TENOS Xobourgo - 2007

Xobourgo. N. Kourou (Athens) reports a further season of excavation in 2007.
On terrace E, a large building (building E) with 2 apparent phases, Ar and Cl, was investigated. Excavation concentrated in room E3, continuing beneath the Cl floor to which a large storage jar found broken in situ in the NE corner was thought to belong. However, this jar was in fact embedded in the Ar floor, and its base firmly fixed in a well-built circular stone base. It remained in use also in the Cl period, when the floor of the room was set almost 0.2m higher than the Ar floor. This confirmed that the 2nd phase of the building consisted of a partial repair of walls or rooms: further stratigraphic excavation is needed to reconstruct the building’s phases and use.
On terrace AA, excavation continued in the area of the eschara and bench (Fig. 1). The dimensions and form of the bench were the same in both periods of use, since the 2nd, LGeo, phase was simply an enlargement of the first with the addition of a new wall covered by plaques along its length. More pyre pits were revealed near the N edge of the bench and lower than the large ash deposit, suggesting that the area had distinct phases of use, with the bench and eschara belonging to a 2nd phase, when the use of pyre pits in this part of the terrace was replaced by other rituals at these 2 features. The small building next to them on the E part of the terrace is a later construction built over the LGeo pits in the E7th Ct. Thus Xobourgo presents one of the fullest pictures of the evolution of an early, open-air cult into a cult related to a building.