The Agora Bone Well

201 Pages·2019·10.13 MB·English

by  Maria A, Liston, Susan I. Rotroff, Lynn M. Snyder

The AgorA Bone Well
hesperia Supplements
The Hesperia Supplement series (ISSN 1064-1173) presents book-length
studies in the fields of Greek archaeology, art, language, and history. Founded
in 1937, the series was originally designed to accommodate extended essays
too long for inclusion in the journal Hesperia. Since that date the Supple-
ments have established a strong identity of their own, featuring single-author
monographs, excavation reports, and edited collections on topics of interest to
researchers in classics, archaeology, art history, and Hellenic studies.
Hesperia Supplements are electronically archived in JSTOR (www.jstor.org),
where all but the most recent titles may be found. For order information and
a complete list of titles, see the ASCSA website (www.ascsa.edu.gr).
Hesperia Supplement 50
The AgorA Bone Well
Maria A. liston, Susan I. rotroff, and
lynn M. Snyder
with a contribution by
Andrew Stewart
American School of Classical Studies at Athens
2018
Copyright © 2018
American School of
Classical Studies at Athens,
Princeton, New Jersey
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Liston, Maria A., author. | Rotroff, Susan I., author. | Snyder, Lynn M.,
author.
Title: The Agora Bone Well / by Maria A. Liston, Susan I. Rotroff, and Lynn M.
Snyder, with a contribution by Andrew Stewart.
Description: Princeton, New Jersey : American School of Classical Studies at Ath-
ens, 2018. | Series: Hesperia supplements, ISSN 1064-1173 ; v. 50 | Includes
bibliographical references and indexes.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023617 | ISBN 978-0-87661-550-8 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Agora (Athens, Greece) | Athens (Greece)—Antiquities. | Infants—
Mortality—Greece—History—To 1500. | Human remains (Archaeology)—
Greece—Athens. | Animal remains (Archaeology)—Greece—Athens. | Burial—
Greece—Athens. | Wells—Greece—Athens.
Classification: LCC DF287.A23 L57 2018 | DDC 938/.508—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023617
PrefACe
This project began 80 years ago with Dorothy Burr Thompson’s excavation
of what promised to be an ordinary Athenian water source. Thompson
was the mother of a young family when she completed the excavation of
the Agora Bone Well in 1938, with twin toddlers and a three-month-old
daughter. The clearing of the lower depths of the well and its attached
cistern, a task left over from the previous year, was her only assignment
that summer, carried out at the tail end of the excavation season. Family
obligations presumably left her time for little more. In the diary that she
kept for most of her life (now in the Bryn Mawr College Special Collec-
tions; we thank archivist Marianne Hansen for sending us scans of the
relevant sections), June 1938 is dominated by her children’s ailments: ear
infections, stomach upsets, and a mild case of dengue—if nothing else, a
reminder of the normality of frequent illness in small children. The diary
records some distaste for the excavation (“more vile bones of dogs etc.”),
adding only that J. Lawrence (“Larry”) Angel looked at the bones on
June 22 and found “many of them human—infants chiefly.” Thompson’s
comments in her excavation notebook are brief and businesslike, and she
makes no mention of infant bones.
However muted her reaction at the time, the well—which ultimately
disgorged the bones of hundreds of infants and dogs—made a lasting
impression on Thompson. She brought it to Susan Rotroff’s attention in
the 1970s, urging her to try to solve the mystery. Her own pet theory was
that both infants and dogs had succumbed to some mysterious ailment that
particularly targets these two populations, and she had from time to time
asked medical professionals if they could suggest a likely disease. In 1989,
Maria Liston briefly explored the possibility of the collection as a disserta-
tion topic, when it looked like the necessary permits to study bones from
Kavousi would not be granted. At that time, however, the science of skeletal
study was not sufficiently advanced. It was not until 1996, and by chance
rather than by design, that the right combination of scholars for this project
appeared on the Agora’s horizon. Lynn Snyder was attracted to the deposit
by its dogs, a subject of special interest to her, and approached T. Leslie
Shear Jr., then director of the excavations, with a proposal to study them.
Susan Rotroff was examining pottery from the well for the publication of
vi Preface
the Hellenistic plain wares from the Agora. Lisa Little, a graduate student in
physical anthropology at Indiana University, was working on Agora mate-
rial for her dissertation. Sitting around the Agora tea table, they devised a
project to publish the well and its contents, and they reported on the early
stages of their work at the 100th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological
Institute of America in 1998 (Little 1999; Rotroff 1999; Snyder 1999). All
had other commitments, however, and the work went slowly. Maria Liston
joined the project in 2005, replacing Little as physical anthropologist and
undertaking a complete restudy of the human skeletal material. In 2014,
Andrew Stewart added a discussion of the herm from the well, which he
was studying in the context of his research on Hellenistic sculpture at the
Agora. The full team was at last in place.
In the course of our work we have incurred debts to a long list of people.
First, we would like to thank John McK. Camp II, director of the Agora
Excavations, for permission to study and publish this material and for his
careful reading of and comments on the manuscript. The Agora staff has
been unfailingly supportive, often going beyond the call of duty to facilitate
our work. Jan Jordan, Sylvie Dumont, and Pia Kvarnström were tireless
in their efforts to provide access to the material and check details for us
when we were absent. Craig Mauzy took many new photographs, often at
a moment’s notice. Amandina Anastassiades contributed expertise from the
conservation laboratory, and her father, rheumatologist Tassos Anastassia-
des, consulted with Liston on the diagnosis of the ailment that afflicted the
adult in the well. We would also like to single out IT guru Constantinos
Tzortzinis for his assistance in the School’s computer lab at Athens.
Many scholars have been kind enough to take an interest in our project
and offer advice and assistance on such diverse subjects as ancient bronze,
Roman pottery, elephant ivory, similar concentrations of infants, and much
more, and we offer them in return our heartfelt thanks: Chryssi Bour-
bou, Kevin Clinton, Edgard Espinoza, Sherry Fox, David Gill, Carolyn
Koehler, Mark Lawall, Neda Leipen, Kathleen Lynch, John Milakson,
John Morgan, James Muhly, Clare Pickersgill, James Russell, James San-
tangelo, Debby Sneed, Dimitris Sourlas, and Michael Vickers. We are
also grateful to Stephan Schmid and Karl Reber, who, just as this project
was reaching completion, generously invited Liston to study the human
bone from two wells at Eretria that constitute striking comparanda for
the Agora Bone Well. We thank Robert Lamberton for his translations
of the passages from Poseidippos and the letter of Hilarion.
The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia pro-
vided comparanda for Liston’s work, and we are all grateful to the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens for the work space and laboratory and
library facilities that it provides to its members. For funding, we are indebted
to the Malcolm H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science, the Loeb
Classical Library Foundation, and Washington University in Saint Louis.
As this scholarly project nears the end of its trajectory, we want to
express our gratitude to our editor, Colin Whiting, who has shepherded
this manuscript through the publication process with tact, intelligence,
and efficiency, and to the staff of the School’s Publications Office for the
care and meticulous attention they have devoted to the production of our
monograph.
ConTenTS
List of Illustrations ix
List of Tables xiii
Chapter 1
The Well and Its neighborhood 1
Chapter 2
human Skeletal Material 25
Chapter 3
faunal Skeletal Material 53
Chapter 4
Artifacts 65
Chapter 5
The Wider Archaeological and
Cultural Context of the Well 105
Catalogue 141
References 159
Indexes
General Index 173
Index of Objects 183
Index of Deposits 185

