Gods and farmers: the Late Antique village at Olympia, Greece

Abstract

From 1989 until his untimely death in 2000, Thomas Völling (V.) explored Late Antique Olympia by participating in systematic excavation and on-site archival study within the research program “Olympia in der römischen Kaiserzeit und der Spätantike.” He developed a close knowledge of the pioneering excavators at the site in 1875–84 – “die Alte Grabung” – who cleared the upper strata of massive alluvium covering the Altis, or the precinct of impressive structures at the heart of the venerable sanctuary. V.’s project, eventually based at Würzburg, began with a series of incisive studies on metal finds and progressed to his habilitation thesis on settlement, burial, and fortification at the site. Although he did not live to finish this work, V.’s publications and professional interactions, chiefly in Germany and Greece, which were by all accounts generous and probing, distinguished him as an early innovator in the now thriving field of Late Antique archaeology. Moreover, in an age when the proper treatment of “legacy data” has long since been adopted as a fundamental strategy in Mediterranean archaeology, we should recognize V. as a trailblazer. Even more so if we consider that the data from the 120-year-old excavations, and the legacy of research and ideology in Bismarckian Germany, are among the deepest and most challenging in the annals of Greek archaeology.