PIRAEUS - 2000

Piraeus. 5 Gounari and 22−24 Aristeidou Streets (Charangioni property): a section of the northern coastal walls of the city (10.4m long, 4.3−5.15m wide, oriented east-west, preserved to four courses high) was discovered alongside a cemetery (Fig. 1). The wall probably dates to the Themistoklean phase (493/492 BC). Twenty metres to the north was a section of the ditch: a further section was previously identified at 23 Navarinou and Gounari Streets (see ADelt 27 [1972] Chr, 168). Between the wall and the ditch was a cemetery of 23 graves, with a further 15 uncovered north of the ditch. These are poor burials − pits, enchytrismoi, tile graves and cists; the few graves goods date from the end of the fourth century BC to the third century AD. Six had bronze coins by the heads.

At the junction of Vasileos Georgiou and Notara Streets was a Roman building with tiled floors.

At Skylitsi and Philonos Streets was a quarry dated by pottery to ca. fourth century BC; another, at 4 Kleisouras Street, had traces of the wedge-grooves where the limestone blocks were separated in the Classical period.

Houses and cisterns were found in several locations. A probable house with two building phases (fourth and third centuries BC) was found at 108 Neoreion and 71 Sotiros Dios Streets, and a series of Hellenistic cisterns at 54 Tompazi Street (Fig. 2).
At the junction of Sotiros Dios and Ypsilantou the atrium and an andron of a second-century BC house were preserved, with floors of white, grey and black pebbles. Beneath this building was a dump containing fourth century pottery, nails, coins, loomweights, obsidian, etc. A cistern may have been used as a dump for wasters and discard from a second-century BC potter’s workshop (including moulded bowls and some lamps).
At the junction of Chatzikostanti, Aigeos and Podaleiriou Streets, eight cisterns contained Hellenistic ceramics, tiles, individual coins and two hoards of six and 25 coins, including bronze issues of the fourth, third and first centuries BC, and a silver coin of the fifth century BC.
An ancient dump at the junction of Alkibiadou and Kantharou Streets (Figs. 3-5) may be from a ceramic workshop. It contained much pottery of the second half of the fourth to the early third century BC (kantharoi, lamps, skyphoi, plates, miniature bowls, mortars, amphoriskoi, askoi, stamped amphora handles, clay loomweights, parts of figurines, a relief plaque with a Nike and a West Slope kantharos inscribed ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗΣ), plus iron and bronze nails, coins, slag, animal bone and a fragment of a marble lekanis.