Preliminary Polis Thoughts

This is a long post. I had originally considered posting it as TWO posts or even just posting a PDF, but I decided to just go ahead and post the entire durned thing.

Here is the preliminary report from our season at Polis. This is preliminary and provisional, of course. It’s rough in places and probably ill-considered in others, but I’ll share as part of my commitment to show folks how the academic sausage is made.

It’s authored mostly by me, but owes a good bit of to Scott Moore’s willingness to study lamps, sherds, and objects from the trenches. Our hope is to turn this into something more polished, definitive, and complete over the next two years.

Introduction

This is an interim report on the work started in 2023 which focused on the area to the east of the South Basilica with particular attention focused on the levels associated with the kiln and ceramic production more broadly. The original goal of this work is to determine whether a significant deposit of lamps from trench S06.1991.Level 14 derived from a kiln excavated later that same year. The connection between the lamps and the kiln remains ambiguous as the following report shows, but a careful (if not necessarily definitive!) reading of the results of excavations does reveal the dynamism of Roman period activities in the area of E.F2. Moreover, it contributes to the understanding that Polis may have been a center for ceramic production at least in the region and the northern edge of the city would have been a suitable zone for such activities.

The following report presents our tentative interpretation of the Roman levels associated with ceramic production in trenches T09 from 1990 and S06 from 1991. It describes these levels (and their stratigraphy) in both a narrative form and in a more summary form.

The report also includes a preliminary report on the ceramic assemblage from Roman levels of S06 and T06 as well as some notes on the lamps from the larger area of E.F2 with specially attention to the lamp cluster from S06.1991.L14.

Excavations in area T06 and S06

The main focus of this report will be on a series of trenches excavated in areas T06 and S06 in the Princeton grid of the area of E.F2. Our primary concern in these areas are the Roman levels, but later activity in this area, including the construction of a Christian basilica-style church in the 7th century (or slightly earlier) had a significant impact on the Roman levels. The latest activity in these trenches, aside from contemporary finds associated with the surface levels, were a series of interments which repeatedly cut into Late Roman and Medieval levels in the area. These burials were associated with the eastern part of the South Basilica. The deep foundation required to support the church’s polygonal apse and half-dome cut into Roman levels and in combination with later burials in the area created both pockets of earlier material presumably dumped back into foundation cuts and burials as well as levels reflecting the generally disturbed situation present in the upper levels of the area to the east of the South Basilica Since neither the basilica or the later burials are a concern for this article, we will avoid discussing the upper levels of this trench unless these later activities shaped the character of earlier deposits.

There seems to have been continuous building activity in the area during the Roman period. This involved the construction and abandonment of a pottery kiln, the construction of a subsequent installation likely associated with the production of ceramics, and a series of walls, roads, and drains. Many of the walls in this area appear to run beneath the east wall of the basilica and were abandoned for several centuries prior to the construction of the church. As a result, the leveling courses associated with the construction of the basilica seems to have overrun and occasionally commingled with the Roman levels providing a kind of ceramic snapshot of the material culture of the city of Arsinoe during the Roman period.

Roman Activity in Eastern E.F2

The highest levels in the two trenches explored here included a series of subsequent Christian burials that clustered around the basilica style church over its long life. These burials often cut down into levels associated with the construction of the basilica or Late Roman surfaces in the area. The basilica apse itself likewise appears to have cut through a series Late Roman levels perhaps associated with leveling the entire area in advance of the church’s construction (for contexts associated with the basilica leveling operation see Caraher et al. 2019). We associate some of these levels with the basilica leveling fill because Late Roman material continues to appear in levels below the lowest courses of the apse foundation (e.g. S09.1991.L16, L14, L15). These levels also present a record of the complex depositional history during the period between the end of the Roman period activity in the region and the construction of the basilica.

Despite a certain amount of depositional ambiguity, the material present in levels associated with the leveling in the area for the construction of the basilica remain important for our understanding of the Roman period at Polis because they preserve a significant quantity of Roman material, albeit in residual contexts. While in most cases, this consists of the same forms and types of pottery that appeared in more controlled contexts, in a few cases the deposits of Roman pottery in secondary context were sufficiently distinctive to warrant additional attention. For example, the deposit of Roman lamps and pottery (PO210 and PO209) found in S06.1991.L14 appeared below the base of the basilica apse foundations and in a context otherwise datable to the Late Roman period. Level 15 was adjacent to Level 14 and different in character, but both levels were sandwiched between Level 13 and Level 16. Levels 13 and 16 appear to consist primarily of rubble, but Level 13 was compromised by a burial of Late Roman date (datable by the typical assemblage of the latest Late Roman pottery at the site including a fragment of ARS105). Level 16, in contrast, is a more complex level that appears to partly form the Roman period horizon across the site. Passes 1 and 2 are solidly Late Roman in date and look very similar to the 7th century deposits elsewhere in the vicinity of the South Basilica. Its location below the level of the apse foundation suggests that it constitutes part of the leveling fill associated with the construction of the church. Pass 3, however, appears to be predominantly Roman in date. Thus, the lamp deposit appears to be associated not with Roman use levels or even fills in which the latest sherd is Roman, but within a characteristically Late Roman level. Predictably, alongside the impressive assemblage of over 50 Roman period lamps are a range of Late Roman material largely consistent with artifacts in L13 and L16, including CRSK3, CRSK8, AMLR1, and AMLR5 amphora as well as earlier Cypriot Sigillata and more broadly dated Roman cooking pots, and utility wares. Level 15, immediately to the north of Level 14, reveals a similar distribution of material. The cohesiveness of this assemblage of lamps, which will be discussed elsewhere in this article, suggests that we understand this deposit as preserving something of its origins despite being in a secondary context. It seems likely that this deposit of lamps had its origins in a nearby Roman period pottery workshop.

