Coinciding with and serving as a prime catalyst for this redefinition of the sociopolitical position of the individual household unit within the larger urban community was a dramatic change in settlement pattern that took place at the end of the seventh century BC in the Kavousi region (Haggis 1993, 1996, 2001, 2005). Intensive survey in the area has demonstrated that whereas the Early Iron Age landscape was dotted by a series of small, agricultural villages organized into regional clusters reflecting larger kinship groupings, by the beginning oF the Archaic Period, the majority of these rural settlements had been partially or entirely abandoned as their inhabitants flooded into the new urban center at Azoria. This nucleation of disparate population groups, a phenomenon that has also been noted for other areas of the island during this period (Wallace 2003b:256-262), necessitated a dramatic reorganization of the sociopolitical and economic relationships within the nascent community. In the process, the traditional kinship groups of the preceding era coalesced into a single, political entity.
Throughout GreeK history, one of the primary means of negotiating social and political status between and among the various competing factions within a community was through the performance of ritualized dining and drinking activities (e. g., Murray 1983, 1990; Lissarrague 1991; Lynch 2007; Topper 2009; Wright 2004). Such rituals provide opportunities not only to forge and negotiate inter - and intragroup relationships through the sharing of food and drink and the exchange of information in institutionalized settings, but also to establish and reinforce social and political inequalities through the display, exchange, and consumption of superior resources (Arnold 1999; Dietler 1990, 1996, 1999; Dietler and Hayden 2001; Joffee 1998). The emphasis on the main hall, the proximity of the storeroom with its richly decorated pithoi, and the prevalence of vessels intended for the production and consumption of foodstuffs in the Archaic houses at Azoria illustrate the importance of such activities operating at the household level in the new urban environment oF the seventh and sixth centuries BC. A similar focus on the hearth, the oven, and the processing of foodstuffs at Vronda indicates a corresponding emphasis on household dining and drinking activities during the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC.
There is also evidence for the performance of more complex rituals involving participants drawn from beyond the individual household or kinship group at Vronda. Building A/B (Figure 7.4; Day et al. 2009:48-63; Day and Snyder 2004; Glowacki 2002:38-39, 2007:135-136), situated on the eastern slope of the hill at its highest point, assumed the form of a large, rectangular room with a central hearth (Building A) flanked to the north by a narrower room, perhaps a storeroom, and to the souTh by an open court. A second suite of four small, doorless rooms bordering the court to the east (Building B) and containing numerous pithoi, cooking vessels, and drinking cups, has been interpreted as storage magazines. Externally, a long, megaLithic terrace waLl provided a monumental facade to viewers from the east. The size and elaboration of the architecture of Building A/B, together with the quantity and quality of its contents, led Day and Snyder to identify it as the house of the local ruler, who may have sponsored communal dining and drinking activities at his own expense in order to forge and reinforce social and political ties among the various members of the community (Day and Snyder 2004:73, 78).
At Azoria, too, there is clear evidence for the performance of similarly elaborate rituals attended by a wider cross-section of the
URBANIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE GREEK POLIS
Figure 7.7 Plan of the Communal Dining Building at Azoria, late seventh/early sixth century BC (drawn by autHor).
Community, although here the buildings in which they were enacted assumed a distinctly civic character. One such building (Figure 7.7), dubbeD the Communal Dining Building, is a sprawling complex of at least ten rooms divided into two functional sections distributed across the upper two terraces oF the West Acropolis, immediately below the summit (Azoria 1:367-370, 373-390; Azoria 11:253-265; Azoria IV:4-i6). The rooms to the north were devoted to cooking (A600, A1600), the processing of wine (A1300), and the storage of foodstuffs (A1200, A1500, and perhaps A1400) and cooking and drinking vessels (A1500), whereas those to the south and east appear to have housed activities associated with dining and drinking (A800, A2000) and the display of prestige artifacts (A1900), including marTial paraphernalia.
