CULTURES OF STONE An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone This is a free offprint – as with all our publications the entire book is freely accessible on our website, and is available in print or as PDF e-book. www.sidestone.com CULTURES OF STONE An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone edited by Gabriel Cooney Bernard Gilhooly Niamh Kelly Sol Mallía-Guest © 2020 Individual authors Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Photograph cover: Experimental flint hand-axe with a 3D-printed polymer handle. MAN MADE design by Ami Drach and Dov Ganchrow (Studio Amidov,Tel-Aviv, Israel; 2014); 3D scanning: Prof. Leore Grosman (Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel); 3D printing: Stratasys and ARAN Research and Development, Israel; Photography: Moti Fishbain. Background image by Slay19 (stock.adobe.com). ISBN 978-90-8890-891-0 (softcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-892-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-893-4 (PDF e-book) Contents List of figures 7 Contributors 17 Acknowledgements 27 Introduction: Constructing identities through stone 29 PART ONE - QUARRYING AND MOVING STONE 31 Labour and Limestone: The relationship between stone and life in the 19th- and 20th-century quarry town of Texas, Maryland 33 Adam Fracchia Roman colours of power: Egyptian stones for the imperial metropolis, and beyond 45 Hazel Dodge Yapese stone money: Local marble as a potential inspiration for producing limestone exchange valuables in Palau, Micronesia 65 Travelling stone or travelling men? Models of sculpture production in the Early Middle Ages (8th–9th centuries AD) 79 Bosiljka Glumac, Scott M. Fitzpatrick Michelle Beghelli PART TWO - MAKING, BUILDING AND RE-IMAGINING IN STONE 101 MAN MADE: Contemporary prehistoric stone-tool design 103 Stormont’s stones: The oratory of power through form and materiality 123 Dov Ganchrow Suzanne O’Neill Stone fisheries and their role in shaping the cultural landscape of the Minho River Valley, Portugal 133 City of stone: Dialectics of impermanence in Josef Sudek’s Prague 149 Rui Madail, Miguel Malheiro Adele Tutter ‘The living stones’: Encountering the prehistoric past in West Cornwall 167 Elizabeth Pratt Sacred granite: Preserving the Downpatrick High Cross 181 PART THREE - STONE IN RITUAL SPACE AND PRACTICE 197 Michael King ‘Living stones built up’: Symbolism in Irish round towers Sarah Kerr Flaming torches: The materiality of fire and flames on Roman cinerary urns 199 213 Liana Brent Stone-grave building at the cemetery of Les Tombes at Estagel (Pyrénées-Orientales, France): Some economic, visual and symbolic aspects 227 Joan Pinar Gil Worship and stones on the Cycladic Islands: A case study of the cult of Apollo and Zeus 245 Erica Angliker All of a heap: Hermes and the stone cairn in Greek Antiquity 261 Is it from the Dreaming, or is it rubbish? The significance and meaning of stone artefacts and their sources to Aboriginal people in the Pilbara region of Western Australia 273 Jessica Doyle Edward M. McDonald, Bryn Coldrick Looking through the crystal ball: Ethnographic analogies for the ritual use of rock crystal 289 Thomas Hess Afterword: The flexibility of stone Gabriel Cooney 303 All of a heap Hermes and the stone cairn in Greek Antiquity Jessica Doyle Abstract The cross-cultural phenomenon of the accumulating stone cairn (Muhonen 2012) persists to this day in many cultures, as hillwalkers and travellers leave markers of their journey for posterity, through the addition of their own stone to heaps at crossroads or on hills or mountains. These cairns signal the way forward for future wayfarers and can also function as boundary markers and provide a platform for expressions of intent or of prayer for protection and guidance through the medium of stone. In Greek antiquity, the practice was explained through an aetiological myth pertaining to the multifaceted and mercurial Olympian god Hermes, in whose very name the stone heap is implicit. In addition to presenting this mythical aition from which the practice is said to have derived in the ancient Greek world, this paper will further elucidate the inextricable relationship of the god and the stone heap from the earliest appearance of his name in Bronze Age Linear B texts. In this paper, I will also explore the physical aniconic manifestation of the god in the heap of stones and in the herm, examining the apotropaic and functional roles of these monuments. Of particular interest will be the archaeological remains of the Nekromanteion—the oracle of the dead—at Epiros in northwestern Greece. This site has yielded evidence of such stone heaps, which, it is likely, allude to the role of Hermes as psychopompos, or guide of souls, in Greek religion. Keywords: cairns, herms, Hermes, boundaries, apotropaism, necromancy. Introduction Accumulating stone cairns, found in the landscape, on hillsides, roadsides and mountaintops, across many cultures and contexts, fulfil a purpose which has driven their construction for millennia. They signal to the passing traveller the comforting reassurance that they have not veered off the correct path, and this traveller will surely in: G. Cooney, B. Gilhooly, N. Kelly and S. Mallía-Guest (eds) 2020: Cultures of Stone: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Stone. Leiden: Sidestone Press, pp. 261–272. 