Culture and climate in ancient Greece

On the east coast of Attica, just east of Athens’ International Airport, lies the landscape of Vravrona, and nestled within it the Sanctuary of Artemis Vravronia. Girls and women would attend the sanctuary in hopes of protection from the goddess before marriage and during pregnancy.

Maeve said: ‘Young Athenian girls would travel there for the Arkteia festival, when they would ‘play the bear’ for the goddess Artemis (one of her sacred animals). Pottery known as krateriskoi depicts girls running, playing and dancing together as part of the Arkteia’s rites.

‘Our project investigates the relationship between the site and its wider landscape, examining both its natural environment and its cultural significance. This landscape is key to understanding how women and girls travelled and lived, from the discovery of ancient road networks to the lost objects associated with women found throughout the landscape.’

Ancient peoples were intimately embedded in the natural landscape, which shaped every aspect of daily life. The team hope to understand more about how the natural landscape and humans interacted, how humans adapted and engaged with it.

‘I think modern climate change is making it clear that we have limited control over our environment,’ said Maeve. ‘Ancient communities understood that we are ultimately at the whim of fire, floods, storms, extreme climate/seasons etc. They embodied these in their gods but also developed practical strategies to work with the natural world.

‘We want to know as much about the ancient natural environment as we do the cultural one. What droughts did they experience and how did they respond? Did they clear forests and how did they manage their water resources? Understanding how people lived alongside nature (and how that changed over time) could teach us a lot as we face climate change today.’

‘We are not digging; most of the finds come from field walking. We space ourselves ten metres apart and walk across the landscape, looking for pottery, worked stone etc. One of these field teams is led by Birmingham graduate Ellen Durbin (BA Archaeology and Ancient History, 2022) and many students join our team to gain valuable archaeological experience, like learning how to read pottery.

‘We are out in the field by 7am and work until mid-afternoon, so we miss the hottest part of the day after that. We study our finds and analyse them at the Brauron Archaeological Museum. We are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for three years of fieldwork, then two years to study the material that we’ve collected.’

The study brings together experts from several universities and specialisms, not just archaeology. The team’s environmental expertise includes:

• Professor Henry Chapman (University of Birmingham) is an important bridge between the archaeological and environmental work.
• Palaeoecologists Dr Michelle Farrell (Coventry University) and Dr Laurent Marquer (University of Innsbruck) are reconstructing what was growing at Brauron and the surrounding landscape (both natural and food crops) using pollen preserved in ancient sediments.
• Geochemist Dr James Bendle (University of Birmingham) is using leaf waxes to see whether the plants suffered from a drought or fires.
• Palaeontologist Professor Yorgos Iliopoulos (University of Patras) is looking at microfossils to see how far the ancient shoreline and local paleoenvironments have changed.
• Botanists Professor Maria Panitsa and Professor Panayotis Dimopoulos (University of Patras) are contributing specialist knowledge of ancient and modern plant communities.

Maeve said: ‘The ambitions of this project are only possible through the collaborative and interdisciplinary work of all colleagues on the project. The project is being conducted in partnership with the British School at Athens (BSA)and archaeological fieldwork is conducted under the directorship of Dr Eleni Andrikou, Ephor of Antiquities of East Attica.’

Students get to take a module called the Study Tour in Greece. They have lectures before and at the major sites they visit, including Vravrona/Brauron, where they get to engage with the research the team is doing. The discoveries feed into undergraduate and postgraduate modules. The Department has access to a teaching collection of antiquities, which Maeve describes as ‘small but mighty’ in terms of the quality of the material and the cultures represented.

‘Beginning with Greek pottery in 1902, the collection has grown through donations from alumni, former academic staff, and private collectors. Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Mesopotamian and British finds are supplemented by long-term loans from the Ashmolean Museum and Birmingham Museums Trust.’