GORTYN - 2009

Informations Générales

Numéro de la notice

1807

Année de l'opération

2009

Chronologie

Antiquité

Période byzantine

Mots-clés

Bains - Baptistère - Temple - Maison - Four - Revêtements (mur et sol) - Sculpture - Pierre - Édifice religieux - Installation hydraulique - Habitat - Sanctuaire

Nature de l'opération

Fouille - Programmée

Institution(s)

Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene (SAIA) (École archéologique italienne à Athènes)

Localisation

Toponyme
Gortyn

Notices et opérations liées

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1995 (1)1997 1999 2000 2002 2004 2006 2006 (1)2007 200820092010 2011 2011 (1)2011 (2)2011 (3)

Description

Gortyn. Prophitis Ilias settlement. N. Allegro (SAIA/Palermo) reports on excavations conducted in 2008-2009 in area B, north of the east-west road, in the partly-investigated buildings I, III, IV and V (Figs 1-2). In the west, building IV was fully exposed, with part of yard B6. In the north lay a new terrace, with structures on the same orientation as elsewhere. An east-west road may have run between it and buildings III and IV. The structures of the eighth- to seventh-century BC settlement are now better defined. Despite its irregularities, there are clear signs of a planned approach: hence the articulation of the terraces that slope from north to south and the presence of the main east-west road, with its north-south subsidiaries. The buildings vary in size and number of rooms. As with building IV, all were accessed from the smaller north-south lanes and not from the main road. The larger yards (B12, 6 and 19) lie adjacent to the main east-west road and span the entire house frontage. Yard B6 was apparently shared by buildings III and IV. In building I, a series of rooms was explored: the northern side of court B12 was formed by a terrace wall supporting a massive stone structure (B24) at a higher level. Further north again, a large area (B26) is covered by a thick layer of stones eroded down from the settlement higher up. B24 is defined to the east by B23, a rectangular room divided by an east-west wall: to the south is a kitchen (noting extensive traces of burning and a tripod pot crushed on the floor) and to the north is a probable dining room entered by a door at the west end. Building IV (Geometric to Archaic; cf. AR 54 [2007-2008], 105, fig. 102) is the largest complex yet discovered, with seven rooms in three sets running at different levels north-south and two entrances (one from the western side of lane B18, the other on the eastern side of yard B6). Though the bonded corners suggest a single-phase construction, both the structure and the rooms within are not squared. Nor is the pattern of internal circulation clear: the four rooms at the south are paired on a north-south axis but do not communicate east- west, and of the three northern rooms only B22 and B17 are linked. Near the western wall of B22, a large lekane was sunk in the floor with a protective kerb of stones around it, while a pit occupies the centre, perhaps connected to a channel running across the wall-line between B22 and B17. In the centre of B17 was an oval stone hearth with a whole cup and other ceramic items upon it, which had burnt soil inside it and a scatter of burnt bones around. The northern wall supports a small bench; a curving platform at the northwest may have been used for the processing of cereals. Building V lies west of a small north-south lane, B18. Its yard (B19) was covered in a deposit, thinning from the north, which yielded Geometric/Orientalizing and Hellenistic pottery, but was disturbed by a large modern pit. Collapsed bordering structures may account for the extensive spread of stones at the south. The settlement was gradually deserted over the second half of the seventh century BC and perhaps into the early sixth. Abandonment layers of the seventh century BC in building IV contain collapse from the structure (e.g. rooms B21 and B22). Over room 20 lay earth and massive stone slabs: a stone kerb at the east is probably part of a road running northeast to the top of the hill, which forms part of the Hellenistic settlement to judge from the sherds associated. In the fill of the upper terrace was late seventh-century BC to Hellenistic pottery, including Ionian cups of B1 and B2 type, and Classical Attic black figure, reflecting a continuity of religious activity in this area.

