Εμφανίζονται 11 τίτλοι με αναζήτηση: Αρχαιολογικοί χώροι στην ευρύτερη περιοχή: "ΠΟΛΥΓΥΡΟΣ Δήμος ΧΑΛΚΙΔΙΚΗ" .
ΟΛΥΝΘΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΧΑΛΚΙΔΙΚΗ
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: Irregularly planned house near the Agora of Olynthus
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Rather irregular plan with rooms ranged irregularly around a small courtyard;
built against the western fortification wall of the city.
Other Notes:
The southern three houses in Row A, houses A 11 - A 13, are irregular in plan
but rather similar to one another. Like the other houses in Row A, house A 11
is larger than the average Olynthian house, measuring 17.7 x 21.3 m, including
the alley between it and A 12, and is built against the west fortification wall
of the city. It is irregular in plan, consisting of a series of architecturally
unspecialized rooms arranged around a courtyard (g), with no kitchen, andron,
or other specialized spaces. The house has no pastas; all of its rooms seem fairly
enclosed. Half of the rooms are roughly the same size: a, d, e, h, i and j are
all about 4.9 x 4.5 m; the other rooms somewhat smaller. The rooms are arranged
in a more hierarchical fashion than those of "typical" houses: for instance, the
only entrance into room e is through rooms h and i, and the only entrance into
room k is through l. The walls are unplastered and unpainted; the floors all earth.
The entrance to the house is not certain, since its east wall was not preserved
above its foundations, but was probably through the "alley," room m. There is
no evidence for a second floor. The house thus shows a less organized and "typical"
architectural arrangement of space than the more regular houses at Olynthus. To
judge from the distribution of artifacts in the rooms, the use of space was less
organized as well. Some activities are restricted to specific rooms, for instance
weaving in room d, where 25 loomweights were found. But other types of artifacts
and activities seem distributed all over the house. The rooms in the northwestern
part of the house, for instance, contained storage amphoras in roughly equal numbers:
five rooms (c, d, e, h, and k) each contained two amphoras, while a sixth (i)
contained four. Whatever these amphoras were used to store, no single space seems
to have been designated for storage, but instead that function was distributed
through many rooms. Likewise, no room has a great concentration of vases: tablewares
are found, in moderate numbers, in rooms e, f, g, h, k, l and m, but there is
no specific room where household equipment was stored, as there was, for instance,
in house A iv 9 or the House of Many Colors . Other notable artifacts in the house
include a lower grindstone which was found in room h; "pithos lids or table tops"
in e and h; a louter base in b and a louter and base in j. And in the western
part of the court was found a cache of at least eight plastic vases and terracottas,
including a head of Dionysus and a faun head, two male heads, a female mask, and
three female figures. Such caches are not uncommon in the courts and porticoes
of houses at Olynthus. Finally, this house, like its neighbors A 12 and A 13,
contained a large number of coins. Room j had a hoard of 10 bronze coins, and
the whole house contained some 96 coins, including six silver coins; this is second
only to house A iv 9 , which contained 100 coins. A sales inscription (or, more
precisely, an inscription recording a "sale on condition that the seller may release
the property from the buyer's claim on it," or a "security in the form of a conditional
sale," one of the many roundabout ways the Greeks negotiated loans) was found
in the courtyard, recording that this house was used as security on a 2000 dr.
loan to Archidamus, son of Metrichus. The inscription lists the neighbors as Polyxenus
the son of Telagrus and Pythion, the son of Diodorus; Polyxenus and Pythion also
served as witnesses to the transaction. It is notable that among the magistrates
of the Chalcidic mint were men named Archidamus and Polyxenus. If these are the
same men as those named in this inscription, it is interesting that they were
neighbors, and that these prominent men would own such irregular and architecturally
undistinguished houses.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 2 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: Well-built house near the Agora of Olynthus, with three
shops.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Domestic portion of house fairly regular in plan, with very small paved court,
pastas, kitchen complex and storerooms in SW; unusual "light well" (?) entrance;
three large shops take up east part of house; second story with separate entrance
from lower.
Other Notes:
A iv 9 lies in as the center of downtown Olynthus, adjoining the agora and opening
onto Avenue B. It was well preserved under between 1 and 1.8 m of fill. The hill
slopes off to the east here, and the the eastern part of the house lies at a lower
level than the west, the house being terraced at two levels. The eastern third
of the house, facing onto Avenue B, was taken up by three shops (d, f, l), of
roughly equal size. The rest of the house conforms more or less to standard layout:
a small court, a pastas extending the width of the domestic area of the house;
one "North Room" (a) and an interesting suite (b-c); a kitchen complex south of
the court and two rooms, g and i, in the southwest corner of the house. The construction
is better than usual, with drafted ashlar masonry on the east and part of the
north wall, two rooms with painted walls, and a number of stone architectural
elements. The entrance to the house leads into room c. The door was of the prothyron
type, whose four bases are still preserved; but extending from the southeastern
base is another series of worked stones. This is probably a stairbase, but here
opening to the outside of the house, rather than to the interior. The upper floor,
therefore, may have been either a separate dwelling with its own entrance from
the street, or some other kind of separate space. The pastas was originally divided
from the court by a colonnade, but the intercolumniations were later partly walled
off, perhaps to a height of only about a meter or so, leaving a doorway just west
of the central pillar. Its walls were painted red with a white baseboard. Against
the south wall of the pastas, just east of the door into room g, was found a terracotta
louter base in situ, whose basin was found across the room near the door to room
a. A storage amphora rested nearby against the south wall, as at the House of
Many Colors, and perhaps for the same purpose, to hold water for washing. However,
there were no portable altars in the pastas, and this louter was probably used
for domestic washing and other tasks rather than for ritual purification. There
is less evidence of furniture here than at some other houses at Olynthus, but
the distribution of finds near the walls suggests that the east and west walls
had shelves or other furniture: part of a red-figure pelike was found in the northeast
corner, a one-handled cup in the southeast corner, while three lamps were found
against the west wall. Three shallow bowls were also found in the pastas, as well
as three loomweights and a spindle whorl, a swinging handle attachment from a
bronze vessel, and seven coins. While the pastas does not show the quantity and
variety of finds and so, presumably, of activities as some others, its uses seem
in general similar, including washing and shelving of some domestic vases and
equipment. Room a, painted red with a buff baseboard, was apparently used for
weaving: thirty-one loomweights, or about one loom's worth, were found in the
room. The room also contained a mold for a terracotta figurine -- another was
found in the court, and it is possible that figurines were produced in this house.
Rooms b and c probably formed a light well like those at the House of Many Colors
and the Villa of the Bronzes. There were few finds in either of these rooms. In
the southeast corner of room c was a peculiar hollow rectangle of stone and mudbrick,
plastered in places, and drained by an open drain of reused rooftiles, which,
at least as preserved, did not continue all the way out the door of the house.
Graham suggested first that the rectangle might be the foundation of a cupboard,
and later that it might have supported the stairs to the upper story; but it is
far too flimsy to have supported the weight of a staircase. Within this rectangle
were found the base of a marble louter, standing upright, and a portable altar.
