611-630

Eordaea : municipality of Ayia Paraskevi

• Καραμήτρου-Μεντεσίδη, Γεωργία

The Macedonian tomb at Spilia, discovered in 1987, was the first in a long line of archaeological sites located on the archaeological map of the municipality of Ayia Paraskevi with the districts of Ayios Hristoforos, Karyohori, Spilia, and Ermakia, which led to the drawing up of a design project for an archaeological park.The archaeological map of the municipality is composed of 17 sites and monuments distributed over an area of 2,537 ha. These are four walled settlements to the W along the Vermio range, one settlement on a hill and outside it (with which the Macedonian tomb is connected), one large settlement on level and sloping areas of land, to which belong cemeteries of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, two smaller settlements, one farm, and clusters of later graves and prehistoric graves, two sites of sanctuaries, and two prehistoric settlements.There is no need to stress the importance of drawing the archaeological map of an area, nor of creating a design project for an archaeological park at the same time, both for scientific purposes and in order to highlight the social role of archaeology. I shall say no more about the dialogue that must begin with our cultural heritage nor about the importance of investing in culture, especially in an area like this one, which is now entering the postindustrial age with the depletion of the Public Electricity Company’s lignite supply.The early subordination of Eordaea, as of Upper Macedonia as a whole, to the kingdom of Aegae is indicated by the sources (Herodotus, Thucydides) as the sequel to Persian domination following Xerxes’ failed campaign in the reign of Alexander I. It has been argued that Eordaea belonged geographically to Upper Macedonia and administratively to Lower Macedonia, despite the fact that the sources indicate the existence of a royal house whose most important representative was Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who was a general, the founder of the dynasty of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and also a great historian of his time, the principal source used by Arrian himself. Archaeological investigations in ancient Eordaea have found that the region was densely populated and powerful, with an unbroken history, ekistic development and organisation, and political, social, and religious institutions identical to those in the adjacent districts of Elimiotis, Orestis, and Lyncestis; while an assessment and evaluation of the archaeological material matches the new historical profile which has been put together in recent years from investigations at Aeane and in the rest of Kozani prefecture.The notion that Eordaea was not a discrete state-like kingdom must be reconsidered and we must accept that it was annexed not at the beginning of the 5th century BC, but, like the other kingdoms, in the course of Philip II’s unification of all of Macedonia and the rest of the Greeks, before Alexander the Great’s campaign.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία

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