Athenian Agora – serie

This is the last of five volumes presenting inscriptions discovered in the Athenian Agora between 1931 and 1967. Published here are inscriptions on monuments commemorating events or victories, on statues or other representations erected to honor individuals and deities, and on votive offerings to divinities. Most are dated to between the 4th century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., but a few survive from the Archaic and Late Roman periods. A final section contains monuments that are potentially, but not certainly, dedicatory in character, and a small number of grave markers omitted from Agora XVII. Each of the 773 catalogue entries includes a description of the object inscribed, bibliography, a transcription of the Greek text, and commentary. There are photographs of each piece of which no adequate illustration has yet been published, including newly joined fragments. The volume concludes with concordances and six indexes.

The three types of inscription from the Athenian Agora presented in this volume are all concerned with important civic matters. Part I, by Gerald V. Lalonde, includes all the horoi found in the excavations; most of them had been brought into the area for reuse at a later period. An introductory essay discusses the various function that the horoi served, whether as markers of actual boundaries or private records of security for debt. The various types are illustrated in photographs. In Part II Merle K. Langdon publishes all the known records of the Athenian poletai, a board of magistrates charged with letting contracts for public works, leasing the state-owned silver mines and the privilege of collecting taxes, and leasing or selling confiscated property. The catalogue is preceded by an account of the nature of these transactions and the history of the poletai. Part III, by Michael B. Walbank, presents the records of leases for public and sacred lands, which once stood in the Agora; the documents are now in both the Agora and the Epigraphical Museum in Athens. The discussion considers the history and the terms of the leases. The three sections are followed by combined concordances and indices, with photographs of all stones not previously published.

The Church of the Holy Apostles stands at an important crossroads in the southeast corner of the area of the ancient Agora. The earliest church on the site, built over a wall of the 5th-century B.C. Mint and the foundations of the Roman Nymphaeum, is here dated to the last quarter of the 10th century on the basis of its plan and details. The original plan was revealed as a tetraconch cross-in-square with dome on pendentives carried on arches supported by four freestanding columns, the west of the four apses penetrating into the narthex. Fifteen tombs of this first period were excavated under the floor of the church proper and the narthex. In a second period, probably in the late 17th or early 18th century, repairs after damage from the 1687 fighting made changes in the narthex and dome and the interior was covered with paintings. War in 1826 again caused damage which was repaired in Period III with further changes and additions. Finally in 1876-1882 (Period IV) the west end was again rebuilt and the last vestiges of the west apse removed. The architectural type is studied in relation to other churches in Greece, and the restoration is described. The plates give the author's photos of the structure before, during, and after restoration and drawings of elevations, sections, and plans.

The scraps of pottery on which were written the names of candidates for ostracism are one of the most intriguing pieces of evidence for ancient democracy found in the Athenian Agora. This book is a complete catalogue and discussion of these sherds. Chapter One discusses the history of ostracism in Athens with brief remarks about the candidates for this procedure. Chapter Two concentrates on the physical evidence of the ostraka, their identification, appearance, and content. Chapter Three presents the groups in which most of them were found; their distribution is indicated on a plan of the excavation area. Chapter Four is the catalogue of 1,145 ostraka, arranged by candidates. To these pieces are appended the 191 ostraka, almost all nominating Themistokles, found by Oscar Broneer in a well on the North Slope of the Acropolis. A large number of the Agora ostraka are illustrated with line drawings, a representative selection with photographs.

The Stoa of Attalos now covers the remains several centuries of previous occupation. Mycenaean and Protogeometric burials represent the early use of the area. By the Late Geometric period, the presence of a few wells indicates a shift to domestic occupation; others containing 6th-century B.C. material suggest the presence of workshops and commercial activity as well as houses. The earliest physical remains are those of an Archaic altar; some rubble structures may have been hastily built by refugees during the Peloponnesian War. At the end of the 5th century B.C., a group of public buildings was constructed, perhaps to house some of the lawcourts. About 300 B.C., these were replaced by an imposing structure, the Square Peristyle, which could have housed four lawcourts simultaneously, each with a jury of 500. Still unfinished when it was dismantled in the first quarter of the second century B.C., its materials were carefully reused in other projects, especially in South Stoa II. The evidence for these centuries is now limited to the meticulous records of the excavators and the finds now stored in the Stoa of Attalos, where some few remains still in situ are visible in the basement. The author's success in making a coherent and orderly presentation rests on the care and diligence of the excavators as well as his own painstaking search through the records. The physical reconstruction is accompanied by a catalogue of architectural blocks; the discussion of the chronology is supported by the stratigraphic evidence and a catalogue of pottery.

An archaeological study of the City Eleusinion in Athens, the sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter and the city terminus for the annual Eleusinian Mysteries. The book presents the stratigraphical evidence from excavations of a part of the sanctuary (conducted in the 1930s and 1959-1960), the remains of the Temple of Triptolemos, a Hellenistic stoa, and a propylon, and contains extensive descriptions of the context pottery, a discussion of the ritual vessel plemochoe, and catalogues of inscriptions, sculpture, and architectural pieces from the sanctuary. There is a survey of the topography of the sanctuary and its environs on the North Slope of the Acropolis, and a discussion of its relationship to Eleusis and its position as a landmark within the city of Athens. Since a significant portion of the sanctuary still lies unexcavated under the modern city, the book includes a detailed assessment of the only evidence known so far for the various phases of use of the sanctuary, from the earliest evidence of the 7th century B.C. to the late antique period.

Examples of Roman period red-gloss and red-slip pottery (terra sigillata) found during excavations in the Athenian Agora form the focus of this volume. These fine wares, like the other table wares of the first seven centuries A.D. discussed here, were all imported--a very different situation to earlier periods where Athens was known as a great ceramic-making center, and perhaps the result of mass destruction of potters' workshops during the Sullan sack of 86 B.C. While the image of a demolished pottery industry is tragic, the consequent conglomeration of fine-wares from many parts of the Roman empire in one city makes the Athenian Agora a tremendous source of comparanda for archaeologists working all round the Mediterranean. Written by the world's leading expert on Roman pottery, this huge catalogue illustrating and identifying multiple shapes and types of decoration will therefore be an essential reference book.

This is the third and final volume in the publication of the Hellenistic pottery unearthed by the American excavations in the Athenian Agora. The first installment (Agora XXII) was devoted to the moldmade bowls and the second (Agora XXIX) to the remainder of the fine ware. The third presents the plain wares, including household pottery, oil containers, and cooking pottery. In all, about 1,400 Hellenistic vessels in these categories have been entered into the excavation record, which are represented here in a catalogue of 847 objects. The study constructs a typology, based on both form and fabric, and a chronology for these ceramics, using the fact that many of the pieces were found in closed contexts like wells. Finally, the author discusses the possible functions of the ceramic shapes found, and uses them to reconstruct some of the domestic and industrial activities of Hellenistic Athenians. While it documents the pottery assemblage of one site, this book will be an essential reference tool for archaeologists around the Mediterranean.

The authors present 404 glass vessels excavated in the Athenian Agora. Although mostly fragmentary, examples are given of almost every type of glass known from the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, and representative finds from Byzantine and later times. The remarkable value of this contribution to the history of glass is that so many of the fragments from the Agora can be dated by context. The catalogued objects are discussed by period and shape with extensive descriptions of the various techniques of their manufacture. An appendix to the volume presents evidence for a possible Late Roman glass furnace in the Agora. The wide scope of glass vessel types presented in this volume will provide an essential reference book for those interested in glass known from antiquity.

Funerary Sculpture is the first volume on sculpture from the Agora in over 50 years, bringing together all the sculpted funerary monuments of the Athenian Agora, Classical through Roman periods, which were discovered during excavation from 1931 through 2009. The wide chronological span allows the author to trace changes in funerary monuments, particularly the break in customs that took place in 317 B.C., and the revival of figured monuments in the Roman period. The study consists of three essays followed by a catalogue of 389 objects. The author places the Agora sculptural fragments within the greater context of Attic funerary sculpture, moving from a general to a specific treatment of the funerary sculpture. The first essay is an overview of the study of Attic types of sculpture; the second discusses the specific features of funerary sculpture from Athens and Attica; and the third examines the characteristics of the funerary sculptures found in the Agora, thereby forming an introduction to the catalogue that follows. The catalogue includes stelai and naiskoi with female and/or male figures, sirens, decorative anthemia, funerary vessels, lekythoi, loutrophoroi, animals, mensa, columnar monuments, and more. There are separate indexes of museums, names, demes, places, and findspots, as well as a general index.

This volume, the first of two dealing with the Early Iron Age deposits from the Athenian Agora, publishes the tombs from the end of the Bronze Age through the transition from the Middle Geometric to Late Geometric period. An introduction deals with the layout of the four cemeteries of the period, the topographical ramifications, periodization, and a synthesis of Athens in the Early Iron Age. Individual chapters offer a complete catalogue of the tombs and their contents, a full analysis of the burial customs and funerary rites, and analyses of the pottery and other small finds. Maria A. Liston presents the human skeletal material, Deborah Ruscillo presents the faunal remains, and Sara Strack contributes to the pottery typology and catalogue. In an appendix, Eirini Dimitriadou provides an overview of the locations of burial activity in the wider city.

Ancient Thasos was renowned for its wine, which was heavily exported in ceramic amphoras across the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Once a principal market in this trade, the Athenian Agora is now home to one of the largest collections of stamped amphora fragments from the island of Thasos, including 723 items dating from the beginning of the 4th to the late 2nd century B.C. This volume presents the Thasian amphora stamps of the Agora collection, contextualized in a broader discussion of their interpretation and chronology. The core contributions of the volume are an improved chronology of the officials mentioned on the stamps, based on a reassessment of archaeological evidence from the Agora and beyond, and an innovative study of the engravers who made the stamping dies. This volume also provides a critical review of the complex and still poorly understood system of control over ceramic production that underlies the stamping practice. A quantitative study based on 28,030 Thasian stamps highlights the major trends in the Thasian wine trade and offers insight into the role of Athens in this trade.

This volume includes all of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman votive reliefs found to date in the excavations of the Athenian Agora. In addition to providing a catalogue of the reliefs arranged according to their subjects, the author treats the history of their discovery, their production and workmanship, iconography, and function. A large part of the study is devoted to discussion of the original contexts of the reliefs in an attempt to determine their relationship to shrines in the vicinity and to investigate what they can tell us about the character of religious activity in the vicinity of the Agora. The work will be an important reference for historians of Greek art as well as of Greek religion.