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Excavation at Arethousa in 2000

• Karivieri, Arja

In August 2000, the Finnish Institute in Athens continued the three-year excavation programme at Arethousa, Thessaloniki prefecture. The excavation of the Early Christian church at Paliambela near Arethousa continued, with the trenches dug in 1999 being deepened and new trenches being dug to the N and W of the church. One of our intentions was to draw a plan of the nave and to map and conserve the floor mosaics in the narthex and the nave.After the sand which covered them had been removed, repairs were made and the tesserae which had been dislodged were re-affixed. The mosaics were then photographed and drawn in detail, and covered with sand again until the next summer.In 1999, to the W of the church, we uncovered part of the wall of the atrium and a wall opposite it, in which the marble base of a statue and a grave relief had been used as building materials. Both indicate that the area had been inhabited earlier. In 2000, we continued to excavate more deeply at the same spot, where, under the base of a statue which we had uncovered the previous year, the base of a column was found.On the N side of the wall which we had uncovered the previous year, a large trench, twice the normal size, was dug. About half a metre down, there was a thick layer of decorated roof-tiles, which could be separated by hand. They apparently fell when the building was destroyed.On the N side of the church, we dug a larger trench, in which we uncovered a wall running N-S surrounded by rust and pottery. It was not possible to specify what this building had been used for solely on the basis of this sample trench. The electromagnetic measurements which we took last year showed that to the NE of the nave there are walls, which belong to the ruined N aisle, and we therefore dug an area of 32 m^, 8 trenches in all. In trench Gl 14 we located part of the outer wall of the church, which continues in trenches HI 12 and HI 10. Trench HI 10 showed that the wall forms a right angle to the NE and continues on the W side of the trench, probably after a doorway. In 2001, we shall dig more deeply in order to uncover the mosaic floor which was revealed by the 1995 excavation and conserve it.In 2000, we discovered at a depth of 20-25 cm a thick destruction layer of the N aisle, which consists of a thick layer of roof-tiles. Under this there is a layer which contains numerous finds. We found a total of 53 coins, a great deal of pottery of various periods, fragments of metal objects, some fragments of Roman lamps and glass objects, and bones of animals —pigs, sheep or goats, and especially calves, but also birds, fish, dogs, and a single bone from a horse or ass. While cleaning and recording the finds, we uncovered numerous details of the history of the church. Part of the geometrical mosaic in the nave, which consists of pieces of undressed marble, contains parts of earlier inscriptions, as is indicated by isolated letters which have survived. In the centre of another mosaic in the pronaos, the figures of the animals are overlain by a layer of soot, which has damaged the tesserae. The soot is from fires that broke out on the mosaics. One possibility is that it was these fires which destroyed the church; or alternatively, the church had already been destroyed, possibly by an earthquake, and abandoned, when the fires broke out on the peacocks and deer. The excavational finds indicate that the church was destroyed and abandoned in the late 6th or early 7th century, i.e. during the population shifts. We know, from both written sources and archaeological finds, that the Slavs destroyed many parts of Greece at this time. Certainly, we cannot directly connect the destruction of this specific church with a Slav incursion, but it is a possibility.The study and recording of the rest of the material will continue apace next year, and the results of the study will be published by the Finnish Institute in Athens.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

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