Francesca Tokoph
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
UROP Fellowship: Community College Summer Fellowship Program
Washtenaw Community College
Research Mentor(s): Andrew Cabaniss, PhD Candidate
Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology
Presentation Date: Thursday, July 30, 2020 | Session 3 | Presenter: 3
Authors: Francesca Tokoph
Abstract
This project explores abandonment and migration in Eastern Crete by looking at Archaeological sites from the Late Bronze Age (1500 – 1200 BCE) to the end of the Roman period (600 CE) as well as written sources of more well documented polis. The polis is an ancient Greek city-state that unified different settlements into a shared identity centered on shared land. When a polis was abandoned in most parts of ancient Greece, it rarely was abandoned for long. People who occupied the settlements tend to come back if possible.
There have been many problems piecing together a clear image of ancient Eastern Crete since there are few written records. A catalog was composed of all identified sites in the Vrokastro region and these sites have been included in a database of Cretan settlements. Sites vary in their size and preservation: some have several buildings intact while others only have a scatter of broken pottery. The Crete database is created in a program called ArcGIS, a mapping database that uses details such as period of occupancy, architecture, pottery to categorize and display different sites on a map. When mapping Cretan settlements of the Late Minoan (1500 – 1200 BCE) and Early Iron Age (1200 – 700 BCE) periods compared to the settlements that exist in the Archaic-Classical (600 – 300 BCE) and Hellenistic-Roman (300 BCE – 600 CE) periods we see a large migration happen when sites went from being predominantly on the coast and scattered about to moving inland to a centralized location. If a polis holds deep meaning to its people, then why is there such a high rate of polis abandonment in Crete? There are many social and natural reasons why a settlement becomes uninhabitable. Looking at other well recorded abandoned Greek polis, I will interpret these migrations within the context of ancient Greek communities and ancient Cretan settlements.
Google Slide Presentation
Presentation Script
Research Disciplines
Arts and Humanities
