where the pressing process took place can be seen on the uppermost level. The arrangement of the permanent installations – the pressing surface, the tank and the two rectangular mortises in which the pressing mechanism will have been inserted – resembles that of the press we passed before the staircase up to the acropolis.The floor of the space consisted of small pieces of tiles, assempled and coated with plaster. The gradient of the floor led the liquid into the small quadrilateral basin, 55 cm deep, through two holes opened in its raised rim. The part with the mortices for fixing the pressing mechanism is in a straight line with the pressing surface, 20 cm lower than the floor of the room. The complex was entered from the south, where a stone threshold (1.35 m long) has been found, with two cuttings at its ends, for affixing the axes of the door.

The existence of pressing installations on the acropolis of Asine, in a rocky area difficult of access,to which the bringing of the agricultural products will have demanded much time and effort, is puzzling to say the least. According to B. Wells, in Hellenistic times Asine was a walled village in which there could have been some cultivation intra muros. In this case, the fortification walls will have functioned also as retaining walls to hold back the earth for growing olive trees, vines and cereals.The many water cisterns found in the city will have played their role in tending the crops.

After completing the tour intra muros of Asine and exiting the ancient gate of the city, visitors can follow the road to the east and then head to the south to reach Plaka beach. From there they can behold the mighty Hellenistic fortification, the entrance to the acropolis, and admire the impressive east tower. At the same time, they can easily make out the different constructional phases of the fortification wall.

Just beyond the gate and turning to gaze high on the rock, at the point where the Italian building with the small exhibition space is located, the observant visitor will ascertain that there are three different building phases in the wall. In the lower part the large courses in the polygonal system of masonry were built in the Hellenistic period and belong to the first phase. During the Second Period of Venetian Rule the height of the wall was increased by adding small stones, tiles and mortar. In this phase the wall was crowned with crenellations. In the time of the Occupation, when the Italian building was erected, the height of the wall was increased further. For the effective concealment of the construction, the Italians imitated the masonry and the crenellations of the Venetian phase.

The road continues to skirt the rock of Asine, passing outside the walls. On the east side, outstanding is the robust retaining wall of the staircase which led to the gate of the acropolis. It is built of large limestone blocks in the polygonal system. The lowest part of the staircase has not survived. In this area the first excavators refer to the existence of a Roman thermae with hypocausts, but give no further information. The bathhouse was destroyed at some moment after it was revealed, perhaps when the road was opened, replacing an earlier narrow path.

In front of the staircase looms the large east tower of the wall. Today the tower stands to a height of 9.5 m, which must be quite close to its initial one, as the existence of only one further course is proposed. At its base, the tower projects 5.5 m and 7 m from the face of the walls, to the north and south respectively, while its east side is 10.3 m long. It comprises 14 courses of polygonal blocks.The two lowest courses are in stepped arrangement. Above these the corners of the tower have been cut diagonally and incised on the salient angles is a vertical taenia. This formation is followed on eight successive courses. The stepped arrangement of the lower courses contributes to the static adequacy of the tower, in the interior of which is a large volume of earth. The diagonal formation of the points where the sides of the tower join is considered to have been intended for the effective confrontation of battering rams, as possible damage to the cornerstones leads to more rapid collapse of the whole construction. The carving of the vertical taeniae helped the masons during the building works.

The fortification walls of Asine were built in the late fourth century BC. Several scholars have suggested that their construction was part of an ambitious project of Demetrios Poliorketes, son of Alexander the Great’s general Antigonos Monophthalmos, who dominated the Aegean in the years around 300 BC.