THORIKOS - 2014

Thorikos. Roald Docter (Belgian School/Ghent) reports on continued excavation and survey on the Velatouri hill and excavation in the west necropolis.

The survey produced 20,792 sherds, including eight Final Neolithic sherds from open and closed vessels with pattern burnished and red or brown burnished decoration, 18 possible Neolithic/Bronze Age, 14 Classical/Hellenistic, and 35 local cooking ware of undetermined date. Work again focused on mine 6 which had two main underground networks. Further mining remains and entrances were identified, an inscription and several graffiti on the mine walls documented, and few lamps and vessels recovered.

On the Acropolis, a trench, opened to document the stratigraphy, revealed an undisturbed child burial in a cist of rectangular marble slabs (ca. 1.4 x 0.8m externally and 1.1 x 0.25m internally) which contained a few small bones and some sherds. In the eastern part of the same trench, wall remains were excavated from the top of a fifth-century stone layer. In the northwest of the trench, a layer of small stone slabs overlay a possible wall, and several small stone slabs were found in the south. Prehistoric pottery was recovered from the trench.

In the necropolis, excavation at the edge of the 1963-1975 excavated area exposed part of the previously discovered Grave 106 which is now seen to be oriented east-west. The grave was built of five upright stone slabs, with two further slabs forming the floor (a further slab was found just beyond the grave). Excavation 2m east of the grave revealed a poorly preserved stone wall with debris from its collapse to the north.