The reconstruction of the structure is problematic, but it might have formed or
supported a kind of domestic shrine, the louter here used for ritual rather than
general domestic washing, and the drain, which in any case could not have handled
large amounts of runoff, intended for liquid offerings. The assemblage might thus
be similar to those in the pastades of the House of Many Colors and the Villa
of the Bronzes. The court of this house was rather small, but well cobbled and
drained by a pipe leading out the front door of the house. Pithoi were set into
the floor in two corners, to catch water from the gutters. A marble louter base,
inscribed --]OS --]ENE --]ENIOS, was set against the north wall of the court;
and nearby was a plastic vase of a Silenus. Another mold for a terracotta figurine
was found in the court, the second in this house, suggesting that the owner was
in some way connected with coroplasty.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 3 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: House on the North Hill of Olynthus, with shops and olive
press.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Domestic portion of house fairly regular in plan, with courtyard, pastas, kitchen
complex. Three shops take up much of the eastern part of the house. Probably had
a second story.
Other Notes:
House A v 10 is rather similar in plan to house A iv 9 . It has a well-defined
pastas and courtyard, a kitchen complex, and three shops fronting onto Avenue
B. It may have had a second story: a small gap in the pavement of the court against
the west wall might once have held a stone base supporting a stair ascending to
the south. The house was entered through double doors on Street v, like those
in the Villa of the Bronzes: the entrance on the right is about 2.1 m. broad,
probably for carts and wheeled traffic, and the second, narrower door on the left,
only 1.2 m. broad, was probably for pedestrians. Another door led into the shop
(f) on Avenue B. The open court was fairly small, only 3.5 x 3.8 m., and was drained
to the south by a drain made of stone slabs. South of the paved court was an unpaved
area which must have been a covered exedra, its roof supported by a single base.
The area northeast of the court was also roofed. Together, these three areas seem
to have seen a wide range of activities. The court or exedra contained a large
fragment of an olive crusher or orbis. The stone was broken and there was no trace
of the rest of the crushing apparatus; but while we cannot be completely certain
that this stone was part of a complete machine set up here, the wide double doorway
into the house, appropriate for carts and heavy loads and found in many houses
where agricultural products were processed, and the findspot of the piece on the
floor of the court or exedra, where such a machine would most likely have been
set up, help confirm the significance of this fragment. Probably the less damaged
pieces were salvaged and reused after the destruction. Two terracotta louters
found here might also have been used in olive crushing. Two groups of loomweights,
one containing 23 weights, the other 38, document weaving somewhere in the house,
but the room(s) in which they were found were not recorded. Unlike some houses
at Olynthus such as the House of Many Colors or the Villa of the Bronzes , the
pastas of house A v 10 contained only a few objects, and may therefore not have
been used for such a range of activities. Perhaps the covered exedra, being architecturally
similar to the pastas, took on some of its functions. The kitchen complex (rooms
b, c and the unlabeled bathroom) is slightly irregular in design, the wall dividing
the bath from the flue being skew, and the flue having a door into the kitchen
rather than into the pastas or court, as is usually the case. As so often, the
kitchen contained only a few, rather miscellaneous finds: a fragment of a bronze
grater, a lamp, a saucer, a few pieces of hardware. A number of fragments of a
bathtub were found in the bath and more in the flue. As in house A iv 9 , the
eastern part of the house was taken up by three shops fronting on Avenue B. The
central shop had doors to the street, to the domestic part of the house and to
the shop to its north, while the southern shop had only a door to the street.
The connection between the main house and the northern two shops shows that these
at least belonged to the owner of the house. This conclusion is supported by the
sales inscription. The northern shop (d) contained a hoard of ten bronze coins
and sixteen other scattered coins, not from the hoard. As in the shops of A iv
9 , this is a large number of coins for a single room. A bronze stylus is perhaps
also evidence of trade. In addition, however, the room contained a number of pieces
of jewelry and vases. The middle shop contained few finds, and was perhaps more
of an entrance and anteroom than a shop per se. The southern shop, however, contained
two more styli, eight coins, and a lead weight, an assemblage similar to that
of the northern shop. The shop also contained a number of tablewares and coarse
vases, seven loomweights, a large terracotta female head, a knife and a spearhead,
and other domestic and miscellaneous objects. A sales inscription found in room
g records that Dionysius, son of Ithyras bought this house, together with the
storeroom (ho pitheon) and "all the things that bring income" (t?a? m?i[sth]ophora
panta), for 5300 drachmas. The price is the highest documented value for a house
at Olynthus or, for that matter, in the entire Chalcidice; other houses at Olynthus
sold for between 410 and 4500 dr., and a roughly comparable house, the House of
Zoilos , sold in the same year for less than a quarter of this price, 1200 dr.
No pithoi were found in the house, and so the storeroom cannot be identified:
either they were salvaged from the house after the destruction, or removed between
the time the house was sold and when it was finally destroyed, or perhaps the
pitheon was located outside the house. But the reason for the unusually high price
is probably the inclusion of t?a? m?i[sth]ophora, which might include the three
income-bringing shops on the east side of the house and the olive-crushing equipment
in the court of the house. The fact that they were specifically mentioned in this
sale shows that in other circumstances they might not be included with the house
-- shops might be rented out or sold, and other equipment sold separately -- but
included with the house, they probably increased its value considerably. Domestic
functions are not as well documented in this house as in some others, perhaps
because it was excavated somewhat hastily. But the scarcity of equipment in the
pastas and kitchen complex is probably not due simply to poor preservation or
excavation; it rather suggests a different form of organization. Instead of the
pastas, the court and roofed exedra took over some domestic functions. The site(s)
of weaving are uncertain, but the household certainly produced its own cloth,
as was normal in a Greek household. Most interesting, however, is the variety
of other sorts of work that went on in the house. An olive crusher is too great
an investment for most houses to have made or needed; just like today, only a
few specialists in the community actually owned such expensive machinery, and
most olive growers would have rented time on the equipment when their olives were
harvested (Forbes & Foxhall conservatively estimate one press per ten households
in antiquity [Expedition 21 (1978) 37-47]). This house, like a number of houses
in Row A and elsewhere, seems to have specialized in such agricultural processing,
and been built accordingly, with wide double doors able to accommodate carts and
beasts of burden. The absence of a press to extract the oil from the crushed olive
pulp is not too surprising, since these could be made of wood and leave few traces.
The shops might have been part of this agricultural processing or perhaps involved
with another side of the family business. The sales inscription associates ho
pitheon with t?a? m?i[sth]ophora panta and it is tempting to speculate that one
of the shops served as a storeroom for olives or oil (its pithoi later salvaged),
and so could belong with the olive-crushing enterprise. In any case, these features
seem to have been considered among the most important in the house, enough to
rate special mention in the sales inscription, and probably to increase the price
of the house well above average.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 5 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: House on the North Hill of Olynthus, with three shops facing
Avenue B.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Domestic portion of house somewhat irregular, with very small court, small "pastas"-like
room, possible kitchen-complex. Three shops take up much of the eastern part of
the house.
Other Notes:
This house was, in its final form, rather irregular in plan, with a very small
court (i), a short "pastas," a kitchen complex, and a number of rather irregular
rooms which do not fit the standard Olynthian design. It seems to have been remodelled,
though: in the walls between f, j, e and i were built three reused olive crushers
and a reused threshold block. The house was therefore probably more regular in
its original form. Unlike most of the other houses on its block, it had two stories,
with a stairbase in the pastas (room e). The small paved area (i) seems to have
been the only part of the house open to the sky. In the northwest corner was a
jar set into the floor for catching rainwater, like the two in house A iv 9 ;
there were no other finds. The area to the south of this was not paved, and two
stones along its southern side could have served as rough pillar bases supporting
a roof over this area. The space would thus be open both to the court and to the
alley, into which rainwater from the roof would drain. In this exedra were found
19 loomweights at floor level, suggesting that a loom had been set up here. Not
far away was a bronze "probe" with pointed ends, perhaps actually a weaving tool.
