habitat rupestre.pdf - Società Friulana di Archeologia

UNDERGROUND OR CAVE STRUCTURES IN GREECEM. N. Assimakopoulos; A. Tsolaki; E. I. Petraki; S. Bekakos; D. AsimakopoulosDepartment of Environmental Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GreeceThe Underground dwellings are most popular in regionswhere there are many natural caves such as Spain, Italy andGreece. The oldest and most simple form of residence in theAegean is what we call cave house, meaning the traditionalbuilding which is found inside the rocks (like carved grotas)with a domelike roof, a narrow facade and a narrow but longspace inside.According to their form underground dwellings acquire differentnames as well as aspects.. Underground or cave structuresin Greece have been used mainly for refuge, religion ordwelling uses but also for storage, water reservoirs and industrialactivities such as oil presses and wineries, up until thisera where now they are mostly used as homes or hotel rooms.Their use and occupation in some areas has been almost continuousfrom prehistory until today and most of them enabledpeople to hide from enemies for a long time. The combinationof the ground temperature alongside with the architecture ofthe dwellings provides a ‘comforting’ environment. Nonetheless,due to the morphology as well as the constructing materialsused for these underground dwellings, the presence ofParticulate Matter is ensured.1. The history of the Greek and Turkish RelationshipThe Greeks after the conquest of Constantinople were enslaved,poor and submissive to the Turks, who had a sacerdotalismstate based on the Muslim holy law, entirely foreign tothe Greek tradition, Orthodoxy and the Greek way of life. Thisdifference helped the Greeks to keep their Christian religionand not to get fully assimilated by the Turkish element. Besidesthe mentality was different, because greek people lovetheir roots and all the people. 1In this way they retained the Christian religion and helped inthe rescue of ancient Greek and Byzantine culture through thedialects, customs and traditions.Architectural features, that Ottomans took from the Greeks isthe dome, the use of screens (windows) to close the gaps, accordingto the Byzantine model, using stones and then usinga mixture of plaster and also the use of decorative elementsfrom the Hellenistic and Byzantine art.The Greeks borrowed some names of the Turkish language,which reveal parts of the traditional home of Asia Minor (ondas,hayatl), which are found also in the architecture of thetraditional houses of Macedonia and Thrace. 2Fig. 1 Santorini island95volumeRicerca_OK_2012-11-15.indd 95 16/11/2012 15:01:45