IlluSTrATIonS
1. Reconstructed plan of the northern slopes of the
Kolonos Agoraios and the area outside the northwest
corner of the Agora square in the 2nd century b.c. 2
2. Plan and section through the water system to which the
Agora Bone Well belongs 4
3. Graphic representation of the notebook account of the
excavation of the Agora Bone Well 6
4. Distribution of the greatest concentration of bones, pottery,
and bronze in the shaft of the Agora Bone Well 7
5. Extant Hellenistic and Late Classical remains on the
north side of the Kolonos Agoraios 9
6. Extant remains of Buildings 3 and 4 and the water system
to which the Agora Bone Well belongs 11
7. Building 4 shortly after excavation 12
8. Schematic diagram of the stratigraphy of Building 4 14
9. Building 3 16
ΛΛ
10. The central part of Section during excavation 20
11. Sacrum of adult AA 24 27
12. Eburnation and pitting of joint surface of left femur of
adult AA 24 27
13. Joints affected by hemochromatosis in adult AA 24 28
14. Vertebrae of child AA 25 31
15. Endocranial surfaces of the skull of child AA 25 31
16. Antemortem fracture on the posterior right parietal of
infant AA 26a 33
17. Detail of the fracture on the skull of infant AA 26a 33
18. Radiograph of the ribs of infant AA 26a 34
19. Right half of mandible of infant AA 26a 35
20. Left and right halves of mandible of infant AA 26a 35