the excavation of the athenian agora twelfth season: 1947

158 HOMER A. THOMPSON
Petrie at El Amarna." The two pieces are identical both in shape and in the dis-
tinctive decoration combining concentric circles on the broad faces with running
spirals on the narrow. The El Amarna flask may be assumed to have reached Egypt
in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and such a dating for the Agora tombs
would appear to be consonant with the evidence, admittedly slight, to be derived from
comparison with other material found in Greece.
The vases from these tombs on the Areopagus, on the other hand, are appreciably
earlier than those associated with the abandonment of the Mycenaean well-house and
postern gate on the north slope of the Acropolis.'2 Those events have been dated by
Broneer on the evidence of the pottery to the end of the thirteenth century and have
been regarded as precautionary measures against the threat of invasion. Our com-
paratively rich burials, made in tombs of which the preparation required a con-
siderable expenditure of time and energy, clearly belong to the more tranquil and
perhaps more prosperous period that preceded the storm.
The smaller of the two chamber tombs cleared in this area in 1947 lay to the west
of the larger at an interval of two metres. Of the second tomb enough remains to
show that the chamber was rectangular, measuring ca. 1.60 X 2.80 m., and that it was
approached through a dromos; but much of the front part of the chamber and pTiacti-
cally all the dromos had made way for modern house basements.
The upper part of the skeleton of an adolescent lay on the floor of the chamber,
head to the south, its lower part cut away by late disturbance. At both the east and
the west ends of the chamber bones lay heaped on the floor, and bones filled a shallow
pit in the southwest corner. Four skulls in addition to that of the skeleton were counted
in this tomb, and others may have been destroyed by late disturbance.
The surviving pottery from the small tomb comprised only a few fragments of
plain bowls and kylikes like those from the large tomb.
The clearing of bedrock brought to light a grave of the Geometric Period on
the lower slopes of the Areopagus near the middle of its north side (Section AP).
Although disturbed by the intrusion of a late wall, the grave yielded no less than
eighteen vases comprising thirteen flat and one pointed pyxis, one medium-sized and
one miniature oinochoe, and two hand-made, unglazed aryballoi (P1. 41, 1). With
the vases were two iron pins very much corroded and a small rectangular plaque of
limestone, pierced for suspension. The style of the pottery indicates an early date
within the Geometric Period. Pointed pyxides are known only from a limited number
of early grave groups; the well-rounded profile of the flat pyxides is symptomatic of
an early date, and so also are the shapes of the two oinochoai. Early likewise is the
11 Petrie, Tell el Amarna, pl. XXIX, 80; Forsdyke, Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum,
Ii, A 998, p. 187, fig. 268. For the decoration on the edge of the flask see also loc. cit., fig. 267.
12 Broneer, Hesperia, II, 1933, pp. 365 if.; VIII, 1939, pp. 346 ff.