Excavations in the North-East Quadrant. 1st Interim Report

Abstract

The background to the Society's involvement with the part of the site of Ptolemais known as the North-East Quadrant has been outlined in a previous report in this Journal. (Annual Report of the Society for Libyan Studies 1977–78)Following a short two week season in 1978, under the overall direction of J. B. Ward-Perkins, to assess the problems of the site, the Society sent out an expanded team over a period of six weeks in May and June 1979 to commence, inter alia, a programme of excavation in the North-East Quadrant. It did not prove possible to complete the programme in 1979 and it was expected that a further, and probably final, season's work would take place in August and September 1980. In the event, however, this has not proved possible, but it is hoped that the work on site can be concluded in 1981. Meanwhile this short interim report on the results of the 1979 excavations is presented to the Society.While the main excavation effort was concentrated in the North-East Quadrant a number of sondages were made in the House of the Triapsidal Hall in an attempt to establish the date of the original building as well as that of the East Avenue (and thus that of the city's Hellenistic street grid) onto which it fronts. A trench 1.5m. wide and 4.0m. long was put down through the central room of the western range between the peristyle and the street wall. This revealed two surviving floor levels of which the upper retained traces of mosaic while the lower, which proved to be the original floor level, was of smooth plaster. The footings of the house's west wall were also revealed, set into the natural sub-soil. These levels produced a quantity of fine ware sherds which, when studied, should yield a date for the construction of the original building, as well as, by implication, the laying down of the Hellenistic street grid.