SKALA - Aetos - 2005

Skala, Aetos (Apostolou or Micha property). G. Riginos (Η’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports on further excavation in the Late Bronze Age to late fourth-century BC hill settlement overlooking the valley of Meso Kalama. The property had been illegally landscaped into four terraces, only the topmost of which was investigated, although occupation appears to extend onto lower terraces too.

The long oval building 2 (14.5 x 3.5m internally), built of stone slabs bound with mud, was divided into two rooms of unequal size (Fig. 1); the larger (eastern) room contained traces of stone paving and scattered pithos sherds. To the southeast lay the similar (but less well preserved) building 3, on the same east-west orientation. To the north of this was the later, rectangular building 1, oriented northeast-southwest. Over this single-roomed structure (with a paved floor) was a thick destruction layer. The northwest wall of building 1 was founded on an earlier curved wall forming an apse oriented to the east.

The settlement was dense and likely arranged on a series of levels defined by terrace or peribolos walls, one of which was revealed. The stratigraphy was too disturbed to support precise dating; fill contained mixed pottery from the Late Bronze Age to the fourth century BC. Wares include handmade pottery with plastic, impressed or incised decoration dating from the Bronze Age to ca. 900 BC; finer Early Iron Age handmade ware, generally unpainted; and later Classical wheelmade pottery including imported Attic black-glaze. The oval or curved-walled buildings appear to have been in use from the Early Iron Age until the end of the fourth century, while building 1 is dated by pottery and coins to the second half of the fourth century.