Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (4.1992(1993))

Excavation were also continued in two rooms which had been
partly investigated in the previous campaign (room 165, where
drilling in 1990 revealed several stone fragments lying together
in a spot of a deeper stratum, suggesting the presence of a work-
shop, and room 163, adjoining the bath complex on the east).
Three phases of utilization and habitation were distin-
guished in the Ptolemaic Period. The upper stratum, containing
a mixed Byzantine-Roman-Ptolemaic material in its surface layer,
revealed some remains of Late Ptolemaic constructions in its
lower layer. The mudbrick walls in the middle stratum, corre-
sponding to the second half of the 2"* century B.C, are partly
preserved up to a height of c. 1 m. They are built upon a thick
layer of ashes and red rubble containing a great amount of
pottery, terracotta figurines and oil lamps. This layer's thickness
varies and generally increases toward the west where it reaches
1 m. Its density and structure allowed us to amend a previous
hypothesis according to which this layer had witnessed destruction
caused by a war, presumably the Sixth Syrian War. In the light
of the present discoveries it seems more probable that the layer
is an accumulation of material removed from somewhere else in
the process of levelling the area which was previously occupied
by pottery workshops and was now supposed to serve a new
purpose. Considering the vicinity of the baths dating from this
particular period, we are inclined to see in this rubble the
displaced remains of the pottery kilns which had existed there
previously. This would also explain the predomination of coins
from the times of Ptolemy VI and his predecessor in our numis-
matic material coming from this context. Underneath the layer of

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