Chora and eschatia of the Greek apoikia Kroton (South Italy)

The city-states of ancient Greece organised the economic and cultural landscape surrounding the urban core (asty) in two areas, the chora and eschatia, each with their own specific functional purposes and ideological qualities. The Greek chora was a highly managed settled landscape where agriculture, animal husbandry, quarrying/mining, and other economic activities took place and rural sanctuaries abounded. The eschatia was unmanaged and perceived as a potentially dangerous frontier zone or wilderness, fit for lumbering, pastoralism and hunting. It was perceived as the transitional area to inland communities and ritually marked. While these concepts structured the spatial perception of the Greek oikumene, i.e the inhabited, or the habitable world, there are but few archaeological case studies that engage with the articulation of these concepts at the scale of the single polis. Topographical inventories and field surveys, however, offer the possibility to explore the concepts of chora and eschatia ´on the ground´. In this paper, the chora and eschatia of the Greek apoikia of Kroton, founded by Achaeans at the end of the eight century BC on the Ionian coast in Calabria is defined in relation to the inland communities. To be able to study chora and eschatia as dynamic entities, a geodatabase holding relevant archaeological evidence was compiled covering the eight to fourth centuries BC, i.e. from the foundation to the demise of the asty of Kroton. This allowed the preliminary mapping and description of four distinct phases in the territorial organisation of the Greek polis of Kroton