An international team of researchers from Canada and Greece has discovered a 2,700-year-old portico at the archaeological site of Argilos.
This is an aerial photo of the portico discovered at the archaeological site of Argilos. Image credit: Jacques Perreault, the University of Montreal.
The portico (stoa in Greek) is a long, open structure that often housed shops and delineated public squares from the city – the agora.
“Porticos are well known from the Hellenistic period, from the 3rd to 1st century BC, but earlier examples are extremely rare. The one from Argilos is the oldest example to date from northern Greece and is truly unique,” said Dr Jacques Perreault from the University of Montreal, who is a specialist of the Greek Archaic period and the Argilos project director.
The archaeological site of the ancient city of Argilos is located on the edge of the Aegean Sea. Argilos was the first Greek colony established in this area around the great Strymon River. At its peak in the 5th century BC, Argilos was one of the richest cities in the region.
Archaeological digs in 2013 unearthed a roughly 40-m length of the portico at the site. The open area once contained 7 rooms, five of which have been excavated, each measuring 5 m wide and 7.5 m deep, with a 2.5-m high back wall.
Since Argilos was prosperous, it is plausible that the portico was commissioned and built by the city. If this were the case, an architect would have overseen the construction and architectural integrity of the structure; there would have been no differences in the size of the stones used, and all the rooms would have been identical.
“The construction techniques and the stones used are different for one room to another, hinting that several masons were used for each room. This indicates that the shop owners themselves were probably responsible for building the rooms, that private enterprise and not the city was the source of this stoa,” Dr Perreault said.
In the Iron Age, northern Greece was an Eldorado. The valley of the Strymon River, whose mouth is located less than 3 km from Argilos, overflowed with gold and silver mines. With its ports and nearby mines, Argilos was a strategic location for trade in precious metals. But its prosperity declined rapidly from the mid-5th century BC, when the Athenians founded the nearby city of Amphipolis. In 357 BC, Philip II conquered the whole region and deported the inhabitants from Argilos to Amphipolis, the new seat of the king of Macedonia.
Thus deserted, Argilos remained frozen in time, which is why it is possible today to discover its buildings and the many vestiges of human activity that characterized them.
