Conservator Nicol Anastasatou is in California to participate in the Colloquium of the International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaic.
On Sept 30, 2014 the work of lifting the Agonotheteion mosaic was presented to two elementary school classes by Corinth Excavations crew. The 5th and 6th grades of the local school of Ancient Corinth, a total of 52 children in two sessions, visited the site accompanied by their teachers. The meaning of the representation of the Athlete and Eutychia and the function of the room which the mosaic decorated in Roman Corinth were introduced by Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst. Nicol Anastasatou continued with a presentation on mosaic construction techniques while Charis Delis and Spyros Armenis, our mosaic conservators, detached one of the pieces for the children to see exactly how it is done. The children enjoyed handling the mosaic tesserae that were passed around and a good number of hands were raised when we asked the children if any of them wanted to become archaeologists and conservators.
All 37 panels of the mosaic have been completely and successfully detached thanks to the hard work of our conservation and workmen/workwomen team: Nicol Anastasatou, Charis Delis, Spyros Armenis, Eirini Lignou, Panos Kakouros, Panos Stamatis, Thanasis Sakellariou, and Soula Anastasopoulou. Additionally a headless togatus statue and a well-head were removed. Eirini Lignou, a student at the Department of Protection and Conservation of Cultural Heritage of TEI of Ionian Islands at Zakynthos, volunteered to help with the works of detachment. Kostas Karagiannis took photographs to create a time-lapse of the whole process with Corinth Excavations photographer, Petros Dellatolas. A generous grant from the Stockman Family Foundation the mosaic is making this work possible.
Currently Nicol is in California to participate in the Colloquium of the International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaics between October 16-18, 2014. She and Betsey A. Robinson (Vanderbilt University) will discuss the conservation in a talk entitled “A Roman mosaic in the South Stoa, Corinth, Greece: New Studies and Conservation Plans.”
