The houses
Excavations
in the settlement of Rentina have brought to light important information about
the inhabitants’ homes and workshops. Most homes abut the wall to the south and
west, despite the advice given by Kekavmenos in his book Strategikon that a clear walkway should be maintained behind the
wall for the free passage of soldiers and castle defenders. Free standing
houses, i.e. those not in contact with other buildings, were built anywhere the
terrain permitted.
A
narrow paved road ran from the west gate, widening immediately after it to run
past the houses erected on the hill base and on in front of others abutting the
southern wall to end at the acropolis. A dirt road began at the point where the
main road widened and ran to the northern part of the wall, while a third alley
extended to the upper terrace.
The
houses were rectangular, single-roomed affairs with one or two floors covered
with saddleback or pitched roofs facing the street. They were low buildings, lower
than the wall transepts. The ground floor homes served both as living
quarters and workshops. When traces of exterior stairs indicated the existence
of an upper floor it was used as a triklinos for the inhabitants, with
the ground floor serving as a warehouse, store or workshop. The existence of
jars wedged in the ground indicates that the lower rooms were used as
warehouses. Rust, nails, tools, a number of vessels and, in two cases, workshop
furnaces indicate that the ground floor housed forges or glass and ceramics
workshops. The upper and ground floors would have been separated by a wooden
floor. The external staircase led to a wooden balcony above, which rested on
beams and had a loggia facing the street. The windows were single-light
and arched.
Surveys
outside the settlement walls point to the existence of houses on the west and
south hill slopes, which may be those referred to in 13th and 14th
century documents from Mount Athos monasteries.
Glossary (3)
transept:
aisle built perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of a church; an elongated transverse space formed between the nave and the eastern wall of the temple, in front of the apse.
tridinium or triklinos:
reception or banquet area.
single-lobed or single-light window:
window with a single opening that forms an arc at the top.
Information Texts (1)
The settlement:
The naturally fortified mound of Rentina is located
approximately 75km northeast of Thessalonica, south of the Richios River and
next to the ancient Via Egnatia. Excavations carried out on the hill and its
environs have revealed traces of human presence since Neolithic times; on the
basis of their construction and associated finds, the building walls and abutments
unearthed in the southwest section of the castle date to the Hellenistic period.
Rentina lies close to the settlement of Arethousa, which went into decline from
the 6th century onwards. According to one interpretation, Rentina
may take its name from the nearby staging post (mutatio) called Peridipidis
(genitive: Peripidinis).
The fortifications at Rentina are
reasonably well preserved, as are the impressive remains of a settlement that
may well be Artemision
Castle, referred to by
Procopius in his work On Buildings as
having acquired fortifications in the time of Justinian. Nevertheless, research
findings to date indicate that the first fortifications, which included water
cisterns capable of supporting a small guard, should be dated to the mid-4th
century. Under Justinian the wall was reinforced with towers and equipped with
a large cistern on the level ground in the citadel.
In mid-Byzantine times the wall
was rebuilt to serve as fortifications for a settlement founded in the first
half-decade of the 10th century, when it was seat of the Diocese of
Lete and Rentina. At that time a church was built over the ruins of the then
defunct cistern on the citadel, together with accommodation for the bishop and
his retinue. By the end of the same century several houses had been erected in
the lower town, following the line of the old wall and on stepped terraces. A
third wall then surrounded the settlement from the most vulnerable section to
the west, where a tower was built. Wood remains from the interior of this have
been carbon dated to around 980 AD.
After 1204 the settlement was
surrendered to the rulers of the Frankish Kingdom of Thessalonica. As indicated
by the large number of contemporary coins found in excavations, they appear to
have installed a permanent guard, with the obvious aim of controlling the Plain
of Thessalonica and the Strymonic
Gulf. In 1242 John
Vatatzes took the castle while marching on Thessalonica, since, as George
Acropolites would have it, the Franks abandoned their position without a fight.
News of the inhabitants of Rentina in the 13th and 14th
century is contained in legal documents held by monasteries on Mount Athos, where
mention is made of lands, mills and houses in the area. In the first half-decade
of the 14th century a small cruciform church was built inside the
eastern enclosure, possibly in connection with an infant and child cemetery. In
the mid-14th century the Metropolitan of Thessalonica granted the vacant
bishopric of Rentina to the Bishop of Platamonas, who was indicted for suspect
ordainments but acquitted at the synod of 1363. From around the same period it appears that
the inhabitants gradually abandoned the settlement, which passed successively into
the hands of Serbs, Greeks and then Turks. The arrival of Turkish Yuruks in the
area probably led the greater part of the population to seek the safety of
larger centres, the most prominent of which was Volvi. The few coins excavated
from that time up until the mid-16th century are illustrative of the
decline of the once flourishing settlement at Rentina, confirming the existence
of a small-scale farm on the same site.
Bibliography (3)
1. Μουτσόπουλος Ν., Ο βυζαντινός οικισμός της Ρεντίνας, 1996
2. Μουτσόπουλος Ν.Κ., Ρεντίνα ΙΙΙ, Το Βυζαντινό Κάστρο της Μυγδονικής Ρεντίνας, Οι κατοικίες και τα εργαστήρια του οικισμού, 2002
3. Μουτσόπουλος Ν., Κοσμική αρχιτεκτονική στα Βαλκάνια 1300-1500 και η διατήρησή της, Thessaloniki, 1997
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