Potamia: clearance of the Ottoman manor (Department, 2009)

In 2009 the Department of Antiquities began clearing and excavating the western part of the manor at Potamia, which the report describes as a later addition to an eastern part dating to Ottoman rule, when the manor was a chiftlik¹. Rooms were numbered I to XIII; vegetation and accumulated earth were cleared and cement floors removed¹. In Room VI, 12 × 4 m with four roof-supporting arches, excavation beneath the gypsum-marble floor uncovered stone slabs, low walls and a lower trodden-earth floor with ash and charcoal, and a sunken installation resembling a small cistern, which held yellow glass paste fragments, a leather knife case and iron pieces. The report suggests tentatively that burning or, possibly, flax processing took place there, while noting that the ash might be secondary¹. Older stone-paved floors lay 30 to 35 cm beneath later floors in Rooms IV and V, and in Room X a plaster-lined sunken structure was found beneath the floor of a space last used as a boiler-room¹.