ARTEMIS Project Update
View of the Sanctuary of Artemis in its wetland landscape from Kapsala hill. Photo Credit: Dr Maeve McHugh
ARTEMIS Season One is a wrap!
From 18 May to 17 June 2026, the British School at Athens supported the first full season of the Attica Regional Integrated Environmental and Material Survey (ARTEMIS), a project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, that explores the long-term development of the natural and cultural landscape around the Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauronia in east Attica. The five-year research program is conducted in collaboration with the British School at Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of East Attica.
This year’s fieldwork combined two strands:
Prof. Yorgos Illiopoulos, Prof. Henry Chapman, and Dr James Bendle coring in the coastal wetlands close to the Sanctuary: Photo Credit: Dr Michelle Farrell
Palaeoenvironmental coring
Led by Dr Michelle Farrell (Coventry), with Prof Henry Chapman (Birmingham), Prof Yorgos Iliopoulos (Patras), and Dr James Bendle (Birmingham), the team ran a two-week coring campaign along the eastern coast of Attica and the floodplain of the Erasinos river, in order to identify sites suitable for investigating landscape and environmental change throughout antiquity.
Archaeological Survey
Carried out as a synergasia with the Ephorate of Antiquities of East Attica under the directorship of Dr Eleni Andrikou. Fieldwork focused on the cultivated fields and hillsides that encircle the sanctuary.
22 researchers from Greece, Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Canada took part, working alongside Ephorate colleagues Dr Kerasia Douni, Katerina Petrou, Dr Elpida Sklerou, and Christina Katsavou.
Finds and features recorded this season include slag and pottery wasters, pyramidal loom weights, obsidian, worked marble, and lamp fragments, plus a classical-period tower and small quarries on the Purgari hillside, all evidence of how this landscape was used and worked over the centuries.
The team is now writing up the season’s results and preparing a synthesis of the material and methods for publication. The team looks forward to discovering more about how eastern Attica was shaped, settled, and used over time.