Boundary stones of Mt Taygetos with Socrates Koursoumis

In this episode Jason König interviews Socrates Koursoumis about his archaeological work in the mountains of Greece, especially on Mount Taygetos.

Socrates is an archaeologist of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. He has been a staff member of the Central Department of the Ministry, as well as the Ephorates of Lesbos, Attica, Elia, Messenia and the Corinthia. He has undertaken several excavations in Attica, the Peloponnese, the Aegean islands, and Crete, and carried out three surveys at Lavreotiki, on Mount Taygetos (Messenia) and on Mt Lykaion (Arcadia).

We start by talking about Socrates’ early experience of the mountain regions of Lesbos in his childhood, before moving on to discuss the first steps in his archaeological work in the mountains.

Socrates talks about his work on Mount Lykaion and the mountains of Arkadia, and about the importance of walking if we want to understand the history of these places. We then to turn to his excavations on the site of the ancient silver mines at Laurion in Attica.

In the second half we take a look at Mount Taygetos, particularly Socrates' work on the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis in the northern Taygetos region on the borders with Messenia, his decades-long research project on the ancient boundary stones on the Taygetos summit ridge, and finally a recent project on the continuities between ancient and modern wine production in the region.

Socrates ends with some final reflections on the (sometimes dangerous!) challenges of mountain archaeology, and its value for local communities.

This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin.

To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social. 

For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk and subscribe for regular updates, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Mountains of Greece podcast series, which is part of the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures Podcast Project. These interviews follow up on our recent Mountains of Greece conference held at the British School at Athens in October 2025. The goal of the project is to explore a wide range of stories from people working on different aspects of mountain heritage in Greece. That involves thinking about the past, but also thinking about the future. How can we find new ways of engaging with history, heritage, and conservation in the mountain landscapes of Greece? How can we ensure a sustainable approach to environmental and cultural preservation? I'm Jason Koenig from the University of St. Andrews. It's a great pleasure to welcome Socrates Kursumis. Socrates is an archaeologist from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. He's excavated very widely across Greece. Particularly relevant for our conversation today is his very extensive experience of conducting archaeological survey in mountain regions, especially Mount Lycon and Mount Tigatos, which we will be hearing more about in a moment. He also has a long-standing interest in the history and archaeology of ancient Corinth, especially in the Roman period, and with a focus, among other things, on Jewish and early Christian communities in Corinth. Welcome, Socrates. It's great to have the chance to talk to you today. Thank you for inviting me, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

It's a real pleasure working with you and talking to you on mountain archaeology of Greece.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

I thought we'd start just by going back to the beginning, really. And I wonder if you could start just by telling us a bit about how you came to work on the mountain regions that you're interested in. How did that arise from your earlier research? And did you have any personal interest or connection with the mountains of Greece before you came to be interested in them archaeologically?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

There is a connection actually. So since my childhood, I went there on vacations, so I became well aware of the mountainous landscape, and I really enjoyed climbing mountains and walking in wild nature. So I think that this experience affected my scientific options and choices. And when I was given the chance of working on mountains, on mountain surveys or surveys at altitudes, I really took the chance and thought that it was ideal for me to do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Thank you. Yeah. Is there any archaeological work on those mountains in Lesbos? I haven't come across anything there.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

There is actually, but mostly by amateurs. I mean people who love archaeology and are willing to either to escort archaeologists or to supply them with information about the mountainous landscape of the island. And we don't have too many articles and papers on the finds of the mountains of Lesbos, but there are many information that wait for future archaeologists to be explored and worked and published, of course. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Great. Yeah, it's exciting to hear that. I think there's the same is true for many mountain regions in Greece, isn't it? As we'll we'll hear more about that in a minute, anyway. So I mean you've got such a big range of different projects here, it's hard to know where to start. But maybe we could talk first about the work you've done on Mount Lycaon. Um, we're going to be hearing from David Gilman Romano about the excavations there in a later recording. But I'd love to hear just a little bit about the work you've done there and how that fits into the bigger picture, I suppose the bigger picture work in Arcadia and the Peloponnese over the last couple of decades.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Arcadia actually has a very fascinating landscape, which is unique, and it is worth working on it and discovering it. A lot of work has been done in this area by the late uh Professor Piculas, and actually I was invited to assist the Greek team that works in the sanctuary by Anna Karapanayotu, who's the director of the project. So from the very beginning I thought that it would be a great opportunity, not just for me, but also for the team, to do some research work on the landscape. And I started walking using alter descriptions and information by locals in order to locate the pathways that lead to the summit of the sanctuary and the lower sanctuary as well, either coming from Messenia or from Arcadia. And I had the opportunity of walking all along the valley that surrounds the summit and the sanctuary in general, and locating interesting finds that in the coming future will become part of a proper research, a proper survey.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

