Ayios Ermoyenis, Discovery of Trench 43, V. Grace 1941Virginia Randolph Grace

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Above this level, the remaining meter of earth below present day surface was ploughed silt in which we found three mediaeval coins. The few potsherds included a little mediaeval glaze.

One more feature to be mentioned is the built sarcophagus over the south end of Tomb 1. It had been sunk in the pebble rock to nearly its full height, at a time two meters when the ground level was not much higher than its lid, now [handwritten: 2.20] from the surface. It had been rifled when we found it (pulled open at the end), and nothing positive can at present be said about its date except that stratification visible over it in the scarp places it at a definitely earlier period than the glassmaker's establishment, as indeed [handwritten: ?] might be concluded from its construction.

Turning to the interiors of Tombs 9 and 1, one finds, as should be expected from their general description, that the earliest pottery appeared in 9 and cannot be later than the 4rth century BC: see the pinched-rim jug, #2. Burials were made in the same chamber at least as late as about the middle of the 2nd century BC, for two skeletons overlay fragments of a stamped Rhodian jar, #13, datable in the second quarter of the century. The bones that had remained more or less in order in this tomb represented four individuals, all laid with heads toward the door side of the tomb. ^2 A was a small person of whom we identified cranium and lower jaw, right upper arm, vertebrae and ribs, lying over pot #18 and beside #1 and #2. The rather light ribs of B lay over #11 and large fragments of #13; and parts of the left upper and lower arm bones were preserved. The ribs of C rested on the lower arm bones of B, the legs on the debris at the back of the tomb, but partly covered, as witness the broken

discovery. See SCE III, pp.531-2 and Pl.CLXXV, Type 6. The largest group is not required by context to be earlier than Constantine (the deposit in Room XXV at Soli: see p.537 and Plan XXXIX) and I find no better evidence. Westholm associates the type with Broneer's Types XXIV- XXV, but it is never glazed and in general seems more like a blurred Type XXVII.

^1 Not a child, if the jaw is rightly attributed to this burial. ^2 Not indicated in the drawing.