Just off the coast of southern Lakonia, in the narrow strait separating the harbor town of Neapoli and Elafonisos, are the remains of Pavlopetri, the world’s oldest sunken city. Discovered in the late 1960s, the site is now systematically being surveyed by a joint team of British and Greek archaeologists who are piecing together details about this 5,000-year-oldplanned town. Barbara J. Euser reviews the survey work undertaken thus far.
The submerged city of Pavlopetri lies at a depth of three meters between the shore of Pounta at Viglafia in the southern Peloponnese’s Vatika and the island of Elafonisos, just a few kilometers off the coast of Neapoli in the southern Lakonia region. Locals have known about Pavlopetri for generations. Fragments of ceramic saucers, bowls, and pots that washed onto the beach were taken home to decorate mantels and windowsills, and few homes in Neapoli are without at least a few old pieces salvaged from the sea. Greek geologist Fokionas Negris first announced the existence of sunken remains at this location in 1904. However, it was Dr. Nicholas Flemming of the University of Southampton who rediscovered the site in 1967, and who realized its importance as an ancient submerged city. As a result, a team from the University of Cambridge led by Professor Anthony Harding (now of Exeter University) conducted a survey of the site the following year. The finds and the plan of the town were published in 1969 in the Annual of the British School at Athens. In 1976, the site became a designated archeological site. But funds to study archeological sites are limited and in Greece, where archeological sites abound, no further research was done for forty years.
Flemming returned in 1979 and confirmed that the site was still more or less intact. Unlike archeological sites buried underground, which remain protected by layers of earth, an archeological site in the water is continuously eroded; some erosion caused by wave action is inevitable as the sea is in constant motion, but more severe erosion is caused by boats with propellers crisscrossing the shallow submerged site.
The bridge of land that connected Elafonisos to the mainland of Lakonia had begun subsiding by the second century B.C.E. when Pausanias wrote in his Periegesis that the strait that once connected Elafonisos with the mainland was submerged, albeit still fordable. By the eighteenth century, Admiralty Pilot evidence indicates the island was completely separated from the mainland by Elafonisos Strait. By then the city we call Pavlopetri had disappeared from view. Around 1000 B.C.E., the land had sunk about three meters.
In 1969, Harding reported that the remains of the city he observed covered an area of 300 meters by 100 meters and comprised fifteen separate buildings and parts of at least fifteen more, five streets, two chamber tombs, and thirty-seven intramural cist graves. He also recognized that “the site may have extended over ten hectares or more, or at least twice as much as survives today.” Harding surmised that over the centuries Pavlopetri had gradually grown outwards, extending its borders as the population grew and required more living space. The surface archaeological material the Cambridge team recovered from the site indicated that occupation dated from at 2800 B.C.E., the second phase of the Early Bronze Age, until the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces in 1180 B.C.E.
The archeological material gathered in 1968 indicated the existence of a highly prosperous Mycenaean city, with a wealth of artifacts showing strong influences from the Minoans: tripod cooking pots, storage vessels (pitharia) and a bronze female figurine. The plan of the city and the abundance of Mycenaean material (roughly 1650-1180 B.C.E.) he lifted made Harding think that Pavlopetri resembled the Late Bronze Age towns at Palaiokastro on Crete and Phylakopi on Melos in the Cyclades.
Nearby, still above water level on the Pounta shore, the archaeologists surveyed a prehistoric cemetery of some sixty-nine rock-cut tombs, presumably from the Early Bronze Age, roughly 3100 to 2000 B.C.E.
The prehistoric city at Pavlopetri overlooked the strategic sea passage between Elafonisos and Kythera islands and could have controlled the sea routes from the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean towards Italy, Malta, and the western Mediterranean. It also could have served as a gateway to the fertile plain of Vatika and inland Lakonia.
Surveying Pavlopetri
Since 1969, the site remained unexcavated, eroding at the mercy of the sea, inquisitive tourists, boats’ propellers and anchors. But since 2005, Dr. Chrysanthi Gallou of the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian studies of the University of Nottingham has been conducting archeological research in Lakonia, exploring prehistoric sites and chamber tombs on the Malea peninsula. Gallou is originally from Tripoli in Arcadia and her interest in the history and archeology of Lakonia began when she was a student. Spending her summers there as a child, she became interested in the submerged city of Pavlopetri. In 2007, she began discussions with Dr. Jon Henderson of the University of Nottingham Underwater Archaeology Research Centre about returning to the site and carrying out archaeological work there. Together they organized the Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project (PUAP).