It's amazing to hear that. It's one of the really striking things about those mountains in Arcadia, I always think is they have this kind of intervisibility. So you can see from one mountain, you can see another. You can see right down to Messina as well. So, yeah, really interesting to hear about how you're tracing those links on the ground, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Actually, from the summit of Mount Lycon, you can see Mount Aegetos as well as other mountains of the Peloponnese. I would say that you can see the greatest part of the Peloponnese, even the island of Zakinthos, the view from up there is breathtaking, and you get an idea of how the big sanctuaries in antiquity operated throughout centuries, throughout time, why they were important not just for the local communities, but also for the city-states that were created from the late geometric every archaic era onwards. So I strongly believe that in order to do archaeology, the first thing that you need to do is to understand the landscape. In case you have no idea about the landscape, you cannot reach safe conclusions about your finds or your research in general. So this is the key, according to what I've seen so far and what I believe. This is the key for all researchers to understand the landscape and to feel it, not just to access it through Google Maps or uh Google Earth, but to reach it, to smell it, to walk it, to feel it.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

And that makes a difference. That's wonderful, yeah. That and that must must be right. We'll see in a minute how that principle plays out in your work on Mount Tigatos. But before we do that, I just wonder whether we could go north for a couple of minutes and look at very briefly at the work you've done also excavating the mineshafts at Larion in Attica. I mean, obviously the site at Larion is not a high mountain site.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

You can call it a plateau, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

And the history of mining is obviously central to the history of mountains in antiquity generally. So it'd be really interesting just to hear a little about the work you've done there as well. Thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

The thing is that I had the opportunity to collaborate with a Greek Greek archaeologist, the late Dr. Evangelos Cacavoyanis, who was an expert in the area as he came from Blavrio. And he asked me to assist him in his survey for the mineshafts. Actually, these shafts were made by the Athenians in order to access the metals that can still be found in the underground. And thanks to this mining process, Athens became a superpower of the fifth, the superpower we know of the 5th and the 4th century BC, meaning that they managed to extract silver and lead from the mines of Lavrion. And thanks to this, they managed to finance the construction of the fleet that beat the Persians in uh in the Persian Wars. So it is extremely important for the history of Attica to understand how history was written on the landscape and not just on inscriptions or on statues and temples.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Great, great. It's not a site I've been to before. I don't know the details of it, but could you give it give us just a little bit of a glimpse of what that site is actually like today and what are the challenges of doing the work that you did there?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Actually, there is a plateau not far away from the modern town of Lavrion, which is a port. You can easily access this plateau with your car. I mean, you can drive there. We were fortunate to find those, to locate all these mineshafts, as by that time the area was actually destroyed by a megafire that burnt the forest. So as the pine trees that are all over the area were actually burnt, we could easily walk all around and find the shafts which are not actually huge. I mean they are narrow, they are quite dangerous as it is not unlikely to fall in one of them. There are accidents mentioned, referred of locals or of soldiers who were walking in the area and they suddenly disappeared as they fell in the shafts. The thing is that I almost fell in one of them, but fortunately I survived. So the thing is that we managed to find a lot of them which are all over the area, even in the vicinity of the Temple of Poseidon at Sunion. And you can, by seeing all this material, you can understand there are not just mineshafts, there are also galleries, of course, mining galleries. There are also furnaces in which the ore that came from the earth was burned. And through this process, the Athenians were able to distinct lead from silver. As you know, the vast majority of Athenian coins is made of silver. So there is a great abundance of material in the area, and we managed to access a great part of it, although we focused on the mineshafts. We even got into galleries. The late Evangelus Kakavoyanis had the experience of working in one of these galleries while he was a child living there. So he knew the place very, very well, and he could guide me better than anyone else. So after that survey, we wrote together an article which was published in an archaeological journal called Archaeolog Meris, a Greek archaeological journal, and I think that it's actually a useful tool for all researchers and scholars who wish to study the area and the production of silver by the Athenian state.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, it's amazing to hear that work really bringing to life that site, which is much talked about in antiquity and in modern scholarship, but usually not in a way that involves a kind of personal engagement with the site. It's fascinating to hear that. So how big is the site? If the mineshafts stretch all the way to Sunion, it's presumably quite a large extent.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

