Ancient Corinth - 2024

Ancient Corinth. Christopher Pfaff (ASCSA) reports on excavations conducted in 2024 in Ancient Corinth.

The excavations took place in the southern half of the field northeast of the ancient theater (where the current field campaign began in 2018) and in the adjacent field to the west (Fig. 1). Work concentrated on the area of the Marble Room, thought to be an apodyterium, which was first discovered in 2020. Work exposed portions of its west wall and large (2.36 m wide) west doorway were exposed and unearthed additional areas of its opus sectile floor were (Fig. 2). Some of the floor still preserved its original design of circles within square frames, but much had been subject to a rather haphazard Late Antique repair that incorporated fragments of reused marble revetment. As in other previously excavated areas of the Marble Room, a deep Late Antique (7th-century) fill covered the floor of the room. This fill contained building debris (bricks, tiles, mortar, marble revetment, and window glass) mixed with large quantities of fragmentary pottery and glass vessels as well as numerous animal bones and shells. Other rarer finds included a silver buckle, a few small fragments of Latin inscriptions, and a few pieces of marble sculpture (an under-life-size hand, part of an over-life-size hand, and part of a life-size female head).  This Late Antique fill was overlaid by another rather deep fill of Middle/Late Byzantine (12th- to early 13th-century) date.

Remains of a lime kiln came to light in the southwest quadrant of the Marble Room (Fig. 3). It was created within a circular pit cut into the Late Antique fill that covered the Marble Room. The inner surface of the kiln was coated with lime mortar, and the upper part of the kiln, rising above a narrow interior shelf, consisted of a thin pisé wall. The chamber of the kiln had evidently been cleaned out, leaving no clear evidence for its floor or for the quicklime (calcium oxide) that would have been produced within it; nonetheless, evidence of burning within the sides of the kiln and a broad, dense scatter of marble fragments outside the stoke hole at the north side of the kiln support the identification of the structure. Northwest of the kiln and within the Byzantine fill that covered the kiln, a coin hoard comprising 10 anonymous folles Class G (A.D. 1065-1070) was found. To the south of the kiln, a robbing trench was revealed over the remains of the south wall of the Marble Room (Fig. 4). This robbing trench marks the line of a Byzantine wall (wall 16), now very poorly preserved, that extended over 11 m westward from an adjoining wall that flanked the west side of the Byzantine road that overlay the Roman road (cardo) east of the Marble Room.

At the north end of the Marble Room, additional portions of two later (probably 6th-century) walls (walls 24 and 30) were uncovered (Fig. 5). The nature of the building(s) to which these walls belong remains unknown, but the deep deposit of destruction debris (bricks, tiles, and crumbled mortar) that filled the space between the walls would seem to confirm that the building(s) suffered a violent destruction, most likely from an earthquake.

To the west of the Marble Room, a test trench begun in 2023 was expanded to reveal more of a massive, east-west wall (wall 39) that must have separated two heated bathing rooms. The portion of the wall revealed in 2024 includes a doorway, 1.56 m wide, and a semicircular niche, 1.90 m wide, which is located east of the doorway in the north face of the wall (Fig. 6). A small portion of the floor of a hypocaust was revealed to the north of the wall, but none of the elevated floor (suspensura) was preserved here. To the south of the wall 39, a few of the supporting pillars (pilae) of the original elevated floor were partially revealed, although none of the elevated floor itself was found in situ. Deep fill on both sides of the wall consists of building debris (bricks and crumbled mortar) that seems to have been deposited where it fell with the collapse of the structure.