Typically, Classical towns with long histories of urban development, commencing in Geometric-Archaic times, grew “organically”: clusters of houses aggregated around public foci such as an acropolis, agora or major temple. Larger settlements had several nuclei of dispersed hamlets which gradually merged over time into irregular blocks separated by narrow, winding streets. This contrasts with rarer examples of more regular settlement plans from later Geometric-early Archaic times (such as Vroulia on Rhodes, and early colonies such as Megara Hyblaea in Sicily). Here it seems that aristocratic elites set out a formal land division, made possible by colonization of a new site, whilst conceiving of regular alignments of small house-plots as appropriate spaces for peasant families.
Earlier, we observed the tendency over Geometric-Archaic times for individual houses to grow in size and in the number offormal spaces. In parallel more privacy was achieved through the layout of the multi-roomed home and its more limited access and visibility to neighbors. These developments relate closely to the contemporary emergence and proliferation of the city-state. Even in regions formally “ethne” or federal-tribal states with multiple nucleated settlements, such as Thessaly (Auda et al. 1990), we find comparable towns. For ah these polis and polis-like cities, the rise of citizen rights and the enhanced importance ofbirth legitimacy (so as to be entitled to citizenship) stimulated investment in house architecture which enclosed the family as a private unit for citizen reproduction, biologically and socially. At the same time rising wealth and aspiration encouraged all but the poorest families to create or commission homes with separate built spaces for human residents, animals, and the reception of visitors.
Thus despite the overall contrast between Athens, notorious for its unplanned domestic districts, and the rigid house-block grids of the replanned “New Town” ofOlynthus in the later fifth century BC, most recorded Classical townhouses have comparable plot sizes and internal designs. Moreover, from late Archaic times the rise of grid-pattern town planning appears to reflect a conscious concept of dividing both town and country space into modular units appropriate to a citizen-farmer family of middling wealth. Although fifth-century regular grid-plan towns are associated with the city planner Hippodamus, he merely elaborated and advertised the concept through high-profile commissions such as the new Athenian port-town of Piraeus, and at Rhodes. Significantly, such grid-plans are organized around units of house blocks (insulae) rather than the custom of Roman towns, which were articulated through city gates, the central square (forum), and other major public buildings (Jameson 1990b).
The Mediterranean climate and the economics of everyday life make a courtyard a natural focus for the home, so that all the main design variants recognized by specialists differ in the way surrounding rooms relate to this open space. Only in the largest cities of the wider Greek world (Alexandria, Antioch), and significantly in Hellenistic times, did modern-style housing pressure lead to tower-like apartment plots with at best only internal lightwells for air and sunlight added to rare external windows. Typical houses from the Northern Greek city of Olynthus can thus illustrate the general nature of the Greek home for average families. (Following Text Box.)
Housing at Olynthus
Olynthus (Figure 12.7) was occupied on its South Hill from ca. 1000 BC, but during the fifth century BC it expanded considerably, mainly due to immigration from other settlements in its region, the Chalkidike peninsula. This “synoecism” or merger of communities was probably in reaction to the rising threat from the hinterland kingdom of Macedon. Indeed Philip II of Macedon besieged and destroyed the town in 348 BC, after which only insignificant reuse is attested. The preceding urban expansion focused on a grid-planned “New Town” on the North Hill and part of the adjacent plateau to its east. During the 1920s, a Greek-American excavation undertook large-scale research on the North Hill, producing what is still today the most extensive sample of Classical housing in the Aegean (more than 100 houses excavated, 50 of which are completely planned). Although by modern standards the recording and recovery of structures and finds was limited, the excavation was exceptionally good for its period, allowing Cahill (2002) to reanalyze the impressive series of site monographs and the plentiful unpublished dig-records, and find remarkable insights into everyday life in the town during the period immediately prior to its sack.
As might be expected, limited trials on the older-settled South Hill found an irregular layout, whilst the “New Town” on the North Hill was largely composed in the now popular Classical style of regular blocks of homes, each two rows of five separated by an alley and surrounded by grid-plan streets. House plots were broadly equal, on which homes of closely similar design were erected on stone foundations with mudbrick superstructures. Many showed signs of an upper story, but it remains unclear if this was normal. The repeated plan (Figure 12.8) has a single entrance to the street, from which the focal, often paved yard is accessed (i on the plan). The latter links together all the other built spaces, emphasiz-underlined by its abundant artifact finds and the fact that adjacent rooms were largely lit from its daylight.
