563-574

Excavations on the proposed route of the Egnatia motorway : Asomata near Verta

• Κουκουβού, Αγγελική

A new archaeological site has been located outside the village of Asomata, Imathia prefecture, as a result of investigations on the proposed route of the Egnatia motorway. Building remains over an area of about a hectare on a natural plateau on the SE slope of Vermio show that the site was in use from prehistoric times to the Byzantine period. Foundations of rubble- built walls and parts of floors belonging to dwellings of a small, possibly seasonal, settlement date to the Iron Age; as do 4 graves excavated a short distance away, with burial offerings in the form of clay vessels and jewellery. A cluster of 11 more graves, dating to the early 5th to early 3rd century BC, were excavated, with burial offerings typical of the period: clay vessels, bronze coins, strigils, and iron weapons (spearheads, swords, and daggers) for the men, bronze jewellery (earrings, fibulae, and rings) for the women. A round hearth, a small oven, and fragments of millstones indicate that the building in which they were found (dating to the 2nd half of the 4th century BC) was used for food preparation.A short distance to the N, the remains of successive building phases came to light. The discovery of the firebars of a rectangular kiln measuring 3x2 m, which must have been used for firing roof-tiles, indicates that these were workshops. Naturally, the site for the kiln was not chosen at random. The clay deposits which covered the entire area of the prehistoric remains were an ideal source of the workshop's raw material. The existence of the workshops and of the Late Classical graves, together with the discovery of rock-cut tombs of the Hellenistic period on the slopes, suggests that we should look for the site of a settlement somwhere close by.The local Directorates of Antiquities carry out important work in the excavations which precede the building of major arterial roads. They investigate and systematically excavate dozens of hectares in areas around the ancient cities, areas that were once inaccessible even by quarry roads, and neglected by scholars for many years, for objective reasons, of course. So it is no coincidence that farmsteads of all periods are multiplying, along with semi-legitimate farming and pastoral settlements and sites dating to the Iron Age, and slowly filling in the historical picture of the ancient countryside, a vibrant, densely populated countryside, which was without a doubt the bedrock of the ancient economy.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

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