PELLA - 2008

Pella. M. Lilibaki-Akamati (Director, ΙΖ' ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of a potter’s workshop at some distance from the main commercial centre of the city in the agora. The workshop, which remained in use from the last quarter of the 4thCt until ca. 200 BC, is a square complex with a central paved courtyard containing a well and the base of an altar, surrounded by porticoes which have rooms leading off them. Kilns and storage areas were found, as well as a system of tanks for the purification of clay, thus providing important evidence for the technological processes employed. In addition, moulds for vessels, luxurious domestic equipment, fragments of figurines, and silver and bronze coins were found.

I. Akamatis (Aristotelian University, Thessaloniki) reports the discovery of the public archive of the city. Hundreds of seals and sealings from papyrus documents have been found, along with a gold stater, pens and ink holders, and raw materials for the production, sealing and storage of documents. The public archive did not only hold the official papers of the Macedonian kingdom, its officials, the cities of the kingdom and their rulers, but was likely the location where these documents were written, signed and sealed. The archive was housed in a 2-storeyed building in the SW corner of the anc. agora, constructed in the L4thCt BC over an extensive Cl cemetery (of the period of Archelaos and Amyntas) which contained mostly child burials equipped with rich grave goods. The building was destroyed in the earthquake which devastated the city at the beginning of the 1st Ct BC.
Several hundreds of clay sealings from papyrus documents, which fell from the upper floor where they had been stored in the peristyle and S stoa, were recovered from the ruins. In the same areas were found several fragments of pens, metal and clay ink holders (one of which bore the name of Philip), and masses of the clay used to form sealings. Motifs depicted on the sealings vary: deities, male, female and animal forms, portraits and the Macedonian club and star. One group, which bears the legend ΠΕΛΛΗΣ ΠΟΛΙΤΑΡΧΩΝ shows Pella personified as a female head wearing a mural crown. Other sealings show the head of Zeus with the legend of the Macedonian generals, in some cases of commercial magistrates and of the rulers of Edessa, Europos and various other cities. A number depict the image of a grazing cow, as used on the coinage of Pella: the legend on the coinage reads ΠΕΛ/HΣ whereas that above the cow on the sealings reads ΠΕΛΛΗΣ ΕΜΠΟΡΙΟΥ thus linking it with the official organization of the commercial centre of the city, while emphasizing the fertility of the region and perhaps alluding to the old name of the city, Bounomos or Bounomeia. A seal type depicting the head of a satyr may have been used by officials inside the building as a guarantee of the confidentiality of the documents prepared there.