The alley here was paved, apparently by the owners of this house since the pavement
ends at the east end of the house. Unlike the alleys in some other houses, this
area seems to have been kept fairly clean and not used for the disposal of refuse
(probably because it was open to the exedra). Besides the exedra, three other
rooms contained large numbers of loomweights. Room h contained 22 loomweights,
as well as an inscribed lead weight. Room j had 18 loomweights, and room e, the
"pastas," 24. Each group probably represents the debris from one loom. All these
rooms adjoined the court, and could have been lit by windows; they would therefore
be suitable for weaving. Four looms is more than would be needed for household
use, and with all the well-lit space adjoining the court used for weaving, amounting
to about a third of the area of the house, this house seems to have been producing
textiles on a relatively large scale. Room e corresponds to the pastas of the
house, although in its final form it was entered from the court through a door
rather than a colonnade. As in other houses, this room was an important workspace,
housing a variety of activities in this sheltered and relatively well-lit space.
In addition to weaving, the pastas was used for preparing food. A grindstone was
found near the center of the room, together with a number of vases and other artifacts.
In the southeast corner was a large stone mortar, buried up to its rim below the
floor; and a terracotta louter base was found in the room as well. This might
actually be part of a kneading trough, used to prepare dough from flour cleaned
and ground with the mortar and grindstone. The kitchen complex on the north side
of the house seems regular in design: a large room (c) separated by a pillar partition
from the "flue" (b), with a small room (a) to its north as a bath. However, like
the complex in A v 10, these rooms contained only a few finds, and its use remains
somewhat problematic. Few or no vases were found in the kitchen or in the flue,
and no ash is recorded in the flue; there is no trace of cooking or food preparation
in the complex. In the "flue" was an unslipped bowl on a stand, possibly a thymiaterion,
a female mask and a fragment of another, and many fragments of bronze, probably
from some disintegrated object. The masks and thymiaterion suggest cult more than
cooking. No bathtub was found in room a, only a bone doll with attached, movable
arms and a lead pendant. There is thus no sign that the kitchen was being used
as such, at least at the moment the city was destroyed; the few finds might be
remnants of a former use by women of the household. The shop in the southeast
corner of the house (k) had two doors to the street, but none to the rest of the
house. It contained 14 coins, a lead weight, and a collection of bronze fragments
including a disk with four holes pierced at its rim. The disk might have served
as a small scales pan, the rest of the scales having disintegrated. The assemblage
is similar to those in shops of houses A iv 9 and A v 10 , and quite compatible
with a function of retail trade, although again it gives little indication of
what was being traded. The door to the shop in the northeast (d) was not preserved.
20 coins found here suggest that it served as a shop, but the room also housed
domestic activities as well: among its contents were a lower grindstone, vases
including a fishplate, a squat lekythos, a saucer, and an amphoriskos; a storage
amphora, and two fibulas. This shop is perhaps another example of the rather common
mixing of domestic activities with retail trade at Olynthus. The central "shop"
and entrance to the house, room g, contained a rather mixed group of finds: a
bronze ladle with a swan's head handle, two large but disintegrated bronze objects,
and an area of red pigment. This room might have been used for dyeing wool, the
bronze objects perhaps basins or cauldrons for mixing hot dyes. In A v 9, then,
we see a specialization of work and use of space which we have not seen in many
other Olynthian houses. All four rooms adjoining the court were devoted to weaving,
three of them apparently exclusively given over to it, and another room perhaps
used for dyeing wool before it was woven. The shops facing the street perhaps
sold finished textiles, which have left no trace. The household must have included
a number of women, free and/or slave, to keep at least four looms busy. It is
no surprise, therefore, to find an unusual amount of jewelry in this house: eleven
eye beads in the "pastas," an earring and bracelet in the kitchen, two fibulas
in room d, an earring in g, a finger ring in l, pendants in the "bath" and alley,
as well as another fibula and another eye bead from uncertain rooms. As in house
A v 10 , domestic functions in this house are surprisingly restricted. The kitchen
complex contained no signs of food preparation, cooking or the storage of eating
or drinking equipment; instead some of these functions are documented in the pastas
and room d. This may suggests a use of space rather different from that of other
Olynthian houses, and more similar to that of its neighbor A v 10. There are no
provisions in A v 9 for large-scale storage of foodstuffs or other produce. One
storage amphora in room d is the only large container, and the pithos in the court
probably collected rainwater. In this respect the house is similar to A iv 9 ,
and quite different from the houses in the Villa Section, for instance the House
of Many Colors and the Villa of the Bronzes .
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 4 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: House of regular plan in block A vii on the North Hill
of Olynthus.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
This house is frequently taken as the "type house" for Olynthian dwellings: a
central courtyard, with an open portico or "pastas" to its north; a series of
rooms opening onto the north side of the pastas, including a three-room "kitchen
complex"; a small storeroom on the east side of the pastas; an andron entered
from an anteroom in the SE corner; a workroom or shop in the SW.
Other Notes:
House A vii 4 contains a full range of rooms found in Olynthian house: a well-defined
pastas and cobbled court, a kitchen with bath and flue in the northeast part of
the house, an andron and anteroom in the southeast; two rooms opening onto the
pastas, and a shop in the southwest part of the house. The fairly large court
was cobbled, and a drain led from near the center of the court south into the
street. The court contained a variety of finds and, unlike the courts of the House
of Many Colors and the Villa of the Bronzes, seems to have been heavily used.
Sixteen loomweights were found apparently scattered on the floor; these might
be the remains of a loom, or perhaps were lost from a loom previously set up in
the court. The court also contained a fair amount of domestic equipment: vases
including bowls, a coarse spouted bowl or mortarium, a guttus, a lamp stand, three
lekythoi and fragments of many other vessels; a bronze cup or vessel; fragments
of four terracotta female masks; various pieces of hardware and other miscellaneous
finds. Two bronze weights and a "lead loomweight" (probably another weight) from
the court are probably connected with commercial activities in the house, as are
other weights from this house. Like the court, the pastas of A vii 4 was the site
of a variety of activities, and their assemblages are generally similar. The pastas
contained a variety of tablewares, metal vessels, and the like: a hydria, and
olpe, a bowl, a guttus, two kantharoi, two lekythoi, and other vases, swinging
handles from two bronze vessels, and other such finds. Most of these were found
in the west part of the pastas, probably stored on shelves or in chests along
the wall, as in the houses discussed above. In this area was a stone "pithos lid
or table top," 42 cm. in diameter; these disks could have served a variety of
uses, not just as pithos lids but as portable working surfaces. The two rooms
north of the pastas (a and b) are almost identical in size, and both had plain
walls and an earth floor. Room a contained only a single coin; like so many rooms
at Olynthus, its function remains enigmatic, but we should always keep in mind
the possibility that it contained perishable furniture. Room b, however, contained
23 loomweights, twelve of them clustered closely, the others scattered nearby.
