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Rescue Excavations at Servia 1971–1973: A Preliminary Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Cressida Ridley  and
K. A. Wardle
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Extract

Until 1974, the site known to archaeologists as Servia, and discovered by A. J. B. Wace in 1909, about 6 km. north of the town of the same name, was to be found on the right bank of the Haliakmon, immediately downstream from the bridge carrying the main road from Larissa to Kozani (Plate 26a). The bridge shown in the frontispiece to ‘Prehistoric Macedonia’ was blown up by the retreating British Army in the last war; the Bailey bridge which replaced it and the site itself now lie over 30 m. below the surface of a great artificial lake, Limni Polyphytou, which fills the valley of the Middle Haliakmon, Plate 26b. The new bridge is the largest in Greece, and its impressive length emphasizes the importance of the crossing. Over it passes the highway, once the only practicable route connecting Thessaly, and ultimately central Greece, with Macedonia, while the bridges, past and present, marked the only convenient fording-place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 74 , November 1979 , pp. 185 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1979

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References

1 Reported by Wace, A. J. B. in ‘The Mounds of Macedonia’ BSA xx (1913–1914) 123.Google Scholar Excavation by Heurtley, W. A.: ‘Excavations at Servia in Western Macedonia’ AJ xvii 227Google Scholar; Prehistoric Macedonia.

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4 Financial assistance towards the expenses of the excavation was also given by the British Academy, the Marc Fitch Fund, the Craven Fund of Oxford University, and the Russell Trust. The excavation was jointly directed by Katerina Rhomiopoulou, Cressida Ridley, and K. A. Wardle and thanks are due in particular to Yiannis Touratsoglou, Epimeletis at Verria, who was one of the site supervisors each season and Ian Morrison who acted as architect and photographer. Drawings of finds in this article were made by Zillah Pettit and Diana Wardle, while Harry Buglass prepared the plans and section.

5 Athens Annals of Archaeology (hereafter AAA) v (1972) 27.

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9 It must be emphasized that this is a preliminary report only. Mies Wijnen had time to study only a limited, though representative, sample of the pottery.

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40 BSA xxviii (1926–7) 195.