The main features datable to the Roman period consist of a kiln structure and a tile edged pool designed presumably for the levigation of clay. [Describe feature] Note semi-waterproof red clay and red clay levels perhaps indistinguishable from levels associated with the levigation of clay itself.

While it would be appropriate to imagine that the lamp deposit and the industrial installations nearby were contemporary, in fact, they were not. The lamp deposit is part of a larger Late Roman fill in the area that overruns a tile lined pool that may have served as part of the levigating process for preparing clay for firing in the kilns. This pool, in turn, stands immediately above a kiln which, in turn, stands below a series of walls perhaps associated with the pool. This sequence of pool and related walls over the kiln indicate that the pool must belong to a later phase in activity in the area. The best evidence for dating the levigating pool involves excavations behind the line of ceramic tiles that make up the side of the pool. The ceramics from behind the tiles (from level S06.1991.L21) were consistently Roman in date. ESA4 (L21P2B35), ESA30 (L21P2B34), ESA Jugs (L21P2B36), as well as CS30 (L21P1B30) and a wide range of Roman period cooking pots (e.g. L21P2B20) and utility wares derived from this context suggesting that the tile pool was likely cut into a level of 2nd or 3rd century date (or at very least before the appearance of our typical later Roman assemblage comprised of Cypriot Red Slip forms and characteristic Late Roman 1 amphora and cooking pots). There are two lower levels into which the tile lined pool appears to have been cut: S06:1991.L24 and L25. These levels produced assemblages of Roman pottery similar to the material behind the tiles of the pool (L21).

Levels 24 and 25 (and presumably Level 21) were cut by an east-west wall, called by the excavator the “South Wall.” This wall has two phases both of which run underneath the east wall of the later basilica and over the top of the earlier kiln. While it proved impossible to disentangle the chronology of the two wall phases, the second phase may represent a later (perhaps, Late Antique, but still pre-basilica leveling fill) intervention. The evidence for this comes from a few Late Roman sherds from beneath a level of consisting of rubble and slag nestled alongside the north face of the South Wall (Rubble and slag level: T06.1990.L27; levels below it: T06.1990.L28P1 and P2). Level 22 from S06.1990, which abuts the south side of the first phase of South Wall produced a more conventional Late Roman signature from the site with CRS11 (L22P2B17), CRSK1/3 (L22P1B37), CRSK4 (L22P1B37) and AMLR1 (L22P1B17) and Palestinian (L22P1B7). It seems likely, however, that this level includes material from post-abandonment and perhaps even from the basilica leveling phase in this area. It is impossible to untangle the relationship between the two phases of the South Wall, other than to observe that the second phase must post-date the installation of the levigating pool. It is similarly impossible to associate the South Wall with the wall that runs perpendicular to it on the east side of the S06 trench. Efforts to clear the juncture of the two walls in 1990 (T06.1990.L39) were evidently inconclusive. If we assume that the East, North, and South Wall form a room, it would be a very large room: approximately 5 m north-south. To be clear, it seems unlikely that this large room is associated with the levigation pool.