The thermal baths south of the so-called praetorium. G. Bejor (SAIA/Milan) reports on continued excavation in this large complex (Figs 3-4) (over 1,500m2) that extends for some 50m between the Hellenistic stadium and the road separating the Pythion from the praetorium. Focuses of research were the large rectangular basin (room E) that opens onto the frigidarium at the south and the area east and north of the frigidarium. The opening from the frigidarium into basin E (10m x 5m) was flanked by two marble columns with Ionic bases; bathers passed down three steps into the water. The walls, of irregular stones, were brick-faced on the interior. Sections of the original polychrome floor mosaic show how this and the walls were later covered with waterproof mortar, probably as part of the Justinianic repairs which marked the conversion of the immersion bath into a simple tank. With the collapse of the building in the final decades of the sixth century AD (devastating earthquakes struck between AD 580 and 618), this cistern became filled with debris. It has previously been reported (AR 54 [2007-2008], 106) that the collapse of the floors in the suite of warm rooms between the frigidarium and the praefurnia led to the ground sinking. Simpler dry-stone walls were then erected. Excavation in 2009 clarified the transformation of the original double-apsidal tepidarium (where remains of the walls and floor of its hypocaust survive). This communicated with another warm area to the east where parts of the floor and columns of the hypocaust are preserved: its position immediately next to the praefurnium N1 clearly indicates that it must be the caldarium. To the north, a second praefurnium (N2) runs perpendicular to the first. North of these two heated rooms, L and K, and connected with both, was room J which also communicated with the apodyterion H to the west. Their original threshold of cipollino marble was replaced in limestone. Room H has another doorway in its northern wall, which is mostly removed (the threshold remains, again of limestone and re-used). These baths were installed between the era of the Tetrachy and that of Constantine. From the beginning, they extended along the northern side of a large colonnaded square; building began from the praefurnium (N1), which was erected over the abandoned Hellenistic stadium, and continued into the reign of Gallienus when cistern C was enclosed. The frigidarium (with its four corner pillars indicating that it was roofed in ribbed vaults rather than with a dome) then began to collapse. Major changes were effected in the heated rooms: J and L were converted to cold-water usage (their floors were repaved in irregular and re-used marble slabs, and room L was equipped with two immersion tubs); thresholds were raised and the apodyterion H renovated. At the time of the severe earthquakes in the late sixth to early seventh century AD, the complex became choked with rubble: the settlement took over part of it (such as room H) with new cisterns created along the southern side.

The Hellenistic temple. E. Lippolis (SAIA/Rome) reports on continued excavation of this temple, which is situated at the southwestern corner of block N of the praetorium (Fig. 5). The neighbourhood has a high proportion of public and governmental buildings. The temple, now well explored and reconstructed in

detail, is unusual, and even experimental, in the details of its construction and appearance: hence the two dominant pilasters attached to the side walls inside the porch. Work in undisturbed parts of the emplecton produced ceramic evidence for a date between the last quarter of the second and the first half of the first century BC, complementing material found in the emplecton of the stadium. A monumental hall was built between the temple and the Nymphaeum, perhaps in the first century AD. At least half of a large threshold block in white limestone has been found, set against the eastern wall of the temple, making an open passage ca. 1m wide between two lateral antae. This new building, which forms an integral part of the south façade of the insula, is only partially preserved, making it difficult at present to determine its function. The late Imperial and Early Byzantine phases are already much researched. Work is now focused on the final stages of habitation in the northeastern rooms of a public building constructed over the temple in the second half of the fourth century AD (which was itself set over a cistern of the first half of the fourth century). During the seventh to eighth centuries AD, prior to the final abandonment of the area, the space became a form of temporary shelter. Underneath the partially collapsed ruins of the highest part of the wall was a hearth set in a beaten-earth surface; beside it stood a lidded jar, crushed in a later stage of masonry collapse.

The Baptisterion. This building, the so-called Rotonda, has in recent years been investigated by M. Ricciardi (SAIA) (AEK 1 [2010], 336-47; cf. AR 53 [2006-2007], 110) (Fig. 6). It is now mostly exposed, but not completely since on the eastern side it lies under another property. This is an essentially circular construction, ca. 15m in diameter, the outer part of which is occupied by an ambulatory 3.65m wide with a gypsum paved floor and a tiled roof. Two rectangular rooms cut through this at the south to border the central complex, leaving a small entrance into the ambulatory at the southwest. The core area is also circular, 8.5−9m in diameter, with four entrances from the ambulatory (at the quarters). The outer face of this central area is divided into eight deep ‘apses’, with a column set on a high squared base between each; in the centre is a cruciform font. Domed in opus cementicum, the apse-like sections have opus sectile decoration of plant motifs in marbles of various colours; their floors have geometric patterns in the same technique. The columns of Karystos marble have capitals of high quality (showing influences from Constantinople), noting in particular an example with paired eagles at the corners. The font was made of marble slabs, frescoed and with opus sectile on the exterior. The building is dated to the late fifth to early sixth century AD on architectural and stylistic grounds: although there are signs of phased construction and restoration, this cannot be securely dated. The building was partially destroyed by an earthquake. Thereafter, there is evidence for some habitation beneath the damaged dome in the late seventh to early eighth century AD, until this was brought to an end by a second earthquake.

Auteur de la notice

Don EVELY

Références bibliographiques

Unpublished field report, SAIA; AEK 1 (2010), 336-47