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interpretive geological details would have
Figure 5. A draping of the author’s geologic map of Mount Lykaion onto the modern landscape of
Agios Elias. The archaeological elements are pictured stylistically, for only the excavated remains
of foundations and spilled building blocks can be seen today. The exact location of the pathway
above the Agno fountain is speculative.
along the base of the upper plate of the
Lykaion thrust. Precipitation falling on
the upper reaches of the Agios Elias
klippe creates meteoric water that seeps
into the underlying porous, permeable
bedrock, including both the fractured,
karst-attacked limestone and the jointed
sandstone. Upon encountering the clay
seal, the flow of this descending meteoric
water is forced to shift laterally, “day-
lighting” just meters above the trace of
the Lykaion thrust.
The stoa was placed immediately adja-
cent to the trace of the Lykaion thrust (see oriented exactly parallel to the trend of the
Figs. 2 and 5). The long dimension of the
stoa (70 m) is not only oriented perfectly
parallel to the trace of the Lykaion thrust, interface between the Thick White
but the back wall of the stoa physically
abuts against the fault. The limestone
blocks for the back wall of the stoa are set (see Figs. 2 and 5). The strata of the rela-
against a scarp-like face that was exca-
vated through easily removed clayey-
gouge materials (sheared Chert Series
Beds Formation) in the uppermost part of
the lower plate of the thrust fault. The
limestone-block foundation of the stoa
was placed just a few meters below the
trace of the Lykaion thrust, and built upon
a limestone bedrock foundation of the flat-
lying Flysch Transition Beds Formation,
the uppermost unit of the lower plate of
the thrust.
The hippodrome (for horse racing and
chariot races) and stadium (located within
or just next to the hippodrome) constitute
8 GSA Today | December 2017
another illustration of the tight connection
between archaeology and geology (see
Figs. 2 and 5). The hippodrome of the
sanctuary measures ~250 m × 100 m, with
its long dimension oriented 348° (Romano
and Voyatzis, 2015). The flat space it occu-
pies is starkly anomalous to the steep slopes
and cliffs of the overall sanctuary and
environs! Mapping and analysis discerned
that the flat space owes its existence, geo-
logically, to a fortuitous intersection of
structural geology and stratigraphy. The
hippodrome resides along a broad, open,
12°-plunging syncline whose hinge line is
hippodrome. Moreover, the landscape sur-
face of the hippodrome coincides with the
Limestone Beds Formation (below) and the
Flysch Transition Beds Formation (above)
tively thin-bedded and incompetent Flysch
Transition Beds Formation has been
almost entirely eroded away at the hippo-
drome site, thus creating a stripped struc-
tural platform along and/or near the top of
the Thick White Limestone Beds
Formation. The added touch was partial
infilling of the shallow synclinal basin by
runoff-derived silt and clay alluvium
eroded from the flanks of the Agios Elias
klippe to the immediate south. The fine-
grained alluvial blanket imparted softness
to the track, amenable for the horse racing
and running races. Of course none of these
been known to the local people in charge
of the site, but it would have been obvious
that this soft flatland would have been per-
fect for the athletic games envisioned.
A bath complex lies just beyond the
northeast corner of the hippodrome. This
location is remote from the built structures
of the lower level (see Figs. 2 and 5). Yet
mapping reveals that its positioning is per-
fectly suited to tapping a local water
source. A sinkhole lies 120 m upslope
from the baths, and a collapse sinkhole
corridor connects the sinkhole to the back
of the baths. Outcrops between the back of
the bath and the sinkhole are marked by
conspicuous solution fluting.
DISCUSSION
On the tectonic scale, the geology, seis-
mology, and geomorphology of Mount
Lykaion combine to exert grandeur and
power to the sanctuary. Its elevation is a
testimony to the residual crustal buoy-
ancy achieved through the presence of
anomalously thick crust fashioned by tec-
tonic inversion and crustal shortening of
the Pindos basin. Its topographic relief is
a product of the active normal faulting
that is causing collapse of basins and
severe downcutting by drainages. Its
earthquake activity, active faulting, fis-
suring, and landsliding are derived from
contemporary crustal stretching. On the
scale of the Agios Elias klippe, there is an
intimate relationship between archaeol-
ogy, structural geology, stratigraphy, and
geomorphology.
I introduced and framed this article with
an emphasis on tectonic klippen, even
though the salient cult-suited geologic
resources of Agios Elias can be presented
without much reference to klippen (Davis,
2009, 2014). But recognizing Agios Elias
as a klippe, i.e., as an outlier, is fundamen-
tal to understanding the provenance of
the Sanctuary of Zeus. Provenance can be
defined as “the beginning of something’s
existence.”
Interpreting the beginning of the exis-
tence of the Late Bronze Age Zeus-cult
worship on Mount Lykaion is very chal-
lenging, because so many factors and
variables must be taken into consider-
ation. I simply wish to add another con-
sideration to that list. From a regional tec-
tonic perspective, I believe that Agios
Elias likely attracted attention for ritual
activity in honor of Zeus because it