Ceramicus Redivivus: The Early Iron Age Potters' Field in the Area of the Classical Athenian Agora (Hesperia Supplement 31)

This volume publishes selected material associated with potters' workshops and pottery production from some fourteen Early Iron Age contexts northwest of the Athenian Akropolis that range in date from the Protogeometric through Archaic periods. Located in the area that was to become the Agora of Classical Athens, these deposits establish that the place was used for industrial activity up until the time that it was formally transformed into the civic and commercial center of the city in the early 5th century B.C. The material includes test-pieces, wasters and other production discards, and a variety of other potters' debris; there is also a reassessment of the evidence associated with the kiln underlying the later Tholos. The location of such potters' refuse in the later Agora but in an area that was known in a variety of ancient literary sources as the Kerameikos, suggests that here was the original Potters' Quarter of Athens. Such a conclusion raises a number of related issues concerning the topography of early Athens, including the location of the old Agora, its relationship to the harbors at Phaleron and the Piraeus, and the Early Iron Age settlement of Athens on and immediately around the Akropolis.