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Excavation

  • The agora of Apollonia
  • Pojan
  • Apollonia
  • Albania
  • Fier County
  • Bashkia Fier
  • Komuna e Dermenasit

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • During 2007 the excavations for the discovery of the archaic and Classical habitation quarter in the northern and southern sectors of the agora of the ancient city of Apollonia continued. In the northern sector, the excavations carried on with the expansion of the sondages opened during the excavations of 2006. The northern corner of one of the insulae of the terracing quarter was revealed in sondage b1. The direction of the road axis that goes toward the acropolis was also defined. In sondage b2, a road section running between two of the insulae was uncovered. Two phases of use of the road were identified, which were both paved with river gravel: the later phase seems to be a construction of the Archaic period, and stayed in use through whole Hellenistic times (related to the northern extreme of the insulae, US 480); the earlier phase, which is contemporary with an archaic wall (US 513, revealed below the insulae wall-US 480) was built and utilized during the 6th Century BC. The foundations of the archaic wall (US 513), were laid above a fill clay and burning layer, which contained ceramic materials of the second half of the 6th Century BC and numerous pieces of metal slag. This latter suggest for the existence of metallurgic activities in the city of Apollonia since the first decade of its foundation. It seems that the habitation quarter with the insulae and rectangular streets was built at this time. This is also suggested by the discovery of a rectangular pit below wall 513 (US) which goes as deep as the sterile ground level. At the upper layers, at both the opened sondages, the excavations unearthed bricks structures of the Hellenistic period.
    The excavations undertaken in the southern sector (sondages 3, 8f, 11, 12, and 13), to the west of the big Hellenistic portico, identified a series of north-south walls of the houses, which defined at the same time the limits of one of the insulae (app. 13 m wide) and a 3 m wide street.
    The uniform fill layer below the road and the insulae identified in sondage 8f contained rich ceramic materials (including two small terracotta human faced masks) of the 1st Century BC, which suggest that the construction of the quarter continued during the late Hellenistic period. The archaeological material, mainly ceramic fragments (including an Ionian cup of BI type, two painted Kraters with Corinthian patterns, an aryballos neck with a female head of Liebieghaus group, some A type Corinthian amphorae, and etc.) identified in the earlier layers of sondages 3, 5c-d, and 11, date to the end of 7th and beginning of 6th Century BC, suggesting therefore, that the construction of the habitation quarter began since the later Archaic and the early Classical periods.

Director

  • Faik Drini - Instituti i Arkeologjisë Tiranë (Albanian Institute of Archaeology)
  • Jean-Luc Lamboley - Université Lyon 2

Team

Research Body

  • Instituti Arkeologjik Tiranë (Albanian Institute of Archaeology)
  • Université de Lyon II
  • École Française de Rome
  • École Française d’Athènes

Funding Body

  • Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères

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