Ancient Tanagra                                                                                                                                                                            

Tanagra was considered one of the most prominent Boiotian cities in antiquity. Pausanias includes the city in his travelogue (9.20.3), situating it on the slope of Mount Kerykion. The site itself is located about 35 km north of Athens in the south-eastern part of Boiotia and lies on the north-eastern slope of a ridge, since renamed Mount Tanagra. At its southern end, therefore, the mountains rise to the southwest; the Asopos River, which separated Attika from Boiotia in antiquity, flows to the southeast. Also at the south end of the city, a lower peak lies within the walls. The whole city is built on a succession of terraces that drop some 80 metres in altitude towards the north, and the walls extend in an irregular track northwards into the plain.

       

The walls are constructed in response to the geographical demands of the city, lacking right angles and lengthy straight sections at the mountainous end, but having these at the flatter northern end. There is structural evidence for many towers along the walls and one large bastion on the northwest side facing Thebes. Only one small gateway on the southeast side towards Athens is visible, although other gates opening up onto the roadways leading to Thebes and Delion, the seaport of Tanagra, are also assumed due to the alignment of the street grid?east-west avenues and north-south streets (here too determined by the Canadian team)?and the absence of wall rubble at these locations. The 5th century of course brought Athenian hostility, and Tanagra was used as a battlefield between the Athenians and the Spartans in 457 B.C. The Athenians levelled the walls, leaving the city unfortified until the early 4th century, when new walls were erected with the aid of the Spartans, and when the theatre was likely also constructed. The Hellenistic period was a time of peace and growing wealth and saw the building of a new temple to Demeter and Kore, as well as the production of the Tanagran figurines. Its prosperity continued until the 2nd century A.D. when it began the course to eventual decline.


Source: Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens

 

-------Tanagra (2nd approach)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From 2000 onwards a team of Dutch, Greek and Slovenian staff and students have carried out fieldwork on the ancient city of Tanagra and its surroundings. The fieldwork includes on-site and off-site survey as well as geophysical research. Specialists study the pottery obtained during the fieldwork seasons. The aim of the project is to reconstruct the historical development of the habitation in the town and the relations with the immediate countryside. The survey also provides useful information for the preservation and management of Tanagra and other sites in Boiotia. Tanagra appears to have first been settled in the Neolithic period by a small group of farmers and there is evidence for the same kind of small settlements throughout the Bronze Age. The city of Tanagra can first be recognized during the Late Geometric and Early Archaic period (around 700 BC.), even though the size of the city in this period is unknown.
In classical times the city of Tanagra was of considerable size and wealth. In Early Roman times there was a decline of population in the whole of southern Greece and it is probable that Tanagra shrunk in size and population, as did other cities in the region. In Late Roman times however, the city grew again and the bulk of the surface finds stem from this period. It was also in this period that its classical fortifications were repaired as a reaction on barbarian raids that afflicted Greece. After the Late Roman period the city was no longer extensively inhabited and for the Byzantine period there is only evidence for scattered farms. During the Middle Ottoman period a small hamlet existed on the acropolis consisting of four longhouses. The evidence for the countryside corresponds with that for the city, with a great expansion of habitation in Archaic and Classical times, a decline in Late Hellenistic and Early Roman times and a blossoming again in the Late Roman period. The survey project has provided some interesting new insights into the farming system of the ancient cities surroundings. The density of so-called offsite pottery, carpets of broken potsherds at lower densities than material emanating from past settlements, but still significant enough to mark a major form of human activity, is at the highest around the edges of the ancient city. Going further away from the city the density gradually declines and after 2 kilometres the pottery has almost disappeared. An explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the cities fertilisation program, urban residents storing their rubbish for recycling out in to the field in order to fertilize their estates. While the organic components are long gone, all that remains is a carpet of broken pottery. This manuring system is still to be dated for Tanagra, but the city of Thespiae has shown a similar phenomenon that can be dated to the Classical period in accordance with the expansion of the population and size of the city.

Source: The Netherlands Institute in Athens