Together with the court, then, this room was seemingly used for weaving. Like
the pastas and court, this room contained tablewares, including a red-figure pelike,
two plates, a lekythos, a cup, a saltcellar and other fragments, and like the
pastas, more jewelry, a fibula and an earring. The "kitchen complex" (rooms c,
d, e) shares with the other houses on this row the anomaly of lacking a pillar-partition
(at least at the level preserved), despite the house's two stories. The wall between
the kitchen and flue is thickened at the south, perhaps to form a kind of platform
or counter. A large stone mortar was set towards the west end of the "kitchen"
(e), showing that this room was used for processing food. Somewhere in the room
was a piece of furniture, which burned leaving a scatter of nails and ash. A few
table vases and two lamps might have been stored in this although their exact
situation was not noted. Like many other "kitchens" at Olynthus, it was relatively
bare of finds. No finds were recorded in the flue (d), but a layer of ash and
traces of burning show that this was used for cooking, like flues elsewhere. The
tub had been robbed out of the bathroom (c), leaving a gap in the cement pavement;
two lekythoi found in the bathroom might have been for oil or perfumes used in
bathing. A small room (g) walled off at the east end of the pastas contained a
pithos sunk into the floor, with a stone disk serving as a lid. The andron is
of the usual seven-couch size, entered from the court through an anteroom. As
usual, these two rooms were the most highly decorated in the house. Except for
the bathroom, whose walls were plastered, all the other rooms of A vii 4 had plain
walls; but the andron and anteroom were painted in three colors. The andron had
a white baseboard, yellow surbase and red walls, while the anteroom had a black
baseboard, red surbase and yellow walls. The platform around the andron, on which
the dining couches were set, was painted bright yellow. And as so commonly at
Olynthus, both rooms were all but bare. The neck of a red-figured pelike was found
in the anteroom, and nothing at all in the andron. Symposium equipment such as
fine cups and kraters, funnels and strainers, kottabos stands and the like were
perhaps made of bronze or precious metals, and so would have been carried off
by fleeing Olynthians or looted by Philip's soldiers; the absence of such assemblages
here and in other houses is striking. The large room in the southwest corner of
the house had doors to both the courtyard and the street, and so probably served
as a shop belonging to the owner of the house. It contained only miscellaneous
finds: one coin, a lekythos, a saucer, a bronze swinging handle imbedded in the
wall, three loomweights, and hardware. However, the domestic portion of the house
contained a number of artifacts which seem related to retail trade: four weights
and possible scales in the pastas, and two bronze weights and "lead loomweight"
in the court.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 6 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: Well-decorated house of regular plan in the Villa Section
of Olynthus.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Fairly regular Olynthian type of house. Relatively small courtyard; "semi-enclosed"
pastas not completely open to court. Unusual paved "exedra" to south of court.
Two adjoining rooms in NW probably forming a sort of light well. Andron and anteroom
in NE corner; kitchen-complex in SW corner; storeroom in SE corner. Second story.
Other Notes:
The "House of Many Colors," (F -ii 9), in the Villa Section of Olynthus and so
one of the later houses at the site, was built partly on a terrace cut into the
slope of the hill, so that west of the house the bedrock rises almost to the surface.
As a result, the west part of the house was quite deeply buried, under more than
a meter of fill; the eastern part, however, was buried very shallowly, so that
the andron in the northeast corner and the storeroom in the southeast are partly
eroded away. Numerous traces of fire, blackening the stucco of the walls, reddening
the mudbricks and leaving layers of ash in many of the rooms, attest the violent
destruction of the house. On the south of the rather small court was a deep portico
or exedra (l), separated from the court by a colonnade. At its west end was a
built altar, covered by a canopy supported by two bases. The court was thus one
site of household cult, as implied by literary sources. The pastas (e) was of
the "semi-enclosed" type, separated from the court by a low wall which probably
supported a colonnade above, and entered through a door at the northwest corner
of the court. It was thus more sheltered from the elements than was the more common,
open type of pastas. To judge from the quantity and types of artifacts found there,
the pastas was one main locus of domestic activity. A marble louter (shallow basin
on stand) was found in situ in the southwest corner, together with a storage amphora;
these were probably used for washing, the amphora holding wash water. Nearby were
two portable altars attesting household ritual. The louter may thus have been
used for ritual cleansing (in addition perhaps to ordinary household washing).
A somewhat similar situation was found in the pastas of the Villa of the Bronzes
. Four more amphoras in the east end of the pastas stored some other substance,
perhaps wine or oil. A number of vases were also found in the pastas: a fishplate,
three black-glaze plates, a shallow bowl, a red-figure pelike, a miniature krater,
and a lekythos. a red figured krater, a lid, and a skyphos were found in the west
part of the room. Three rooms (a, b and c) open onto the pastas. Rooms a and b
were separated by a pillar-partition. This and similar spaces at Olynthus may
have been light wells, the smaller room (b) being the light well, open to the
sky and illuminating the larger room. The pillars would have supported a second
story room above room a. The open "skylight" could have been fitted with a cover
(telia) to keep out the rain in bad weather, or perhaps was lit with special "chimney
tiles" with elliptical openings (opaia), examples of which were found in the house.
Other possible light-wells at Olynthus were found in the Villa of the Bronzes
and house A iv 9 . Both these rooms were apparently still under construction when
the house was burned. The main room contained an amphora full of sand for making
cement, red and blue pigment stored in a small vase and piled on the floor, probably
for painting walls, two small pigment grinders, and a pile of blue stone pebbles,
probably intended for a mosaic floor; while the light well contained another storage
amphora, this one full of cement, and a pile of cement lying on the floor nearby,
a terracotta "pithos lid or table top" and a terracotta tray partly under the
cement pile, which might have been used for mixing cement, and a pile of black
pebbles. But although this suite was apparently being refurbished, it also constituted
another important workplace in the House of Many Colors. The larger room contained
35 loomweights, about the right number for a loom, an epinetron and a spindle
whorl, while nine more loomweights were found in the light well. Well-lit and
airy yet sheltered, the larger room would have been a comfortable and convenient
room for weaving. This room also contained many table vases: two fishplates (one
red-figured), two plates, two hydrias and a pelike, a lekanis and three lekanis
lids (two red-figured), two lekythoi, a guttus, a group of twelve miniature cups,
six saucers, a skyphos (?), and two lids. The assemblage apparently contained
no coarse or cookingwares. The scarcity of cups here and elsewhere in the house
is surprising, and might suggest that drinking vessels of bronze or more precious
metals were used in place of pottery, but were looted when the house was destroyed.
The room also contained a complete terracotta female head and a female mask. Room
c, on the other hand, was more finely decorated, with cement floor and painted
walls, but contained only a few, miscellaneous objects: hardware, bronze fragments
and the rim of a pithos. Like so many "North Rooms," the function of this space
remains uncertain: its fancy decoration might suggest a room for socializing,
akin to the andron. In the northeast corner of the house was the andron (d), of
the usual seven-couch size. This was entered from a relatively large anteroom
(f). Both these rooms were shallowly buried, and perhaps partly for this reason
few finds are preserved here; but in most other houses, androns contained relatively
few artifacts. The andron itself contained only two iron spearheads. At the south
end of the anteroom was found a cluster of 16 bronze decorative bosses with carbonized
wood adhering to some of them, perhaps the remains of a chest or cabinet used
to store equipment for the symposium, for in this area was also found a fishplate,
two plates, and fragments of a krater. The southwest corner of the house was taken
up by the kitchen complex, which was entered from the courtyard. The kitchen (k)
had a built hearth about in its center, although slightly skew to the walls of
the room. The hearth was filled with ashes, but contained no other finds, such
as bones or pottery. Three storage amphoras were found in the room, useful for
storing water and other materials for cooking, but the room contained few other
artifacts, only a lead disk with lotus and palmette decoration, a loomweight,
a saucer, a coin and an arrowhead. Adjoining the kitchen was a small room (g),
which corresponds to the bathroom in other kitchen complexes. However, while in
other houses these rooms usually contained bathtubs or holes where tubs had been
robbed out, there was no sign of a bathtub here. This room contained an intact
upper and lower grindstone and a few vases. The "flue" (h) was separated from
the kitchen by a pillar-partition; this was probably not an entrance, however,
but instead access was gained through a door from the courtyard. The "flue" was
of an unusual design: instead of the usual slab or plain earth floor, it had a
trench cut into the bedrock running down the center of the room. The trench was
filled with a deep layer of ash containing many bones of cows, sheep, goats, pigs
and deer. Robinson suggests that the trench formed a kind of broiling pit, which
was filled with coals to cook meat on spits. The flue also contained many artifacts,
some of which are easily understood as cooking equipment, such as a spit support,
but also including a great many other table vases, hardware, terracottas and other
miscellaneous finds which are not so easily explained. The exedra (l) south of
the court was divided from the courtyard by a colonnade, and is unique at Olynthus.
