ARTA - Anc. Ambracia - 2004

Arta (anc. Ambracia), Aetorachis Street. P. Gouni (ΙΒ' ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of late Classical-Hellenistic housing extending over two neighbouring properties.

On the Matsouka property (Fig. 1: 286α) a section of a north-south road was found plus the greater part of a roadside house (A) which is separated from the neighbouring house B by a narrow paved alley/drainage channel. A second, narrower, drainage channel parallel to the main road divided House A from House Γ to the west. This accords with the overall city plan, where the distance between streets is standardly 30m, and the usual house area ca. 15 x 15m.

The three houses and two drainage channels were laid out in the fourth century and continued with the same dimensions until they went out of use in the late third or early second century BC. There is little evidence for the internal arrangement of House A during the first, fourth-century phase: most surviving evidence inside the structure dates to the second, third-century phase. Its dimensions are confirmed as 15m east-west and estimated at 12.5-13m north-south. A double door with a porch led onto a road, a short (1.37 x 0.6m) section of which was investigated. Surfaced with packed earth stones and tile fragments, the road was in use during the second construction phase (excavation did not proceed so as to determine any earlier use). The porch had a red plaster and tile floor, and was partially covered with a destruction layer of the second century BC. Walls of the first construction phase were located in this area. South of the porch, room A contained a rectangular hearth of limestone slabs, with an area of paved floor to the west of it. A small quantity of undecorated pottery was found within the hearth. Room A, probably a kitchen, produced a large quantity of plain domestic pottery, including cooking and storage vessels, and a stone grinder. A stone base at the southwest corner of the room is tentatively interpreted as supporting a wooden staircase to the upper floor, assuming that it was not in its original position. Two walls below the hearth belong to the first construction phase. Rooms B and Δ lay in parallel to the west of room A: room B had a pebble floor and a small channel leading into the main south drain of the house (a small stone structure next to it may have held a foundation offering) and room Δ a paved floor and water channel. Despite its large size, room Δ, which was entered via its antechamber, room Γ, produced no portable finds or architectural remains to define its function. The north wing of the house extends into the neighbouring plot and was therefore only partially excavated. Two rooms were revealed; both had beaten earth floors and there was a hearth by the east wall of the westernmost. From the first construction phase, a wall and parts of two earth, pebble and tile floors were found, with a fourth-century BC destruction layer over one floor. The andron of House A (room E) had a plaster floor slightly raised to form a one metre-wide platform along the three sides of the room uncovered: the room must have been entered from the north (as yet unexcavated), approached from the rear, domestic quarters of the house. The room contained few finds, and its northwest part had been disturbed by a kiln.

The one metre-wide drainage channel which separates House A from House B to the south was exposed for a length of 12m. The flanking house walls, clad with limestone slabs, formed the sides, and the channel was covered with further slabs to make the passage passable. Part of the north wall of House B was uncovered, along with sections of interior wall and part of the courtyard (a paved area with water channels). The 0.5m wide drainage channel which separates House A from House Γ to the west was also defined by the exterior walls of the two houses. One small parts of this exterior wall and one interior wall of House Γ were uncovered.

All three houses produced large quantities of pottery (mostly plainware), lamps, loomweights and a few figurines. 224 bronze coins were found, plus a silver starter, a small bronze Early Hellenistic figure of Hermes (from room A), three bronze hooks, two bronze spearheads, pins and bronze and iron pegs and nails.

On the Analogidi property (Fig. 1: 286β) to the north lay a roadside house (also called A) which extended to the north of the House A found on the Matsouka plot, plus more of House B and the continuation of the water channel which separated Houses A and B. These structures, which again date to the fourth and third-second centuries, lie in an area previously occupied by workshops.

Four rooms of this second House A were found (I-IV), poorly preserved due to later, post-Byzantine, incursions. All had beaten earth floors and walls of roughly worked stone. In the southwest corner of room I was a foundation deposit of 27 miniature vessels plus traces of burning. Room II (which communicates with room I via a doorway with a built, stone and tile, threshold) contained a hoard of 120 bronze and four silver coins. The bronze coins were mainly Ambraciot issues of 238-168BC: the only legible silver coin is an issue of the Epirote Koinon of the same date. Part of a floor dating to the first construction phase lay in the northeast corner, with a similar floor of the same date also in room III (south of room I). Room IV (south of room II) was likely the focal point of the house: it contained a hearth and a further foundation offering of miniature vessels and animal figurines, and had plastered walls with traces of yellow and red colour preserved. The part of the house which extended further to the west was particularly badly damaged by a post-Byzantine well and pits, plus the drains of a modern building, to the extent that it is now hard to reconstruct its internal layout. However it seems that it differed from that of the House A on the Matsouka plot. Analogidi House A followed a grid plan with rooms of equal size (4.5m square), while Matsouka House A had rooms arranged around three sides of a long narrow central space aligned with the street entrance.

The water channel which separated Matsouka Houses A and B was exposed for a further 15m. More of House B was revealed on the Analogidi plot (the street wall and parts of rooms I-IV). The best preserved room, III, had a clay floor with a pithos on the south side. Room IV to the south contained a complete stone grinder next to two limestone slabs. These remains date to the second construction phase: sections of wall of the first, Early Hellenistic phase were exposed at a deeper level, but it proved impossible to determine the structures to which they belonged.

These houses produced much pottery (chiefly plainware), terracotta figurines, miniature vessels, lamps, loomweights, and three stamped tiles (with the public stamp depicting a baetyl). 322 bronze and seven silver coins were collected, plus bronze sheet, bronze and iron nails, three bronze pins, a bronze arrowhead, a lead plaque with a relief depiction of a baetyl and the letter A, a bone point and pin, and glass beads.

In a deeper layer were seven long clay structures (one kiln-shaped and the rest rectangular) with signs of intense burning, oriented east-west. Two of these contained masses of clay, some vitrified, and further masses of clay (some burnt) were found over the entire area west of the west wall of room IV (the construction of the house to the east likely destroyed any earlier installations in the area). Two further clay structures were located at the west edge of the plot, but not excavated. The area was evidently used for workshops during the fifth and fourth centuries, although no material (as wasters), specifically connected with pottery production, was found, nor was any area where the burning so widely evident could have taken place. The little pottery collected from the lowest levels consists of pithoi and chytres, skyphoi and kylikes.