Vagia (Corinthia)
Coordinates: 37 ° 50 ′ 24 ″ N , 23 ° 4 ′ 21 ″ E
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Vagia or Vayia ( Greek Βάγια ( n. Pl. )) Is an archaeological site in the southeast of Corinthia in Greece . It lies on the highest point of a peninsula at a height of 80–86 m. In the north, west and east the peninsula slopes steeply into the Saronic Gulf . There are two natural harbors to the west and east of the peninsula. The western port in Lychnari Bay was the main port and was particularly suitable for Bronze Age ships. The site was named after the small settlement Vagia, which is about 300 m to the east and consists of only a few houses.
The archaeological site was discovered in the 1990s and investigated and mapped in more detail in 2002 within the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS). The oldest finds came from the end of the Final Neolithic or the beginning of the Early Helladic (FH I). In the following FH II the settlement reached its prime. From this time pithoi , smaller storage vessels and millstones made of andesite , which were probably imported from Aegina , were discovered. At the highest point, a few stone mounds with a diameter of about 5 m and a height of 3-4 m from this period were discovered. Some of them are connected to one another by linear piles of stones, so that they enclose an area of around 1 hectare . Other stone mounds are isolated outside this fortified settlement. The cairns that were integrated into the fortification are probably towers or bastions . The isolated ones were perhaps burial sites. It is not known whether the towers were originally round or square. An originally polygonal ground plan could only be determined for an isolated stone mound. The stone walls were between 0.70 and 2 m thick and 0.50 m high. They probably had an adobe structure. It is possible that the settlement was surrounded by two rings of walls. It has been destroyed and rebuilt several times.
No traces were found from the period from FH III to the end of the Middle Helladic . In the southern part of the site, wall remains from the Late Helladic era were found . A homestead on the peninsula and towers and other buildings on Lychnari Bay date to the Classical and Hellenistic periods (around 500 BC-1st century BC). Other finds and rectangular, well-built walls date from the early modern period .
An obsidian blade found at Vagia
Shard of a large vessel made of coarse clay
Cairn 2 (cairn) of the archaeological site of Vagia
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literature
- Thomas F. Tartaron, Daniel J. Pullen, Jay S. Noller: Rillenkarren at Vayia: geomorphology and a new class of Early Bronze Age fortified settlement in Southern Greece in Antiquity , Part 80, pp. 145–160 ( online )