Its cement and pebble floor was almost bare of artifacts; a pit at its southern
end may have been an unfinished cistern. In the southeast corner of the house
was a room (m) whose floor was about 0.9 m below that of the court and exedra.
At least four pithoi in this room attest its use as a storeroom or pitheon. The
contents of the pithoi were not preserved, but they most likely held agricultural
products. This partly subterranean, cool room would, as Xenophon points out, be
suitable for storage of grain and wine (Xen. Oec. 9.2-11). The house almost certainly
had two stories. A rubble foundation spans the space between the east wall of
the exedra and the easternmost colonnade base, and probably either served as or
supported a stairbase. Another base at the south wall of the exedra probably supported
a landing. The presence of rooms with pillar-partitions also usually implies a
second story, the pillars supporting the wall of the upstairs room. Finally, over
the cement and pebble floor of the exedra were found fragments of another mosaic
floor, one piece about 1.3 m in length, which seem to have fallen from this second
story. The House of Many Colors is a fine example of a "regular" Olynthian house
with a full spectrum of specialized domestic rooms. The main areas of work tend
to be the best-lit: the pastas and room a, lit by the light well. The court contained
few artifacts and was rather small, which stands in contrast to some other houses;
but this house has an unusually large amount of well-lit but sheltered space around
the court, and those spaces may have taken over some of the activities which were
done in the courts in other houses. The range of activities which can be documented
in the house is perfectly compatible with what literary sources would lead us
to expect in a purely domestic home: grinding grain, cooking, eating, weaving,
religious cult, storage (presumably of foodstuffs), entertainment and socializing,
sleeping. These activities seem to be fairly strictly spatially organized, although
rooms shared more than one function: washing, domestic storage and cult in the
pastas; weaving and more domestic storage in the North Room a; cooking and food
preparation in the "flue" and kitchen; large-scale storage, probably of agricultural
products, in the storeroom or pitheon. The house had no workrooms or ergasteria
not involved with normal household production like weaving and food preparation:
no shops and no special installations such as are relatively common on the North
Hill. While the owner might have had such workshops outside his house, it is most
likely that his main source of income was agriculture, the primary and favored
occupation of most Greek citizens. This house is somewhat unusual in having the
entrance to the andron rather separate from the rest of the house: the public,
men's dining room seems to have been entered from the entrance hall (j), leaving
the rest of the house more private and enclosed. But this probably does not constitute
a formal distinction between the women's and men's quarters, the andronitis and
the gunaikonitis, at least in the sense used by Xenophon and others (Xen. Oec.
9.2-11). Much of the ground floor of the house seems to have been used for women's
work, including the suite with light well and the kitchen complex; and these areas
are not closed off from the rest of the house. While outsiders coming to symposia
here did not need to pass through the rest of the house to reach the andron, the
house itself is not strictly divided.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 1 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: House of somewhat irregular plan, with small rooms and
two "shops" (for food preparation?).
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
Domestic part of house consists of small court, pastas and portico, and other
relatively small rooms. In the SW are two separate complexes, one consisting of
rooms e, i and l; the other of room n.
Other Notes:
The House of Zoilos (D v 6) is a house of somewhat irregular plan, with a small
court (j), a pastas and portico (g-h), and other rooms ranged around these spaces.
The house has some seventeen rooms, an unusually large number. The southwestern
part of the house-plot is taken up by two separate complexes which are not connected
to the main domestic area: rooms e, i, l and m form one complex, while room n,
divided into two subspaces by a spur wall, forms a second. These seem to form
shops, but there are obvious differences in plan between this house and houses
like A iv 9 or A v 10 , which allocate a large amount of space to shops but are
otherwise regular in plan. In its organization, the house is more similar to the
irregular houses A 11 - A 13 and other such irregularly planned houses. The main
part of the house was entered from room p, which led immediately into the court.
Room g probably formed a portico on the west side of the court, and room h the
pastas on its north, although no bases were preserved. These spaces led to a series
of rooms along the north side of the house (a-d), and to rooms f and k. Room b
could only be entered by passing through room c, and room a only from b, so the
organization of this area, as in house A 11 , is more hierarchical than in more
regular houses. There is no evidence of a second story. Most of the rooms had
earth floors and unplastered walls. The court was cobbled, and rooms d and k had
plastered walls, while room q, in the southeast corner, was painted red with a
white baseboard. Unlike the more regular houses, the court, pastas and portico
(g) did not contain many objects and may not have been important areas of work.
The court and portico were entirely bare. The pastas contained four loomweights
and a spindle or distaff, but many rooms in this house contained a few loomweights,
so these might be random scatter. A low poros stone tray or trough at about the
center of the pastas might have been used for grinding or food preparation. An
olpe, a saucer, and an earring were also found in the pastas. Room c was apparently
open to the pastas and court, and so would have been another well-lit work area,
but this room too was almost bare, containing only a loomweight, a nail and boss
and a coin. Room b, on the other hand, contained fourteen loomweights, and was
probably used for weaving. A vase containing green pigment was found near the
door, and red pigment was found on the floor. Since so few of the rooms were plastered
it is unlikely that the pigment was intended to paint walls, like the pigments
in the House of Many Colors . In the northeast corner of the room was a pithos
on its side. In the northeast corner, room d may have been used to store domestic
equipment for use in the pastas (h), as in house A iv 9 . In this space were found
more than 27 vases, including a cooking pot, a very large coarse basin, 2 gutti,
an askos, five bowls, a hydria, a red-figured oinochoe, an olpe, and two storage
amphoras. The room also contained part of a bronze unguentarium and the swinging
handle from another bronze vessel. These were mostly found near the west and south
walls, where they had fallen from shelves. A marble louter was also found here,
as well as a terracotta louter or another basin, a slate pithos lid or table top,
and various other finds. To the west of the court, room f was apparently a storeroom
for foodstuffs, containing another pithos and its terracotta lid, as well as a
few vases. The other rooms in the main part of the house, however, were quite
barren. Room q, in the southeast corner of the house, was the best-decorated room
in the house, with red walls and a white baseboard, and therefore perhaps served
as a reception room or andron. It contained almost no finds, however. The two
groups of shops in the southwest corner of the house were probably used for food
preparation. The western complex (rooms e, i, l, and m) contained three mortaria
with spouts, a large pithos, three "pithos lids or table tops" (two terracotta
and one stone disk) which could be used for processing food, and many vases, including
a bowl, an oinochoe, and fragments of many other pots. A foundation just inside
the door to the complex might have supported a counter. The other room (n) contained
another slate "table top," another mortarium, two louters (one stone, one terracotta),
and at least eleven storage amphoras, as well as more vases. The quantities of
coarsewares, mortaria, storage vessels and "table tops" in these shops are probably
equipment for some kind of food processing, although there were no grindstones
and no obvious cooking areas in either complex. These "shops," then, might have
been used for preparing food either for the main part of the house or, more likely,
for sale outside the house. An almost complete sales inscription was found broken
and scattered around the door into room p, parts of it leaning against the wall
east of the door where it had apparently been set up as a public record.1 The
text records that Zoilos, the son of Philokrates, had bought the house from Diopeithes
for 1200 dr., and that its neighbors were Diokles and the sons of Apollodoros.
