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The
OSU Excavations at Isthmia - 1998 Preliminary Report
With a permit from
the Ministry of Culture and the assistance of the Fourth Ephoreia
of Classical and Prehistoric Antiquities (Nafplion) and the Sixth
Ephoreia of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Antiquities (Patras), The
Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia carried out a program
of study and research at Isthmia for the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens, from 20 June to 14 September
1998. Funding was supplied by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, The Ohio State University, and many
private donors. Special thanks are due to Ms. Zoe Aslamatzidou of
the Fourth Ephoreia, Ms. Konstantina Skarmoutzou of the Sixth Ephoreia,
and Ms. Maria Pilali and Professor James Muhly of the American School
of Classical Studies.
Research this
year focused primarily on various record-keeping tasks and bringing
up to date work on a number of widely dispersed projects. Work continued
toward final publication of the Roman Bath to the north of the Temple
of Poseidon. Fikret Yegul of the University of California at Santa
Barbara coordinated architectural study and recording. Professor
Birgitta Wohl of California State University at Northridge worked
for some time at the site, preparing for publication the lamps found
in the Roman Bath. Professor Richard DeMaris, Valparaiso University,
and Professor Scott Nash, Mercer University, worked on completion
of the catalogue of Roman pottery from the Bath that Jeanne Marty
had nearly finished before her untimely death in December of 1997.
Progress was made in the analysis of the stratigraphic evidence
associated with the various phases of the Roman Bath and its predecessors
and successors.
Research was
also carried out in the area of the Northeast Gate, where Mr. Joseph
Rife, of the University of Michigan, investigated two graves that
had been opened in 1969. Mr. Rife's careful analysis of these graves
provides important new information about their construction and
date and the skeletal material within them. Mr. Rife also continued
his work toward publication of the burials from the Late Roman and
Byzantine period at Isthmia. In this he was joined this season by
Dr. John Robb, of the University of Sheffield, who investigated
the pathologies present in the skeletons from this period. Dr. Robb
and Mr. Rife are working together to bring all this material to
timely publication.
Mr. Daniel Curtis
served this season as photographer and he made considerable progress
in developing systems to produce publication-quality photographic
prints from digital images, usually based on our original black-and-white
photographic archive.
We continued
our work this season on the recording procedures used at the site,
involving a shift from simple computerized data bases to much more
complex and interrelated ones. This has required considerable reorganization,
gathering of new information, and keying-in of the resultant data.
We also continued
our project of making excavation data available for educational
use. This broader project remains under the supervision of Samuel
Fee, who maintains the site web page (http://isthmia.ohio-state.edu/)
and has issued an updated version of his educational program
Isthmia 4.0. Further progress was made in transferring excavation
notebooks to electronic form, complete with digital versions of
photographs and drawings.
Timothy E. Gregory
14 October 1998
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