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Legrena -to- Agios Konstadinos, Greece

Exploring the Legrena Valley

August-September 2006

I spent a number of days exploring the valley area between Legrena & Agios Konstadinos (Ancient name Kamariza) this summer (2006) unsuccessfully trying to find the ancient helicoidal ore-washeries but made some very interesting finds - mostly related to silver & other mining activities that took place in this area - both in ancient and modern times. The results are diplayed by clicking the links above.

Part of my problem was that there were no tourist maps, let alone detailed archaeological or topographical maps available in Lavrio (either at the Municipality offices, the bookstores, or the kiosks). So I searched the Municipality (Dimos) offices located near the port and found a large aerial photograph of the Lavriotike area on the wall in an end office on the second floor. I took a number of digital photos which I subsequently joined together on my computer. I then created an overlay, identified and lined-in the roads & named them using my notes and car odometer records. Also using odometer records I created a scale which I added to the overlay.

Having created an accurate map I could now add a legend and symbols & then place symbols at the points on the map where I had located & recorded the location of items of interest (with reference to the car odometer readings along the roads in the Legrena valley).

It was only after this post-processing operation & further research & labeling of the map that I gained an understanding of the geography of the Legrena valley & where the the ancient helicoidal ore-washeries may be located. Finding anything in some areas of the valley is made quite difficult by the pine trees, gorse bushes, burnt trees covering the ground (from the fire) and rough, rocky ground, not to mention lack of easy reference points when exploring far off-road.

On future trips to the Legrena valley I hope to be able to locate new objects and add them to this map & to the photo files.