CHANIA - 2003

Chania. 2 Daskaloyianni Street (Melissa property). K. Tzanakaki (ΚΕ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports on excavations conducted between 2001-2003.

The earliest occupation evidence comes from infilled hollows in the bedrock at the southeast, where EM II-MM IA sherds were retrieved. Elsewhere, three buildings and a workshop all date to historical times. The domestic structure C, at the west, was partly excavated revealing three basement rooms with well-built stone walls set on bedrock. It was occupied in the Archaic and Classical periods and abandoned in the fourth century BC: rubble was then dumped in to raise the ground level.

The work-area that succeeded it (which was investigated at the west and north only) functioned in Hellenistic times as a potter’s workshop. Finds include three rectangular clay bins, a deep, squarish shaft (stone-lined to the excavated depth of 3m), a number of potter’s kilns and deposits of pure clay awaiting use. There is some evidence for a built-in heating system based on clay pipes. A bronze coin of 37-36 BC found in a kiln channel may give a terminus post quem for the abandonment of the workshop.

The square shaft, cut into the kouskouras bedrock, widened as it went deeper. Pipes which terminate by its mouth on all but the north side drew waste water and slurry from the workshop. The shaft’s value as a soak-away seems to have been recognized, as it remained open throughout the life of the Roman House (Building B), and fell out of use only in the sixth - seventh century AD to judge from Early Byzantine pottery in its topmost fill.

At the east side of the plot are two large rooms of the Hellenistic Building B, one with a cobbled floor. A cooking pot held the remains of a small animal plus carbon. To the west of these rooms was a paved surface. The large Roman Building B (constructed in the late first century BC/early first century AD) covered much of the plot. Its foundations rest on earlier structures raised on top of the Hellenistic levels in the decades following the Roman conquest of Crete. Six rooms of Building B were investigated. The three centuries until its destruction in the third century AD saw many architectural alterations and changes in the functions of spaces. The tiled roof of the final phase was found collapsed on to its contemporary earth and baked clay floors. Many architectural spolia, including ashlar blocks and a column drum, were reused in the walls. A higher standard of living earlier in the building’s history is evident from well-made pebble floors and fragments of a mosaic-floor now scattered throughout. Door thresholds are preserved and narrower openings may indicate windows (in Room 3). Room 1 had at least three floors: on the last, of clay, lay vases, lamps and amphorae, bronze coins and marble statuary. Room 2, initially open-air, was later given a tile roof and a window blocked. Room 3, a bath, had alternating layers of lime and hydraulic plaster; a jug lay on the plaster floor. Room 4 with a pebbled floor, preserved lime plaster on the north wall (a general trait but here painted purple). Room 5 was formed following the insertion of the present north wall in Room 1: a third-century AD cookpot lay on the earth floor. Room 6 had a floor of hydraulic plaster mixed with grog, with five earlier earth floors beneath. The small finds from Building B include iron tools (axes), as well as smaller bronze and lead implements (nails, spatulae etc.) and stone tools for grinding and crushing. Abundant terracotta whorls and loomweights attest to cloth production. Stamped amphora handles date to the Classical period.