House A vii 4
Walter Graham chose this house as his type house for his discussion of the dwellings at Olynthus (figs. 22, 23;
virtual reality reconstruction on Perseus).
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| Fig. 22. House A vii 4 |
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| Fig. 23. Reconstruction of House A vii 4 |
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| Fig. 16. Key to House Plans |
The house contains a full range of specialized rooms: a well-defined pastas and cobbled court, a kitchen with bath and flue in the northeast part of the house, an andron and anteroom in the southeast, two North Rooms, a small storeroom off the pastas, and a shop in the southwest part of the house. The house was entered through a prothyron door which led into the court. It had two stories.
3.46
Court
The
courtyard had about the same area as that of the Villa of the Bronzes (7 x 6.2 m) and was cobbled and
drained to the street. The court contained a variety of finds and, unlike the courts of the House of Many Colors and the Villa of the Bronzes, seems to have been heavily used. Sixteen
loomweights were found scattered on the floor. These might be the remains of a loom, or perhaps were debris from a loom previously set up in the court. The court also contained a fair amount of domestic equipment: vases, including
bowls, a coarse spouted bowl or
mortarium, a
guttus, a
lamp stand, three
lekythoi and fragments of many other vessels; a bronze
cup or vessel; fragments of four female
protomes;
hardware and other miscellaneous finds. The exact locations of these finds were not recorded, but in other houses they tend to be set on shelves or pegs on the courtyard walls. Two bronze
weights (one inscribed
Τ, for
τέταρτον or
τεταρτημόριον, one-fourth of a mina) and a “lead loomweight” (probably another weight) from the court could be connected with commercial activities in the house, as are other weights from this house.
Pastas
Like the court, the
pastas (f) of A vii 4 was the site of a variety of activities, and their assemblages are generally similar. The pastas contained a number of eating and drinking vessels: a
hydria, two
kantharoi, an
olpe, and a
bowl, as well as many other vases, not mended or published. Swinging handles from two
bronze vessels were found nearby. Small pouring or unguent vessels included a
guttus and two squat
lekythoi. Most of these were found in the west part of the pastas, probably stored on shelves or in chests along the wall, as in the houses discussed above. A bronze leaf found with two clamps, and five bronze
bosses from the western part of the pastas probably belonged to a chest or other piece of furniture in this part of the room. A stone “
pithos lid or table top,” 42 cm in diameter, was also found in the western part of the pastas. These disks could have served a variety of uses, not just as pithos lids but perhaps as portable working surfaces (such as the one found in room b of the House of Many Colors, probably used to mix mortar).
jewelry including an
earring and a
fibula were found in the western part of the pastas as well. The pastas also contained four more
weights, these made of lead rather than bronze but one with two inscriptions (
Τ and
ΤΕ), and nearby was a bronze disk, pierced at the edges, and a rod with a ring at one end. These might have been part of a
scales, the pierced disk being a scales pan.
North Rooms
The two North Rooms (a and b) were almost identical in size, and both had plain walls and an earth floor. Room a contained only a single coin; like so many North Rooms, its function remains difficult to determine, but furnishings and bedding would have left few traces. Room b, on the other hand, contained twenty-three
loomweights, twelve of them clustered closely, the others scattered nearby. Together with the court, then, this room was probably used for weaving, although the loomweights might also have been stored here for use in the pastas or court. Like the pastas and court, this room also contained tablewares, including a red-figured
pelike, two
plates, a
lekythos, a
cup, a
saltcellar, and fragments of other black-glazed vases. Like the pastas, this room contained jewelry, another
fibula and another
earring (not a match to the one from the pastas). Other finds from this room included an odd cylindrical lead bar and a number of fragmentary terracotta
figurines. This room was therefore a multipurpose space, used for weaving, storage of household goods, and other functions.
Kitchen-complex
The kitchen-complex shares with the other houses on this row the anomaly of lacking stone bases for its pillar-partition (at least at the level preserved), despite the house’s two stories. The wall or foundation between the kitchen and flue is thickened at the south, perhaps to form a kind of platform or counter; the pillars supporting the second-story wall may have been set directly on this platform without stone bases.
A large stone
mortar was set towards the west end of the kitchen, showing that this room was used for processing food. The room also contained a piece of furniture, which burned leaving a scatter of
nails and ash. Two
lamps and tablewares, including a
pelike, another red-figured vase, a
lekythos, and a
saucer, might have been stored in this furnishing, although their exact situation was not noted. A bronze pendant, few pieces of hardware, and three coins complete the contents; like many other kitchens, it was relatively bare of finds.
No finds were recorded in the
flue, but a layer of ash and burning on the stone slab pavement show that the space was used for cooking, on fires built on the floor of the flue. The
bathtub had been robbed out of the
bathroom, leaving a gap in the cement pavement. Two red-figured squat
lekythoi found in the bathroom might have been for oil or perfumes used in bathing.
Storeroom
A small room at the east end of the pastas contained a small
pithos sunk into the floor, with a stone disk serving as a lid. The pithos was about 0.8 m in diameter, and had a capacity of some 190 liters.
3.47 It is much smaller, therefore, than the pithoi in the House of Many Colors or the Villa of the Bronzes. Unlike the large storerooms in those houses, this house had only limited storage capacity—one small rather than multiple large pithoi. This distinction is important in understanding the different economic strategies pursued by different households and will be explored further below (
Chapter 6, “Household Storage”). The pithos contained a black-glazed
fishplate and a bronze
needlelike instrument, but these probably fell in during or after the destruction of the house.
Andron and Anteroom
The
andron is of the usual seven-couch size (4.4 x 4.5 m), entered through an anteroom from the court. As usual, these two rooms were the most highly decorated in the house. Except for the bathroom, whose walls were plastered, all the other rooms of A vii 4 had plain walls; but the andron and anteroom were painted in three colors. The andron had a white baseboard, yellow surbase, and red walls, while the
anteroom had a black baseboard, red surbase and yellow walls. Both rooms had cement floors; the platform around the andron, on which the dining couches were set, was painted bright yellow. And as so commonly at Olynthus, both rooms were all but bare. The neck of a red-figured
pelike was found in the anteroom, and nothing at all in the andron.
Shop
The large room in the southwest corner of the house (h) had doors to both the courtyard and the street, and probably served as a shop or workshop belonging to the owner of the house. It contained only miscellaneous finds: one coin, a
lekythos, a
saucer, a bronze swinging handle embedded in the wall, three
loomweights, and
hardware. However, the domestic portion of the house contained a number of artifacts which seem related to retail trade: four
weights and
scales in the pastas, and two bronze weights and “lead loomweight” in the court. Although these do not help us identify what might have been sold in the shop, they fit with the presence of a shop connected with the house. Relatively few shops at Olynthus preserved assemblages which would help determine what was made or sold in them (below,
Chapter 6, “Shops”).
Summary
While very regular in plan, house A vii 4 offers a few surprises in its distribution of artifacts and the apparent use of space in the house. Tablewares and related objects were found in the court, in the pastas, in North Room b, and a few in the kitchen. The North Room b and perhaps the court as well were used for weaving. Weights were found in the court and pastas. This suggests a more homogeneous use of architecturally distinct spaces than in, for instance, the House of Many Colors, where few activities were duplicated in different rooms. There is, however, considerable specialization in other kinds of spaces. The house has a storeroom and an andron and
anteroom, all of which seem to be single-purpose spaces. The contrast between the two North Rooms (a and b) is particularly striking: when excavated, a was empty while b was a multipurpose room housing a variety of activities which left many material remains.