Whatever room we associate with the earliest phase of the South Wall and the levigation pool, it is clear that the first phase of the South Wall was built atop the almost fully preserved remains of a pottery kiln. The topography of this site likely explains the unusual superimposition of a room atop an abandoned kiln. The kiln stood on the eastern side of a drainage which descended the northern slope of the city. The Late Antique remains at the site hint at the challenges associated with the topography of this site in antiquity. The construction of the basilica style church in the 7th century led to a series of large-scale efforts both to create a level space for construction but also to manage the flow of water through the drainage. It may be that during the Roman period this drainage was sufficiently pronounced to have led to terracing at least along the east side of the ravine. If this was, indeed, the topography of this area in the Roman period, the construction of the fish pond and room at a higher level than the kiln may well represent the construction of a terrace to create the kind of level space necessary for the large room consisting of the South, East, and North Walls and the subsequent pool used for large scale levigation. This might also account for the range of different soil types present in the fill into which the levigation pond was cut. For example, L24 has ashy patches perhaps associated with kiln debris, L23 consists of redder soil, L25 is a layer of orange soil. These three layers appear to predate the South Wall stratigraphically, although excavations to remove the South Wall which followed the foundation cut did not produce ceramics that were significantly later than those associated with earlier fill levels. Excavations below these levels in this same years produced more fills and cuts, represented by levels 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 34. Excavators at the time connected at least some of these levels with highly fragmentary surfaces or areas around the kiln (e.g. the concrete surface in L33 or the limey surface of L26). This seems unlikely as the bottom of the kiln is over a meter below these surfaces. While the excavators did their best to sort out this sequence of levels, it seems more likely the stratigraphic complexity reflects the process of filling the area around the kiln perhaps in association with the construction of an earlier building at the site (dating to between the kiln’s abandonment and the construction of the levigation pool). The construction of a terrace to support the levigation pool would also be consistent with the role played by an east-west Roman road that served as a check dam across the same drainage. More broadly, there seems to have been a concern for the flow of water through the area which led to the presence of numerous water pipes and drains.

Absent here, as across most of the island, is material from the third and fourth centuries with the exception of LA157 which may well be a 4th century type. If we imagine that this material entered these contexts through efforts to level the site for a series of rooms and the the pool, then it would appear that the room and pool were in use for a relatively short period of time or at very least a period of time that was not especially visible within the resolution of our ceramic chronologies. This fill appears to be same as the fill that covered a ring of unfired clay presumably used in ceramic production to the north of the levigation pool. The latest material extracted from the soil from within the unfired ring includes ESA jugs, Roman amphora sherds, and kitchen ware sherds (S06.1991.L17).

To reach the kiln levels the excavators had to dig through levels associated with the basilica leveling fill, the abandonment associated of levigating pool, the fills associated with the levigating pool, and the fills associated with the construction of earlier rooms at the site. It would appear that S06.1991.L16P1 and L16P2 removed rubble from the levelpool and that this rubble appears to be largely Roman in date and perhaps associated with the abandonment and collapse of any building around or near the pool. This level may represent a continuation of the debris found in Level 28P3 and L37P1-P2 from T06.1990. The first pass of Level 28 (i.e. Pass 1) appears below a level of slag (Level 27) that may be associated with the second phase of the South Wall (Wall 10 in the T06.1990 notebook). As the excavator followed the level, however, she extended it further to the north especially in Level 28, Pass 4 (and subsequently Level 37 Pass 3 seems to focus on the northern part of the trench and it produced a very late CRSWF [L37P3B29]); thus passes 1-3 should be regarded as separate strata from pass 4. The ceramic evidence would appear to bear this out with Passes 1-3 being distinctly Roman in character and producing CS5 (L28P2B27), CS26 (L28P2B28), CS41 (L28P1B39, L28P2B25, and L28P2B26) and cooking pots in Roman forms. Oddly enough, there were also two later, Late Roman sherds also in this context – LA157 (L28P2) which is a lamp type dated to the 4th century by Oziol at Salamis (e.g. nos. 653,656,657, et c.) and a piece of a CRS base stamped with a cross (PO204 from L28P1). Further excavations in this area, below the top of the levigation pool tiles in T06.1990.Levels 37 Pass 1 and Pass 2, and Level 38 further suggests that the small quantities of Late Roman pottery (e.g. CRS body sherds (L37P1B11) and PO203) likely entered these contexts during what might have been a prolonged collapse of this building and the subsequent leveling of the area prior to the construction of the basilica, or perhaps during the construction of the second phase of the South Wall. In fact, Late Roman material appears to be associated even with levels associated with the highest levels of the kiln (T06.1990.Level 47: CRSK3 [L47P1B40], CRS Body Sherds [L47P1B37] or Late Roman cook pots [L47P1B13 and B18]) alongside what appear to be lamp wasters (L47P1B19 and B20) ilustrating how disturbed this entire area was in antiquity. Despite evidence of a complicated abandonment and depositional history, the dominant signature of material in these levels remains Roman in date.

Excavations in 1991 began to reduce both the area around the kiln and the kiln (S06.1991.L35, L36, and L37). These levels are notably different than the levels excavated in 1990. It is interesting that the lowest passes of the levels inside the kiln produced some of the latest pottery: CS, ESA, and possibly ESB as well as greater concentrations of Roman and Early Roman kitchen wares. In contrast, higher levels in the kiln produced Hellenistic material. This hints that the kiln was filled deliberately starting with Roman period material closer to the surface of the ground and followed by material from the Hellenistic period being from deeper in the cut and entering the kiln last. Whatever accounts for this inverted stratigraphy, the Roman material deep in the kiln provides a terminus post quem for this structure. This date is largely consistent with the date of the fills associated with both South Wall phases and the material behind the tiled wall of the levigating pond.