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Island Towers: The Case of Thasos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Robin Osborne
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Abstract

Towers on the island of Thasos are discussed, to determine how they relate to the Thasian countryside. It is unlikely that there is any single explanation for their existence. Defence does not appear to be a normal purpose. Some may have served as signals of danger to sailors, others were primarily agricultural, providing safe, if temporary, bases for farming and herding. Some may have been strong rooms associated with normal village dwellings for storage and protection of goods as well as people in times of danger or as a display of wealth. It is noted that village settlements are infrequent on Thasos. A catalogue of the towers is given in an appendix.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 81 , November 1986 , pp. 167 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1986

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References

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to John Cherry, Yvon Garlan, and Anthony Snodgrass for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

1 The most comprehensive collection of evidence for towers is M. Nowicka, Les Maisons à tour dans le monde grec, Bibl. Antiqua XV, Wroclaw Acad. Pol. des Sciences (1975) (henceforth cited as Nowicka), but the most influential and easily accessible recent survey of towers is that by Young, J., ‘Studies in South Attica. Country Estates at Sounion’, Hesperia 25 (1956) 122–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar (henceforth cited as Young). The other most important recent contributions are: Young, J., ‘Ancient Towers on the Island of Siphnos’, AJA 60 (1956) 51–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pečirka, J., ‘Homestead Farms in Classical and Hellenistic Hellas’, in Finley, M. I. (ed.), Problèmes de la terre en Grèce ancienne (Paris 1973) 113–47Google Scholar, esp. 123–8; Haselberger, L., ‘Der Pyrgos Chimarru auf Naxos’, AA (1972) 431–7Google Scholar; id. ‘Der Paläopyrgos von Naussa auf Paros’, AA (1978) 345–75 (hereafter cited as Haselberger); Lawrence, A. W., Greek Aims in Fortification (Oxford 1979) 187–97Google Scholar and no. 11–12 (hereafter cited as Lawrence).

2 Haselberger, 367. As Haselberger's note to this statement admits, the homogeneity of the towered site is at least partly the artificial product of selecting the areas from which relevant towers are deemed to come and doubting the pedigree of towers elsewhere. Haselberger is himself critical of Nowicka's categories, Haselberger, 364 n. 64.

3 The following account is based on the published literature, supplemented by personal autopsy. I owe a debt of gratitude to the British Academy for financing my activities on Thasos, and especially to Yvon Garlan, without whose help and supplementary directions I would have found it much more difficult to locate the towers on the ground.

4 The most important work in discovering and describing the Thasian towers has been done by G. Perrot, Mémoire sur l'îlede Thasos, Arch, des Missions scient., IIème série, 1 (1865); Conze, A., Reise auf den Inseln des thrakischen Meeres (Hannover 1860)Google Scholar; Baker-Penoyre, J., ‘Thasos II’, JHS 29 (1909) 202–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bon, A., ‘Les Ruines antiques dans l'île de Thasos et en particulier les tours helléniques’, BCH 54 (1930) 147–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar All these works are hereafter cited by author's name alone. Detailed references to the earlier literature on individual towers will be found in the catalogue of towers in the Appendix.

5 Thus Yvon Garlan tells me that he has found abandoned terraces of uncertain date high up on the slopes of Mount Hypsarion.

6 On Thasian amphorae, see Garlan, Y., ‘Les Timbres amphoriques thasiens. Bilan et perspective de recherches’, Annales ESC 37 (1982) 837–46Google Scholar and the further literature cited there.

7 The towers of Thasos therefore offer little encouragement to belief in a date for construction as late as that favoured by Lawrence, 187–8, 197.

8 Baker-Penoyre, 247 n. 89, Bon, 179 n. 1.

9 Baker-Penoyre, 241.

10 BCH 106 (1982) 1–21.

11 For the Koukos pottery see BCH 103 (1979) 656–8, and Garlan, , ‘Koukos. Données nouvelles pour une nouvelle interprétation des timbres amphoriques thasiens’, BCH Supp. v (1979) 213–68.Google Scholar

12 Bon, 191–4.

13 Young, 143.

14 IG 12. 5. 872, 11. 49 and 52. The inscription dates to about 300 BC.

15 Salviat, F. and Servais, J., ‘Une stèle indicatrice thasienne trouvée au sanctuaire d'Aliki’, BCH 88 (1964) 267–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Not all the factors which I argue here to be relevant to the decision of the Thasian wealthy to build towers are operative with equal force in other poleis where towers are common. However, the nearby mineral resources arc unlikely to be irrelevant to the towered farms of Sounion or to the towers of Siphnos; and the divided political community of Keos and Amorgos may have encouraged the exhibition of economic strength as being something not dependent upon political divisions. For Sounion, see Osborne, R. G., Demos: The Discovery of Classical Attika (Cambridge 1985) 29–36Google Scholar; for Amorgos, see Boussac, M.-F. and Rougemont, G., ‘Observations sur le territoire des cités d'Amorgos’, in Les Cyclades: Matériaux pour une étude de géographic historique (1983) 115–19.Google Scholar