Description of field project:

The Ionian University (dept. of History and Digital Humanities) has establish an interdisciplinary research team to conduct a multifaceted, on-site study of the historical landscape, across a complex of valleys and hills in southern Lavreotiki, tracing its evolution from antiquity to the present.

The Laurion Archaeological project, constitutes the core of a broader interdisciplinary research program which integrates archaeology, history, bio-anthropology, ethnography and social anthropology, geology, environmental studies and ecology. The archaeological component is being implemented in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Eastern Attica.

It combines the implementation of extensive and intensive survey methodology and strictly targeted excavation in the form of stratigraphic trenches. In this composite context, we employ traditional archaeological recording methods, as well as topographic, and architectural recording (mapping, drawing, scanning with land and airborne laser scanners); scientific analytical field-methods (pXRF, pRAMAN, micro-core sampling, collection of palaeoenvironmental proxies) are deployed targeting certain archaeological materials (plasters, mortars metallurgical by-products).

The archaeological project aims to locate and investigate one of the Classical Sounion Deme collective centres -including the Leukios Agora- to decode functional qualities of the built space, to unravel mining and metallurgical processes and understand the archaeometallurgical and hydraulic technological apex of the 5th-2nd Cies BCE and to acquire safe chronological proxies for dating stages and phases in the evolution of the Laurion historical landscape while linking it to the wider historical context.