Vasilikos Valley Project: the survey

The survey of the Vasilikos Valley, directed by Ian A. Todd for Brandeis University, recorded 135 sites of all periods by Todd's later count.¹ It began in 1976 beside the excavation at Tenta, and Todd says the last transect was completed in 1989, with exploratory forays in the northern area in 1990 and 1991.¹ The National Science Foundation funded the project.²

Todd presents the survey as a regional settlement study meant to place excavated sites in the context of the whole valley.² From 1976 the method was intuitive reconnaissance of likely locations such as hilltops, ridges and river terraces, and Grace Burkholder carried out much of the work in 1976 to 1978.¹ In 1977 J. Malcolm Wagstaff undertook geographical reconnaissance.² In 1978 the survey reported the aceramic Neolithic site of Mari-Mesovouni, with a decorated stone vessel and a quadruped figurine.³ Todd reports that the hill was bulldozed in 1987 and 1989 and no longer exists.¹

In 1979 the survey moved to a systematic sample of the lower valley: twelve transects, each 100 m wide and 400 m apart, between Kalavasos and the river mouth. The team walked nine of them and reported 24 new sites; the 1979 survey section was written by Jerald J. Johnson and Larissa Hordynsky.⁴ Hordynsky and Johnson report 31 new sites across the transects surveyed in 1979 and 1981.⁵ Todd says intuitive reconnaissance and transect sampling together gave about 60% coverage of the main drainage, that the transects missed Tenta, and that three minor side drainages were surveyed at 100% coverage.¹

Todd reports Early Bronze Age material as almost absent from the survey and says it seems likely that a hiatus of more than a millennium followed the Aceramic Neolithic.¹ Todd's The Field Survey of the Vasilikos Valley was published in three volumes: I (2004), II (2016, on the artefacts recovered) and III (2013, on human settlement in the valley).^6,7,8