261 contribute a stone offering of his own, for posterity and in acknowledgement of the comfort this cairn will provide to future travellers on the same path. In doing so, he is perpetuating a very ancient custom—a custom which, in the Greek world, was performed in veneration and supplication of the deity Hermes, whose spirit or daimon was believed to be inherent in the stone heap (Casson 1974, 71,173–174; Burkert 1979, 41; 1985, 136). These piles of stones were frequently to be found on roadsides and at crossroads, acknowledging Hermes’ role as deity of thresholds, boundaries and liminal spaces. However, these man-made waymarkers more practically referenced his aspect as guide and protector of wayfarers. The traveller who added his own stone to the pile in doing so expressed his own well-wishes for the safety and relief of future passers-by and could claim some responsibility for contributing towards their guidance. The protection and guidance sought in the god were therefore provided through the agency of the travellers themselves, who could thus engage in silent communication across time with one another, communication being another remit of Hermes. The stone added to the cairn was a durable manifestation of gratitude to the god for his guidance hitherto and an entreaty of continued protection for the journey’s remainder. In this paper, I will explore afresh the phenomenon of the stone heap in Greek antiquity and its association with the god Hermes. The more primordial and chthonic aspects of this elusive and eponymously (in his Roman incarnation) mercurial deity are frequently eclipsed in wider perception by his associations with wiles and the Trickster archetype, the swiftness afforded him by his winged sandals, and his role as intermediary, effortlessly crossing boundaries, including those between the domains of mortal and immortal. He is, however, also psychopompos, charged with the task of escorting souls to Hades. I will present the aetiological justification for the pile of stones in Greek myth and the place of the monument type within Greek religion and society, as an aniconic manifestation of an Olympian deity and in relation to the herm. Finally, I will examine a specific site at which stone heaps have been found. This site has been postulated by some scholars as the Nekromanteion, or oracle of the dead, at Ephyra in northwestern Greece, in which case these stone heaps may represent invocations of Hermes as psychopompos. Hermes and the stone cairn: the origins of the association The association of Hermes with the heap of stones, or cairn, is given justification, as are so many other phenomena in Greek consciousness, by an aetiological myth recounted in the 5th century BC by Xanthos of Lydia (FGrHist. 675 Fr. 29). As is the case with so many other Greek myths, this story originates with an indiscretion on the part of Zeus: in a bid to shield the object of his affections from his wife Hera’s jealousy, Zeus transforms the nymph Io into a heifer, denying having had any dealings with her. Dissatisfied still, Hera places her under the watch of Argus the all-seeing, or Panoptes, a giant with multiple eyes. At Zeus’ bidding, Hermes throws a stone at the giant and then slays him, thereby acquiring one of his most notable epithets—Argeiphontes, ‘the slayer of Argus’. In the ensuing trial, the other gods faced a dilemma: while Hermes had acted on Zeus’ orders, he was nonetheless now tainted as a result of the bloodshed, the first of the gods to be thus contaminated. This type of contamination was known to the Greeks as miasma, which was a religious pollution incurred by engaging in actions which were taboo in some way (for the fullest exploration of this concept, see Parker 1983; see also Bendlin 2007), or 262 CULTURES OF STONE which had to be circumscribed by strictly observed rituals. Sacrilege incurred miasma, but so did certain natural rites of passage, particularly birth and death, as is illustrated best by the island of Delos, where these events were taboo on grounds that they were held to be polluting events (Bendlin 2007, 184). Bloodshed of any kind, as in the case of Hermes, was also a risk—not only with regard to homicide, but also pertaining to ritual blood sacrifice, within which sphere the blood spilled had to be carefully contained and properly handled by religious personnel. By way of cleansing themselves of this pollution and simultaneously voting in Hermes’ favour in order to appease Zeus, the assembled gods cast stones at him which accumulated in a pile before the god. In this way, the heap of stones commemorates the trial of the god at which he was acquitted. Burkert (1983, 165, n.16) notes that this may also offer an aition for the Greek practice of voting with pebbles, or psephoi, and suggests that the practice may have evolved from stoning rituals. Accounts