Marion: Department of Antiquities rescue work, 2008–2010

A Hellenistic workshop complex on Manolis Andronikou Street at Marion yielded large quantities of pigments in dishes, three metallurgical kilns, and a possible sanctuary room with a monolithic altar and fragmentary terracotta figurines¹. The salvage excavation had begun in 2007 on a private plot planned for apartment blocks and continued in 2008; the central building was of ashlar blocks, river stones and mud mortar, with small rooms along a corridor, and many loomweights showed that there were weaving installations too¹. The report gives a storeroom and distribution function for the pigment room as a possibility¹. Najbjerg treats these workshops as seemingly part of an intentional Hellenistic urban grid². Archaeological Officer Eustathios Raptou directed the rescue work of 2009 for the Department of Antiquities, and Childs credits him with the discoveries of 2010^2,3.

Two further pieces of work in 2008 were at Petrerades and Sfageion. A trial excavation at Petrerades uncovered the bothros of a sanctuary dated in the report to the Late Cypro-Archaic/Hellenistic period, with whole and fragmentary clay figurines, among them a Cypro-Archaic II thymiaterion (MMA 662/878) and a clay statuette of Isis dated to Cypro-Classical I (MMA 662/847)¹. At Sfageion seven Classical/Hellenistic tombs were excavated during apartment construction; the report describes them as looted or partly looted, with an Attic "St. Valentine" cup (MMA 664/2) and an askos with lions (MMA 671/1) among the finds¹. These finds are listed in the report under the Local Museum of Marion-Arsinoe¹.

In 2009 a road serving the new fire station was cut through the ancient cemetery at Orta Koilades. The work exposed a 34 m East-West wall with a north-facing façade, reinforced by monolithic pillars, which the report dates to the early Hellenistic period, possibly the early third century BC; its full extent could not be exposed because it continued into private property³. A platform and the base of a possible funerary complex lay beside it, and a test trench in the platform revealed a Hellenistic tomb with two Rhodian amphorae; an unlooted Archaic tomb and a Classical tomb were found nearby³. Childs reports that in 2010 Raptou uncovered what may be a funerary monument in the eastern part of the town, and that excavation across the street from the Maratheri sanctuary led him to many large female statues and statuettes².