A portico faces the court (f), offering shelter from sun, wind, and rain, whilst allowing sunlight and air to circulate, and acts therefore as an extension to the fully open yard. At a deeper access-level, a series of small rooms behind the portico form the household living-quarters (a—e), incorporating units for washing and cooking with special drainage and draught facilities (c—d respectively), the others serving storage and daily family life. They are usually unpaved. Separately accessed rooms (h) may be stables or additional general storage and family space. The formal dining room (andron, “male room”) (k) and an antechamber for food preparation or serving in that space (j) (bottom right) are distinctly furnished rooms, also separately accessed from the yard. The andron has settings for dining-benches, mosaic or plaster floor, and decorated walls. Some houses had a room on the street without internal access, seen as a shop or workshop. Although contemporary texts suggest separate areas for women and men, only the dining-room appears gender-linked. Visitors emerge directly into the courtyard, where normally family members of both sexes doubtless spent much of the day. However, the lost upper floor, and uncertainty over its frequency, makes it plausible that distinct female quarters were here, in the most remote place from stranger-access.
Since ground floor windows were high and small, whilst the entrance door was a substantial barrier, the overall design emphasizes family seclusion rather than gender or class division, for no obvious areas for slaves or servants can be identified (Jameson 1990a—b). As for fixed features, immobile storage vessels are rare, suggesting many rooms were multifunctional. Fixed hearths are uncommon, suggesting that portable braziers were used for heating and cooking, and this suits activities moving around rooms and also into the portico and yard as the weather and company
Dictated
Figure 12.7 A series of house blocks on the North Hill, Olynthus.
N. Cahik, Household and City Organization at Olynthus. New Haven: Yale University Press 2002, Figure 7.
Figure 12.8 A typical Olynthus house plan.
M. H. Jameson, “Domestic space in the Greek city-state.” In S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space. © Cambridge University Press 1990, Figure 7.6.
Why did citizens prefer to live side-by-side in these small habitations, where work, leisure, storage, some animals, family, slaves/servants, and guests were accommodated at varying times, rather than in the countryside, closer to the primary income source for most Classical Greeks, their estates, and where land was cheaper and hence habitation space could be wider? Following Hopfner and Schwandner (1994), the primacy of the city-state or urban-citizen mentality overrode convenience, with the majority of families choosing life in a town-like nucleation to that in villages or farms. Moreover the uniformity of the necessarily small plots and almost identical house plans reflected a shared ethos of citizen equality before the law, and in at least half of Greek city-states, of major political rights for free male household-heads. Almost all Olynthus house plots are 200—300 m2, comparable to those in fifth-century BC grid-planned Piraeus.
More irregular houses have been excavated around the Athenian Agora, where individual homes are identified through separate courtyards, but even here the larger houses are only of the normal Olynthus size, making the smaller appear rather impoverished. Athenian sources state that some poorer folk did not possess storage space. Overall, an immense gulf appears between the size and grandeur of public (religious and secular) architecture and that applied to private life in the Classical Aegean city, reinforcing the primacy of the polis over the oikos (home).
The majority of Greeks were farmers but additionally urban dwellers: agricultural processing and the storage of estate produce took place in the house plot. Animals were probably few per family, larger flocks of sheep/goats or cattle being managed on the large estates of the rich, or group-managed for several families by rural shepherds. Urban families probably had traction or pack animals such as donkeys, and small stock such as milk-goats and chickens in their household enclosures. A typical family possessed large storage jars for water, oil, and wine. But surprisingly little clearly differentiated space exists to reflect these activities. Hints such as rare wheel-ruts in thresholds point to transport to estates. At the town of Halieis the unusual scale of olive production, where four of the 24 excavated homes possessed large oil presses, leave the remaining known townhouses without obvious working fixtures. It should be recalled that such presses suggest commercial specialization above household needs. Perhaps they processed the olives of other families, but since a family could also make oil for itself without them, alternatively they might indicate owners of larger olive-groves. Shops and workshops are more recognizable as small rooms only accessible from the street, though still part of a typical house complex. One fifth of Olynthus houses had such a dedicated space. The home-based, small-scale nature of most Greek craft and industry is clear.