At the same time, Flemming renewed his interest in the site and the three decided to join forces. In 2009, through a permit granted by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture to the British School at Athens, Henderson and Gallou–joined by Flemming and in collaboration with the Ephorate for Underwater Antiquities and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR)–began a five-year interdisciplinary project to survey and excavate the remains of the prehistoric city using state-of-the art technologies to determine when the site was first occupied, how it might have looked, and why it was built in the first place. Through an oceanographic survey, they hope to learn how, when and why the prehistoric site and the Elafonisos strait became submerged.
In 2009, a mixed Greek and British team of fifteen archaeologists, oceanographers, scientists, and archaeological divers under the direction of Dr. Jon Henderson and Elias Spondylis of the Greek Underwater Ephorate began mapping the sunken remains using a Total Station and revolutionary Sector Scan Sonar techniques. The material recovered in 2009 surpassed all expectations. Among the finds, Gallou identified pottery that dated back to the end of the Neolithic period, 3500 B.C.E., suggesting the site was first occupied 5,500 years ago and not in 2800 B.C.E. as was previously thought. In addition to the remains recorded in 1968, the archaeological team identified and recorded an additional nine thousand square meters of buildings and one more street, including the foundations of a trapezoidal building of monumental dimensions –34 by 15 meters– that resembles the halls of administrative centers of the Greek Bronze Age. Their findings showed the importance of the site and were sufficient to attract more research funding for 2010.
“There is now no doubt that this is the oldest submerged city in the world. It has remains dating from at least 2800 to 1200 B.C.E., long before the glory days of classical Greece. Certainly there are older sunken settlements in the world but none can be considered to be a planned town such as this, which is why it is unique,” says Henderson.
In 2010, Gallou, Henderson, and Flemming, joined by a team from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, returned to Pavlopetri with an international team of fifteen scientists from England, Scotland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the United States, and Australia. Their goal was to continue the mapping of the site by applying cutting-edge technologies in order to collect, identify, catalogue, and preserve archaeological artifacts that could be easily picked up from the site.
In addition to the Total Station and the Sector Scan surveys, photo-stereogrammetry was carried out by Dr. Oscar Pizarro and his team from the Center of Field Robotics in Sydney, Australia. They built a floating device with two separate cameras that photographed a strip of sand about a meter-and-a-half wide. The digital images recorded by the cameras were then downloaded to computers on land. Their new technique combines stereo-imagery with a multibeam sonar survey, which produces an accurate three-dimensional model of submerged remains that is photo-realistic. Working tirelessly, the Australian team covered large areas of the submerged city, one meter-and-a-half swath at a time. The result is a record that, when compared to a future set of images, will show every piece of pottery, rock, or shell that has moved in the meantime. This was the first time this new technology, which has the potential to radically change underwater archaeology, had been applied to an underwater archeological site.
Dr. Dimitris Sakellariou directed an oceanographic survey, sponsored by the University of Nottingham. His mapping team from HCMR employed three different techniques: multi-beam geoswath, side-scan sonar or geoacoustics, and sub-bottom profiler. The aim of the oceanographic work was to investigate when, how, and why the prehistoric site and the Strait of Elafonisos became submerged, as well as to reconstruct the paleo-landscape in Vatika bay. The subbottom profiler revealed the existence of two prehistoric river valleys. Built on land between the two valleys, Pavlopetri would have relied on these rivers for fresh water.
Life in Pavlopetri
Evidence of what life was like in Pavlopetri is deduced from the lifting and recording of archeological material. In Pavlopetri, these consist mostly of broken pieces of pottery and implements made of stone, terracotta and obsidian (volcanic glass). Archeologists use these remnants to reconstruct a picture of life from 3500 B.C.E. to 1180 C.E. when Pavlopetri flourished.
