Developing Research Repositories to Preserve Cretan History

Fieldwork & Ethnography

Role: Research Assistant

Company: Washington University in St Louis

Year: 2019

University Sponsored Research

The Late Byzantine Churches and the Legacy of the Artist Ioannis Pagomenos project conducted an assessment of eight Byzantine churches containing fresco work by Ioannis Pagomenos. Ioannis Pagomenos was a fourteenth-century Byzantine fresco painter who practiced throughout western Crete. These churches capture a transition from the medieval period to the early Renaissance; a time where small churches were arising due to village patronage in rural Byzantine communities.

The conservation reports being created for each church document similar issues across the board. The issues include but are not limited to cracking, sugaring, loss of component, bio growth, rising damp and white veil. The creation and documentation of this material will create a baseline of information about the churches and hopefully help identify physical damage such that these churches can be repaired and maintained. There are many factors threatening the condition and accessibility of these sites and the Salvaging Crete database is one way of promoting their survival.

*Disclaimer: The visuals you see on this page are summaries of the process taken to conduct the research.*

We need to support the churches’ future management and care

The eight small Byzantine churches were little documented and the state of conservation was unknown before the assessment. The intention of collecting such information was to support the churches’ future management and care. The documentation of these churches will be published on the team’s website (https://sites.wustl.edu/salvagingcrete/) for easy accessibility to both scholars and stakeholders connected to the individual sites.

In my role as a research assistant, I assisted in a combination of fieldwork and post processing research to create a digital archive of 14th century frescoes by Ioannis Pagomenos. Skills utilized in the field including documentary photography and conservation analysis informed the later documentation created with Adobe Suite, Rhinoceros 5 and AutoCad.

Team:

Dr. Helen Human (anthropology)
Tiffin Thompson (conservation/architecture)
Dr. Cristina Stancioiu (art history)
Dr. Naomi Pitamber (art history)

Site

The fieldwork portion of the research project involved traveling through Western Crete and visiting a total of eight small Byzantine churches. These churches were determined to be part of the collection of churches that included frescoes painted by Ioannis Pagomenos and/or his workshop. These churches were located between mountains, perched above bee farms, on cliffsides, in small village centers, community backyards and beyond.

Each church location varied in signage and accessibility. As a result, the team produced maps that documented the local terrain, paths and surrounding buildings for future access.

What does success look like?

The interdisciplinary team had three main goals for the fieldwork portion of research: 1) document the complete decorative scheme of the churches as they appear today, 2) provide a conservation report including baseline architectural drawings of the buildings and 3) conduct semi-structured interviews for an understanding of the churches' cultural significance and impact across the variety of people involved.

The documentation of these churches was published on the team’s website (https://sites.wustl.edu/salvagingcrete/). This site is managed by the hosting university.

Unexpected Realities

While conducting the qualitative research within the island of Crete, many interviews were limited by language barriers and personal conflict. The majority of the population the team interacted with spoke Greek with a bit of conversational English. This limited the team’s ability to gauge the true emotions and approaches to maintaining the churches under investigation.

In addition, differing groups such as the local population or the government appointed conservationist believed in conflicting approaches to the use and maintenance of these churches. This conflict in beliefs paired with the language barrier made interviews less direct and often encouraged more yes/no answers for clarity.

The future for Salvaging Crete

This project continues to develop and process the fieldwork research from the Summer of 2019 into a digital database. Stakeholders have been provided with recommendations for future conservation and each church has been thoroughly documented in case of future damage.