An Archaeology of Domestic Life in Early Byzantine Gortyna
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An archaeology of domestic life in early byzantine Gortyna: stratigraphy, pots and contexts Stefano Costa, Università degli Studi di Siena [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000- 0003-1124-3174 Abstract: Ceramic finds from the Byzantine Quarter near the Pythion in Gortyna (Crete) are primarily linked to domestic spaces, particularly during the 7th and 8th century. Specific contexts gave the opportunity to investigate the use life of pottery in such domestic spaces, within the changes that happen both in the quarter and in the city as a whole. Gortyna was the capital city of Crete for many centuries during the Roman and Early Byzantine periods. The monumental area of the city has been under archaeological investigation for more than 130 years1 and major publications resulting from the work of the Italian Archaeological School at Athens provide an extensive and detailed understanding of the city throughout Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine period. The archaeological excavation at the Byzantine Quarter near the Pythion in Gortyna (GQB), led by the University of Siena since 2001, is located at the monumental center of the major urban site, but the main focus of investigation is on dwellings of the Early Byzantine period – tellingly also the nearby area is known as “Case bizantine”. Life in the Byzantine Quarter revolves around several core spaces, all with a clear domestic function, both from an architectural point of view and especially looking at pottery in use within space: cooking pots, storage jars, tableware, all contribute to our understanding of domestic life. A solid chrono-typological framework has already been developed for the local and regional ceramic products of Gortyna, especially in the Gortina V volumes, allowing recent research to focus on broader archaeological issues and further refining of specific issues2. It is reassuring to be able to go beyond a typological approach, towards a more integrated role for ceramic finds at the stratigraphical and “anthropological” scale3. When we look at finds from an archaeological context, there are naturally several scales of interpretation available, depending on the interpretative framework that we choose to 1 DI VITA 2010, pp. 11-13. 2 See e.g. the work presented by BONETTO et al. in this volume, and those of Albertocchi on coarse wares: ALBERTOCCHI 2010, ALBERTOCCHI 2014. 3 ZANINI 2010. adopt. For example, if the focus is on trade patterns of regional and Mediterranean products, it doesn't make much sense to look separately at single areas of a large urban center, no matter how large, because at the scale of quarters or even buildings the local availability of a product in town (in market terms, the offer) was more significant than the demand of one household. The Byzantine Quarter (GQB) has an excavated surface of 2000 m² for the Early Byzantine period, but that figure is only a tiny fraction of the entire urban area, large parts of which are still completely unknown. Any quantitative estimate from such a small sample is by definition unreliable, and the same argument holds for the nearby areas of the Pretorio and the Byzantine Houses. In the case of the excavation of the Byzantine Quarter in Gortyna, it was natural to start the study of ceramics finds “from the bottom up”, beginning with each stratigraphic context and its depositional history, then moving to public and domestic spaces, and only eventually to the socio-economic level. Combining different scales of analysis seems to offer useful insights. In a urban site like Gortyna, comparing different periods from a relatively small excavation area is potentially misleading from the point of view of the ceramic record, because changes in a single building over several centuries are more likely to result from the development of the entire city rather than from the isolated history of one house or even room. In other words, buildings can undergo significant changes in their use even with minimal or no changes at all in their structure. Finds from each context were examined as a group in the first place, proceeding from their elementary stratigraphic properties (fragmentation, completeness, residuality) to an assessment of their depositional history, whether primary, secondary or tertiary deposits. It is of course the primary and secondary deposits that are more interesting, particularly when we can combine their study with that of the built space where they originated. Tertiary deposits such as a landfill may yield larger amounts of material but we can only obtain generic information from their study, at the scale of the urban area. The material presented here consists of only a fraction of diagnostic finds that were quantified using the percentage of rim, resulting in estimated vessel equivalents (eves). Quantitative data is not presented here, but it was used as an aid in separing in-phase finds from residual items, a task that remains highly problematic when there are no sharp typological differences between any periods. The 7th century During the 7th century the main building in the Byzantine Quarter (labeled A on the site plan) is transformed from a single complex into small units with a mixed housing/workshop nature (based on traces of working glass and knives, together with a ceramic kiln found earlier in the nearby area). Further architectural transformation occurs in the second half of the 7th century, when the street level in the middle of the quarter is further raised. As these spaces undergo restructuring activities and eventually abandonment, we find some traces of domestic life, such as storage and processing of food at a small scale. Stratigraphic data shows clearly that indoor space in these houses was kept mostly clear of any waste, but outdoor areas and animal shelters were used by the inhabitants for piling and discarding old and unneeded items from their homes, resulting in secondary deposits from continuous accumulation (especially in rooms 3, 4 and 14). Instead, items in primary deposition are only a handful and were found in all rooms. The observation that indoor space was kept clean is confirmed in building B: there are no significant pottery finds in this period, and activity traces are only negative (e.g. consumption of floors in passages). The life of the quarter during the second half of the 7th century can be partially told by the finds in secondary deposits. Some items stand out for their relative quality, such as three red-slipped juglets in a fine micaceous fabric (CER 115:3, 137:1, 470:27)4, a deep bowl reminescent of imported fineware specimens (CER 470:14) and of course the local sovradipinta, mainly with closed forms (CER 470:31). Lamps of the “Byzantine” type that is well known in Gortyna are found in all rooms. Cooking pots are not abundant, but simple forms are characteristic of this context, with thick bodies and rather fragile fabric (CER 137:213). Interestingly enough, a glazed cooking pot from Constantinople makes its appearance here (CER 137:180), marking some of the earliest imports of glazed pottery in Crete, because the “Coarse Glazed Ware” 1 is only made in the 7th century5. Amphorae include a range of highly fragmented finds, and only a few small buff spatheia could be traced to actual usage in the building. Storage containers of medium size, like small pithoi, are also found in rooms 4 and 14, but they could have been easily moved when empty, and their use association with the respective spaces is not certain. In the end, the final collapse of the roofing in building A occurs when the entire 4 Vogt has suggested that similar juglets found in Eleutherna could be produced in Asia Minor (VOGT 2000, p. 66). 5 HAYES 1992, p. 41. complex has largely become a decaying structure. However, some objects attest to The imported tablewares are rather common 7th century material: a Hayes 105 plate was found in close association with a small fireplace, in one corner of room 6. Other tableware finds include Hayes 106 in ARSW and Hayes 10C in LRC/PRSW. Basins, a well known item in Gortyna, are overrepresented in room 6, with one particularly large example, whose function may have been of a generic home container6, but possibly connected to the remains of Ovis sp. in the same context, either for feeding animals or collecting milk. There was an actual pithos in room 6, kept in place with mortar, with a small hole at the base, suggesting that it was not used for ordinary food storage (liquids or grains) but perhaps for drying fruits or cheese. The 8th century In the first half of the 8th century, a destructive event, probably one of the frequent earthquakes, hit the city and its buildings, including the Byzantine Quarter. The dating of this event after 700 AD is inferred from several elements: the stratigraphic sequence, the numismatic evidence (coins of Constans II, some of which overstruck, and earlier coins that were cut in half) and most importantly the ceramic evidence: this includes amphorae of generic 7th-8th century chronology, and a decorated chafing dish in Glazed White Ware I, found in secondary use in the collapse layer of building B. Some caution is necessary when analysing this stratigraphic horizon7, but we can observe some aspects of domestic life in the urban area of the Byzantine Quarter, that was still central as will be clear from the following discussion about the size and use of building B. The size and internal organisation of building B with respect to the building A are significant: we see a courtyard (room 27) for what seems only part of a large complex that had its main entrance on the “strada Nord” running from the Pretorio towards the Agora.