Excavations in Ithaca, I

Abstract

The area of the Protogeometric cairns here described was first discovered in 1931, when we opened a trial pit (Fig. 3) which revealed part of a wall (Fig. 4, 6) and behind it what seemed to be a confused mass of stones mixed with black earth, and containing sherds, ranging from a few LH III to Protogeometric. These stones we took to be the remains of a collapsed house. In 1932 the pit was extended, principally to West and North, and though we encountered the same masses of stones all over the area, it became possible to discover some coherence in them. The plan (Fig. 3) and section (Fig. 4) give some idea of the complexity of the remains, but for the sake of clearness the accumulations of stones (all of which it was necessary to plot before they could be removed) between the surface and the remains actually shown are omitted. In the neighbourhood of wall 6 the stones explained themselves as remains of a succession of terrace-walls and their filling, built at various periods to terrace up the area to the North of them, each time with a slightly different alignment. It was only when we had got near virgin soil that the cairns became recognisable. They had naturally suffered in the process of terracing and had been further disturbed by a series of Byzantine cist graves (Fig. 3, 12–21; Fig. 5), the makers of which had displaced the stones and contents of the cairns and the earth above them. It is really remarkable that the cairns have survived at all and it is only owing to the skilful and patient work of Miss Lorimer that their structural character has been recognised.