the excavation of the athenian agora twelfth season: 1947

EXCAVATION OF ATHENIAN AGORA, 1947 157
however, would seem to have been closely similar to its companion piece and may be
restored with a length of ca. 0.50 m. The " cleaver " is of heavy bronze, tanged for
a handle that was, no doubt, of wood.'0 The bronze bowl was found crumpled and
heavily oxidized; its profile, however, could be recovered with fair assurance and it
seems certainly to have had only one handle.
Near the middle of the floor, and probably to be related to Burial B, lay nine
conical pierced buttons of dark steatite (P1. 40, 1). Thirty-eight rosettes of thin gold
were recovered from the tomb, and of these thirty-two lay in a compact group at the
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- ,~~ -
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~~~~ cm
A
Fig. 4. Bronzes from Mycenaean Chamber Tomb on Areopagus
(A= B 778; B==B 781; C==B 780; D =B 782)
base of the wall near the feet of Burial C, as though they had served as ornaments
on a garment, now utterly vanished, hung on a peg in the wall (Fig. 3, P1. 40, 1).
The date of our tomb is clearly indicated by the vases. In the first place it should
be observed that there can be little difference in date between the three much broken
vases to be associated with the earliest burial (A) and those placed on the occasions
of the later interments. The vases from this tomb, moreover, are closely contemporary
with those from the larger tomb found in 1939 and illustrated in Hesperia, IX, 1940,
figs. 17-25. Although the finds of 1947 are on the whole less fine in quality and less
pretentious than those of 1939, the shapes of amphora and of ewer are exceedingly
close. The vases of the tomb found in 1939 have been referred to the earlier part of
the Third Late Helladic period, and a similar classification may be accepted for the
new group. A welcome clue to the absolute dating is given by the close correspondence
between the " pilgrim flask " found in the Agora tomb (P1. 40. 2) and one found by
10 Examples of this implement, sometimes, though not very plausibly, identified as razors, have
been found elsewvhere
in contexts of the Third Late Helladic period. See Blegen, Prosym'na, I, p. 347.