VARI - 2006

Vari, Maroti Street (Linden and Saman properties).Maria Kassimi-Souttou (ΚΣΤ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of a looted and badly disturbed Archaic to fourth-century BC cemetery and a Geometric pyre.

The Π-shaped burial enclosure I, built of carefully-worked blocks with a second, inner row of smaller stones, extended from the southwest of the Linden property onto the adjacent Saman property (the wall that continued north was 7m long and 0.85m wide). A north-south road (11.5m long and 3.1m wide) led to the enclosure, which contained two shaft graves, a pyre and a sarcophagus. Finds from the enclosure include a marble alabastron, a black-glazed lekythos, seven bronze nails, a red-figure squat lekythos, an unguentarium, and Archaic and Classical sherds.

Enclosure II, also Π-shaped, extended from the southeast of the Linden property onto the Saman property. It was built of soft limestone: a 1-1.1m-wide road ran around it. Two sarcophagi were excavated from the mound, plus a shaft grave and two circular pyres to the north of it. Finds from the enclosure include marble elements from a loutrophoros, a small column, and a staff (lagobolon), as well as a black-glazed cup, a miniature lekythos and a funerary stele. Finds from the shaft grave and the pyres include Classical plain and black-glaze pottery (including pyxides, pyxis lids and a plates), bones, a copper ring and pieces of copper. Additional finds from the Linden plot include a marble funerary stele with pedimental decoration plus a palmette from another stele, fragments of marble vessels, a marble lekythos, four miniature oinochoae, a limestone alabastron, part of a marble staff (lagobolon) and numerous marble fragments.

North of enclosure II on the Saman property were four cist graves, 19 pyres, two sarcophagi (one marble and one limestone), two pithos burials and a geometric pyre which contained a cup and an oinochoe. The pyres were square or circular: stone enclosures surrounded some of the pyres and cist graves, perhaps demarcating family burial plots. The pithos burials contained miniature vessels. Other finds from the Saman plot include late Archaic and Classical sherds, pieces of copper, black- and red-figure lekythoi, a glass trefoil-mouthed oinochoe, two animal figurines (a ram and a horse), and bronze bosses.