SPARTA Byzantine city - 2005

Sparta, Byzantine city. A. Bakourou (formerly Director, 5th EBA) presents MByz remains in the city area focusing on 2 adjacent building plots, O.T. 126 and 127, where a funerary chapel, a church, a bath and an olive press were discovered.
The triconch funerary chapel was discovered on the Theodosopoulou-Karydi property in O.T. 126. This is a simple, one-roomed structure, 12.4m total l. x 6.1m w (narthex 9m w.). The structure included building material in secondary use (large orthogonal limestone blocks with smaller stone filling between them, plastered in), a technique mostly used in the 10th−11th Ct, although there is no evidence for earlier structures on the site. The interior was decorated with wall-paintings; one fragment depicts an inscribed scroll. Evidence combines to indicate a date of the 2nd half of the 10th Ct AD. Inside the main chapel were 3 cist tombs (one in the S apse and 2 in the W aisle), with a further 6 in the narthex, below the floor and the marble threshold. This indicates that the chapel was funerary in its original conception, but burial continued after its destruction, from the 12th to the first half of the 13thCt. Small rectangular enclosures were built to the W of it in this later period, probably to organize the large cemetery which then developed inside and around the building (26 cist tombs have been recovered, containing multiple burials, and 25 pit graves mostly of children). Grave goods included bracelets, rings, earrings, and many MByz buckles. From the fill across the area come examples of glazed pottery of the 12th and 13th Cts, with restorable vessels from funerary feasts within the cemetery. Thirty eight coins were found, 3 of the 10thCt, most of the 11th to the first half of the 13thCt, and 3 Fr coins of the Corinth mint of ca. 1250.
On the property of E. Rigos, just to the W in O.T. 127, are the foundations of a Byz church (preserved to 1m h.), resting on the remains of a Rom structure. The building, which has an almost square plan, has 3 aisles with apses at the E end and a narthex at the W (the main entrance is in the W side of the narthex). There are traces of wall-painting in the central apse (and loose fragments found scattered elsewhere), as well as of marble cladding and a marble floor. The altar table was in situ. On the basis of the building itself, its sculpted decoration and the coins found (especially 2 anonymous folles), an 11th Ct construction date is indicated; there followed 3 or 4 building phases, and it is likely that the building continued in use into late Comninan times and that it was destroyed by an earthquake.
A further rescue excavation on the property of S. and P. Androutsou, in addition to allowing complete exploration of the whole of the church, revealed MByz cist and pit graves along the entire E side of the building. A small distance to the E of the church lay the remains of a bath, preserving the apodyterion, caldarium and frigidarium. The central room had apses around, one of which served as a cistern. Remains of 2 water tanks were discovered outside the building. The hypocaust is poorly preserved, although the floors of the W niche and the 3rd room survive. The bath was a public rather than a private building, and is dated by the architecture to ca. 1100−1260.
The olive press was discovered NE of the bath, on the Philippopoulou plot. The large collection basin was well preserved, with a large rotating trapetum, with the slot for the central wooden axle pole which, together with a horizontal beam, supported 2 millstones turned by animal power. A further press was found just to the N. This is the first well-preserved workshop of this period found in Sparta, although partial traces of others (for example, on the Katsou property in O.T. 125) are preserved within the mod. city and on the acropolis.