229.90m. Roughly N 37° 23.306 E 023° 23.306.
A bronze disk is fitted atop a geodesic column, cemented atop the peak of Profitis Ilias, formerly known as Kokkygion, which was in even earlier times known as Thornax, located just over 2km west of the present town of Ermioni in the southern Argolid.
Such elevation columns dot the Greek countryside. The bronze disks they support provide hardened links between locales on the ground and coordinates within the national triangulation grid of Greece on paper. In their capacity as points of reference, they act as critical team members of hundreds of archaeological surveys throughout the country.
 by Chris Witmore
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more in fieldwork, instrumentalities, media archaeology, topography |
July 6, 2005
09:43PM
Timothy Webmoor said on July 11, 2005 10:59 AM
Beautiful azure of the Mediterranean in the background. I like thinking of these ordnance survey pedestals as actants - in this case 'immutible immobiles' - which only by virtue of their obdurate materiality can manage to collate locale/sensorial richness with the analytic of scientific topography/maps. (Much better than those survey stakes we place for seasonal excavation.) But still only for a time. So again the compresence of place and time together.
Timothy Webmoor said on July 11, 2005 11:05 AM
Beautiful azure of the Mediterranean in the background. I like thinking of these ordnance survey pedestals as actants - in this case 'immutible immobiles' - which only by virtue of their obdurate materiality can manage to collate locale/sensorial richness with the analytic of scientific topography/maps. (Much better than those survey stakes we place for seasonal excavation.) But still only for a time. So again the compresence of place and time together.
Chris Witmore said on July 11, 2005 09:30 PM
Spot on Tim!