It's huge. Yeah, I cannot actually give you a number, but I can tell you that as we use the old maps made by a German architect and topographer back in the 19th century, we can tell that the relics that can be related to the mining process are many, many and spread all over the region, the area which is called southeastern Attica. So they start from the area of Annabisos. They are not far away from the Temple of Poseidon and Sunion. Of course, there are a lot of mineshafts on the plateau that overlooks the Lavrion town. There are furnaces or infrastructure which was used for the washing and cleaning of the ore, not far away from the modern town. Unfortunately, I cannot uh give you a number. If one examines uh the maps that were produced by von Kaupert, you will realize the extent of this operation.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Brilliant. Thank you. Right, let's fly back down to the Peloponnese now and back to Mount Tigatos, if you're willing. Uh I just wonder if you could give us a kind of introduction to Mount Tigatos and to the range of projects you've worked on there, and then maybe we'll zoom in on one or two examples.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

When I was uh sent to Kalamata to work for the archaeological service for the Ministry of Culture after Olympia, I was quite disappointed because although I expected to work on the field, I realized that a great part of our work is merely bureaucratic. So in the early days of my career as an archaeologist, I got a call from the late Professor Yanis Akelarakis, who was one of my teachers back in my youth. And when I told him that I was very, very disappointed, he asked me, Can you name a place which was visited by early archaeologists, referred in written sources, and it is difficult to access? And I said, Yes, there is a sanctuary on the Messinian Taigetos, which is very hard to access, and it was actually described by archaeologists of the 19th and the early 20th century. And he said, You should go there, and I did so. And that's how I started working on Taigetos. After that, I had the pleasure of taking part in one of the car in a carnival festival that is held every Ash Monday in the villages of the area, thanks to a friend of mine, Antonis Kazakhos. And I realized that was that there was a strong and well-rooted pagan tradition in the area, as those festivals are almost similar or even identical to ancient rituals. They are only a small part of it can be described as Christians. So I realized that there were many opportunities in the area, and as I had already met many locals, I got a lot of information about antiquities in the area and started visiting those areas as an archaeologist of the local ephoria, of the local ephoraate. And then I focused on the sanctuary of Artemis Linatis, which is on a mountain valley at an altitude of approximately 900 meters above sea level, at the Messinian part of Taigetos. And then I realized that this sanctuary, or what remains from this sanctuary, can be associated with other finds. Finds of the early days of archaeology that can be that by that time were not well described. Although there were papers and articles on them, we didn't have a clear picture of them by that time. So I invited my friends while we were working for the re-exhibition of the Museum of Kalamata. A friend of mine came with a picture of a boundary stone from Taigetos, and I asked him, Where did you find that this? And he said, Um, our photographer is a climber, and it's his picture. And I asked him and I told him, Can you tell him to take us there? And he said yes. A few weeks later, we climbed up the mountain.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Wow, amazing, amazing, and that then turned into a bigger project on the boundary stones up on the summit of Summit Ridge. How long were you working on that project? How many of these things did you find? Actually, since 2007.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So it's almost 18 years. Oh more than 18 years, almost 19 years. I started working on the sanctuary, and thanks to the British School at Athens, um uh I I got a bursary and I visited the University of Nottingham for a while. And I was uh I had the opportunity of working along with um Bill Cavano, Steve Hodkinson, and James Roy. And after that I was invited to at the school um and I I gave a lecture on it, and I decided that it was worth writing an article. And I did that, and I it was published in the annual of the BSA. And at the same time, I was working on the boundary stones along with my friend and colleague the Mostens Cosmopoulos, and thanks to a fund through the school, we managed to walk, to climb the mountain many times and walk along the ridge line of the central part of Taietus, and not just the ridge line, also the gorges, in order to locate whatever we could concerning our um our goal, which was a new mapping of the area.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yep, great, okay. And just to give some context for people who maybe are not familiar with this material, it's not uncommon, is it, in the in antiquity to find boundary stones on in mountain regions, on mountain ridges. There are other examples too. This is separating two different territories. That's what it what it's what are the boundary stones for, basically.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Actually, there is a decree that was issued by the authorities of the Roman province of Achaea in the years of Vespasian, that is 78 AD, which describes in detail the delimitation of two regions, the two major regions of Southern Peloponnese, the Messinian and the Laconia, the Spartan, or Laconian, okay, and the boundary between those two regions and the so-called Free Laconian League, which was created by the Romans and lies to the south of Messenia and Laconia, uh, more or less. So through this inscription we get a very nice picture of the region uh in early Roman times. And of course, we can um further document the descriptions given by Pausenias, by Strabo about the area.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

