ARCHAIC INSCRIBED VOTIVES ON THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS: DATING THE DEDICATIONS OF ORDINARY MEN AND WOMEN

Abstract

Sacred landscapes, like all landscapes in Greece, were subject to natural disasters; sometimes, however, Greeks could protect themselves and their buildings. N. Makris and his collaborators have explained in numerous publications how Greek architects and builders designed some of their temples in such a way that they were protected from destruction by earthquakes. There were, however, other causes of ruin: the temple of Zeus at Nemea, for example, was destroyed by human looters. Unlike destruction due to some natural causes, protecting temples from human destruction could not so easily rely upon scientific ingenuity and experience. The destruction that the Persians wreaked upon the Acropolis of Athens in 480 BCE is perhaps the best known: it is well documented in the descriptive accounts of ancient historians (Herodotus, Thucydides and Diodorus Siculus) as well as in the archaeological evidence on the ground; the case for the totality of that destruction is accepted by most scholars today.
Here we focus, however, not on the destruction, but on the chance preservation of material objects in the Acropolis deposits; our interest lies broadly in the methods used for dating the oldest of these deposits, viz., the rubble left by the Persian devastation (often designated the Perserschutt in the last century); eventually, we shall be interested in identifying a method for dating the letters of inscribed texts amongst the oldest finds. The preliminary enterprise here is part of a larger project, the publication of a new edition of the archaic inscribed bronze dedications on the Athenian Acropolis.