The limited range of townhouse sizes is matched by the rarity of elaborate decoration. A friend of the fifth-century BC Athenian politician Alcibiades was criticized for luxurious living through using marble in his home, as was the politician himself when he employed a famous artist to do wall-paintings for him. The Athenian orator Demosthenes bemoaned the decline of unostentatious living between that century and his own time of the mid-fourth century, claiming that if you know houses of the famous personalities of that era you cannot see them differ from the common man, whilst today every politician has a house so remarkable that it is more magnificent than public buildings.
Archaic house plans, not surprisingly for an era of aristocratic control, show the existence of “immodest homes,” before the Classical inauguration of the ethos of citizen equality encouraged at least a superficial similarity of homes in the polis world. We may assume that outside that world, where elites continued in power through Classical times around the Aegean, peasant huts lay alongside the mansions of the rich into Hellenistic times. As the fourth century progressed, leading into the autocracies of the Hellenistic kingdoms, we might also expect a relaxation of the citizen-equality of uniform houses. Indeed during the fourth century some houses do appear of well above average proportions, and exhibit a new architectural ostentation, such as the House of the Mosaics from Eretria. Interestingly, here the traditional family home has now been pushed to the fringes of the complex, with its own now private court, kitchen, washroom, and family spaces. The visitor enters an impressive reception court, with a portico on all sides {peristyle), opening onto no less than four mosaic-floored rooms for entertaining guests. This 625 m2 home is more than twice the size of the normal Classical module, although it lacks an upper story. At Olynthus the late fifth to early fourth-century New Town also has a minority of extra large, well decorated suburban “villae” especially in the Eastern Plateau extension.
Moreover, the relative modesty of the typical Classical house hides variable cost. At Olynthus and Athens {Cahill 2002) standard house prices range from 1000 to 5000 drachmas, with 10,000 for a fine house. A reasonable annual family income might be 200 drachmas, thus buying a new home was a major investment. Customary fittings like giant storage pithoi or replacement rooftiles were also costly.
A major variable was house location, and Olynthus inscriptions record {unsurprisingly) that house prices rose in more desirable quarters, such as near the town center.
Concerning gender relations within the Greek house, iconography and texts announce that the woman’s place is the home, the man’s place is outside in the city. Some ancient sources separate a female area of the home (gynaikonitis), perhaps lockable but also possibly more decorated than that for men, from a male area (andronitis). Protecting women from encountering non-family males appears a primary goal. The andron-room for formal drinking-parties is associated by modern house analysts with the males of the family and their male guests. Yet the commonly recognizable andron might also have seen wider use. Texts mention special family celebrations, which might have taken place in the andron; indeed in sanctuaries, women celebrated festival dinners in similar symposium rooms. The courtyard would have been a major activity focus for both genders through the year, easily accessible to all the ground floor roofed spaces. Managing female seclusion became therefore a time-scheduling affair, clearing areas of women and girls on the approach of visitors.
One favored solution to the apparent conflict between texts and plans proposes that the upper floor was a zone of female seclusion. This would be the place for sleeping and a refuge when male guests penetrated the courtyard and ground-floor rooms, as well as housing a female boudoir as identifiable on vase-paintings. Stone footings for stairs rarely survive, suggesting that access staircases were normally of wood and mudbrick. Moreover, since house foundations are not massive, upper floors cannot have possessed heavy mobile or fixed contents, so that fallen traces onto excavated ground floors would be rather uninformative, as is indeed the case. In genuine single-floor houses, time-scheduling for the temporary seclusion of women would involve their retreating into slightly less accessible inner rooms, and the latter’s nightly conversion to bedrooms from more everyday living-rooms. But throughout this discussion, we need to separate the lifestyle of the middle and upper classes from those of the equally sizeable lower class. Peasants and artisans frequently required wives and daughters to help with agricultural and craft work, outside as well as inside the home, so that restrictions on female movement and mixing with non-family males may have been relaxed for practical reasons.
Both house plans and images in art indicate that the house was primarily a female and family space, with a male presence highlighted only by the andron. Women controlled everyday household activities, not only the children and the work of servants, but its budget. Greek states encouraged the presence of its middle-and upper-class males in public spaces: the lawcourts, the assembly or gymnasium in the more democratic poleis, or the barracks and dining-clubs as well as gymnasia for the serf societies such as Dorian Crete and Laconia. The home as a complementary space for female power and sociability, however confining, suits its relative openness and the multifunctionality of its spaces.