Located within the walls of at least three dozen houses, Henderson and his divers found cist graves. They look like small rectangular boxes with thin, flat rocks forming their sides. Gallou explained that it was the Middle Bronze Age custom, when a child died, to bury the body in one of these small stone-sided coffins inside the wall of the house. The idea was to maintain a sense of the continuity of life and fertility in the house, encouraging the birth of more children. The Minoans of Crete also buried children in cist graves, thus linking Pavlopetri with the Minoan culture and times.
Gallou and the finds team use the markings on pottery and other decorations, for example, inscribed lines or bands of clay decorated by thumbprints, to tell approximately when a piece of pottery was made. Pottery shards found in 2009 dated to the end of the Stone Age – about 5,000 years ago – and 1,200 years earlier than previous findings.
The pithoi –large ceramic storage jars– uncovered at Pavlopetri show parallels with the nearby Minoan colony on Kythera Island and Knossos in Crete, further tying Pavlopetri to the Minoan culture. Pithoi were used to store to store liquids such as olive oil and wine as well as solid foods, including figs, olives, grain, dried fish, and meat. In the Middle Bronze Age, pithoi were also used as coffins; burial pithoi have reportedly been found near Ayios Georyios, only a few kilometers from Pavlopetri.
Eating and drinking vessels, including pieces of terracotta stemmed goblets, imply that at least some people living in Pavlopetri enjoyed drinking wine.
Small containers decorated with flower patterns were used to hold perfumed oils tell that were either prepared in Pavlopetri or were obtained by its wealthy citizens through trade with other areas, including Crete.
Numerous loom weights have been lifted from the seabed, suggesting that woven fabrics were produced for clothing and home furnishings. Fabrics would have been woven of flax and wool, but the fabrics themselves have long disappeared. Garments would have been elaborately decorated with the use of purple dye produced from murex shells (porphyra) at the site. Murex shellfish were also gathered or cultivated at Cranae near the modern town of Gytheio in the Lakonian Gulf and on Kythera (ancient Porphyrousa).
Fragments of roof tiles and mud brick tell us something about the architecture of the houses and other buildings. Flat-roofed houses do not use roof tiles, so at least some of the houses of Pavlopetri probably had pitched roofs. Fragments of drainage tiles, with their characteristic angular shape, suggest that Pavlopetri had a system for moving water in –and possibly sewage out– of buildings.
The footprint of one very large building, possibly a megaron, is of palatial proportions. Monumental buildings were used in Minoan times by the elite as administrative centers. Thus, Pavlopetri may have been an important Minoan colony and trading center.
During Minoan times, ships were powered by long oars and, from around 2000 B.C.E., by sails. Freight was carried below decks in clay amphorae–large transport jars with pointed bottoms that allowed them to be stacked efficiently and securely next to the hull. It is easy to imagine these ships pulling in to the shallow blue waters off of Pavlopetri to unload and pick up new cargo.
Pavlopetri apparently flourished during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages and continued as an active trading community through the Mycenaean (Late Bronze Age) era.
But then time stops. After 1000 B.C.E., Pavlopetri appeared to vanish–and maybe it actually did. Pottery shards found at the site show that it may have been used during the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine times, most probably for quarrying poros stone and producing salt at Lake Strongyli.
What happened to cause the city to disappear? Was it a cataclysmic event? An earthquake or a tsunami? Perhaps future research will tell.
Henderson and Gallou were back in Pavlopetri with additional researchers this year, and plan to return for a number of years after that, if research funding allows. In the meantime, the underwater city is unprotected, at the mercy of the sea and people in the area. Swimmers and snorkelers do no damage, as long as they do not touch anything at the site. As Gallou said during a public presentation in Neapoli, “If you pick up a piece of pottery and take it home, it means nothing special to you. To us archeologists, it tells an entire story. Finding this particular piece of pottery [she pointed to one slide of a rather nondescript piece of grayish clay] enabled us to date Pavlopetri one thousand years earlier than anything we had found before.”
Gallou and Henderson can imagine the day when the Pavlopetri site is protected as an underwater archeological park with a teaching center nearby. The center would be designed along the lines of one of the now-submerged houses, with interactive exhibits enabling visitors to experience what life might have been like there over five thousand years ago. Guided tours for snorkelers and glass-bottomed boats powered by oars will enable visitors to experience the site for themselves.
But for now the region of Lakonia and the local people of Vatika must ensure that the site is protected so that it retains it value – for the people of Greece and the rest of the world.