The house thus sold for less than a quarter the price of house A v 10 , although
the two sales took place in the same year and the houses are generally comparable.
Although irregular in plan, the House of Zoilos shows clear organization in its
use of space, although this is quite different from the organization of other
houses. The best-lit areas of the house adjoining the court, rooms c, g, h, k
and p, contained relatively few finds and have little direct evidence of use.
Instead, room b seems to have been used for weaving (although it is also possible
that the loomweights were simply stored in this room and the loom would have been
set up and worked in another space like the pastas). Room d probably was a pantry
for storing domestic equipment handy to the pastas. There are no obvious cooking
areas; this may have been done on portable braziers in the court or porticoes.
By contrast, the two "shops," which do not communicate with the rest of the house,
might have been small restaurants or other food-processing businesses. They may
have belonged to Zoilos or been sold or let separately.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 1 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Site: Olynthus
Type: House
Summary: Well-built house of regular plan in the Villa Section of
Olynthus.
Date: ca. 432 B.C. - 348 B.C.
Period: Classical/Late Clas.
Plan:
House of regular Olynthian type, with central courtyard, pastas, rooms along north,
kitchen-complex with bath and "flue" in southeast, and storage room in southwest
corner of the house.
Other Notes:
The Villa of the Bronzes is a well-built and well-preserved house, and had been
heavily burned, particularly in the northern part. A number of weapons found in
the court and other rooms, including a shield, a sword, three knives, two spearheads,
five arrowheads and thirteen slingbullets, attest to the heavy fighting here during
the capture of the city, and led to the naming of the house. The house is quite
regular in plan. The court takes the common position in the center of the south
side of the house, and the pastas opens to the court through a colonnade of two
columns and two engaged pilasters. Two stone Doric capitals and a pilaster capital
from this colonnade were found near the bases. To the north of the pastas are
three rooms, two connected by a pillar partition and forming a suite with a light
well like that in the House of Many Colors . A fourth room in the northeast corner
of the house (d) was entered through an anteroom (f) from the pastas, and might
have served as an andron. In the southeast corner of the house was a kitchen-complex
with flue and bath, and in the southwest was a storeroom. The house had a double
door, a narrow door on the west for people and a wider door, 1.9 m wide, on the
east, whose threshold was rutted by cart wheels. Although similar in plan to the
House of Many Colors , the Villa of the Bronzes has no proper andron, but has
more architecturally unspecialized space than does the House of Many Colors .
The house was well built and appointed. Its south and west walls were built of
drafted ashlar masonry, rare at Olynthus, and the court paved with cement and
stone slabs. Six of its eleven rooms were painted, some with molded plaster, and
room b had a mosaic floor. The court, of about average size, was drained to the
street via a channel and terracotta pipe. Most of the finds here seem to be remains
of the final battle for the city: a shield, sword, three knives, two spearheads,
and seven slingbullets. The skeleton of a large calf or small cow was also found
on the floor of the court, perhaps another casualty of war. As at the House of
Many Colors , the pastas was apparently an important workplace. In many respects
the assemblages of the two pastades are remarkably similar. In the northeast corner
of the pastas was a cult assemblage, with a fine marble louter and base, nearly
complete and mended in antiquity, and a marble portable altar. Another portable
altar was found about two meters in front of the door to room b. A great many
vases were found along the north wall between the doors to rooms b and c, including
an askos, a fish plate and two plates, six saucers, and many other fragments,
"usually broken in large pieces and lying on the floor as if they fell from a
shelf or from somewhere above rather than as if this were any sort of a discard
dump. Most of the pottery consists of the familiar small black glaze saucers"
(excavation fieldbook). This chest or shelf also held a hollow bronze instrument
with claw-like projections and a few other bronze objects, while other miscellaneous
metal objects were scattered through the pastas, most notably a bronze basin near
the westernmost base of the pastas, a finger ring, and a heavy hook. The two rooms
north of the pastas (a and b) form a suite with light well similar to that in
the House of Many Colors . Architecturally, the suite differs from that in the
House of Many Colors, in that the light well was not accessible from the pastas
but only through the pillar partition from b, and the main room b was well decorated,
with red stuccoed walls and a pebble mosaic floor; but in general the two suites
must have been fairly similar (especially if the main room in the House of Many
Colors had been painted and paved with mosaic as was intended). This suite was
used quite differently, however, from that in the House of Many Colors . In the
main room, a chest or other furnishing stood at the north wall, attested by eight
iron bosses in two sizes. The furnishing probably held either perishable or precious
objects. Two elegant lamps, one with two, the other with four nozzles and with
central handles, were found nearby. Otherwise, the room contained a rather mixed
assemblage: a couple of saucers, an arrowhead, two heavy hooks (perhaps attached
to the door, where they were found), a pin, and three coins. We should perhaps
interpret this as a more formal living or reception room, lit with fancy lamps
and with decorated furniture. The light well (a), on the other hand, had an earth
floor on which were found many ashes and traces of burning, apparently not only
from the fire of the destruction but from "continuous fires here" during the use
of the house. These fires might have heated the main room of the suite. There
is no reason to think that this was a cooking area: no cookingwares or bones were
found here or nearby. In the northwest corner of room a was an odd egg-shaped
pithos sunk into the floor, and in the center of the west wall of the room were
20 nails, apparently the remains of another piece of furniture. Several small
iron bosses were found in this room although their exact locations were not noted;
they too might belong to this furnishing. Near the furnishing were two more fancy
double-nozzled lamps like those in the main room, personal articles like a bone
spatula, a finger ring with a decorated bezel, and two black-glazed plates. On
the other side of the room near the pillar partition were at least 25 saucers
and another plate, while many other vases were scattered in this room, and in
the southwest corner was a large shallow pot. The interpretation of this area
is difficult: presumably it serviced the main room (b), but the use of the pithos,
the saucers and other objects is problematic. The kitchen complex in the southeast
corner of the house consisted of a large kitchen, a "flue" separated by a pillar
partition, and a cement-paved bath with a tub still in situ (rooms i, j and k).
The flue and bath were separated by only a light partition, which left its impression
on the yellow plaster of the bath. A fragment of a lower grindstone in the kitchen
might suggest that this, like the kitchen in the House of Many Colors , was used
for food preparation, although it may have been reused here for some other purpose.
The floor of the flue was covered with a layer of ash, charcoal, burned earth
and fragments of animal bones, up to 3 cm. thick; this was apparently a cooking
room like the flue in the House of Many Colors . A tub was found in situ in the
bathroom. Nearby was a large terracotta spouted basin full of ashes, perhaps a
makeshift brazier for heating water. The other corner of the house was taken up
by a large storeroom (g), like that in the House of Many Colors . This contained
a huge pithos, 1.7 m in diameter, whose lid was found nearby. As at the House
of Many Colors , there is architectural evidence for a second story at the Villa
of the Bronzes. A stone stairbase was found along the south wall of the court,
shifted out of place but probably at approximately its original location; and
the kitchen has a pillar partition which probably implies a room above.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 1 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Region: Macedonia
Periods: Neolithic, Archaic, Classical
Type: Fortified city
Summary: Grid planned city, capital of the Chalcidic League
Physical Description:
Olynthus is located between the westernmost and central "fingers"
of the Chalcidic peninsula, about 2.5 km. inland from the sea. The country immediately
surrounding the city is rolling fields, well drained and plentifully supplied
with water. To the north, the Polygyros hills rise to some 3000 feet. The city
was built on two flat-topped hills rising about 30-40 m. above the surrounding
plain (the North and South Hills). In addition, houses were built to the east
of the two hills, down on the plain in the area known as the "Villa Section."
