Limestone
E11/12, 1, 2 between F1 Fountain and S8 Sacred House
Mpl. 1.00 m. Lower end measures 0.54 by 0.50 by 0.46 by 0.39 m.
Trapezoidal in section. Upper end badly broken but clearly tapered. Molded face consists of four plain fascias, separated by three raised fillets, with a much worn astragal along outer edge. Joins with no other known frags.
Arch. Cat. J:6 (field no. 4, Fig. 6). Molded block frag.
Limestone
E12/D12, D off surface of squatter Wall W8.
Mpl. 0.76 m. W. 0.28 m. Mph. 0.18 m.
Cyma reversa moldings on opposing long sides, indicating that block was visible from both directions. May have served as a lintel over doorway set in a narrow free-standing wall or, inverted, as the base for a stele. Despite close proximity, appears unlikely that frag. was incorporated into the S8 building.
Context and Date of S8
At the time of its final destruction, the pitted interior of S8 was filled with four separate strata (Fig. 4). St. 1 from E11, Tr. 2, and E11/12, Tr. 1, was a ca. 0.30 m. thick layer of topsoil, mixed with some earthquake debris. St. 2 represents a ca. 0.50 thick earthquake debris layer, composed of smashed limestone building blocks and various fragments of marble and limestone statuary, including the lower left half of a pieced-together seated draped goddess statue in limestone (Kane no. 14). It also contained four Ptolemaic period bronze coins95 and a red clay coarse ware “frying pan handle.”
St. 3, over 1.20 m. thick where it fills the natural pits that cross S8’s interior, is a loose, dry earth fill that again contained some broken building blocks together with marble and limestone statue fragments, including the lower right half (Kane no. 15) of the same pieced-together limestone seated goddess statue found in St. 2. St. 3 contains one red clay coarse ware pithos rim fragment with “piecrust” edging that dates St. 3 to anywhere from the 1st to 3rd century A.D., 96 and it is our view that St. 2 and St. 3 are here both expressions of the same A.D. 262 earthquake disaster.
Finally, patches of bedrock across parts of the interior are covered with a thin layer of sterile St. 4 terra rossa fill that contributes nothing by which to date either the building’s construction or its period of use. In this regard, it is noteworthy that neither St. 2 or St. 3 contained any appreciable remains of a collapsed roof, and, indeed, the stratigraphy of its interior produces the strong impression that the S8 Sacred House had been abandoned and emptied of contents before the final destruction of the surrounding sanctuary.
The fill associated with the structure’s exterior is scarcely more helpful. E11, 3, 3 fill piled against the second course of S8’s south wall (Fig. 4) has the appearance of a leftover Archaic period occupation stratum associated with the line of the pseudoisodomic peribolos (T1) to the south. The S8 builders must have cut into the dense, heavy St. 3 fill here as well as the sterile St. 4 beneath it in order to back the lowest two courses of their building and proceeded to double the thickness of their wall to compensate for the weight of the earth fill left pressing against it. In addition to the layer’s Archaic period pottery and other early objects, St. 3 contained a bronze coin assigned to the Hellenistic period97 together with a vertically ribbed black glazed sherd.
St. 3 fill against the outer face of the building’s west wall (E12, 1, 3) does not appear in the drawn cross-section98 but once again is a pre-existent fill used by S8’s builders as a backing for their structure. In this case, a significant number of 2nd and 1st century B.C. sherds were mixed with its predominantly early (6th and 5th century B.C.) contents.
The problem is, of course, that S8 is not directly tied to either exterior St. 3 fill. Our feeling is that the structure is slightly later than its latest exterior St. 3 objects which belong to the 1st century B.C. Such a view is, for whatever it is worth, corroborated by the approximately 1:3.65 height-to-length proportions of its blocks, which more or less conform to those of the early Imperial Walls T10 (1:3) and T11a (1:3.25). On the other hand, it could be earlier. If the later objects found in E11, 3, 3 and E12, 1, 3 were in fact contaminations from the St. 2 earthquake layers directly above them, it then becomes possible that the S8 Building might have been introduced into the Middle Sanctuary as early as the Archaic period. As unsatisfactory as it may seem, no clear-cut proof for its date is presently available.
S9 Enclosure
A thin, elongated structure running east to west, the S9 Enclosure is positioned more or less equidistant between Sacred Houses S5 and S6 in approximate alignment with the rear wall of the former (Fig. 1).99 Its total width measures ca. 3.50 m., and its length appears to have extended at least 8.50 m. Because most of its recovery occurred toward the end of the Expedition’s last season of excavation, we were unable to excavate more than two-thirds of its interior below the level of a thick layer of St. 2 earthquake debris.100 Some deeper testing was undertaken at its east end where the line of its east wall was interrupted by the S23 Late Structure (P1. 9). The results of this investigation are somewhat inconclusive but point to a construction date in the 1st century B.C. or later. How far S9 extended west is unknown, as is virtually everything else that has to do with its appearance and use, including whether or not it was ever roofed.
Plate 9. Lower right-hand corner of photo is occupied by eastern half of the S9 Enclosure where it is interrupted by the northwest corner of the S23/S24 Late Structure.
Northeast Corner
The best preserved section of S9 belongs to its northeast corner (P1. 9). As already noted, the east wall was interrupted by the outer corner of the S23 Late Building and only survives as a short, 1.40 m. long stump before turning at right-angles to the west to form the structure’s north wall, of which 3.60 m. survives today.
The north wall consists of three ashlars laid end to end over a hard St. 3 fill that covers the bedrock. Their foundation on dirt, as opposed to bedrock, permitted the two westernmost blocks, originally set on edge, to tip forward under the pressure of the earth to their south. The corner block at the east end remains in its proper upright position. The blocks average 1.15 m. long, 0.60 m. high, and 0.40 m. thick. Their interior southern faces are smoothed carefully, and marked with faint traces of broad, flat chisel strokes that recall the treatment of the vertical courses of the later Archaic pseudoisodomic peribolos (T1), as do their dimensions and stone type.101 The outer faces and upper surfaces, by way of contrast, were left roughly finished.
The two surviving elements of the east wall were probably once formed from a single block, 0.80 m. long, 0.40 m. thick, and 0.60 m. high, that has shattered. The east wall butts up against the north with no visible attempt at bonding.
South Wall
Excavation of the south wall occurred in two phases. For reasons of economy, the grounds containing its western two-thirds in D14/E14, 2 were stripped of surface debris but otherwise not dug during the excavation’s final 1978 season. This has meant that, while roughly a meter’s length of the wall’s east end was dug down to its foundation level, approximately 5 m. of what is taken to be its continuation west represents only portions of the south wall’s upper level trapped in St. 2 earthquake demolition fill under conditions that make difficult any real analysis.
The eastern end consists of a layer of low rubble foundations on which rise a course of four squared-off blocks, measuring up to 0.40 m. long, 0.50 m. thick, and 0.50 m. high. The second course is represented by a single block of roughly similar size, pushed out of alignment to the south. Partially obscured by earthquake collapse material, the blocks of the wall’s extension west appear to