The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is pleased to announce the publication of Hesperia 85.1. Topics in this issue include the 2013 preliminary report from the Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project, a Mycenaean conglomerate quarry, a discussion of how the field of Aegean prehistory may have developed if Schliemann had not discovered Troy and Mycenae, erotic curse tablets from Nemea, Classical Athenian taxes and their administration, and a bronze pinakion that had been lost since 1910.
Subscribers can read the issue online at JSTOR, which now hosts all current issues of Hesperia as well as an archive of past volumes.
Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project: 2013 Preliminary Report, by Nathan T. Arrington, Domna Terzopoulou, Marina Tasaklaki, Mark L. Lawall, Demetrios J. Brellas, and Chantel E. White, provides us with the results of the first season of excavation and survey work at Molyvoti, a site that has been proposed to be ancient Stryme. Ceramic and numismatic evidence demonstrates that the site was not destroyed ca. 350 by Philip, but rather its habitation likely extended into the late 4th or early 3rd century. The first evidence for a Late Roman phase was also found in 2013. Extensive amphora remains indicate that trading activity was a prime occupation of the inhabitants, although that trade was relatively local rather than long-distance. Archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence also adds to the picture of those who lived on the Molyvoti Peninsula in ancient times.
The Conglomerate Quarry at the Mycenaean Site of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi in Laconia, by Louise A. Hitchcock, Anne P. Chapin, Emilia Banou, and James H. Reynolds, presents the evidence for a Mycenaean quarry situated between the site of Palaiopyrgi and the Vapheio tholos tomb. A roughed-out column base is shown amid other features. The authors discuss the quarry’s cuttings in relation to those of other quarries, and refer to the significance of the conglomerate stone in Mycenaean culture.
Aegean Prehistory without Schliemann, by Michael Fotiadis, lays out the prime interests and attitudes of scholars interested in prehistoric archaeology in the decades preceding Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy and Mycenae in order to highlight the reorientation of the field that occurred as a consequence of those discoveries, and to spur our thinking about the field as we know it today.
Erotic Curse Tablets from the Heroön of Opheltes at Nemea, by Jorge J. Bravo III, presents four inscribed lead curse tablets found in the Heroön of Opheltes, all of which have to do with turning one lover away from another. Bravo also discusses the ambiguity caused by the language of the curses—it is not necessarily clear which of the two named persons is the object of the author’s desire.
“When I Squeeze You with Eisphorai”: Taxes and Tax Policy in Classical Athens, by Peter Fawcett, considers all the inscriptional evidence discovered thus far on Classical Athenian taxes as a body and reviews the current scholarly thinking on the taxes and their administration. Fawcett then uses this review as a base for his very thorough and enlightening discussion of the Classical Athenian economy and its fiscal policy.
A Lost Pinakion Rediscovered, by Leena Pietilä-Castrén, discusses the modern history and the ancient use of an Athenian pinakion that had been published in 1910 and then recently rediscovered in Finland. Pietilä-Castrén finds that this pinakion is of the less usual nondikastic type.
Current subscribers can view the issue online at JSTOR. The printed version will be mailed shortly.
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