4.8 Atsas Valley: Medieval-Modern

The most striking feature of the Medieval-Modern periods in the Atsas Valley consists of Lemonas village, the remains of a seasonal settlement from the late Ottoman and Modern periods (TP209).

TP209 Evrykhou Tanayies

The structures that remain partially intact have foundations of river boulders, stone and potsherd chinking, and mudbrick superstructures. The extent of the mudbrick walls still in existence may point toward the date of the village's final abandonment.

In the 1963 aerial photographs, several threshing floors encircle the village. Although they no longer exist, their paving stones seem to have been pushed into rubble piles or strewn throughout adjacent fields as a result of cultivation practices.

The earliest post-Byzantine material from close to the settlement is a single piece of 14th–15th-century sgraffito 150m to the south (TCP382), though there are further fragments in another broad alluvial terrace 1100m to the south-east. For all later periods there is a very slight concentration immediately south-west of the settlement, never rising over 0.8 sherds per 100m² for a specific period (18th–mid 20th century), or 3.2 for all Medieval-Modern periods together.

The characteristic activities in and around the village were clearly the ploughing, planting, harvesting and threshing of the seasonal agricultural cycle. The survey transect shows a gradual fall-off both north and south, giving a clear 'halo' from manuring and dumping of about 500m from north to south. The main area cultivated was apparently limited to the alluvial terrace, which shows up clearly on the aerial photograph.

Other than round Lemonas there is virtually no medieval-modern pottery in the Atsas area (.mov panorama). In the north-west there is a different type of evidence for medieval-modern activity in the form of two water mills on the Ayia Saranta stream, a tributary of the River Atsas (BU0053; BU0059). Although they are in the Atsas drainage, they are very close to another series of mills between Katydhata and Linou, the nearest of which is 680m further south-west up the drainage. The grain to feed them is more likely to come from the thickly settled and intensively cultivated Karkotis Valley, rather than the very sparsely occupied Atsas Valley.