DOI article:
Daszewski, Wiktor Andrzej: Nea Paphos 1991
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26426#0065
cm below this floor there was another one, made of a several-
centimetre thick layer of grey clay, cracked from buming. Below
it, down to about 0.6 m depth, the soil was brown and bumt
through. The pottery material would indicate a date in the later
Hellenistic period with the latest sherd below the lower floor being
a ffagment of a lamp discus with voluted nozzle from the
beginning of the first century A.D. Overall, the results confirmed
an earlier suggestion that the building facing the westem side of
the street should be dated to Later Hellenistic times in general and
its abandonment to a point somewhere at the beginning of the
Early Roman period,
The next sector where excavations were continued was the
site of a large Hellenistic edifice discovered in previous seasons to
the south of the Villa of Theseus (so-called Hellenistic House, Fig.
3). Trenches were dug in all three of the uncovered wings:
westem, southem and eastem. On the west, room no. 10, which
was presumably the main official hall of the edifice, was almost
completely cleared. Its floor was found to be a mosaic of rough
irregular chips of stones forming a simple design of a rectangular
black frame against a white background. The walls of this room,
almost totally destroyed and plundered in search of stone, were
preserved in only small fragments on the north and west as well as
some blocks on the east. Traces of painted wall plaster were
visible on the fragmentary remains, permitting a reconstruction of
the lower register of wall decoration which consisted of large
rectangular fields of a dark red colour set apart by yellow pilasters
projecting about 4 cm and 0.53 m wide. The upper parts of the
southem wall were uncovered during a careful clearing of the
debris in the middle of the room. The preserved fragments of
plaster demonstrated that the sections of the wall above the red
fields were covered with a white plaster imitating blocks of
masonry. In other words, the character of the decoration found in
63
centimetre thick layer of grey clay, cracked from buming. Below
it, down to about 0.6 m depth, the soil was brown and bumt
through. The pottery material would indicate a date in the later
Hellenistic period with the latest sherd below the lower floor being
a ffagment of a lamp discus with voluted nozzle from the
beginning of the first century A.D. Overall, the results confirmed
an earlier suggestion that the building facing the westem side of
the street should be dated to Later Hellenistic times in general and
its abandonment to a point somewhere at the beginning of the
Early Roman period,
The next sector where excavations were continued was the
site of a large Hellenistic edifice discovered in previous seasons to
the south of the Villa of Theseus (so-called Hellenistic House, Fig.
3). Trenches were dug in all three of the uncovered wings:
westem, southem and eastem. On the west, room no. 10, which
was presumably the main official hall of the edifice, was almost
completely cleared. Its floor was found to be a mosaic of rough
irregular chips of stones forming a simple design of a rectangular
black frame against a white background. The walls of this room,
almost totally destroyed and plundered in search of stone, were
preserved in only small fragments on the north and west as well as
some blocks on the east. Traces of painted wall plaster were
visible on the fragmentary remains, permitting a reconstruction of
the lower register of wall decoration which consisted of large
rectangular fields of a dark red colour set apart by yellow pilasters
projecting about 4 cm and 0.53 m wide. The upper parts of the
southem wall were uncovered during a careful clearing of the
debris in the middle of the room. The preserved fragments of
plaster demonstrated that the sections of the wall above the red
fields were covered with a white plaster imitating blocks of
masonry. In other words, the character of the decoration found in
63