The Mytilene Project (MytP) was a research project directed by Caroline and Hector Williams (University of British Columbia), with the permission of the 20th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of Lesbos, that conducted a series of excavations on the island of Lesbos between 1983 and 1994. The project focused on the ancient polis of Mytilene, a major urban centre continuously developed and occupied from the Archaic period to the present day.
Excavations and research at Mytilene primarily concerned its lower city and acropolis, which features a heavily fortified Byzantine-Genoese castle and a previously unknown sanctuary dedicated to the chthonic goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The sanctuary, founded around 400 BCE, contained a series of five altars of varying types arranged in a row, along with dining rooms for ritual feasting, a sacred house, and numerous small finds, including thousands of piglet bones, terracotta figurines, oil lamps, and three curse tablets. Excavations also revealed the burial chapel of the Gattelusi, a Genoese family who ruled Lesbos and much of the northern Aegean between 1355 and 1462. Within the chapel are a number of skeletons of men and women of the late medieval period that have provided much information about local diet from chemical analysis of the bones. MytP also explored a multi-period site near Mytilene’s North Harbour, which included an Ottoman cemetery containing a suspected vampire burial; a large Roman peristyle building that appears to have functioned as a tavern or brothel by the 4th century; a late Classical wall; and an extensive deposit of industrial debris dating to the 3rd–2nd centuries BC, with evidence for pottery and figurine production, bone and horn working, cloth making and dyeing, and metalworking in bronze and iron.
Select Bibliography
Ivison, E.A. 1992. “Funerary monuments of the Gattelusi at Mytilene.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 87:423-437.
Ruscillo, D. 2013. « Thesmophoriazousai: Mytilenean Women and their Secret Rites. »181-196. In Bones, Behaviour, and Belief: the Zooarchaeological Evidence as a Source for Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece and Beyond. G. Ekroth & J. Wallensten eds. ActaAth-4, 55. Stockholm: Swedish Institute at Athens.
Williams, C., & I. K. Whitbread. 1984. “Hellenistic and Roman Buildings in the Medieval Walls of Mytilene.” Phoenix 38, 1: 31-76.
Williams, C. & H. Williams. 1991. “Excavations at Mytilene, 1990.” Échos du monde classique 10, 34.2: 175-191.
Williams, H. 2014. « The Fortifications of Ancient Mytilene: A Brief Introduction. » 231-248. In Meditations on the Diversity of the Built Environment in the Aegean Basin and Beyond. Proceedings of a Colloquium In Memorium of Dr. Frederick E. Winter, Canadian Institute in Greece, June 22-23, 2012. D.W. Rupp & J.E. Tomlinson eds. Publications of the Canadian Institute in Greece 8. Athens: The Canadian Institute in Greece.
More on the project can be found here: https://portal.cig-icg.gr/node/548
