AIGEIRA - 2006

Aigeira (I. Eustathiou and P. Oikonomou properties). E-I. Kolia (Στ' ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery in the course of rescue excavation in 2006 of two fourth-century BC houses in modern Aigeira, 200m from the sea and west of the mouth of the Krios river.

The houses were on the same north-south orientation and their outer walls approximately parallel. They likely formed part of a planned coastal settlement, perhaps the port of the city of Aigai 2.5km away. The variety of issues among the 23 bronze coins recovered indicates commercial activity.

House I (on the Eustathiou plot) was built (probably in the second quarter of the fourth century) in mud-brick on stone foundations, with no evidence of a basement. It was remodelled at least once in the mid fourth century, when the eastern part was converted to a shop or workshop, noting the large quantity of (in many cases local) pointed amphorae in the destruction deposit. The central and western areas remained residential (noting, e.g., loomweights and fish-hooks, and the discovery of the andron, with a fine plaster floor, in the northwest corner). Plaster and the remains of pebble flooring in the destruction deposit indicate an upper storey.

In house II (Oikonomou plot), only part of the andron (with a light-reddish plaster pavement and couch settings) and its antechamber lay within the building plot. Part of a terracotta sima with floral and meander decoration found in the andron dates the construction of the house to the second half of the fourth century (most likely in the third quarter).

In both houses, violent destruction in the late fourth to early third century BC is indicated by a thick deposit with evidence of intense burning, including burnt wood, Laconian tile, pottery (a homogenous collection of the second half of the fourth century including black-glazed echinus bowls, kylikes and kantharoi, and an early unguentarium) and coins (notably a bronze issue of Sikyon with a terminus post quem of 340 BC). Slight remains of poor third-century construction were found on the Eustathiou plot, plus a fifth-century wall deeper in the northeast corner (noting a little pottery and a bronze bull figurine of the first quarter of the fifth century).