Sparta - 2010

Sparta, Platanista Street (O.T. 127, alleged property of G. Kalopisi). Maria Florou (5th EBA) reports on continuing excavations of the site in 2010. In 10 excavation sectors fills were removed and fragmentary surviving architectural remains of Byzantine and later Roman times were identified (Fig. 1).

The antiquities revealed generally have a NE-SW orientation and include sections of walls and built-in pipes, as well as poorly preserved mosaic flooring. From the Byzantine period there are sections of 5 walls, poorly constructed from rubble masonry and using earth as a binding agent, which do not demarcate a defined area. In the central and eastern section of the site, a system of 10 interconnected built-in pipes came to light.

The mosaic floor was found in the northeastern part of the excavated area and consists of medium sized tesserae, white and blue in colour, giving geometric motifs. Its preserved dimensions are 2.40 x 0.50/0.77 m. The tesserae are stone, of medium size; they have been assembled and fixed to a substrate of mortar, using the technique of cutting from all four sides of the tesserae (opus tessellatum). Part of the same mosaic floor has been revealed in excavations on the property directly to the south and another mosaic floor was found on the property adjacent to the north.

In the northern section of the site a rectangular construction was found. Its flooring is composed of clay slabs with mortar as a binding material and preserves in situ the lower section of hypocaust stacks. The construction, probably a bathing facility with hypocaust heating, extends to the north onto the adjacent Soultani property, where previous excavation uncovered late-Roman bath remains.

Finally in the western part of the site a square space was revealed which preserves a floor of hydraulic plaster, probably belonging to a cistern. A few glazed Byzantine-era ceramics with rough-incised, fine-incised, and painted decoration were collected, pottery of early Byzantine times with grooved and scored decoration, as well as a small amount of red-slip ceramics of the Roman period. In addition, metal objects (nails, sheets), terracotta (loom weights, a lamp, pieces of hypocaust stacks), bones (awls), fragments of glass vessels and five bronze coins were collected.

Since the excavation is incomplete, it is not possible to draw clear conclusions about the use of space. However, individual elements that relate to architectural remains (pipeline systems, cisterns) and to moveable finds (segments of hypocaust bricks and tegulae mammatae) as well as the location of the excavation advocate for the conclusion that the antiquities here correlate with and are part of the remains of the Roman era bath that were excavated on the neighbouring property to the north.

[Entry created by E. Strazdins]