Agrileza Excavation 1995-1997: Season 1997
Excavation: Research excavation
A short joint excavation took place under the direction of Dr E. Kakovoyiannis of the 2nd Attic Ephoreia with Mr J. Ellis Jones, Dr E. Photos-Jones, Mr P. Johnson, Ms Y. Takahashi and Ms K. Beaufils representing the School. The aim was to reveal a more accurate internal plan of Compound B before back-filling trenches and recovering the washery excavated in 1995. The compound measured c. 30 m E-W x 28 m N-S with its washery set in the NW corner. Extending E was a N range of at least four rooms of similar N-S depth but of variable E-W width, the E-most having some fine plaster on its walls. The room next to the washery was sectioned and found to have massive stone walls (revealed to foundation depth at the SW corner), and a plain earth floor set above rock and foundation level and lacking the fine waterproof lining of the corresponding room in Compound B. This room, and probably the whole N range, was terraced fairly deeply into the hillside so that a main entrance on the N side was unlikely. In the s half of the compound, other rooms and perhaps semi-enclosed spaces were indicated by runs of wall foundations. In the sw corner was an ore preparation or 'grindery' room, where three large boulders were in situ, their tops worn smooth, even hollowed, from use as ore-crushing 'tables'; a section between two of these revealed the stone packing to keep them upright. A further test midway along the compound's E side cleared a short length of a water channel, plaster-lined in part, which formed a link with the nearest of two large round water-storage cisterns (now thickly overgrown). Mr Jones later worked at Laurion Museum on the finds. The potsherds were washed, marked and sorted for further study. Finds consisted of 'Laconian-type' tile fragments, scrappy pottery of 4th century BC character but including, remarkably, a ram's head rhyton; and a British penny of Edward VII, dated 1905
Active in /10/1997.