Motorway works Corinth-Tripoli-Kalamata - 2011

Motorway works Corinth-Tripoli-Kalamata, Leuktro – Sparta spur,region of Agorianis, Chlevaina. Afroditi Maltezou (Ε ΕΠΚΑ) reports on excavations at KM 23+880. The foundations of a section of a building with NW-SE orientation. Four areas are distinguished. The two to the S/SE are roofed. The pottery recovered is mostly black-glazed and dated in the Late Classical/Hellenistic period. Also, clay loom weights, grinders, fragments of large unpainted vessels, and one bronze arrowhead were found. The finds and the plan of the building show that it was a farmstead. Also collected were miniature vessels, a few scattered flakes of obsidian and flint, a few examples of pottery from the EH period.

At KM 23+765, NW of the previous spot, a section of a circular structure of unknown use was found in the rocky ground. A few pieces of unpainted pottery were collected.

At KM 23+985, S of the previous location on a low hill, antiquities were found. Heaps of stones, groups of tiles, and also part of a drystone wall were found in the W part of the excavation. In the E part, 6 graves of various types without grave goods with an E-W orientation were found.

Grave 1: covered by fragments of tiles and another tile as the floor. On the S long side of the floor tile a secondary inhumation was found. A few decomposed bones were found in the main burial with head to the W.

Grave 2: cist grave, disturbed burials were found inside, heads to the W. Graves 3 + 4 were pit graves carved in the natural ground with disturbed burials inside. Grave 5contained a few bones scattered and decomposed. Grave 6, a simple pit in the bedrock, with 1 burial inside and head to the W and perhaps fragments of 2 tiles as a pillow. Four more graves were found. In Grave 8 there were the bones of at least 3 individuals. The pottery found was dated mainly to the Roman-Late Roman period.

At KM 24+060, a rectangular building and piles of stones were found. The building has an E-W direction. Because there were no small finds or pottery from inside, it is impossible to interpret or date. Very little pottery was collected from outside the building and it is dated in the Roman period.

Leonidas Soukleris (Ε ΕΠΚΑ) reports on excavations at KM 24-24+050. Around 20 m to the NE of the previously mentioned rectangular building, 6 extensive heaped piles of stones were found with a significant number of small finds associated with them. In Groups 1, 2, and 6, a large amount of pottery was found of EH and LH III periods. In the other groups, mainly undecorated tiles, sherds of storage vessels and utilitarian pottery of the Roman period and fragments of a hypocaust tile. In Group 6 fragments of the following was found: phialai, cooking vessels, jug of EH II, 25 stems of kylikes, an animal figurine with red paint, handles and lips of skyphoi with vestiges of painted decoration of LH III A1-B1.

[Entry created by E. Strazdins]