A narrow ridge extending southwards from the southeast corner of the North Hill
is known as the East Spur Hill (ESH). The South Hill was probably occupied as
early as the seventh century, and continued to be densely inhabited throughout
the life of the town. By contrast, the North Hill was not inhabited until the
anoikismos of 432 or shortly thereafter (below). The western fortification wall
was uncovered by the excavation in a number of places. The clearest stretch is
along the west side of the North Hill, where it forms the back walls of the houses
along the brow of the hill (cf. Plat. Laws 779b). The line of the wall along the
east side of the hill, however, is not as easy to determine. Possible traces of
a fortification wall were discovered on the brow of the East Spur Hill, and the
arrangement of houses and buildings in that area, suggest that the east brow of
the hill formed the original limit of the city, with the wall ringed inside by
a row of houses analogous to that in Rows A. This section of fortification wall
probably belongs with the layout of the North Hill in 432 BC. A section of fortification
wall was uncovered at the north end of the South Hill; but whether this wall is
part of the enclosure that also ringed the North Hill or part of an earlier circuit
that protected only the South Hill before the anoikismos is uncertain. The South
Hill must have been fortified in both periods, however: Artabazus' siege of Olynthus
in 479 BC shows that it was fortified at least that early (Hdt. 8.128). The South
Hill has an area of some 7 hectares. The North and East Spur Hills together measure
some 17 ha., including the valley between the two hills. The extent of the Villa
Section was not determined: roughly 16 ha. can be documented, but the section
may continue considerably farther. The area documented by the excavations therefore
totals about 40 ha., with the Villa Section a wild card. By contrast, the built-up
area of the city of Priene, for instance, encompasses only some 15 ha., although
the walls enclose about 37 ha. Of this area, about 4 ha. was actually excavated.
This is a fairly small proportion of the whole town, but is more than almost any
other Greek urban site. The North Hill was laid out in an orthogonal plan which,
with some irregularities, filled the entire area of the hill. Houses were mostly
grouped in blocks of ten, comprised of two rows of five houses separated by a
narrow alley. On the east side of the city, however, the blocks were shortened
to allow the roads to follow the topography of the hill. The streets are oriented
almost due north-south and east-west. The north-south arteries were labelled "avenues"
A, B, C etc. by the excavators, the east-west arteries "streets" i, ii, iii etc.
Blocks were identified by the intersection of street and avenue at their southwest
corner. Within the blocks, houses are numbered from the northwest: house A v 1
is at the northwest corner of block A v; A v 2 is at the southwest corner of A
v; A v 3 is the second house from the west on the north half of A v, and so forth.
Towards the eastern part of the city the grid plan becomes more irregular. The
plan of the Villa Section was not completely established; all the houses in the
blocks were probably not built, but space was left open around some of the houses.
The grid here on the plain is oriented 2-3 degrees nearer to magnetic north than
the grid on the North Hill, and is probably a later extension. Most of the houses
of Olynthus conform to a basically similar ground plan, commonly referred to as
a "pastas house." They are roughly square, averaging about 17.2 m. across. Two
important axes cross the house from east to west: one near the midpoint of the
house divides it into two nearly equal parts, the second divides the northern
half into two portions. These axes govern the placement of walls and pillars,
which had to be aligned to support the common roof which ran over the northern
half of the entire row of houses. Like most Greek houses, they are based around
a central courtyard, often paved. The court was nearly always located on the southern
half of the house (cf. Xen. Mem. 3.8.9-10; Aesch. PB 450-453). Opening onto the
north side of the court is a long portico, identified by Graham as the "pastas"
mentioned in ancient sources. These two areas, the court and pastas, are the main
unifying elements of the house, and also seem to be the foci for most of the household
activities: well-lit and airy but sheltered from the sun and rain, the pastas
in particular offers a convenient and comfortable work area. Most of the other
rooms open directly onto either the court or the pastas. The organization of rooms
in typical Olynthian houses is thus paratactic or non-hierarchical: that is, there
are relatively few "back rooms" on the ground floor to which access is restricted
by an intermediate room. Nor is there a single dominant room or axis, as there
is in the "prostas" type of house, as well as in the typical Roman house. A number
of different room types are commonly found in Olynthian houses. A "kitchen complex"
consisting of a large chamber, sometimes with a built hearth, and one or two smaller
spaces partly divided from it on one side, is one such unit. One of the smaller
rooms usually served as a bathroom, with bathtubs frequently found in situ. The
other small room seems to have been used for cooking; in most cases these rooms
could be entered from the court or pastas, and they often contained ashes and
many artifacts. Another distinctive suite of rooms is the andron-anteroom complex.
Androns, or formal dining rooms, are well attested both in literary sources and
archaeologically, not only at Olynthus but at many other sites (e.g. Xen. Sym.
1.13; Aristoph. Eccl. 675ff; Murray 1990; Hoepfner & Schwandner 1986). At Olynthus,
the androns are usually square, most often about 4.8 x 4.8 m., with a cement floor
(occasionally decorated with mosaic) and plastered and painted walls. They are
normally the most elaborately decorated of the rooms of the house. A raised border
about 0.85-1.0 m. wide runs around the sides of the room. Dining couches or klinai
were set on this border around the walls of the room; most androns probably held
seven couches. Because of the arrangement of couches, the doors of most androns
were off-center. The floor was frequently drained by a channel or pipe let through
one of the walls, either into the street or occasionally into a catchbasin in
the anteroom; this would facilitate washing down the floor after the boisterous
and messy revelry that went on in these rooms. A number of houses have special
workrooms and shops, opening onto the street (e.g. A iv 9 , A vii 4 ). Within
this very regular plan, however, there is considerable variation, and the apparent
uniformity of the house plans is, on closer inspection, somewhat deceptive. Some
houses devote a lot of space to androns, kitchens and other specialized rooms;
others have more general-purpose spaces; others have many shops, and so forth.
Moreover, the houses on one block tend to be more similar to one another than
they are to houses on other blocks. Houses with many shops are mostly found along
Avenue B, which probably formed a major commercial artery through the city. The
houses of block A vi have more androns, more kitchens, and more decorated rooms
than those of A v, while the north half of block A vii is much more irregularly
planned than the south half. The coherence of house blocks may result from social
ties among the households who built the block. The blocks thus form social as
well as physical building units of the city. And the differing uses of space,
equipment, and assemblages in houses in different parts of the city shows that
the city was organized in different sorts of neighborhoods, and that households
of different neighborhoods engaged in different trades and economies. On the South
Hill, two public areas were excavated. At the north tip of the hill was a rather
poorly-preserved area with two "arsenals" or stoas and fragments of other large
buildings. To the south of this area is the "Civic Center," consisting of a large
building built of ashlars which may have been a bouleuterion or other meeting
place. Another public area is located towards the south end of the North Hill.
