Dragon houses

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Karystos and Mount Ochi
Dragon House on Mount Ochi
Ochi-Drachenhaus: south front
Ochi-Drachenhaus: roof
Ochi-Drachenhaus: Entrance
Ochi-Drachenhaus: Entrance area from the inside
Ochi-Drachenhaus: North-East corner
Palli Lakka Dragon Houses: South House
Palli Lakka dragon houses: house north
Palli Lakka Dragon Houses: House East
Dragon House near Kapsala (Euboea)

Dragon houses - in Greek Drakospita (Δρακόσπιτα) or Draga (Δραγκά) - is the name for more than 20 ruins of monumental, rectangular buildings made of local rock, which are scattered in the south of Evia . The building walls are built without mortar from huge stone blocks and slabs and the roofs from large, flat stones using the cantilever vault technique. The best preserved and best known are the dragon house on Mount Ochi (Δρακόσπιτο της Όχης) north of Karystos and the three "Palli-Lakka" dragon houses (Πάλλη-Λάκκα Δραγκά) in the area of ​​the ancient marble quarries on Mount Kliosi (Κλίόσί) Styra . Local legends attribute the construction and use of the enigmatic structures to "dragons", beings with superhuman powers. Scientific attempts at interpreting the buildings range from the early forerunners of Greek temples and dairy huts to profane and cultic buildings by Carian quarry workers.

Discovery story

On October 21, 1797, the British geologist, traveler and writer John Hawkins climbed Mount Ochi near Karystos , which was named Oche in ancient times. Hawkins had gone ashore in Karysto Bay to triangulate on the 1,398-meter-high mountain . Unexpectedly, he came across the massive building on the rugged summit, which is now called the Ochi-Drachenhaus. He measured and sketched it and concluded that it was an early precursor to the Greek temples. Since then, his discovery has repeatedly attracted archaeologists, particularly Heinrich Ulrichs , who examined the Ochi-Drachenhaus together with Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker and published his findings in 1842 and 1863.

Ten years after Ulrichs, the French classical philologist Jules Girard visited Euboea. He not only described the Ochi Dragon House, but also created an initial description of the three Palli Lakka Dragon Houses. More recent reports, which also mention the Palli Lakka dragon houses, were written by the American archaeologists Jean Carpenter and Dan Boyd, for example.

Special Greek articles exist about finds of other dragon houses, but they do not contain any precise location information. The Swiss archaeologist Karl Reber tracked down these structures and made them known to a wider audience with articles in English.

Today the Palli Lakka dragon houses are a popular and well signposted destination for hikers who start in Old Styra and typically also have the ancient Cipollino quarries and the “Acropolis of Styra” on Mount Kliosi (685 m) as their destination . A climb from the Karystos district of Myli (Μύλοί) to the Dragon House on the Ochi, on the other hand, is much more challenging.

Construction

Ochi dragon house

The Drachenhaus on Mount Ochi is located at an altitude of 1386 meters between two summit peaks on a small plateau (38 ° 03'31 ”N 24 ° 28'03” E), with a view to the east of the Strait of Kafirea and on a clear day even offers to Chios . The rectangular building (external dimensions: 12.7 m × 7.7 m) is made of large cuboids and slabs of the long-layered mica slate of the area and borders with its northern longitudinal front on the rugged rocks of the northern summit (1398 m).

The walls of the building were built from layers of stone of unequal height without mortar with predominantly vertical joint cuts. Stone blocks are carefully interlocked with slab masonry , with wall sections with polygonal masonry inside . The stone fronts are usually somewhat embossed and their edges smoothed. The north wall and the two side walls are windowless. The south wall has an entrance door in the middle (height: 2.1 m, width: 1.2 m) and a narrow window on both sides of the door (height: 0.85 m, width: 0.45 m). The walls are on average 1.4 m thick in order to be able to support the heavy roof. Their height in the interior is 2.4 m. The interior is around 48 square meters and was previously covered with floor panels.

The roof is built in the manner of a cantilever vault . From the edge of all four walls, rows of long stone slabs - slightly inclined to the outside by a wall crown made of stones of uniform thickness - are laid so that each layer protrudes a little further into the interior than the one previously laid. The hipped roof resulting from four layers is relatively low and has no ridge, but a roof gap of 6.0 m × 0.5 m. Cover plates for the roof gap were also found, including two with a circular opening that apparently served as a chimney.

The entrance to the building is particularly elaborate. The two door posts are monoliths , as are the two consecutive parts of the lintel. The roof stone above the door is a mighty stone block (length: 4.0 m, width: 2.0 m, height: 0.45 m), which protrudes slightly over the door as a canopy. Below it, a corbel of the first layer has been left out to relieve the lintel, so that the mighty stone block can be seen almost in full length in the roof at this point. This should make the room appear more impressive when you enter.

