Archaeological Sites

The edifice of the Hellenistic-period, whose excavation officially began in 1994 at the site known as Ladiava, was revealed after information was obtained from the owner of the plot of land. Excavation of the site was interrupted in 2000, while subsequent brief research excavations revealed its preserved floor plan and the destruction of its northern and northwestern parts.

It is probably a public building, arranged around a marble-paved atrium with two wells. The building is characterized by its successive uses, interventions and subsequent destruction, since the old village of Ierissos was built upon the ancient remains. During the conservation phase of the building, the South wall stands out, which (like the rest of the building) is composed of second-use building material. It exceeds 1m in width, in order to contain and withstand the pressures generated by the hillside. Two large rooms, the andron on the SE side and the pytheon, with eleven pithoi unearthed on the SW side, constitute parts of the initial phase of the building; the latter was destroyed in the middle of the 2nd century BC and two new spaces were established in the same place, with some of the pithoi used as depositories. The small kitchen with the small circular hearth composed of potsherds and a central tube, on which a clay grate rested, also belongs to the same phase. Most of the walls are plastered with white mortar, while fragments of colored mortar were also found. Among the wells in the atrium, with the marble well-heads, the smaller one (3m deep) was formed by putting together 2 pithoi that served as a water collector, and the bigger one (11m deep) was formed from specially cut curved shape tiles, placed facing each other, so as to form a cylinder. Pottery from the Hellenistic period was found inside the wells, which indicates that this space was last used in the second half of the 1st century BC.

References

Τρακοσοπουλου-Σαλακίδου, Ε., «Αρχαία Άκανθος 1986-1996», Το Αρχαιολογικό Έργο στη Μακεδονία και τη Θράκη 10Α (1996), σσ. 297-307.

Τρακοσοπουλου-Σαλακίδου, Ε., Νασιώκα, Ο., Παντή, Α., «Άκανθος. Ελληνιστική κεραμική από αποθέτες -πηγάδια κτίσματος της πόλης», στο Θ΄ Επιστημονική Συνάντηση για την ελληνιστική κεραμική, Αθήνα 2018, σσ. 243-666.