HISTORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF W. ACHAIA RESEARCH PROJECT
               Hellenic Ministry of Culture – National Research Foundation – Landscape Archaeology Group

The Historical Topography of Western Achaia Research Project, a collaborative venture between the 6th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, the 6th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, and the Centre of Greek and Roman Antiquity of the National Research Foundation (Greece), began in 1985 with an extensive survey project aiming towards the documentation of known and new archaeological sites for the compilation of an archaeological archive for the western part of the province of Achaia. A more intensive and systematic methodology in archaeological surface survey in the region of investigation was employed in 1991, with the collaborative participation of the then newly established Landscape Archaeology Group (OM.AP.T.). The extensive coastal and inland zone between Alissos, Therianos and Kaminia was thoroughly investigated up until 1995 by the field research team, identifying and recording a good number of known and unknown archaeological sites of all periods.

In 2013, following an agreement of collaboration with K. Papagiannopoulos, director of OM.AP.T. and the Institute of Local History (I.T.I.), the coordinator of ArtLandS Lab began the systematic study of the surface pottery from a number of archaeological sites identified in Western Achaia and dated between the early Byzantine and the early modern era. A ceramic workshop of the 13th-14th centuries at the site of Derveni, as well as a number of small settlement sites in the area Therianos-Alissos-Kaminia, identified through concentrations of early glazed wares from Constantinople and amphorae from Italy and various centres in the Aegean, are amongst the most important archaeological sites identified during systematic field survey. The study of the surface ceramics is currently in progress, it will be completed in 2015, and will be prepared for publication in the next couple of years.