Building Apollo in a Multicultural Peraia: Theorizing the Floor Deposit of the Temple of Apollo at Mesemvria-Zoni (20 min)

Presenters

Amanda Ball, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

The Sanctuary of Apollo of Mesemvria-Zoni (ancient Zonē), Samothrace’s most successful peraia holding, is overlooked in discussions of Greek sanctuaries of the Classical period; this oversight is due to the size of its temple and temenos, its placement in the northeast Aegean, and its publications to date largely in modern Greek. The most archaeologically significant aspect of this sanctuary is a floor deposit under its temple, which serves to challenge our conception of the ancient Greek foundation deposit and of place-making strategies in colonial contexts. The floor deposit of the temple of Apollo produced roughly 21,000 ceramic sherds, a little less than one-third of all the ceramics recovered from the site; these sherds date between the seventh century B.C.E.—the earliest artifacts found at Zonē—and the fourth century B.C.E. Among these sherds are decorated imports, handmade Thracian ceramics, and ostraca with dedicatory inscriptions in Greek and the Thracian language. What is represented is not a snapshot in time, but an awareness of a multicultural, bilingual community and its past as an emporion perched between a Greek world to the south and a Thracian world to the north.

I argue that this massive leveling deposit was a curated, strategic deposition intended to solidify a community faced with encroaching empires and the increasing connectivity of the classical Aegean. A ceramic deposit this dense and representative of centuries of ritual activity cannot have been the result of sacred trash disposal; instead, I argue the act of deposition was a place-making strategy by the worshipping community. I review the stratigraphic evidence, highlight the notable ceramic fabrics and shapes within the deposit, and contextualize the material within regional and historical patterns. This paper, a case study of my dissertation project, will propose a new understanding of community-building strategies through the renovation of sacred landscapes.

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