The economy of Classical Greek society rested on slaves, serfs or tenants; texts characterize a completely impoverished citizen as one lacking such tied labor. Female slaves assisted citizen-wives in housework (Figure 12.4), while agricultural slaves/serfs or tenants were probably fundamental to the middle-upper class of citizen farmers of the democratic polis, and their class counterparts (the normal citizen) in serf-states (Jameson 1977—1978). But hardly any built spaces seem designed as living space for slaves or servants, apart from occasional tiny rooms by the entrance-door which possibly housed a porter, and are usually post-Classical, when class divisions became more visible. Texts portray house-slaves as household members, whilst maidservants probably slept in the same area as the free women of the house. As just noted, the view of many, that the lost upstairs rooms were the prime bedroom space, would leave few excavated traces.
In contrast to Early Modern Greek homes, a small fixed household shrine is not characteristic for Classical houses. A minority of excavated homes possess a stone altar in the courtyard but portable altars were perhaps moved round the house according to need. Texts suggest that rituals were common and conducted ubiquitously within the home, often being a simple scattering of offerings of food or liquid over a fire or into the ground, to bless the varied house localities. Miniature cups recovered from homes at Halieis could represent such practices. The cult of
Zeus Ktesios, for protecting and enriching family property, was focused on a jar of seeds and fruits; this was kept in a storeroom and deployed on special occasions, such as if a new slave or married couple joined the household, when they were showered with the contents.
Texts such as fifth-century Athenian confiscation-inscriptions or the Hellenistic temple-estate inventories from Delos caution us that much may not survive for house archaeology (Whitley 2001). We noted that the rich in Athens could employ renowned painters for interior decor. As for movable contents, sums of 1000—1500 drachmas are given for portable items confiscated from homes by the Athenian state, to set against a reasonable annual income of 200 drachmas. More unexpectedly, Delian houses were let without doors or windows, wooden fittings being so valuable on smaller Aegean islands that people took them when moving.
Nevett (1999) explored house interior scenes on vases. If room furnishings consistently matched activities, they might indicate functional spaces. A computer analysis indicates sets of regularly co-occurring pot types on vase scenes, which are correlatable to their likely purposes in the home. One clear grouping seems to be set in the female boudoir. Other contexts are religious libation-pouring for both sexes, washing, and male symposia; the first two associate pots with activities rather than distinct spaces, but the symposium can be located in the andron with its dining-benches and male-only clientele (flute-players etc. excepted!). This analysis can nonetheless identify the probable multipurpose use of rooms when combined with archaeological house inventories.
Olynthus remains our largest excavated house sample. However, excavated generations ago, only small samples of finds were recorded, from which a further selection occurred before publication. On average three finds per room were recorded: in the best conditions, the maximum finds per house were 268. This is very low compared with the recent high-quality excavation at Halieis (Ault and Nevett 1999, Ault 2005), where House E produced 4100 ceramic finds, excluding roof tile, plus additional non-pottery objects. Nonetheless, the best large-scale data on house contents come from intelligent reworking of the excavation records of Olynthus town (Cahill 2002).
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Figure 12.9 An example of Cahill’s Olynthus house analysis.
N. Cahill, Household and City Organization at Olynthus. New Haven: Yale University Press 2002, Figure 16.
Figure 12.9 shows Cahill’s artifact-coding and its deployment to illustrate space-use for one Olynthus home. Spatial patterns do become apparent, some artifact types being localized, others ubiquitous. A series of house-contents analyses reveals interesting trends. The andron (d) is generally kept clean, but its function emerges from the benches and fixed decor. The associated anteroom (f) has a mixing-bowl and plates in store. Weaving equipment can occur in almost any room in Olynthus houses, underlining the likely absence of permanent gender seclusion (in Figure 12.9, loomweights occur in “a” and “b”). Women probably prepared cloth in the court or in various internal ground - and upper-floor rooms, dependent on time of day, season or personal preference. Storage rooms or spaces, and shops, often show up well from their limited range of vessels (e. g., in Figure 12.9, rooms “k” and “m”).
