Agios Georgios (Pegeia): the University of Thessaloniki excavation

The courtyard building west of basilica A at Agios Georgios (Pegeia), Cape Drepanon, which its excavator identifies as the episcopal residence, was uncovered by an expedition of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki that began digging in 1991 under Charalambos Bakirtzis^1,2. The first campaign set out to show how basilicas A and C and the bath-house fitted the town plan and to clarify the function and history of the settlement². Work concentrated on basilica A, the baths and the southern slopes, and Herscher records that survey suggested the settlement flourished from Constantine the Great until Justinian I and ended in the seventh century¹.

In 1995 the open courtyard between basilica A and the baths was completed, revealing the stepped dromos of a Roman rock-cut chamber tomb reused as a bath drainage tank^3,4. Finds from it include clay bathing cups, glass bottles for aromatic oil, stone dice and numerous clay and glass containers of the 6th-7th centuries². West of basilica A, a Roman building with rooms around a court was uncovered in 1997; it was raised and given a second storey in the Early Christian period, and Bakirtzis interprets it as a bishopric, or episcopal residence, communicating with the baptistery of basilica A^2,4,5. In 1998 a room in its south-west corner, with glass lamps and a burnt lead bulla, was suggested as the archive⁵.

Two oil-pressing workshops added to the north wall of basilica C were partly excavated in 1994, and the work of 2000 concentrated on the annexes of the basilica and the workshops. A rubbish pit held domestic debris and two coins, one of Heraclius (AD 613–618) and one of the house of Constantine (AD 641–645)⁵. The north-east outbuildings of the basilica had eleven rooms, one with an olive press installation, stone troughs and an imported marble Justinianic capital⁴. In the cliff face above the harbour, Bakirtzis counts 24 rock-cut tombs of two types and dates them late Hellenistic and Roman; fronts of loculi tombs carry Early Christian crosses and names^2,3. Bakirtzis lists annual notices of the excavation in ARDAC and BCH to 2005².