Building on the archaeology of the 1930s and 1960s: reinvestigating the town above the Sanctuary of Hera, Perachora

Archaeological research has been conducted at the 8th–2nd century BCE sanctuary dedicated to Hera Akraia at Perachora for nearly 100 years. The sanctuary was initially excavated in the 1930s by Payne and then Dunbabin of the British School at Athens, who also investigated the habitation site located above the sanctuary in an area called the Upper Plain. There they found evidence for what they interpreted as a “substantial town” with its fortification walls, built road, and extensive waterworks. In the 1960s, Tomlinson reinitiated work there, excavating both within the sanctuary and in the Upper Plain. Tomlinson’s estimation of the Upper Plain's settlement was radically different from that of his predecessors’, characterising it as “a sporadic scatter of structures.”

The Perachora Peninsula Archaeological Project is conducting intensive pedestrian surface survey, legacy data verification, Lidar, and drone photogrammetry in its investigation of this town. A necessary part of our work has been questioning Payne and Tomlinson’s diametrically opposed interpretations of the settlement and the likely motivations for their (perhaps) over- and underestimations of its significance. The data collected through our survey, which are providing context for the site’s architectural remains, combined with our research on the respective projects in the British School’s archives, and comparing our finds to those published in the Perachora volumes are all leading to a more holistic understanding of the sanctuary, its town, and the wider region of the Perachora Peninsula. Conducting the archaeology of the past archaeology has been key to our approach.