Palli Lakki dragon houses

The three dragon houses of Palli Lakka are located on a narrow ledge (38 ° 09'10.5 ”N 24 ° 15'49.0” E) on the western slope of the 682 meter high mountain Kliosi east of Styra. Carpenter and Boyd refer to them as house north, house east and house south according to their location to the common courtyard. The longitudinal axes of the rectangular houses north and south - both measuring around 12.4 m × 6.2 m on the outside - lie parallel to the slope of the slope. The approximately 7 m wide inner courtyard between them is bordered on the slope by the east house (external floor plan: around 6.5 m × 6.5 m). Its northern foundation wall is flush with the southern wall of the north house.

The walls of the three buildings, like those of the Ochi-Drachenhaus, consist of blocks and slabs of the surrounding slate, but are only 1.1 m thick on average. The cuboids and stone slabs used are also less bulky, only roughly machined and barely toothed. Gaps are filled with small stones. All three houses are one-room and windowless. They have simple entrances on the courtyard side. In the case of the east house, the door height is 1.3 m, the other two entrances are even lower. This applies in particular to the south house, the interior of which has obviously not been examined and uncovered after having been used as a sheepfold for decades. The lintel over the entrance of this house protrudes 0.5 m from the facade.

Similar to the Ochi-Drachenhaus, the houses north and south have roofs in the form of cantilever vaults, which are built up from the longitudinal walls in four or five layers. Suggest South down Fallen roof panels in the house, that it is closed gabled roofs could have acted. The cuboids lying on the roof panels at the edge of the wall could have been counterweights for the overhang, the parapet of a roof terrace or possibly even the remains of another floor of the building. Haus Ost is characterized by the fact that its cantilever vault is round. So from the inside you can see a stepped dome that is open at the top. Compared to the Ochi-Drachenhaus, the three dragon houses by Palli Lakka are less elaborate in terms of craftsmanship and artistically.

Limiko dragon house near Kapsala

The not particularly well-preserved Limiko dragon house is elevated in a sharp left curve (38 ° 07'29.4 "N 24 ° 14'42.8" E) on the road from Styra to Karystos about 3 km behind the center of the village of Kapsala (Κάψαλα). The rectangular building (7.65 m × 6.25 m) has an entrance in the south front. As with the Ochi-Drachenhaus, the door posts and the lintel are formed by flat monoliths. A further monolith above serves to relieve the lintel, which protrudes from the wall like a canopy. In the western half of the building, remains of the cantilever vault of the roof rest on irregular layers of ashlars. The eastern half of the building was apparently repaired later with small stones and separated by a stone wall, possibly to be able to use it as a stable.

Age and function

Legends and Early Interpretations

Since no historical sources can provide information about the origin of the megalithic buildings, local legends explain them as the work and dwelling of "dragons" in the sense of mythical beings with superhuman physical strength. The founder of Greek folklore studies, NG Polites, has documented such legends. Carpenter and Boyd have "adapted" it.

Hawkins interpreted the Ochi-Dragon House as an early forerunner of the Greek temples. This view was shared by Ulrichs, who interpreted the gap in the roof as a hypaethron and saw a stone slab inside the building in the middle of the western wall, which “was undoubtedly intended to carry the idol or other sacred objects”. He dated the dragon house to the prehistoric period "in which the Cyclopean buildings Mycen , Argos , Tirynth and the like fall". He further assumed that the Pelasgian founders of Karystos built this temple at the same time as their city and consecrated it to Hera Teleia, who was called Juno Pronuba by the Romans.

Girard was also convinced that the Ochi-Drachenhaus was a temple. In his opinion, the three Palli Lakka dragon houses could also have been a temple complex, but possibly also a treasure house with two residential buildings for privileged families of the guardians, possibly also a royal seat. In any case, Girard said that the three buildings had to be older than the Ochi-Drachenhaus because of their simpler construction. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker contradicted this . Conrad Bursian classified the dragon houses of Palla-Lakka as a cult building and argued against the view of Ludwig Ross that the Ochi-Drachenhaus was "nothing but a dairy hut". He recognized the same basic architectural character in the two sites and in three ruins of old secular buildings in the south of Evia, which he also described, which he called “ dryopic construction”. In his opinion, the trinity Demeter , Clymenus and Kora , important to the Dryopers, were venerated in Palli-Lakka , known in Hermione through inscriptions and a hymn by Lasos from Hermione .

Theodor Wiegand came to a completely different conclusion regarding the age and function of the Ochi-Drachenhaus . "Almost all the building blocks on the outside have a kind of rustica with careful, smooth edging, which is never found in buildings from the Mycenaean or, to use Ulrichs' expression, the" Pelasgic "era." An even more obvious sign of a much more recent development for him were the smooth Edges and the "recessed mirrors usual in the developed rectangular construction" of the floor and ceiling panels. He dated the building “by no means earlier” than the 6th century BC. And argued that the building was built for watch and signal services.