It's really fascinating to see that the kind of precedent for modern boundary setting, because obviously there are a lot of examples in modern nations, it's divided by boundary lines running along ridges. So it's amazing to see that practice trace back to antiquity. And so how how many and how many boundary stones have you found up there?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Okay, actually uh we found five of them along the ridge line, which is called Paximadi. Paximadi is the southern part of the ridge line of the so-called central Taihetos. Taiegitos is a mountain range, okay, starting from the southeastern part of Arcadia, ending at the Tenaro Cape. So the central part was called by the ancient authors Ventheliatis. That was a region which was claimed by both Spartans, Laconians, and Messinians. There is a long story concerning dispute over the area, and another thing is that this dispute is closely related to the so-called sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis, which was actually the main sanctuary in the area and one of the most prominent sanctuaries in Southern Peloponnese that originally became a part of Laconia, and then after Messini was founded, the Messinians claimed the territory and the sanctuary as well. And there was a dispute that lasted for centuries until the Romans decided that it was necessary to put an end to this dispute and delimit the areas so that no further dispute or battles, even battles, would take place in the area. And they did that by engraving letters on the natural bedrock, creating boundary stones that are thoroughly described in this inscription that was found in Messini, describes a delimitation which is mostly refers to the pastoral life in the area, meaning that all these uh pathways were accessed by shepherds. Okay, or by travelers or by armies, but mostly by shepherds. And we know that, and we can tell that for sure, as uh we have a description given by Ludwig Rosch in the after the foundation of the Greek state, that the shepherds of the early 19th century destroyed the ancient boundary stones that they found along the ridge line, as they were very much afraid that due to the distinction of areas, due to the limitation of regions Messinia and Laconia in the early years of the modern Greek state, they would not be allowed to travel from one place to the other because of these ancient boundary stones that bore letters referring to the letter M, the Greek letter mimu standing for Messinia, and the great then the letter lava standing for Laconia or like a themud. So there are recent examples of how these boundary marks were interpreted by the locals.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Fantastic. It's hard to convey to somebody who doesn't know the mountain, it's hard to convey what a huge task it is to do archaeology there. It is a huge mountain, isn't it? It's I don't know how long it is, is it 50 50 miles long from beginning to end or more or less from north to south? It's uh but not only that, but it's very complex topography. It's hard to even to get an understanding of one small part of the mountain, let alone a kind of overarching view of the whole thing. But I love the way, I love the way the work, the work you you're doing is helping us to r really to reconstruct life on and around the mountain in antiquity. I mean, ancient historians are quite used to talking about Sparta, the history of Sparta. But the history of the mountain region more broadly is quite invisible still, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yes. Three years ago, Steve Hodkinson invited me to take part in one of his conferences, which is on Sparta and archaeology. I mean the topic has that name, and I was asked to write something about the presence of Sparta in the region of the Antheliates. So I wrote an article, a paper on the Spartan presence in the Theliatis, and it is fascinating how the Spartan occupation of the area changed the idea of what the mountain was before the Spartans, meaning that it was a no man's land actually, and as Sparta was expanding all over the Peloponnese, it was gradually Laconized and became an integral part of the Laconian territory. And we've got references in our written sources, in the ancient written sources, that document this new identity for the mountain. For the region, and I think that it is more or less evident of how the so-called police state created a territory that surrounded it, and how this territory which gradually received the identity of the police, and how this identity was assimilated by the locals, and how it was expressed, and how difficult it was throughout the centuries to change this idea. Even modern villages of the area, let's say the mid-20th century, had a strong idea about Sparta and the relations of the area with Sparta. And they called themselves Magnates, meaning people of money, although they are closer to Calamata.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Yeah, really interesting to see some of these continuities as well between ancient and modern, which you mentioned earlier in relation to the Ash the Ash the Ash Monday celebrations that you were talking about earlier. I know you've done some work also on Denthis wine and its cultivation in Dentheliatis in antiquity and in the present case.