Kyparissia, Property of P. Anagnostopoulou - 2007

Kyparissia (property of P. Anagnostopoulou). S. Koursoumis and Ph. Stavrianopoulos (ΛΗ’ EΠKA) report on the discovery of settlement remains of Hellenistic-Roman date (Figs. 1-2) at this location on the west slope of the kastro hill, only a few metres from the location of a Hellenistic public building excavated in 1967-68. Remains of 3 buildings of unknown use founded in the 2nd – 1st c. BC and used throughout the 1st c. BC were uncovered, among which was added an almost square structure (3 x 3 m), its entrance to the N, its floor of beaten earth. A burnt level attests to its destruction between the 1st c. BC and AD; a large number of loomweights (Fig. 3), fragments of glass vessels and animal bones suggest a residential or industrial function. Immediately in front of the E lintel of the entrance a stone phallus was recovered in a foundation pit (Fig. 4). The building was abandoned until the end of the 2nd c. AD, when the room was re-used as an open space, its E wall restored as the W side of an alley running N-S., which formed the N end of an imposing wall (17 m long) made of large limestone blocks and orientated to the E. In the same area as the earlier pit in front of the lintel, a later pit with traces of burning produced a protome of a clay idol and a model of a clay idol, both probably dating to the 2nd-3rd c. AD (Fig. 4). The excavators suggest these materials might have been connected with the original foundation and then the re-dedication of the building, a practice common in several cities in western Greece in the Hellenistic period.