Newer interpretations and digs

Franklin P. Johnson was the first to point out similarities between dragon houses and buildings in Caria in 1925 , something that Jean Carpenter and Dan Boyd re-examined 50 years later. They suspected that the dragon houses were built in the late Hellenistic and early Roman times by quarry workers from Caria and were used as storage rooms and places of worship.

E. Theodossiou et al. believed that the Ochi dragon house could have had a religious and / or astronomical function, especially since δράκων (dragon) is derived from the ancient Greek verb δέρκομαί (see clearly, observe). They investigated whether the orientation of the Ochi-Drachenhaus corresponded to a special position of a star or constellation and assigned the central orientation of the longitudinal walls of the building an orientation towards the rise of Sirius in 1105 BC. Chr. To. In addition to Ochi and Palli-Lakka, Reber allowed six other ruins of southern Evia to be considered dragon houses and saw in them shepherds' quarters, possibly only inhabited in summer, and thus "rare architectural evidence of an ancient cattle breeding society of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods of Greece".

Ioannis Liritis et al. investigated the age of several ancient buildings in the vicinity of Styra using Optically Stimulated Luminescence, OSL . The stone samples taken from the masonry at certain points each provided a point in time with error bars for the initial construction or a renovation of the building. The total preserved times correspond to the most important periods in the history of Styra. First there was the time of the Persian Wars and the Classical Period, in which Styra participated in the battles of Salamis and Plataeae and then in 477 BC. Joined the Attic League . During this time there could have been Carian warriors of the Persians, who ended up as slaves in Southern Suboea and who brought their own architectural style with them. In the Hellenistic-Roman period, the region's quarries were exploited on a large scale, which required a large number of experienced quarry workers - possibly also from Caria. And there were also traces of construction from the early Byzantine period, the Franconian Middle Ages, the occupation of Euboea by the Ottomans from 1470 AD and modern times. Especially for Palli-Lakki, construction work was carried out in the north house on the basis of two samples in the year 430-230 BC. And 160–480 AD determined. In the south house, a sample below the lintel revealed construction work in the period AD 1460–1550.

In 1959, K. Moutsopoulos examined the Ochi-Drachenhaus and 11 other similar buildings. He undertook excavations in 1960 and 1978–1980. Some of his finds can now be seen in the Museum of Karystos. Inside the building on the Ochi, he found a stack of ceramic vessels in a niche in the foundation, which may have served ritual purposes and which he assigned to the early Hellenistic period. Carpenter and Boyd suggested that they originated more in the late Hellenistic or early Roman period. The dragon house itself can of course be older, especially since fragments from Archaic times found in a pit outside the building are evidence of early activities on the mountain. After emergency excavations have already taken place on the "Acropolis of Styra", further excavations may soon begin at the dragon houses and help to unlock their secrets.

