PORPHYRA Workshop: Hellenistic and Roman Purple Dye Workshops on Agathonisi and in Chania, and Concluding Discussion

This recording covers the final session and closing discussion of the PORPHYRA workshop on purple dye production and use in Cyprus and the Aegean from prehistory to the Late Roman period.

Pavlos Triantafyllidis (Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesbos) presents his 2006 to 2014 excavations at the fortified settlement of Kastraki on Agathonisi (ancient Tragia) in the northern Dodecanese. Rebuilt in the 2nd century BC against piracy, the Hellenistic and early Roman fortress contained workshop installations with plastered tanks, pigments for painting vases, and punctured and crushed Hexaplex trunculus and Bolinus brandaris shells. Triantafyllidis connects these with over 50,000 clay beehive fragments, including examples incised kypselion and kypselia demosia, and stamped tiles of 84/83 BC naming Apollo as eponymous stephanephoros, arguing that apiculture and purple production at Kastraki were controlled by the Milesian state and sanctuary of Apollo.

Angeliki Tsingou (Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania) presents a 2002 rescue excavation in Nea Chora on the outskirts of ancient Kydonia (Chania, Crete). Functioning from the mid-1st to the mid-2nd century AD, the Roman workshop had circular furnaces with central cylindrical stones for indirect, low-temperature heating, cisterns, and a well holding an estimated 188 cubic metres of crushed shells, 85 per cent of them Hexaplex trunculus.

Dimitra Mylona and Thomas Brogan lead a concluding discussion comparing the Aegean and Cypriot case studies, addressing indirect heating, dyeing recipes, isotopic sourcing, and the apparent Iron Age gap. Participants note newly observed murex shells at Kition alongside Palaepaphos, Marion, Hala Sultan Tekke, and Pyrgos-Mavrorachi, arguing that continuous occupation at Cypriot towns obscures earlier levels unless a site was abandoned.