Cahill’s detailed house analyses led him to argue that rows of houses were in part or whole purchased by social groups with related space needs: either people with similar economic profiles, or relatives. In particular, the North Hill had much commerce and industry, in comparison to the often larger and more agriculturally-focused houses on the Eastern Plateau extension. Such social and economic zoning belied the generally similar appearance and size of homes, and although the North Hill includes many slightly wealthier homes, their higher frequency on the Eastern Extension agrees with storage provision being generally much higher there. Maybe North Hill residents combined small-scale farming with a trade, whilst the Extension farmers had larger estates, which were perhaps more commercially oriented.
From his analyses Cahill concludes that Hopfner and Schwandner’s (1994) thesis that regular “estate-towns” such as Olynthus offer concrete expression for an overriding egalitarian ideal needs significant modification. Actually, contemporaries such as Demosthenes inform us that fourth-century norms (the main period of Olynthus’ occupation) had relaxed from those of the fifth century, permitting status families to occupy more visibly spacious homes.
Classical texts, essentially elite-focused, denigrate artisans, so one might have expected to find them on the urban periphery as a marginal social group. The Olynthus house-finds allow easy recognition of sculptors, potters, figurine - and weapon-makers, also cloth - and food-processing on a scale beyond household needs (Cahill 2002). Surprisingly however, trade was not banished to urban fringes or special quarters: at least one quarter of 100 excavated houses, widely distributed, revealed such domestic industries, including presses and press-floors, and large grain-grinder collections, all of which suggest the provision of services for other households (as possible at Halieis, see above).
Till recently the variety of Classical housing was illustrated mainly through contrasting irregular Athens, where limited domestic areas were known, and the large database from the planned town of Olynthus. Now excavations well away from such famous towns are revealing what may have been the “norms” for most Classical Greeks, who lived in smaller cities (the “Normalpolis”) which were sometimes grid-planned from late Classical or Hellenistic times, and perhaps as often not. A Greek team led by Adam-Veleni (2000) has been excavating such a small town in inland Northern Greece, whose ancient name is even unclear. Although its remains belong to Hellenistic times, just a few aspects may reflect that late date, and the rest could represent a small town in a hilly region typical for much of the Classical Aegean. The reconstructed town plan shows houses in irregular groups following the contours of the hill and with winding small streets for foot and donkey passage. Perhaps just one wider street existed to allow wheeled traffic to cross the city. Houses, usually on two floors, average 180—200 m2. Upper storys are of light materials to reduce the load on the floor and lower foundations. The excavator argues that the common one-and-a-half story house-type was adapted to steep slopes. Its andron was on the upper level of the house-front, facing the street. The rear of the house, at a lower level, possessed a backyard with a stair to a veranda (comparable to the hagiati of Early Modern Greek houses) from which one accessed a large upper-floor backroom for women. Finds show that ground floors were used for storage, shops or workshops, and also for cooking and stables. Upper rooms from their fittings did for once allow spatial separation of males (andron with symposia equipment) and females (looms and a shrine).
Fascinating new studies have investigated housing arrangements in the very conservative serf-states of the Classical Aegean. Much of Crete followed a “Dorian” mode of society comparable to ancient Sparta. A broad upper-middle class dominated an equally numerous dependent lower class who worked the land for the former as tied labor. Trade and industry were largely left to resident aliens. The political solidarity of the free ruling-class was emphasized by male citizens eating in communal dining halls (syssi-tia), to which each free household contributed 10 percent of its agricultural production. Westgate’s (2007) examination of domestic house plans of several Cretan towns reveals greater resemblance to Iron Age homes than those of Mainland Classical cities (Figure 12.10). The access diagrams reveal a simple linear progression which we saw typical for preClassical homes. Only the uppermost house on the plan shows Mainland polis influence in its more complex radiating plan. There is thus a lack of development regarding the space for the citizen family. In contrast, work at the small East Cretan city ofAzouria (Haggis et al. 2007) shows the monumental construction of public dining and storage complexes in the center of the town. In these cities then the focus of the town is shared male citizen activity, preventing the emergence of elaborate homes marking household autonomy, which is all consistent with our historical evidence.
Figure 12.10 Access analysis for the settlement at Trypetos, Crete.
R. C. Westgate, “House and society in Classical and Hellenistic Crete.” American Journal of Archaeology 111 (2007), 423—457, Figure 12. