Agora Report: 1936 ΚΚ
Title:   ΚΚ Excavation Report 1936
Author:   Dorothy Burr Thompson
Abstract:   Section ΚΚ, the area inside the modern fence around the so-called Theseion, was cleared to bedrock in order to determine the entire history of that portion of Kolonos Agoraios. Excavation revealed that the hill is naturally steeper than its modern contour, which is the product of much leveling and filling. It was discovered that the area in earlier times was used for burials, and down to the early fifth century B.C. the hill must have been uninhabited. Then simple houses and workshops, chiefly dealing with metal, were built. The filling of a pit provided extremely fine fragments from red figure and black figure vases, as well as ostraka.
The foundations of the temple were entirely exposed. Dumps of working chips of poros and marble from the time of the of construction of the temple, and the pottery found within them, suggest that work must have begun about the middle of the 5th century. B.C., while the work on the terrace continued well down into the 5th century B.C.
In Hellenistic times private houses were built outside the terrace wall, and some time after the middle of the second century B.C. the hill was included in the general scheme of enlarging the Agora region. A closed building, which purpose has not yet been determined, was set into the north side of the hill. Later, an exedra was built and a garden laid out. Two early Roman villas show that the region soon became a popular residential district. Three hundred years later the inhabitants were driven out by the Herulian invaders and everything except the temple was destroyed.
About the time of Justinian the temple turned Christian and a small settlement clustered around the church. By the 10th-11th A.D. centuries the flourishing settlement included sizable houses and a monastery, which fell into disuse after 1204. Late Byzantine remains were scanty. A fragment of the Turkish fortification wall of 1778 was cleared just to the west of the temple. The area had been filled in at about 1890 by the Greek authorities.
Date:   10 Feb-13 Mar 1936
Section:   ΚΚ
Keyword:   Checked
PDF:   1936 ΚΚ.pdf
References:   Report Pages (6)
Notebooks (8)
Notebook Pages (760)