Opuscu/a Atheniensia XVJJ/:15, 1990 THE BERBATI-LIMNES ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY. THE 1988 SEASON BY BERIT WELLS, CURTIS RUNNELS AND EBERHARD ZANGGER Abstract The 1988 field season demonstrated that site location, preservation of monuments and artifacts, and land use are dependent upon the geological setting. Thus architectural remains such as the Myce- naean road is only preser ved on the hard limestone, whereas the softer rocks such as marl and flysch, once stripped of their soil cover, have lost their archaeological record. Within the geological framework economic and political factors governed the settlement pattern. Trade and pastoralism attracted people to the Miyio valley northeast of Limnes in Final Neolithic/ Early Helladic and Myce- naean times, while in Middle Helladic, Late Geometric and Classical to Roman times, good, arable soils in the lower Berbati valley were preferred. It is suggested that the discontinuous and highly variable low-density distribution of artifacts in our area results from past human activity such as land clearance and agriculture, pastoralism, dumping, manuring and artifact loss rather than from geomorphological processes. INTRODUCTION The Berbati valley is strategically located on the edge of the Argive plain forming a hinterland to the great Mycenaean centers of the Argo lid (Figs. 1-3 ). Within this area are sev- eral natural passes over the mountains between the Argive plain and the Corinthia which would have constituted strategic routes of communication in the past. The archae- ological knowledge of the area is still rudimentary, but the existence of the Bronze Age Mastos, the Roman bat h, and a Mycenaean road point to the potential significance of the valley and it is expected that a regional archaeological study could help remedy this situation. For example, in the case of the Berbati vall ey several questions present themselves: was the Berbati valley a center in its own right with a hier- archy of settlements or was it a satellite to greater powers? To what extent are archaeological settlement pattern and past land use practices controlled by bedrock geology and geomorphology? Some ten years ago, during a field trip to the Argolid of the Classics Department, Lund University, the idea of car- rying out an archaeological survey in the Berbati valley was first conceived. The drastic agricultural changes taking place at the entrance of the Kleisoura, the gorge connecting the valley with the Argive plain, triggered the idea. The lower slopes of the gorge had up till then, if at all cultivated, been planted solely with tobacco, but now bulldozers cut into the slopes and wells were being drilled in the dried-up stream bed to prepare for the cultivation of orange trees. It was not hard to imagine what would happen next. As the trees grew and started bearing fruit, the orchards would be fenced in and gates locked with the ensuing difficulty of ac- cess for archaeological field work. Archaeological field work in the valley in the 1930s and the 1950s was concentrated around the Mastos, the lime- st one cone in the western sector, approximately 6 km from Mycenae, leaving the rest of the area unexplored, a further incentive for attempting to disclose the cultural history of the region over the millennia. While working at the Swedish Institute at Athens in 1984, Berit Wells resumed her idea of carrying out a survey in the Prosimna valley and as the vol- ume on the Berbati pictorial pottery went to press in 1986 the plans were begun in earnest. As this was the first venture of the Swedish Institute at Athens into the field of archaeological survey, the director of the project approached colleagues with experience in that specific field for assistance. Thus Curtis Runnels was in- vited to serve on the team and Eberhard Zangger, extending his geological investigation of the Argive plain into our survey area, was asked to collaborate as a scientific advisor to enable a completely integrated study of the cultural and geomorphological changes in the proposed field area. The publication of the archaeological survey is a joint effort of the three principal scientists. 1 1 The Berbati-Limnes Archaeological Survey is carried out under the auspices of the Swedish Institute at Athens, with permis- sion from the Ministry of Culture and Science and under the super- vision and support of the Ephorate of Argolido-Korinthia. The geoglogical field work is supported by the Greek Institute of Geol- ogy and Mineral Exploration in Athens. We wish to express our warm thanks to these institutions for their services and for their co- operation, and especially to Dr. Fanny Pachiyanni, the Director of the Ephorate at Nauplion and our liasion at the Archaeological Museum of Nauplion, Mrs. Nicoletta Divari-Valakou. Financial support from various sources rendered the project possible . Two private foundations, Gunvor och Josef Aners Stiftelse and Marcus and Amalia Wallenbergs Stiftelse, most generously covered the major part of our costs, with the Swedish