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Bothroi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. W. Hutchinson
R. W. Hutchinson
Affiliation:
Villa Ariadne, Knossos
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Extract

House-Pits or ‘bothroi’ have been uncovered on various sites of the Early Bronze Age in Greece, notably at Korakou, Gonia, and Zygouries in the Korinthia, at Asine in the Argolis, and at Eutresis and Orchomenos in Boiotia. They vary considerably in size and shape and the explanations of their purposes advanced by archaeologists are scarcely more uniform. They have been interpreted as common or as sacrificial rubbish pits, as hearths or slow ovens or as ‘silos’ (that is, cupboards for the storage of grain or other food).

The theory that such bothroi were underground ovens has recently been championed by Dr. Mylonas, who found one in a neolithic deposit at Olynthos in Macedonia, and who gives an illuminating account of the construction of such an oven at the present day in the neighbouring village of Myriophyto, inhabited by refugees from Asia Minor. The modern oven, or ‘ταντοῦρι,’ was prepared in the following manner.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , 1935 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1935

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References

1 I restrict the term ‘house-pits’ to the nonstructural pits often discovered by archaeologists in the floors of prehistoric houses or in courtyards immediately adjacent to them, and shall disregard pit-dwellings, post-holes and all other holes of an obviously structural character.

I am indebted to Miss Lamb for permission to publish details of the pits discovered in the recent excavations at Thermi; likewise to Mrs. M. E. Cunningham for permission to publish Fig. 9, to Dr. Buday Arpád for Fig. 6, and to Dr. W. Unverzagt for Fig. 7.

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16 E.g. Γ 14 illustrated in BSA. XXX, Pl. III, No. 5, and the room in K1 illustrated in my Fig. 1.

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33 Cf. Fig. 9, Nos. 2 and 5.

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46 Hist. Nat. XVIII, 30Google Scholar; see also Columella, I. 6Google Scholar, and Curtius, VII, 12Google Scholar.