of lapidation as punishment or means of execution are also known from Greek history (see, for example, several instances in Herodotus’ Histories: 1.167.1–2; 9.120.1; 9.5.1–3; see also Steiner 1995) Furthermore, the heap of stones commemorates the death for which Hermes was responsible, the resulting miasma which polluted him and his fellow Olympians, and the means by which they rid themselves of the stain of this death through a symbolic stoning. While this is the most generally accepted aition behind Hermes’ heaps, there are other possibilities: A scholiast on Homer’s Odyssey (16.471) explains that Hermes was credited with clearing streets and roads of stones. The stone heaps piled at roadsides acknowledge this, and clearing pathways is perfectly in keeping with Hermes’ role as patron of travellers. A further possibility relates to Hermes’ originating the first sacrifice to the gods in the Homeric Hymn. As a deity of sacrifice, these piles of stones could conceivably represent rudimentary altars. The famous ‘Thalatta! Thalatta!’ episode in Xenophon’s Anabasis (4.7.24) recounts the construction of a cairn in celebration of the Ten Thousand mercenaries’ first glimpse of the Black Sea en route to Trebizon after their failed expedition. On this cairn, they piled offerings in thanksgiving. We do not know to which god they dedicated the offerings, but regardless of which deity was the recipient of these sacrifices, Hermes is implicit in the cairn’s construction and in the dedication. As interlocutor between man and god he is implicitly present at all sacrifices. As such, it is possible that, among other things, these stone cairns referenced this particular remit of Hermes, as makeshift platforms for spontaneous sacrifice and worship. Etymology: Hermes, e-ma-a2, and the antiquity of the stone heap That Hermes is one of the most established and ancient gods of the Olympian pantheon is verified by the apparent occurrence of his name on a number of Mycenaean Linear B tablets (Gulizio 2000). To judge from the context of its appearances, the deity indicated by e-ma-a2 is male and receives various offerings, including a man, on the Pylos tablet Tn316, which has received a good deal of attention as a potential reference to human sacrificial victims (Gulizio 2000, 107ff.). That e-ma-a2 is in fact Hermes may be supported by Gulizio’s observation that he does not appear to be associated with a designated sanctuary and that this may be in keeping with his character as god of boundaries. Sanctuaries exclusive to Hermes remain relatively rare in the Archaic and Classical periods. Furthermore, on this tablet the god is mentioned in association with ALL OF A HEAP 263 a number of female deities, foreshadowing, perhaps, his shared cult in the historical period with Aphrodite at Kato Syme on Crete (Lebessi and Muhly 1987) and at Locri in southern Italy (Marinatos 2003, 145f.), among other places. Although disputed by some scholars, the established view is that Hermes’ name is closely etymologically connected to the Greek word for the stone heap––ἕρμα––which can also mean a prop or support. This connection is suggested not only by the etymological similarity, but also by the god’s early connection with this type of monument. While there are occasional depictions of stone heaps in the Bronze Age, as demonstrated by Chittenden (1947, 106, Pl. XVa; Pl. XVIb), whether or not these monuments are connected to e-ma-a2 is unclear. Their appearance in glyptic art of the Bronze Age with lions, trees and wild goats bears testimony to Hermes’ very early role as a deity of vegetation and his incarnation as a Master of Animals, and the apparent offering of libations to such heaps suggest that they were perceived as numinous. These facets of the god persist into the Iron Age and the Archaic period at the Cretan sanctuary of Kato Syme, at which continuity of cult is evident from the Bronze Age. An explicit connection between Hermes and the heap is made in the D scholia to the Odyssey. This scholiast—distinct from the one mentioned above, regarding the clearing of stones from pathways—offers a lexicographical explanation of the ῞Ερμαιος λόφος—the Hill of Hermes named by Eumaeus at Odyssey 16.471, as a pile of stones constructed by passers-by in honour of Hermes as guide and protector of travellers. Regarding the physicality of the accumulating stone heap in the Greek countryside, Nilsson (1978) envisages the custom as so ancient as to be almost innate in the Greek country-dweller, who may participate in the custom without even perhaps understanding why. Imagining a peasant passing through the countryside, he speculates: ‘If our peasant passed a heap of stones, as he was likely to do, he might lay another stone upon it. If a tall stone was erected on top of the heap, he might place before it a bit of his provision as an offering. He performed this act as a result of custom, without knowing the real reason for it, but he knew that a god was embodied in the stone heap and in the tall stone standing on top of it.’ (Nilsson, Greek Folk Religion 1978, 8). The idea that the stone heap was imbued with the daimon or numen of Hermes belongs to a strain of worship which has a long history in the Aegean world. Aniconic cult representations are in evidence from the Bronze Age civilisations of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, particularly in the practice of baetyl, or pillar, veneration (Evans 1921; La Rosa 2001). Besides Hermes, Apollo appears to have been the most frequent object of aniconic cult. The tripillar shrine at the sanctuary of Kommos on the coast of southern Crete is frequently cited as an example of baetyl-cult associated with Apollo (Shaw and Shaw 2001, 20ff.). While the shrine at Kommos may have been catering largely for the proposed community of Phoenician traders in the area, the omphalos at Delphi and the pillar which apparently represented the cult image at Bassae cannot really be said to target a similar market. Besides litholatry, the earliest Greek cult statues, or xoana, on occasion consisted reportedly of a plank or beam of wood, though were no less sacred for their simplicity. Indeed, their extreme sanctity may have derived in part from their unwrought condition and their perceived great antiquity. 264 CULTURES OF STONE Litholatry, aniconism, and the herms Aniconic cult objects and their veneration appear to have been regarded as primitive even in the ancient world. Xenophon, in his Memorabilia (1.1.14) cites litholatry as, among other forms of devotion, evidence of extreme superstition or piety. Theophrastos, also writing in the 4th century, offers an excellent insight into popular folk customs in his character sketch of the Suspicious Man, who worships the stones at crossroads on his knees and anoints them with oil before he passes on. As Gaifman (2010, 70–71) points out, based on these passages, the practice of litholatry is clearly not unknown or considered completely eccentric in classical Attica. It is, however, the possibility of excessive engagement in such rituals that characterises a person as overly superstitious and pious. As such, we may surmise that they did indeed represent a strain of religious belief and practice that was very ancient and somewhat outside of a more structured and organised religious framework and therefore susceptible to being misunderstood or regarded with trepidation. It is in the context of such perspectives, perhaps, that we might understand the proliferation in the Archaic period of the distinctive monuments known as herms and the distinctly superstitious panic which gripped the Athenian people in 415 BC. when they awoke one morning, just days before the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition, to find all the city’s herms mutilated (Thucydides, History, 6.28–29; 6.53). The propagation of herms in the late 6th century BC is associated with the Peisistratid tyrant Hipparchos (Osborne 1985), although the monument type probably existed before he dispersed them throughout Attica. It is reported that herms stood at halfway points between Athens and its demes (Pritchett 1965, 160f.), and herms marked the boundaries of private homes and sacred spaces, stood on streets, at crossroads, shrines and in marketplaces. While they did not exclusively represent Hermes, they are always called after the god. The typical herm comprises a stele-like quadrangular piece of stone topped with a sculpted human head, most frequently that of Hermes, the pillar being ithyphallic but devoid of any other anthropomorphic attributes. Scholarship has not reached a consensus regarding the origin of the monument, or its relationship to the stone heap. However, the sense of a connection between the two is supported by the shared relationship to the god, the employment of both types of monument as boundary markers and at crossroads, and through the practice of placing a tall stone or pillar atop the stone heap. Rare archaeological evidence of this practice may be yielded by a stone inscribed with the word EΡΜANOΣ (‘Ermanos’—indicating that the stone was sacred to Hermes) which was embedded in a stone heap on a hillside at Pikromygdalia in Lakonia, close to the Chrysapha Relief (Chittenden 1947, 94). Vase painting of the Classical period depicts herms rising from stone piles (Figure 1), and Babrius, writing as late as the 2nd century AD, refers to a herm, that is, a square with a stone pile at the base (Fabulae LXVVIII). The inextricability of the relationship between the god, the stone and the monument may be seen in Aristotle’s example of potentiality, in his Metaphysics, when he says ‘the Hermes is in the stone’ (5.1017b). The herm continued in use concurrently with the development of naturalistic sculpture, and so we must acknowledge the deliberate choice behind Inv. Nr. 1347 (Photograph: Thomas Zachmann) the fusion of the largely aniconic in the quadrangular pillar and the figurative in the sculpted head and genitalia. As such, we cannot consign aniconism and abstract representation to primitivism and unsophisticated superstition. The pillar component of the herm ALL OF A HEAP 265 Figure 1. Depiction of herm on Attic red-figure skyphos (c. 425 