This book is part of a long line of research into fortifications in the ancient Greek world. Some scholars have drawn on architectural data from excavations across the Mediterranean world to study fortifications as a phenomenon common to the Greeks as a whole, for example F.E. Winter (Greek Fortifications [1971]), J.-P. Adam (L'Architecture militaire grecque [1982]) and more recently N. Fields (Ancient Greek Fortifications 500–300 bc [2006]). Other works have focused on a single type of fortification, such as city walls (R. Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period: 900–480 bc [2011]) or towers (L. Karlsson, Fortification Towers and Masonry Techniques in the Hegemony of Syracuse, 405–211 b.c. [1992]). As often, the challenge for scholars has lain in combining an all-encompassing vision of Greek fortifications with respect for local characteristics. This was the starting point for regional studies. But the second challenge, specific to the study of fortifications, lies in de-essentialising the military from the political, keeping our distance from the ‘Ober system of Attica’ (J. Ober, Fortress Attica. Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier 404–322 b.c. [1985]), a strategic politico-military system that would have been promoted by the Greek city. For Eretria, S. Fachard (La défense du territoire: étude de la chôra érétrienne et de ses fortifications [2012]) was the first to propose the strict use of field data, without presupposing an imminent role for the city. This approach allows one to study the local conditions for the erection of a fortification, be it an enclosure wall, a tower or a fortress. B. is the disciple of such a master (p. 3).
B.'s study focuses on the rural fortifications of a difficult and neglected region, the Argolid, a ‘region of contrast’ (p. 1). She emphasises the traditional contrast between the Akte and the Argeia and also confronts a historiographical contrast. Some specific studies of certain areas (the surveys of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Southern Argolid Survey) offer variable and perhaps questionable chronological data, while other areas remain relatively unknown until today, subject to neither excavation nor survey. And, of course, she does not yet have the data from the biggest, most recent survey in the Argolid, the Western Argolid Regional Project.
Three major contributions of the book should be mentioned: (1) To bring together all the archaeological data for the rural fortifications of the late classical and Hellenistic Argolid in a single monograph. Thus, B. collects, processes and supplements the information collected by various scholars before her, such as Y. Pikoulas (Οδικό δίκτυο και άμυνα: από την Κόρινθο στο Αργος και την Αρκαδία [1995]) and K. Tausend (Verkehrswege der Argolis: Rekonstruktion und historische Bedeutung [2006]) (she mentions an article by M. Guintrand, but sadly had no access to his Ph.D. thesis). She brings together diverse testimonies in order to draw up a catalogue of rural fortifications: modern travellers, archives, excavation reports, maps, literary and epigraphic sources etc. This reviewer regrets that vocabulary such as phrourion was not borrowed from inscriptions to designate fortifications, which would have been useful. However, B. is to be commended for including numerous photographs and maps, in addition to supplying an elaborate appendix of more than 150 rural fortifications with data on location, type, masonry etc. B. provides all the basic data we need to ask our own questions about these rural fortifications.
(2) To give a clear account of the methodology applied, sometimes almost to the point of heavy-handedness. First, B. explains the choice of a ‘landscape’ (the Argolid), then of a ‘time period’ (400–146 bce). The cautious way in which she approaches this space, stressing the difficulty of talking about a region and preferring the traditional dichotomy between the Akte and the territory of Argos (p. 5), offers a point of methodological originality. It could be argued that the title of the book preserves an artificial idea that this space constituted a region in the Hellenistic period, even though the Argolid was an imperial invention (see C. Weber-Pallez, ‘Argos, l'Empire romain et les historiens aujourd'hui: déconstruire les représentations, reconstruire l'histoire argienne’, REG 134 [2021], 317–60). However, by studying broad regions, B. is able to demonstrate the impossibility of finding similar models on either side of this region (Akte/Argeia), further demonstrating that the Argolid is a modern rather than an ancient invention. Outside Akte and Argeia, further problems in regionalism abound: maybe that is why B. is not very clear about the place of Kleonai in this ‘region’, saying that it became Argive only at the end of the fourth century, whereas C. Kritzas (‘Nouvelles inscriptions d'Argos: les archives des comptes du trésor sacré [IVe s. av. J.-C.]’, CRAI 1 [2006], 397–434), has proved that its incorporation was more ancient. These observations highlight how difficult it is to retrieve the historical geography of this peninsula.
The choice of chronological frame is logical: the majority of fortifications in the Argolid date to the late classical and Hellenistic periods, often without further precision. Readers might hope for a solution to the problem of dating these various buildings in the region more accurately, and, thus, finding an archaeological frame to illustrate the history of these cities in this period, which is still missing from the literary or epigraphical sources. Sadly, as B. admits (p. 129), an accurate chronology is still impossible to reach, except in rare cases where literary or epigraphic documentation reveals specific events.
Following in Fachard's footsteps, B. develops a twofold methodology: first she creates an infinite variety of typologies to distinguish rural fortifications from one another, and second she uses the possibilities offered by GIS to organise space on a larger scale. The typologies are B.'s trademark: classification of the fortifications (fortified settlements, forts, towers, drystone masonry, p. 89), chronological structure (classical-Hellenistic, late-classical, classical, Hellenistic, p. 44), categories of masonries (drystone, roughly hewn, carefully fitted, p. 42), criteria for ‘dynamic defences’ (size, location, defensibility, construction technique, surface material, p. 89) etc. B. makes abundant use of GIS in her analyses and in producing numerous maps. The work involved in enriching this tool must have been long and laborious, requiring constant feedback from the field, and B. is to be congratulated on having accomplished such a journey. With GIS-enabled patterns, such as the cost-based catchment area or the viewshed visibility, she explores the possible habits of the inhabitants of the Argolic peninsula as well as the links between travel and fortifications, that is to say, the distribution patterns of fortifications in the region.
(3) To present the results of applying this methodology to the late classical and Hellenistic Argolid in the area of social and economic history of this peninsula. B. calls into question the city-state's total sovereignty over rural territory and its defensive structures by underlining the role of local communities. Local fortifications are often associated with agricultural areas, and they provided places of refuge only incidentally (p. 112). Agency is thus the centre of her interrogations: who built these structures? Who used them? But B. returns to some of the flaws she set out to avoid in the first place, as she refers to the Argive komai as possible builders and supervisors of these fortifications (p. 125), for which we have no proof. By attributing responsibility to these sub-civic entities, she may lose more local actors, perhaps without a political role. Sometimes she unwittingly reverts to the Ober system (p. 56, she asks herself how the fortifications can ‘reveal how the city-states in the Argolid aimed to protect their rural territories’). Even if sub-civic communities were responsible for the construction and maintenance of local fortifications, they are still conceived largely as part of a city-state, managing this aspect of the city-state's territory. In the same spirit, despite B.'s cautious approach, she uses civic borders and thus the traditional chôra as limits for her analytical framework (pp. 52–6).
These methodological questions highlight how thought-provoking the volume is for studies of the Argolid and broader considerations of fortifications and regionality: it is a very fine piece of work, based on extensive research and powerful analysis, and B. is to be congratulated. It will be a basis for all future research about the landscapes and cities-states of the Argolid.
