NAUPAKTOS - West cemetery - 2000

Langadoula, Mesolongiou Street (Papakosta property). (Fig. 1). Ph. Saranti (then Στ' ΕΠΚΑ, now ΛΣτ' ΕΠΚΑ) reports on excavation of a significant part of the west cemetery of the city, beside a road from Naupaktos to Antirrio. This extends the known boundaries of the cemetery to the west and south.

Sixteen Classical, Late Classical and Hellenistic graves were located in the southern part of the cemetery, organized into groups but with different orientations. They are simple pits bordered with small stones, tile graves and one cist. Many were child burials (mostly in the northeastern group) in pits with tile covers. Tile grave V contained the burial of a woman with a child in her arms. An area of intense burning, burnt wood and bone, which covered tombs X and IX, probably came from a purification pyre. Most child graves did not contain goods (the exceptions were a small cup in grave VII and, in VI, which was probably a reburial, a lamp, a thilastron and two fragmentary vases). Adult graves had more offerings: tomb III had three plainware phialae, a lamp, part of an iron strigil and a few small objects. Tomb 5 had a black-glazed small lekythos. Tomb I, a cist built of large worked blocks, was disturbed but originally contained a bronze kalpis or hydria of which only fragments survive, the handles of a silver kantharos, a plain lamp, a terracotta female figurine, a small silver knob and other small objects. The most important find in the tomb was a mid fourth-century bronze mirror with a relief depiction of Dionysos and Ariadne, an Eros and a Silen (Fig. 2).