BC). Tübingen, Eberhard Karls Universität, Institut für Klassische Archäologie Inv. Nr. 1347 (Photograph: Thomas Zachmann). may have symbolically represented the consolidation or the imposition of permanence on the heap of stones, while the bearded head of Hermes and the phallic component, which probably represented potential and fecundity, constituted a figurative acknowledgement of the spirit or daimon of the god who resided in the stone itself. In perpetuating the aniconic element, the herm acknowledged and respected the primordial nature of the god’s earliest physical manifestation, while also carrying the medium forward into the newer traditions of naturalistic sculpture. Furthermore, the practice of placing stones at the base of the herm was a further salutation towards the tradition from which the monument type may have derived. The episode of the mutilation of the herms in 415 BC (Osborne 1985; Hamel 2012) can tell us a lot about the place of these monuments in the Athenian religious atmosphere and the extent to which they were an integral part of the city’s religious identity and expressions of piety, in their ubiquity and the apotropaism with which they were imbued. Nonetheless, many questions continue to surround the affair. For example, the nature of the mutilation is unclear. While Thucydides mentions the herms’ faces specifically, Plutarch’s description of the incident (Alcibiades 18.3) implies the extremities were mutilated. In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata—which recounts a sex-strike among Greek women protesting their husbands’ involvement in the Peloponnesian war—the chorus warn a group of men to cover themselves so that the herm-choppers, or hermokopidae, will not notice them, implying that the priapic aspects of the monuments also attracted the destructive impulses of the perpetrators (1093–1094). The citywide extent and systematic flavour of the vandalism, not to mention the event’s proximity in time to the Sicilian Expedition, indicated that a highly organised group were behind the desecration. The ensuing panic in the city cast a spotlight on sacrilegious behaviour and its perils, and soon the affair of the herms became conflated with an accusation of sacrilege levelled at, among others, Alcibiades, one of the generals leading the Sicilian Expedition. Suspicion 266 CULTURES OF STONE and fear were rife, and the accusations levelled against Alcibiades of having profaned the Eleusinian Mysteries compounded the religious outrage and superstitious panic.1 What was it about the herms that rendered them particularly suitable targets for the actions of a group who can only, it seems, have wished to cause citywide chaos and instability? Certainly, as the city’s fleets prepared for the Sicilian Expedition, anyone wishing to undermine such an undertaking could make a clear statement in targeting Hermes, as god of travel and communication. The archaic nature of the herms’ composition and their association with boundaries and thresholds may have offered a target for any factions wishing to carry out religious terrorism, invoking transgression of taboo. Any statement could be all the more effectively driven home through the systematic destruction of a monument-type that was generally uniform, in its austere and semi-iconic nature, and ubiquitous throughout the city, and it may well be that this was ample reason for the choice of target. For the group of iconoclasts who wanted to efficiently make an unequivocal statement in a single night, the herms presented the perfect medium. The ancient perception of herms appears to have held them as particularly associated with Athens and Attica. It appears that these monuments were so enmeshed with Athenian self-identification and self-expression that their destruction constituted an assault on the people of Athens themselves. After the 5th century, herms came to bear the heads of other deities and eventually portrait heads of citizens. For Osborne (1985) this suggests that the viewer could literally see himself in the herm, that in confronting a herm, the citizen confronted himself. The herms of Hipparchos are reported to have been inscribed with moral maxims advising the viewer to ‘know himself ’ or to think ‘just thoughts’ (Osborne 1985, 57). The traveller encountering such a monument on a roadside would be compelled to stop, face the herm and contemplate. The mutilation of the monuments’ faces, Osborne says, was the mutilation of the ‘face of every Athenian’ (1985, 65), and the unmanning of the herms was to symbolically and psychologically render the Athenians impotent. While this may be a step too far, the culprits certainly did succeed in causing chaos and instilling religious terror into the Athenian people and in disrupting the civic and religious stability in the city at a crucial and vulnerable time. Hermes Psychopompos, the cairn and the journey to the Underworld Beyond Attica and throughout the Greek world, Hermes, as we have noted, is patron of wayfarers who demonstrate their gratitude for his guidance by depositing their own stones on heaps accumulated