City Plan
As a part of the present project, most of the major
architecture and all of the roadways of the Roman city, known as a
result of excavation, have now been surveyed in the field by means
of an electronic total station, which is an electronic theodolite
and an electronic distance measuring device (EDM), guaranteeing a
very high degree of precision. This equipment has been used in
each of the nine summer seasons of work and has provided continuity
from year to year, as well as the necessary high standards of
accuracy for the project as a whole.
The framework for the modern computerized survey has been the
Greek Geodetic Survey that was set into place by the Greek
government in the early 1960's. The basis of the geodetic system
was an air photographic survey which was then used to create a
corresponding land survey with permanent geodetic markers. Each
cement marker has an x and y coordinate and an elevation. Four of
these geodetic pins are within the range of our survey and we have
used these as the basis of our field and laboratory work.
What this has meant is that all of our evidence has been
associated with the same coordinate system, regardless of its date
of excavation or publication, or the scale or size of the original
drawing. This has led to the discovery and definition of the Roman
colonial city plan. All of our data not surveyed in the field, which includes
actual-state drawings of excavations, some of which are no longer
visible, as well as some photographic evidence, has been entered
into the computer and carefully calibrated, if necessary, in order
to make it correspond accurately with the surveyed material in the
same coordinate system. This is one of the procedures where the
use of the computer is invaluable since the ability to draw on
hundreds of "layers", in differing colors, all within the same
master drawing, means that associations that would not necessarily
be possible otherwise, become obvious.
At the present time, we have close to 30 square kilometers of land entered onto the
computer in and around the ancient city. This area
includes the region within the Greek city circuit wall, including
Acrocorinth, as well as the broad and fertile plain to the north of
the ancient city as far as the Corinthian Gulf, most of which, as
will be discussed below, is found to be within the Greek Long
Walls. There is also additional land included in the present study
both to the east and the west of the Long Walls.
As the Corinth Excavations of the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens have
been underway since 1896 there exist a
great number of excavations from in and
around the Greek and Roman cities.
Each excavation has produced an actual- state
plan or a stone for stone drawing. One of
our current objectives is to digitize many of
these actual-state plans and to scale or
rotate them, where necessary, to fit the
precisely surveyed monuments. In this way
it has been possible to recreate, literally
block for block, the excavated remains of
the successive phases of the city. Each of
the actual-state drawings is retained as an
independent entity in our drawing archive
and then can be imported into the larger
survey drawing, when needed. In this way,
a very precise physical site survey is
combined with accurate stone for stone
actual-state drawings of the site. There exist
now over 50 actual-state plans that have
been carefully digitized, representing
different structures and buildings throughout
the ancient city. The goal will be
to complete the stone for stone drawings of
the entire excavated city.