Ancient Sikyon - 2017

Ancient Sikyon. Foteini A. Balla (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) and Athansios Tsiogkas (Ephorate of Antiquities of Corinth) report the following:

In the plain of Sicyon, north of the Classical city’s remains and divided by a large road is a large and important cemetery dating from the 7th to the 1st centuries BC. The cemetery was first identified in the mid 1960s during work for the construction of the Athens-Patras highway. Excavations in the mid 1970s and in 2013-2017 uncovered a 250 m-long stretch of the cemetery, comprising a total of 277 graves, primarily pits, some monolithic larnacae, and cist-graves. The deceased were occasionally accompanied by five to ten objects, mainly vases of Corinthian and Athenian workshops, figurines (associated primarily with children’s burials), metal objects, and, more rarely, jewellery. Burials of the 4th century occasionally feature a silver Sicyon coin placed on the deceased. Three funerary monuments dominate the cemetery area. Although the construction of at least one can be dated to the Late Hellenistic period at the latest, the monuments contain burials dating to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, which suggest continuous reuse of the monuments particularly during the Roman period.