in his honour. This is true of terrestrial journeys, 1 A slave of Alcibiades, Andromachus, testified that Alcibiades, among others, had profaned the Eleusinian Mysteries in front of a group of uninitiated men (Andocides, On the Mysteries, 1.12–14). Few details are known to us about the rites observed at Eleusis, and that is as it should be: The Mysteries were to remain strictly shrouded in obscurity to all but the initiated. To Athenian superstition, that Alcibiades and others had re-enacted the Mysteries in drunken irreverence was insulting, outrageous and frightening. Alcibiades denied the charges and set sail for Sicily, to be tried on his return. Nonetheless, recognising that he stood at the centre of possibly the greatest religious outrage that Athens had experienced to date, and suspected not only of impiety but of attempting to destabilise the democracy, he went into hiding on the return trip and was sentenced to death in absentia. His subsequent defection to Sparta was a major factor in the ultimate failure of the Sicilian expedition and the massive plunge in morale suffered by the Athenians. ALL OF A HEAP 267 and an archaeological site in north-western Greece suggests it may be indicated for a symbolic journey as well, for the journey par excellence—the final one. His role as psychopompos is a prominent aspect of Hermes’ cultic portfolio from the earliest Greek literature. The Homeric Hymn to the god documents Zeus’ appointment of Hermes as intermediary between the upper- and netherworlds. A number of sites in the ancient Mediterranean housed oracles of the dead, or nekromanteia (Ogden 2001), generally in areas where the topography or distinct topographical features were conducive to the belief that they were places at which the veil between the worlds was thin enough to allow interaction with the Underworld. I wish now to briefly look at the so-called Nekromanteion of Acheron, believed by its excavator, Sotirios Dakaris, to be the site of an oracle of the dead, notably mentioned in Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus makes his katabasis, his journey to the Underworld, to engage in a nekyia, a consultation with the shades of the Dead. Located in what once was ancient Thesprotia, now Epirus, in north-western Greece, the connection drawn between the Homeric episode and the site near Ephyra is based largely on the striking similarities between the topography of the area and the geography as described by Homer—namely, the rivers Acheron and Cocytus, which joined at a now dried-up lake, Acherousia. This similarity was not lost on Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD, who expressed his view that Homer named the rivers in his account of Odysseus’ descent directly after the rivers in ancient Thesprotia (1.17.5). Herodotus also mentions the site as the location of Periander’s consultation of his late wife Melissa (5.92). The archaeological evidence from the site, however, renders the situation far from clear: despite the Homeric and Herodotean accounts, the material remains do not predate the late 4th century BC, and the complex, excavated by Sotirios Dakaris between the late 1950’s and late 1970’s (Dakaris 1958; 1960; 1961; 1963; 1964; 1975), is now believed by some scholars (Baatz 1979; 1982; 1999; Wiseman 1998) to have been a Hellenistic farmstead, based on agricultural equipment, grinding stones and large storage pithoi. The latter contained quantities of carbonised foodstuffs which cannot be easily explained away through the interpretation of the structure as a sanctuary. The presence of a tower and catapult ratchets and counterweights, seem to indicate that the complex was fortified. However, the construction of a church in the 18th century on top of the ancient monument may indicate that an awareness of a certain sanctity was preserved on the site and in the area. Some vessels which may be of a ritual nature, such as phialai, rhyta and unguentaria, were found at the site, in addition to a number of figurines thought to represent the goddess Persephone, queen of the Underworld. Further Persephone figurines were found on the nearby hill, dating from as far back as the mid-7th century BC. Below the central hall of the Hellenistic building was a vaulted crypt (Figure 2), which was most likely the focal point of the cult in earlier times. As the site of a chthonic cult with Persephone at its centre, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the agricultural aspect of the site was linked to its cultic functions: such systems are known, for example, from Eleusis, where Persephone is venerated with her mother Demeter and with Triptolemos, in a merging of agrarian and chthonic religious practices. If, as Dakaris believed, a particular diet was integral to the procedure of incubation at the oracle, it may have been the case that the necessary foodstuffs were farmed on site. 268 CULTURES OF STONE Figure 2. Vaulted crypt at ‘Nekromanteion’ of Acheron, Epirus, Northern Greece. (Photograph: courtesy of Dr Maeve McHugh, University College Dublin). Dakaris, of the firm belief that this was indeed