Week 2: The Dirt on the Agora

Good lord, I am really sorry for that pun. That was dreadful, I'm not gonna lie. Anyway, I figure that since this week was more of the same, sweeping, cleaning passes more sweeping, ect. ect. I would take the time to get into the history of the agora, both the place and the dig. Not too much, since this isn't really my field of expertise, but you'll get the general gist of things.

So the agorá, which translates to "assembly place" was basically the one place which people would meet for markets, political business, religious festivals, athletic competitions and so forth. It more or less functioned as the sole public space, and for Athens, since citizens (that is to say, not women, slaves or foreigners, so still a minority of the population) were expected to participate in politics on a regular basis. This form of government is usually called a "democracy" which is, strictly speaking, true, because they came up with the term, so they can use it however they want. However, as with our own democracy, it is rather more complicated than "the people make the laws." The the people, that is to say the citizens who showed up to the ecclesia (popular assembly) voted on the laws but the laws themselves were managed by a series of magistrates wh- you know what, here just look at this chart.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. Source

  In any case, the agora was a lot more than just an assembly place, it's also had a number of temples, public buildings and porticos (called stoaí) surrounding the main square. I'll give you a couple maps, since, although everyone is crazy about 5th C. BCE, Athens did, in fact, exist during other periods.

5th C. BCE Agora. Key in the source

2nd Cent CE. Source

I'll wrap up today by including a couple of Google Earth links. First, one that is (more or less) centered over the agora the same way these maps are, so you can see how it looks in modern times, and two more centered over the main areas which we were digging. You will see that they ran a train track over the north of the agora. To be fair, they didn't know that the agora was there at the time, and I have been assured that it's actually less disruptive than you might first think. This bit here in the center is section Omicron Omicron, the first dig site I was on, pictured before we tore it to shreds. You might think that the tree would be a nice bit of shade, but I assure you digging around it and sweeping up after it all the time was far more trouble than it was worth. And this massive pit here is Beta Theta and Beta Zeta, along with a couple other sections that we weren't digging. This is where the most significant chunk of our dig was focused this season, and it is where, next week onward, I would be spending the remainder of my time. I'll leave it at that for now.

Sincere Regards,

Michael Coffey