A second public facIlity (Figure 7.8) devoted, at least partially, to communal feasting was unearthed a shorT distance to the south and has been dubbeD the Monumental Civic Building (Azoria 11:295-301; Azoria IV:16-28, 39-41). This structure, which assumed the form of a huge trapezoidal chamber (D500) measuring 10 m in width and 20.5 m and 22.5 m long along its eastern and western sides respectively, was lined with two tiers of benches composed of hammer-dressed stones arranged along its southern, eastern, and northern walls. Substantial quantities of roofing material preserved along the eastern wall and two well-dressed post supports, as well as numerous outcroppings of roughly worked bedrock that would have functioned in a similar capacity, and traces of burnt beam impressions, indicate that the entire space, despite its immense size (ca. 200 m2) was roofed (Azoria II:298; Azoria IV:21-22). The main entrance to the building appears to have been located at the southern end of its western wall. Here, a handful of risers and a large schist slab bearing a massive pivot hole mark the position of a short staircase leading up to a double door. Although few complete vessels were recovered, copious amounts of food debris found atop the floor of the building suggest at least one oF its functions was to house feasting and sacrificial activities. A second, smaller entrance cut through the north wall of this room granted access to a short corridor running along the top of a set of theatral-like seats (D1400) that lined the street below, which in turn opened onto an irregularly shaped kitchen (D1000) and a small, rectangular room (D900). This small room (D900) contained a central hearth abutting the north face of a stone altar that was founD littered with ritual implements (Azoria IV:28-38). Also associated with
Figure 7.8 Plan of the Monumental Civic Building and the Archaic Hearth Shrine at Azoria, late seventh/ early sixth century BC (drawn by author).
URBANIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE GREEK POLIS
This complex was a suite of interconnecting rooms and open courts located a short distance to the south, which the excavators have idenTified as a Service Building (Azoria 11:274-295; Azoria IV:43-62). Two large kitchens (B1500, B2200/2300) ran along the east side of an as yet unexcavated street connecting two open spaces (B1700, B3100) in which various activities, including food processing and perhaps textile manufacture (Azoria II:286, 288-289, 301; Azoria IV:43), took place. BoTh kitchens contained a rectangular hearth and multiple work platforms as well as numerous vessels for storage, dining, and drinking, whereas an adjoining room (B700) was devoted to the storage of foodstuffs and serving and processing equipment. An isolated room to the south of the south court (B3300) housed additional food processing activities, whereas two large rooms at the northern end of the complex were devoted to the production and storage of olive oil (D300).
The absence of boTh inscriptional evidence from Azoria and architectural comparanda from elsewhere on the island makes it impossible to determine the specific nomenclature applied to these complexes by the ancient inhabitants of the site. The evidence for the large-scale processing, storage, and consumption of food and the display of aristocratic artifacts in the first building (Figure 7.7) has led the excavators to suggest a possible identification as an Andreion Complex (Azoria I:38o-382, 387-390, 391-393; Azoria II:253, 263-265; Azoria IV:4-16). This building type is known from literary and epi-graphic sources to have housed such activities and to have acted as a forum for the competition for status by elite males (Azoria I:387-390; Azoria IV:4-6; Koehl 1997). Similar activities have also been ascribed to the MonumentaL Civic Building, where the presence of theatral-like seating designed for accommodating large-scale public gatherings and the intimate connection with the cult activities housed in the neighboring shrine building boTh find parallels in the formal and functional arrangement of the later city centers at Lato (Demargne 1903:216-221; Ducrey and Picard 1971, 1972; Miller 1978:78-86) and Dreros (Demargne and van Effenterre 1937:10-16; Marinatos 1936:254; Xanthoudides 1918).5 These features also recall the descriptions oF the so-called Prytaneion, known from later historical and epigraphic sources (Miller 1978). Whether or not the inhabitants of the site referred to these structures as an Andreion and a Prytaneion, however, is less relevant than the fact that they housed the sorts of activities that would come to be ascribed to such complexes by later
Authors (Azoria IV:4-6, 39-41). Indeed, the scale on which both of these structures were designed and constructed, the multiplicity of facilities devoted to the production, consumption, and storage of foodstuffs they housed, and the sheer volume of material unearthed within them makes it clear that they operated well above the level of the individual household, and instead belonged to the purview of the nascent cIvic authority.
URBANIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE GREEK POLIS
Despite the functional similarities between these two complexes and the fact that they were both designed to accommodate public, or perhaps rather communal (Sjogren 2007:149-150), activities, they nevertheless appear to have been designed for somewhat different purposes and audiences. The relatively small size oF the dining facilIties in A2000, the measures taken to limit visual and physical access to its inner rooms through the creation of multiple doorways and circuitous routes of passage, and the emphasis on the display of elite artifacts in A1900 and A800 suggest that the gatherings housed in the CommunaL Dining Building were of a more restricted, intimate nature and it is tempting to associate them with commensal meetings attended and/or hosted by the traditional leaders and senior members of individuaL kinship associations. By contrast, the strikingly open design oF the Monumental Civic Building, the extensive provisions for seating or standing arranged along its perimeter, and the expansive arrangement of associated facilities - that is, the Civic Shrine to the north anD the Service Building to the south - arranged in a very unrestricted fashion along a major thoroughfare, indicate that this complex was designed to accommodate much larger gatherings of people in a much more public setting, and it is tempting to identify it as a sort of public assembly hall where citizens of the new polis would convene to discuss and deliberate social, political, and economic matters affecting the city-state as a whole.
World History