the Thesprotian Nekromanteion, reconstructed the putative incubation of the supplicant at the oracle (1993). The visitor would remain for an unknown duration in the lodging rooms to the north of the building, where he would eat food appropriate to the location, that is, food associated with the nekrodeipnon, or feast in honour of the dead. These included broadbeans, found at the site, which, if eaten in their intoxicating green state, may have contributed to an altered state of mind and fuller immersion in the experience. At the appropriate time, the visitor would make his way down the eastern corridor before arriving at a labyrinthine passage. Reaching the end of this labyrinth, he would be led into the central hall, where Dakaris envisaged his being met with puppets or effigies of the dead, operated by the personnel of the oracle via a crane. A number of ratchets were found at the site, in addition to counterweights, which Dakaris took as evidence in support of his suggested deus ex machina-type apparition. They have subsequently, however, been shown to be components of catapults which appear to have been kept at the site (Baatz 1982). The visitor to the oracle, before leaving the north passage, may have had to undergo a ritual purification, washing his hands in a louterion which stood to his left just at the threshold. To his right, as another part of this purificatory ritual, prior to progressing to the next stage of his visit, he cast what Dakaris (1993) described as an ‘apotropaic stone’. This was inferred from a pile of stones found opposite the louterion just before the doorway (Figure 3). A second pile of stones was found just inside the central hall, after the labyrinthine passageway, indicating another possible apotropaic gesture at the most crucial moment in the rite. The presence of these stone heaps at two thresholds within the complex is amongst the strongest pieces of evidence that at least one of this site’s roles was associated with chthonic cult (van Straten 1982, 224). Both stone heaps at the site occur close to doorways or thresholds, areas under the remit of Hermes. These may have been associated with progression between stages of the ritual, and, as a deity of transitional states, invocation of Hermes would also be ap- ALL OF A HEAP 269 Figure 3. View of a stone heap (left) at ‘Nekromanteion’ of Acheron, Epirus, Northern Greece. (Photograph: courtesy of Dr Maeve McHugh, University College Dublin). propriate here. In casting a stone, the visitor may have flung from himself any miasma of impurity or impiety which might hinder or shadow his progression to the next stage. Hermes, as we have noted, is also a psychopompos, an escort of souls in the Underworld. The template of the katabasis, the hero’s journey into the Underworld, may have lent itself to the necromantic rites which may have taken place at this site, culminating in the simulated descent into the Underworld. As a wayfarer on a perilous journey of a spiritual nature, the supplicant would have sought the protection and guidance of Hermes. In comparison, Pausanias’ account (9.39) of the oracle of Trophonios at Lebedeia may be cited, at which youths called Hermai escorted and anointed the supplicant. This is not a nekromanteion, though it does have a distinct chthonic flavour, as the visitor to the oracle would descend through a cave to the oracle, and Hermes, in the form of these youths, would have been present at the beginning of the journey. Another striking parallel may be seen in Book 24 of the Iliad, in which Priam travels to Achilles’ quarters to ask that Hektor’s corpse be released to him. This nocturnal journey has been acknowledged by many scholars as structurally emulating a katabasis. As the old man begins his journey, Zeus sends Hermes to escort him, and Hermes again escorts him back as he returns with the body. The stone heaps, evocative of Hermes, thus may mark a beginning and culmination of a progression at the Ephyra nekromanteion. The stone pile in both the upperand underworlds invokes Hermes and implores his guidance and protection. In the case of the descent into Hades, however, it further defines the space as one of liminality and transition, and appears to compliment additional purificatory rites. The properties of stone which lend themselves to the construction of architectural monuments, and more informal and perhaps ephemeral ones—such as the stone heap— include its durability and ready availability. These characteristics may seem at odds with 270 CULTURES OF STONE the elemental nature of Hermes himself, who is as swift as wildfire, as slippery as water and as elusive as the wind. Nonetheless, the durability of stone allows for the definition of space and the delineation of boundaries in a manner which is visible and robust. The element and medium of stone offers another aspect that is highly appropriate to its association with Hermes, and that is its chthonic nature—that it is derived from the depths of the earth itself, the place to and from which Hermes alone can journey with ease. 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