This consists of an open plaza, about 85 m. wide and perhaps 130 m. long, which
was apparently free of building. Three public buildings surround the north side
and northeast corner of this plaza: a poorly preserved stoa-like building along
the north side, a building with central colonnade at A iv 10 (so-called "bouleuterion"),
and a fountain house at A iii 9. This open space was probably the agora of the
city. The fountain house in the northeast corner of the agora (building A iii
9) was fed by a large terracotta pressure pipe set some six meters below the surface
at the bottom of a subterranean tunnel. The pipe continued northward beneath Avenue
A, leaving the city through the gate at the northern end of the avenue. The pipe
was apparently fed from sources in the hills to the north, some 12 km. away. No
sanctuaries have been found in the city; the main sanctuary of the city may have
been outside the city walls. Three cemeteries were partly explored by Robinson's
team. Some 560 graves were excavated at the main one, known as the Riverside Cemetery,
which was located just to the west of the city. To the north, the North Cemetery
produced only some 30 graves, more widely scattered than at the Riverside Cemetery.
The third burial ground was the East Cemetery, located on a small knoll some 700
m. east of the tip of the South Hill. In addition, a Macedonian-type chamber tomb
was excavated some 2 km west of the city. Robinson believed that these three graveyards
were the only ones used by the Olynthians.
Description:
The urban history of Olynthus can be divided into fairly
distinct periods. There is an early phase, little known either historically or
archaeologically; the rebellion from Athens of 432 BC and the anoikismos ("moving
inland"), in which the populations of some of the neighboring Chalcidian cities
moved inland to Olynthus to form a larger and more defensible city; the growth
of Olynthus and of the Chalcidic state in the fourth century, and finally the
destruction of the city by Philip of Macedon in 348 BC. In the Neolithic period
there was a small settlement on the South Hill. No Bronze Age remains are preserved
on the site, but nearby Agios Mamas was inhabited during that era. Archaic occupation
begins in about the seventh century, when a town was founded on the South Hill
(Olynthus, 5, 15-61). At some point this town was taken, according to Herodotus,
by the Bottiaeans, a local tribe which had been driven here by the Macedonians
(Hdt. 8.127). Together with the other towns in the area, Olynthus supplied troops
and ships to Xerxes in 480. But during the Persian retreat from Greece in 479
BC, Artabazus besieged and captured the city, suspecting that it would revolt
from the King (Hdt. 8.127; Hdt. 7.122). Artabazus probably did not kill all the
Bottiaeans living at Olynthus, since they seem to have been an important element
of the citizen body later on, and even minted their own coinage in parallel with
the Chalcidic. The archaeological remains from this early period, down to the
last third of the fifth century, are exclusively concentrated on the South Hill.
In 432 BC, in the face of Athenian aggression, Perdiccas, the king of Macedon,
persuaded a number of Chalcidic cities to move inland and form a single, fortified
city at Olynthus (Thuc. 1.58). This anoikismos, or "moving inland," is generally
thought to have been the impetus behind the expansion of the old town of Olynthus
on the South Hill onto the broad, flat-topped hill to the north, and the laying
out of a new grid-planned section of the city there. It is thus the most critical
single event in the urban history of Olynthus. At some time before 382, the Chalcidians
formed a League with Olynthus as its capital (see Xen. Hell. 5.2.11-20). Various
dates have been proposed, from before 479 BC, to 432 BC, to the end of the fifth
century. The nature of this League, whether a true confederacy of independent
poleis or a single unitary state with a single set of laws and citizenship, is
also debated (see Olynthus, 9, 115; Zahrnt 1971, 80-84). Olynthus was sacked and
burned by Philip of Macedon in 348 BC, and this destruction is responsible for
the unusually fine preservation of the houses and their contents (Dem. 9.11; Dem.
9.26; Dem. 19.267; Diod. Sic. 16.52ff.). A number of houses showed evidence of
intense burning; most contained large numbers of objects still in situ on the
floors. Evidence of the siege and fighting at the walls and in the city was quite
widespread: slingbullets and arrowheads, many bearing the names of Philip and
his generals, were found throughout the site, particularly on the east side of
the South Hill. A small area of the site at the north end of the North Hill was
reoccupied after 348 BC: early Hellenistic coins were found in considerable numbers
there, as well as in the public buildings which were apparently robbed by the
late settlers. There has been some doubt about how complete the abandonment was
in recent years, and it has been claimed that most of the site was reoccupied
after Philip's destruction. This author's analysis of the coins and other data
from the site, however, suggests that while a small area was undoubtedly reoccupied,
the greater part of the site was definitively abandoned.
Exploration:
The site was excavated in four seasons between 1928 and
1939 by D.M. Robinson. Recent excavations and restorations are being undertaken
by Dr. J. Vokotoulou.
Nick Cahill, ed.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains 93 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Olynthos, whose pre-Hellenic name means wild fig-tree, was founded
in the 7th century BC in Chalkidike
by the Bottiaioi. The city, built on a hill according to the free
system of town-planning, was destroyed in 479 BC by the Persians, who turned
it over to the Chalkidians.
In 432 BC the king of Macedonia Perdikkas II persuaded the Chalkidian
cities to desert the Athenian
Confederacy and form the Chalkidian
League. The inhabitants of these cities abandoned their homes for security
reasons and settled at Olynthos.
In order to accommodate the Chalkidians, the city was rebuilt on a
hill north of its former site. There, as seat of the Chalkidian League, it prospered.
At the end of the 5th century BC it had 15,000 inhabitants, and in the first half
of the following century it became the foremost city of the Chalkidian Peninsula.
Classical Olynthos was laid out according to the Hippodameian
system and was surrounded by walls. The wide avenues and large well-built
houses,
decorated with mosaic
floors and plastered walls, indicate the prosperity of the city. Olynthos tried
to resist the expansionist
schemes of Philip
II, and as a result was entirely destroyed in 348 BC.
By kind permission of:Ekdotike Athenon
This text is cited Nov 2003 from the Macedonian Heritage URL below, which contains image.
Τετράγωνο οικοδόμημα που εικάζεται ότι αποτελούσε Bουλευτήριο. Χρονολογείται
στο τέλος του 5ου αι. π.Χ., εποχή που η Ολυνθος γνώρισε μεγάλη πολιτική ακμή ως
έδρα της Χαλκιδικής Ομοσπονδίας, της συμμαχίας δηλαδή των Χαλκιδικών πόλεων που
οργανώθηκε στο γ' τέταρτο του 5ου αι. π.X.
Το εσωτερικό του οικοδομήματος απαρτιζόταν από δύο μικρές αίθουσες
που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν, πιθανότατα, ως γραφεία και χώροι αποθήκευσης αρχείων. Η
νότια αίθουσα με την εσωτερική κιονοστοιχία, το βωμό στο κέντρο και μια εξέδρα
απέναντι από το βωμό παραπέμπει σε αντίστοιχα αρχιτεκτονικά μέλη γνωστών βουλευτηρίων.
Ξύλινα έδρανα ήταν διατεταγμένα στη δυτική πλευρά της αίθουσας, η οποία είχε χωρητικότητα
250 ατόμων.
Εικάζεται ότι το κτήριο χρησιμοποιήθηκε επίσης ως χώρος φύλαξης των
μέτρων και των σταθμών ή ακόμη και ως οπλοθήκη. Νεότερες έρευνες αμφισβητούν την
λειτουργία του ως Bουλευτήριο και το ταυτίζουν με Πρυτανείο.
Το κείμενο παρατίθεται τον Φεβρουάριο 2003 από την ακόλουθη ιστοσελίδα του Ιδρυματος Μείζονος Ελληνισμού
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