tes, the Sacred Gate and the Dipylon (“double door”). It was between them that the Roman dictator Sulla’s army breached the Athenian defences in 86 BC.
Part of the Kerameikos site comprises the very edge of Classical and later Athens within the walls. There are some interesting structures there, including private homes, potters’ workshops (the name Kerameikos primarily referred to the pottery-producing quarter of the city) and a large fountain house, providing fresh water for those leaving or entering the city. The most significant of these buildings is the so-called pompeion, a large building complex just inside the walls. Comprising a series of small rooms, probably andrones, around a central courtyard, this appears to have been used in the preparation for the various religious festivals that structured the Athenian calendar, such as the Dionysia in honour of Dionysos, the god of wine, the Eleusinia, underlining the close link between Athens and the cult of the fertility goddess Demeter at nearby Eleusis, and most importantly the Panathenaia, a major event worshipping the city’s patron goddess, Athena. Those festivals included processions and “floats”, which were probably set up at the pompeion, so the structure had a central, if rather practical, role in the city’s spiritual life.
A vast ancient necropolis and a mine of information
The most important part of the Kerameikos, however, is the area outside the walls. Here, decades of excavations have revealed part of the enormous necropolis, the cemetery lining the roads immediately beyond the western limit of the city. There were other cemeteries elsewhere outside the city walls, but the Kerameikos was the largest, most famous and most ancient. It also the only one that can be explored as a discrete and coherent site today.
The area was used as an important burial ground from the Late Bronze Age, before 1200 BC, until the Roman period in the first centuries AD. During that enormous stretch of time, Athens underwent massive and repeated changes, including the gradual formation of the city state in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, the rise of Athens to the leading power of the Aegean in the 5th, as well as her defeat in the Peloponnesian War and her eventual incorporation into the Roman Empire. The very shape of the city, but also the life that took place within it and the beliefs and ideologies underlying it, evolved and changed again and again, all of which is reflected in the burial habits of the Kerameikos.
Burial as social history
For example, the prevailing form of burial veered back and forth between inhumation and cremation multiple times throughout the first millennium BC. Similarly, the shape of the tombs themselves changed, from simple pits in the earliest periods via great burial mounds for the noble families of the Archaic age to the elaborate grave terraces of the Classical period. At the same time, the type of objects placed alongside the dead or offered at their gravesides underwent a succession of transformations, as did the way individual graves were marked and monumentalised, first with enormous clay vases, later with marble statues, inscribed grave stones and other forms of sculpture. The absence of such monuments during certain periods (most of the 5th century BC and again after 317 BC) is also of interest, as it illustrates the Athenian state’s attempts to rein in excessive spending and social competition.
In the Kerameikos, all of this fascinating history can be traced in detail at the small but excellent site museum. Its collections include key examples of Athenian grave sculpture, among them the wonderful Kouros of the Sacred Gate from the early 6th century BC, and a series of very fine relief-decorated grave reliefs typical for the 4th century, usually depicting the deceased bidding farewell to their loved ones. They are among the finest pieces of ancient Greek stone-carving to have survived. The museum also displays personal objects placed within the graves, as well as a compact but comprehensive gallery of pottery found in or on tombs – an immensel