the excavation of the athenian agora twelfth season: 1947

EXCAVATION OF ATHENIAN AGORA, 1947 167
miniature scale of many of the offerings and the thinness of the bones suggest that
the dead wvere children. Such burials are attested for a limited period within the
fourth and third centuries. A few other examples are known from elsewhere in the
Agora and from other parts of Athens. The whole series deserves a special study.
The work of the past season has considerably clarified the road system and the
drainage of this part of the city (Fig. 6). As observed in the report for last season,'9
the very bottom of the valley was avoided by the roads of classical times in favor of
the adjacent hillsides where they were less subject to disturbance from freshets. It
was already clear that the principal road leading out of the southwest corner of the
Agora proper swept around the west shoulder of the Areopagus. The excavations of
1947 brought to light a long stretch of a second road running roughly parallel to the
first on the opposite side of the valley, i. e., on the northeast slope of the Hill of the
Nymphs. Both these north-to-south thoroughfares were intersected by the westward
continuation of the road that has been traced above along the north slope of the
Areopagus (p. 163).
The newly found street is characteristic oL the thoroughfares in this part of the
city. Its width is normally three to four metres, enough, that is, to permit the passing
of two loaded donkeys. The road metal consists of layer after layer of firm packed
gravel. Beneath the middle of the street runs a large drain fed by many lateral tributaries
in the shape of lesser channels which took the sewage from the individual houses
flanking the street. The large drain consists of two U-shaped sections combined so
as to form a channel oval in section with an inside height of ca. 0.84 m. and width of
ca. 0.40 m.; this was just large enough to allow a workman to crawl through to clean
out the drain or to make repairs. In many places the trench above the drain channel
was filled with large wine jars to reduce the weight on the tiles.
The drains echo the history of the area. They show traces of repeated repairs
and alterations down to the mid third century A.D., but all were allowed to silt up in
the period of desolation that followed on the Herulian sack of A.D. 267 and only
certain limited stretches of them were cleared out to be used again for a brief period
in the fifth and sixth centuries. Thereafter they were abandoned.
The earliest, and probably the most important structure of a public nature in this
region consists of a trapezoidal enclosure measuring ca. 16.50 X 38 m. set in at the
westernmost foot of the Areopagus (Fig. 6). To receive the southeast corner of the
enclosure the soft bedrock was cut down to a depth of some three metres. The
bounding wall has now been traced from its few surviving blocks and from the bedding
where no blocks remain throughout its south and west sides; the north end, the northeast
corner and most of the east side have yet to be explored. A little remains of a
cross wall some 12 metres from the south end. The foundations of both the outer wall
19 Hesperia, XVI, 1947, p. 205.