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Thanks to another conference which was uh which focused on uh the agricultural uh life in Greek antiquity. I thought that it would be a great idea to cast light on the so-called denthis wine, which is actually um one of the most prominent wines in Greek antiquity, uh referred by Alkman as well as by Athenius in his Diplosophice. So it seems that uh apart from the written sources, there is a tradition, there was a wine tradition, still is, still exists. The thing, uh Jason, is that when you visit remote areas such as uh Essenia Taegetos, you realize that life remained unchanged until recently. My notion of the air about the area is that life and means and customs remain almost unaltered until recently, or modern highways and roads actually changed the character of the area. But before that, and we know that from other sources as well, people used to live there as they lived, as they were living in antiquity. And that is extremely fascinating. And the oral tradition, the customs, everything allude to early beliefs. So then this wine is not just a reference in text, it's something beyond that. There is still a viny culture in the area. There is a variety. Actually, I'm part of a another project uh uh funded by um uh Captain Vasilis and Carmen Constantacopulos Institution, which is trying to illuminate the early production of wine in Messinia. And it seems that we need to research more and do some further analysis on this, that there are varieties which are unique, and we can tell that from the way the Denthis wine is described by Alkmann and modern descriptions we have about the modern wine, there is a chance that one of these varieties is actually the so-called Denthis. And I think that we will come up to very interesting results and conclusions in this um project, which is ongoing. And I think that in the coming years, two or three years, we will be able to say more about this uh topic.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Amazing, thank you. That's a really nice little case study of those connections, the continuities between ancient and modern. What would you say are the challenges of doing mountain archaeology in your experience? But also what opportunities, what priorities do you see for more archaeological work in the mountain regions of Greece and particularly in Mount Tigatos in the future?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Okay, number one challenge is to remain safe when you do that. I mean, you should not do this on your own. You need to have a plan, you need to have people, to have friends from the area that are willing to assist you and help you in case of emergency. You need to be assisted by colleagues who are willing to do this because it's quite tiring, it's quite risky sometimes. For instance, you may when we were up on Taigetos on the ridge line once upon a time, we felt that a storm was coming. So you need to know what to do. Apart from this, I think that one of the challenges is to protect the mountain. All this work that we do, it's not just for our own career and our own fame, it's also for the people. By locating antiquities, you can help people remain there, let's say by creating sites or places of interest for travelers, for hikers. The locals will probably profit from this process, and they will remain there, they will keep on cultivating their fields, they will maintain their herds, they will be present in their panigiria, in their festivals. And what I'm saying is that founters are important when people are there, people who respect the environment, they do not violate the balance of the environment, and they also protect it in cases of emergency such as fires. If there is no people, a fire can easily destroy an area, so people protect it. And I'm saying that mostly people benefit from my work, and I'm extremely happy that they have welcomed me and they consider my presence as something which is not hostile to them, but help them get along with obstacles, help them promote their place, their villages. After all these years, I feel part of the of the I think that that's why I'm there when they have festivals, not just uh on vacations. I mean when people live their everyday life.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Yeah, so it's partly thinking about archaeology as actually a really powerful tool of cultural preservation in the context where a lot of mountain populations are under pressure, aren't they? Pressures of depopulation, for example. That's really inspiring to hear that. Well, thank you, Socrates. You've given us an amazing glimpse of what it's like actually to do archaeology in these really challenging places, but also a fantastic glimpse of the ancient history of Taigetos and connections with the current communities of the mountain today. I went to that sanctuary of Artemis and Imnatis a quite a long time ago now, maybe 10 or 12 years ago now. I remember I dragged my children along there with a copy of your article in my pocket, trying to find my way. I think we got lost at one point and went in the wrong direction. But I hadn't suspected at the time that we'd be having this conversation now. So it's been a great pleasure to talk about this with you today. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Hi, thank you, Jason. I it was a real pleasure for me talking to you. I'm extremely grateful to you for promoting this tremendous work done on mountains all over Greece. And I think that the conference that you organized was an extremely good and powerful start for all those people who wish to protect more effectively the Greek mountains.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

I thank you. Thank you. It's good to hear that. Thanks to Socrates, thanks to Zophia Gertin for editing. We've got more episodes coming up, exploring mountain heritage in Greece from a whole range of other perspectives. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do share our podcast with others. Have a look at our other episodes. You can follow us on social media or get in touch directly via the Mountains of Greece project website. You might like also to have a look at the separate website for the broader mountain stories, mountain futures project that this series is a part of. You can follow the links to both of those in the episode notes. Thank you for listening.