OINIADES - 2010

Oiniades. E. Serbeti (University of Athens) reports on the 2009 and 2010 excavation seasons. Work since 1989 (now published in E. Serbeti, Οινιάδες. Δημόσια Οικοδομήματα από την Αρχαία Αγορά, Αthens 2001) has uncovered the greater part of the agora of the ancient city (the bouleuterion, a 124m long stoa, a small temple, three votive monuments, a circular heroon containing an altar and a bothros for offerings, and three buildings of unknown function). Current research focuses on the cemetery outside the city wall to the east.
Excavation in 2009-2010 exposed the retaining wall which defined the north side of a 2m wide road for some 36m of its course through the cemetery. This wall was not one unified construction, but comprised six separate walls all on the same orientation (Figs 1,2,9,10). These were built of worked blocks of local hard limestone, with the south face (towards the road) finished (Figs 3). Walls 1, 2, 4, and 5 were in orthogonal masonry, wall 3 in irregular polygonal masonry, and wall 6 had almost completely collapsed (Fig. 13). In front of the bedrock between walls 3 and 4 and upon the road was a roughly-set row of medium-sized unworked stones which defined a semicircular space of uncertain function.
A block at the ends of the walls oriented north-south, against the alignment of the road (Fig. 12), indicates that the retaining wall also incorporated independent structures, probably funerary periboloi. Tombs 1 and 3 can be associated with wall 1, tombs 45 and 49 with wall 2, tomb 91 with wall 3, tombs 77 and 78 with wall 4, tombs 60, 61, 74, 76 and 81 with wall 5, and tomb 58 with wall 6. The tomb groups thus identified are valuable for the study of the form of the cemetery, burial customs, and the dating of grave goods.
Portable finds include small groups of sherds, plaster, tiny fragments of grave stelai, a spearhead, a nail, and shell. Significant discoveries include parts of inscribed funerary stelae, fragments of 16 figurines (six of which come from the area of the stone semi-circle over the road), two bronze coins, and a bronze ring.
Only slight traces of the road were found for the remaining 20m in the west of the area investigated: in two places cuttings in the rock surface reveal the course of the wall to the western point where the road turns and continues (in narrower form and cut into the rock) to the eastern gate in the city wall. Prospection among the thick vegetation and collapsed blocks of the city wall revealed the line of the road up to the east gate.
Cleaning of the area south of tombs 4 and 50 revealed a further orthogonal rock-cut tomb (95) with three white limestone cover-slabs (Fig. 14). This tomb had been robbed: it contained one burial with some 30 small Hellenistic vessels of know local types (lamps, unguentaria, aryballoi etc.) and a bronze coin, which presumably constitute a fraction of the original offerings. A total of 95 tombs has now been discovered. These were cleaned to remove fill from those previously excavated and enable new plans and photographs to be made.