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Petres (Florina) : twelve years of excavations

• Αδάμ - Βελένη, Πολυξένη

The excavation at Petres near Amyntaio in the Prefecture of Fiorina (western Macedonia) began in 1982 at a site where antiquities had been ide­ ntified on the surface as far back as 1913. Over the intervening period, a si­ gnificant number of random finds provided testimony to the importance of the site. In the 1950s, the construction of a secondary road between Petres and Kleidi destroyed a section of the settlement, revealing the first traces of buil­ ding. It was at this point that the excavation began in 1982, lasting, with interruptions totalling three excavation seasons, for a total of twelve years. The plateau on which the mound stands is bounded by two seasonal rivers, has a gradient of 30-40%, and is 720 metres above sea level. The evidence from the excavation shows that the settlement was inhabited from the late fourth or ea - rly third century BC to the mid-first century, at which time it was destroyed by the Romans when the whole of Upper Macedonia became a battlefield in the civil war. The excavation focused on three sectors: 1) on the ‘south platform’, located on the south slopes of the mound; 2) on what was called the ‘fountain sector’, located between two low platforms, and 3) on the ‘acropolis sector’, con­ sisting of the summit of the mound.This was a relatively small city, surrounded by a strong limestone wall. The town was freely laid out, with streets following the contours and slopes of the hill. The houses, arranged in threes and fours on insulae of irregular size, stood adjacent to one another on the larger or smaller natural platforms formed by the hillside. Two types of house have been identified: the first had a narrow frontage and a N-S axis, and the second a broad frontage on an E-W axis, ar­ ranged in an L-shape. All the houses had two storeys and a view out over the lake of Petres and the fertile plain at the foot of the hill. Their walls consist of rubble masonry up to a height of one metre, above which they were made with unfired brick. The upper storeys were of lighter materials: mud, reeds and wood. Access to the groups of houses was along streets running parallel to the natural contours of the hill, while between the house-groups were narrow al­ leys, up to 1.30 metres in width, which ran at right angles to the contours and gradients of the hill. Both the large horizontal streets (which were up to 2.50 metres in width) and the alleys were equipped with a very well-organised water supply system, which fed fountains placed at various points in the city.Some of the public buildings of the city were identified in the ‘fountain sec­or’. With its advantageous orientation, this area was the site of a public sanct - uary of Zeus and of public storehouses and processing areas for agricultural produce whose size reveals them to have been for common use. The sanctuary of Zeus was a plain rectangular building completely constructed in rubble masonry, in the centre of which was a large square altar. The altar was marked out by large stones driven vertically into the ground and contained successive strata of ash. Nearby was found a stele with an inscription which identified the area as a sanctuary of Zeus.Important information about the occupations of the inhabitants of the city and their religious beliefs were provided by the numerous portable finds from the site. The city had workshops manufacturing pottery, figurines, metal items and, most probably, statuary, The city was at the height of its prosperity in the mid-second century BC, as a result of the fact that the Via Egnatia ran through the plain to the south. At that time, the city developed, becoming a craft industrial centre for the production and marketing of goods rather than an ag­ ricultural, provincial town in the Macedonian kingdom.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

Φλώρινα, συνέδρια, Πέτρες

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