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University of California at Berkeley
The Graduate Group in Ancient History &
Mediterranean Archaeology
presents
Pritchett Seminar
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
2:00 - 5:00 pm
7205 Dwinelle Hall
Susan Rotroff
Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities, Department of Classics, Washington University, St. Louis
"Religion in the Workplace: the Saucer Pyres of Ancient Athens"
Over the last 80 years, archaeologists excavating the residential and industrial areas bordering the Agora, or public center, of ancient Athens have unearthed a series of unusual deposits. These consist of a shallow pit containing ashes, charcoal, and fragments of burnt bone, along with a votive deposit of pottery. Most of the pots are miniatures - tiny saucers, containers, and cooking pots of types found only in this context - but alabastra (a common grave offering), larger plates, and a full-size drinking cup or lamp were sometimes included. About 60 such deposits have been excavated so far, and more continue to appear in ongoing excavations. They have been nicknamed "saucer pyres," reflecting the most common ceramic offering and the burning that characterizes them.
The deposits were first interpreted as baby burials, on the basis of the small size of both the vessels and the bones (regularly too badly burned for identification), and the funerary character of some of the pottery. Recent zooarchaeological analysis of the bones, however, reveals that they are the remains of sheep and goats, the animals most commonly offered in sacrifice by the ancient Greeks. The deposits, then, are sacrificial, not funerary.
A new review of the deposits reveals that pyres usually occur in groups of two or more and that they are limited to private buildings, most commonly to industrial buildings rather than dwellings. Their association with workshop activity is striking, and I argue that they document rituals designed to keep the workers safe and to assure the success of the industrial activities on which their livelihood depended. Such rituals are attested elsewhere in Greek life by texts (for example, a poem cursing the five demons that can assail the potter's kiln) and by images (in black- and red-figure scenes depicting the workplace). This lecture examines how the Athenian saucer pyres may fit into this ritual complex.