literature

  • Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: Dragon-Houses: Euboia, Attica, Karia. In: American Journal of Archeology , 81, 1977, pp. 179-215.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Hawkins: An Account of the Discovery of a very Ancient Temple on Mount Ocha in Euboea . In: R. Walpole: Travels in Various Countries of the East. London 1820, pp. 285-293 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Strabo , Geography 10,1,6 ( online ): Κάρυστος δέ ἐστιν ὑπὸ τῷ ὄρει τῇ Ὄχῃ (Karystos lies at the foot of Mount Ocha).
  3. ↑ Heinrich Ulrichs : Intorno il Tempio di Giunone sul Monte Ocha vicino a Carystos. In: Annali dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archaeologica , Rome 1842, pp. 5-11.
  4. ↑ Heinrich Ulrichs : About the temple of Juno on the mountain Ocha near Carystos in: A. Passow (Hrsg.): Travel and research in Greece. Weidmann, Berlin 1863, Volume 2, pp. 252-259 ( online )
  5. ↑ Jules Girard : Mémoire sur l'île d'Eubée. In: Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. Paris 1851, Volume 2, pp. 708–714 and illustration (without page number following p. 730) ( online )
  6. ^ Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: The Dragon Houses of Southern Euboia. In: Archeology 29, 1976, pp. 250-257.
  7. ^ Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: Dragon Houses: Euboia, Attica, Karia. In: American Journal of Archeology , 81, 1977, pp. 179-215
  8. ^ Karl Reber : The Dragon Houses of Styra: Topography, Architecture and Function. In: Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry , Volume 10, 2010, No. 3, pp. 53‐61 ( PDF; 361 KB ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  9. ↑ Route on Google Maps: Myli - Ochi-Drachenhaus - Dimosari Gorge - Kalianos (Greek)
  10. ↑ Theodor Wiegand : The alleged original temple on the Ocha. In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologisches Institut (Athenian Department) , Volume 21, 1896, pp. 11-17 ( online ).
  11. ↑ Heinrich Ulrichs : About the temple of Juno on the mountain Ocha near Carystos. In: A. Passow (Ed.): Travel and research in Greece. Weidmann, Berlin 1863, Volume 2, pp. 252-259 ( online ).
  12. ^ Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: Dragon Houses: Euboia, Attica, Karia. In: American Journal of Archeology , Volume 81, 1977, pp. 188-189.
  13. ↑ NG Politis: Παραδόσεις - Μελέται περί του βίου και της γλώσσης του ελληνικού λαού (Traditions - Studies on the life and language of the Greek people). Pelekanos, Athens 2013, ISBN 978-960-400-674-8 (first publication: Sakellariou, Athens 1904, Volume 1, pp. 220-222 and Volume 2, pp. 994-995).
  14. ^ Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: The Dragon Houses of Southern Euboia. In: Archeology , Volume 29, 1976, pp. 250-251.
  15. ^ J. Hawkins: An Account of the Discovery of a very Ancient Temple on Mount Ocha in Euboea. In: Robert Walpole: Travels in Various Countries of the East. London 1820, pp. 285-293 ( online ).
  16. ↑ Heinrich Ulrichs : About the temple of Juno on the mountain Ocha near Carystos. In: A. Passow (Ed.): Travel and research in Greece. Weidmann, Berlin 1863, Volume 2, pp. 252-259 ( online )
  17. ↑ Jules Girard : Mémoire sur l'île d'Eubée. In: Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. Paris 1851, Volume 2, pp. 708–714 and illustration (without page number following p. 730) ( online )
  18. ^ Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker : Andre ancient temples on the Ochagebirge. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie , New Series, Volume 10, 1856, pp. 611–617 ( PDF; 1.3 MB ).
  19. ↑ Conrad Bursian : The dryopic construction method in Euboea's rubble. In: Archäologische Zeitung , Volume 13, 1855, pp. 129-142 ( online ).
  20. ↑ Theodor Wiegand : The alleged original temple on the Ocha. In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologisches Institut (Athenian Department) , Volume 21, 1896, pp. 11-17 ( online ).
  21. ↑ Franklin P. Johnson: The “Dragon Houses” of Southern Euboea. In: American Journal of Archeology , Vol. 29, 1925, pp. 398-412.
  22. ↑ E. Theodossiou et al: Study and Orientation of the mt. Oche “Dragon House” in Euboea, Greece. In: Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage , Volume 12, 2009, pp. 153–158 ( PDF; 970 KB ).
  23. ^ Karl Reber : The Dragon Houses of Styra: Topography, Architecture and Function. In: Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry , Volume 10, 2010, No. 3, pp. 53‐61 ( PDF; 361 KB ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )).
  24. ↑ Ioannis Liritzis, SG Polymeris, N. Zacharias: Surface Luminescence dating of "Dragon Houses" and Armena Gate at Styra (Euboea, Greece). In: Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry , Volume 10, 2010, No. 3, pp. 65‐81 ( PDF; 690 KB ( Memento of March 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive )).
  25. ↑ Work by Nikolaos K. Moutsopoulos (Greek):
    • Μουτσόπουλος Ν.Κ .: Το Δρακόσπιτο της , περιοδικό Το Βουνό 217, σ. 147-169, Αθήνα 1960. (The Ochi Dragon House)
    • Μουτσόπουλος Ν.Κ .: Τα Δρακόσπιτα της Ν.Δ. Εύβοιας. Συμβολή στην αρχιτεκτονική, την τυπολογία και την μορφολογία τους , Επιστημονική Επετηρίδα Πολυτεχνικής Σχολής, Τμήμα Αρχιτεκτόνων, τόμ. Η΄, σ. 263-478, Θεσσαλονίκη 1978-1980. (The dragon houses in south-east Evia)
    • Μουτσόπουλος Ν.Κ., Τα Δρακόσπιτα , Περιοδικό Αρχαιολογία 42 (1992), σ. 47-54. (The dragon houses)
  26. ^ Jean Carpenter, Dan Boyd: Dragon Houses: Euboia, Attica, Karia. In: American Journal of Archeology , 81, 1977, pp. 209-210.
  27. ↑ S. Fachard: Rescue Excavation at the Aghios Nikolaos Fortress (Styra): A Preliminary Report. In: Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry , Volume 10, 2010, No. 3, pp. 37-40 ( PDF; 361 KB ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  28. ↑ E. Theodossiou et al: Study and Orientation of the mt. Oche “Dragon House” in Euboea, Greece. In: Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage , Volume 12, 2009, pp. 153–158 ( PDF; 970 KB ).