KERAMEIKOS - 2014

Athens, Kerameikos. J. Stroszeck (DAI) reports on excavation of the Sacred Way near the Sacred Gate, in the area of the modern retaining wall at the edge of the site. The Sacred Way was always a dirt road paved with compact soil and small pebbles; the laying of water pipes and sewers was an integral part of road construction. Wheel ruts on the surface attest to its extensive use in the Classical period.

A section of the late fifth-century Sacred Way was revealed, disturbed in Hellenistic times by a well (Br 28) and in modern times by excavation trenches. The road was placed on the river dam which had been filled with sandy soil and rubble. Before leveling the road surface, a sacrifice was performed in the middle of the street, the remains of which are partially preserved in situ. An oval pyre consisting almost entirely of ash residues and charcoal, contained animal bones and sherds from various drinking vessels of the end of the fifth century (including a red-figure vessel attributed to the circle of the Jena painter).

The construction of a sewer tunnel along the southwest side of the road in the first century AD disturbed all predating street levels. The tunnel was repaired many times in antiquity; a second construction phase dates to the sixth century AD, during which part of a Classical funerary stele (of the third quarter of the fourth century BC) was used as a cover slab for the sewer. The stele would have depicted several members of a family, but only four are now visible: in the foreground a seated woman with a little girl standing before her, and in the background a woman and a bearded man. The stele could have been re-used as a threshold before its conversion into a sewer cover slab.