International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Evangelos Papathanassiou
Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Athletics, 
Ephorate of Antiquities of the Periphery of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Early Christian and Byzantine Sculpture on Samothrace
An island possesses the distinctive particularity of a “closed” archaeological unit. The jigsaw 
puzzle of its past relics, irrespectively of their epoch, especially regarding the marble members, 
could have been re-distributed in many ways through all these centuries and become henceforth 
more and more complicated. However, its pieces, with the exemption of those that have already 
decomposed into lime, remain on it waiting for us to combine them. 
The vast majority of the architectural ecclesiastical sculpture on Samothrace, dated throughout 
the medieval era, is to be found and seen, scattered as it is, all over the productive zone of the island, 
in and around the hundreds of ruined small churches, the majority of which has been erected in the 
2
nd
half of the 14
th
c., distributed according to a certain detected model of space organization. A very 
small amount of it has been unsystematically collected and safeguarded either at the local Museum 
or in a nearby curatorial establishment. 
The stock of the Early Christian sculpture on the island derives from its six derelict or vanished 
basilicas, the two of them already known prior to our survey, two more located by our survey, 
plus other two the existence of which we presume. Precisely, the majority of this Early Christian 
recycling material might come from the three of these basilicas: the one partially excavated in 
Palaiápolis, and the two destroyed ones: this in Kamariōtissa and the other in Thérma. In one case, 
this of the basilica in Palaiápolis, we have managed to detect in various sites all over the island many 
architectural members, such as columns, capitals, imposts, bases, presumed with almost certainty 
that they have been sprung from its original ensemble. 
Comparatively, less to be found (or recognized) are the members (mainly panels and capitals) 
attributed to either the Transitional or the Middle-Byzantine Eras. Some of them are to be seen still 
scattering around in the few detected middle-byzantine church or monastic sites on the island, as 
is the case of the Middle-Byzantine basilica of “St. George” in Striverós of Apánō Meriá. A local 
Middle-Byzantine sculpture workshop has been ascertained beyond any doubt.
A cross study of all these Early Christian and Middle-Byzantine scatters could come down to 
interrelations and groupings, as many of them derive from the same, yet unrevealed, buildings.
A re-composition and mingling of Early Christian and Middle-Byzantine members is to be no-
ticed in the Palaeologean Era. The local tradition is carried on in the late byzantine era, as a tradition of 
ashlar-masonries, mainly for the curved parts of the churches: vaults, apses, and arches. And beyond 
that: A multitude of bas-reliefs spolia – drums, fragments of architraves with fascias, triglyphs, gable 
cornices, guttae, simas, capitals, pilaster-capitals, sepulchral altars, gravestones, water-basins pedes-
tals, inscriptions – hailed from the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, are found today dispersed inside the 
devastated Paleologean churches, mixed with Early-Christian and Byzantine marble members. Few of 
the them are being brought to be embedded, either modified and re-chiselled or not. Most of them are 
just laid down, used simply as offerings, revealing a part of the amazing re-casting of the Antiquity by 
the medieval man, an inseparable and essential part of the Samothracian historical landscape.

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