Agora Deposit: H 16:3
Title:   Cistern System
Category:   Cistern
Description:   An extensive cistern system on the lower north slope of the Areopagus, south chamber with blind tunnel extending further south (south tunnel); north chamber; drawshaft further north, extends to north tunnel. With exception of north tunnel (which contains nothing later than 300), all parts seem to have been filled at the same time.
The entire interior was covered with a single coat of waterproof plaster. The system went out of use, no doubt because of the repeated caving in of the soft bedrock in which it was cut. Thus the blind tunnel leading off from the draw-shaft was first shortened 0.50m by a wall of field stones set in clay and carefully plastered on the face toward the shaft. Later, the entire tunnel was blocked off by a similar wall set in the side of shaft. About the same time,the southern chamber was dispensed with and the mouth of the passage leading to the north chamber was carefully walled, the one plastered face of the wall looking toward the northern chamber. Some rubbish would seem to have been thrown into the abandoned southern chamber, but later, perhaps because it was proposed to use this chamber for dry storage, the rubbish was shoveled into the blind tunnel and the mouth of that tunnel closed with a carelessly built wall of loose field stones. Some years later, the chamber was finally abandoned and filled in with earth. In the meantime , the passageway connecting the two chambers was sacrificed and its remaining mouth closed by a wall looking into the northern chamber.
The network of underground reservoirs intended to supply the private houses of classical times which must have stood there to the south of the public market-square. The cisterns and chains of cisterns must have been filled up at various times between the end of the 4th B.C. and the 1st c. A.D.
Cistern System, 45/Β and 45/ΙΑ (Hell. Group B) (ΣΤ = 45/Β, 45/Ζ, 46/Ζ, cf. Also 42/Δ)
Contents:   Coins: ΣΤ
13 April 1932 #1-#3
14 April 1932 #3-#5
16 April 1932 #9, #15
20 April 1932 #2-#3
21 April 1932 #5-#13
23 May 1932 #1
Coins: ΣΤ'
25 May 1932 #1-#4
26 May 1932 #4
30 May 1932 #1-#2
31 May 1932 #1
1 June 1931 #1-#2
Bibliography:   Hesperia 32 (1963), pp. 325-327.
    Hesperia 26 (1957), pp. 108-128, fig. 12.
    Hesperia 3 (1934), pp. 330-345, fig. 12.
    Agora IV, p. 241.
    Agora XII, p. 393.
    Agora XXI, p. 98.
    Agora XXII, pp. 102, 108-109.
    Agora XXIX, p. 456.
    Agora XXVI, p. 309.
    Agora XXX, p. 364.
    Agora XXXIII, p. 361.
Chronology:   Ca. 320-240 B.C.
Date:   13-30 May 1932
Section:   ΣΤ
    ΣΤ'
Grid:   ΣΤ:43-47/Α-Ζ
References:   Publications (11)
Publication Pages (40)
Image: 2004.01.1652 (HAT 62-210)
Objects (82)