The results of SHARP's field studies permit the outlines of a diachronic narrative for the Korphos region to be interwoven with that of Kolonna and other communities to develop a larger history of the Saronic maritime small world.
Sometime before the beginning of the third millennium BC, potters in the Korphos area were importing Aiginetan volcanic stone, which they crushed and used as temper in the full range of functional pottery classes. Incipient settlement in the SHARP survey zone in FN/EH I grew steadily, culminating in a highly developed economic and social exploitation of the landscape in EH II. During that phase, raw obsidian was imported from Melos and worked into tools at a workshop overlooking the western basin of the harbor at Kalamianos. Stiri was a large settlement well situated for agropastoral subsistence and for expansive views over the Saronic Gulf. The pottery assemblage at Stiri represents a full domestic suite, and shows that the inhabitants were connected to sources of contemporary shapes and decorative styles. The Korphos region can thus be counted among the nucleated and socially complex coastal centers of the EH II Aegean. At that time, Kolonna, with its large settlement and two phases of a grand corridor house, was the most important settlement in the Saronic and well along its trajectory toward regional domination. This was a period of cohesion in the Saronic small world as settlements in places like Kalamianos, Kiapha Thiti, and the Methana peninsula interacted with Aigina, and, although it is nearly impossible to prove, surely with neighboring small settlements as well.
From EH III to the beginning of the Mycenaean palatial period, Kalamianos is almost invisible archaeologically, like so many other small settlements of the northeastern Peloponnese. This hiatus lasted even longer than for the many communities that were founded or revitalized in MH III or LH I. The scant evidence of human presence, consisting of a few sherds at Kalamianos with standard Aiginetan potmarks, is insufficient to project more than a sparse, inward-focused population engaged in agropastoral pursuits, with limited external contacts between 2200 and 1400 BC. This dramatic depopulation prevailed throughout the Saronic, with the principal exception of Kolonna, which exploded into complexity with continuous expansion of the settlement, characterized by massive building programs of fortifications and dwellings. Kolonnans now developed long-distance contacts with Minoan Crete, the Cycladic islands, central Greece, and the interior Peloponnese, in part to compensate for the deep reduction in connectivity within the Saronic Gulf. They imported pottery and may have hosted a small enclave of Minoan potters, but soon Aiginetan potters developed their own highly successful export industry that persisted well into the Mycenaean palatial period, and for specific shapes even to its very end.
The recolonization of the northeastern Peloponnese and the lands bordering the Saronic in MH III—LH I, and the events of the Shaft Grave Era in the Argolid, seem to have drawn Kolonna's attention back to the Saronic Gulf. The earliest phases of the LBA marked a time of prosperity and high connectivity between Aigina and the settlements on the islands and coasts of the Saronic, along with more distant partners in Attica, the northeastern Peloponnese, central Greece, and the Aegean Islands. Mycenaeans from the Argolid expanded their interests and exports only gradually into the Saronic region. Mycenaean-style painted pottery of LH I—IIA is rare in the circum-Saronic area. The Saronic small world, although nested geographically within the Helladic realm, may have been culturally distinct from the emerging Mycenaean palatial state in the Argolid, and seems to have resisted its expansion into the Saronic Gulf. By LH IIB, when Mycenaean fineware pottery had begun to appear around the Saronic, the inhabitants of Megali Magoula in the Troizenia were building tholos tombs, perhaps signaling the establishment of a Mycenaean foothold on the western shores of the Saronic. During the crucial transition to early LH IIIA, Kalamianos was part of a contested periphery — the setting for a competitive process in which Mycenae extended its sphere of influence into the Saronic Gulf at the expense of Aigina. The foundation of a number of centers large and small in LH IIIA, such as Kanakia and Ayios Konstantinos, coincided with the decline of the Aiginetan pottery export industry and the adoption of Mycenaean cult practices at Aphaia.
The founding of a port town at Kalamianos, probably by Mycenae circa 1300 BC or slightly earlier, served two objectives: first it was a foothold and safe haven for maritime economic and military activity in the Saronic, and second it was a definitive statement of Mycenae's ascendancy. This statement is encoded in the monumentality of the architecture at Kalamianos and the terrace walls at Stiri, quite remarkable in contrast to other Saronic settlements of the period, marking Kalamianos as a second-order center and probably Mycenae's principal Saronic harbor. This display of power was probably not specifically aimed at Aigina, since Kolonna by that time was no longer a legitimate threat. Instead, it was a characteristic habit of the Mycenaeans of the Argolid to build monumental structures as an advertisement of power, from the shaft graves and tholos tombs to the fortification walls and elaborate buildings on their citadels. The imposing architecture at Kalamianos and Stiri was meant to be seen from the sea.
Kalamianos was a coastscape and the anchor of a maritime microregion characterized by highly developed internal organization, which was at the same time the creation of the wider Mycenaean world, to which it was closely connected by both sea and land. The Korphos region was developed to support the role of Kalamianos as a working harbor town, giving rise to a second substantial settlement at Stiri and a system of agricultural terracing. Kalamianos was not a long-lived settlement, however. The rapid and intensive development of this microregion ceased abruptly circa 1200 BC, when Kalamianos and the other sites were abandoned, suggesting a strong association with the fate of the palaces and many other settlements that were destroyed or abandoned at that time.
World History
