Ancient Sikyon - Siryon site - 2012

Ancient Sikyon - Siryon site. Vasileios Papathanasiou (LZ’ EPKA) reports on the continuation of the excavation held at the Siryon site, situated within ancient Sikyon. Part of the fourth and fifth century BC settlement was revealed. The findings indicated that the settlement was particularly wealthy. 

Ancient Siryon was abandoned after Demetrius the Besieger ordered that the settlement was moved to a safer site, on the highland of the Hellenistic and Roman Sikyon, in 303 BC. The study of architectural remains between kilometric positions 17+054 and 17+096 revealed two construction phases, dated in the Classical and the late Classical times, respectively. The housing blocks were divided by streets of various widths, sided by water pipes. The urban complex arrangement had been done loosely, unlike the very strictly perpendicularly organized Hellenistic sites. 

In the central housing block (fig. 1) there were the foundations of a house with three quarters. It was organized around a central open yard (atrium) which connected areas linked with very different activities in the house. In the S/SE of the atrium there were some subterranean storage areas (arrangement of many pithoi and kitchen area), while there were also some homebound workshop areas, built to attend to the housing unit’s needs. The andron was located in the E half of the house, and it was fit to house seven beds. The room had painted decoration on the walls (as was conducted by the red and blue traces of paint on the mortar) and the floor was adorned with a mosaic, depicting lions attacking cattle and other farm animals (fig. 2). Finally, the house had its own altar, situated on one of its most central areas (fig. 3). 

Five burials were located in the same area, featuring pottery dated in the first half of the ninth century BC. 

[Entry created by E. Kourti]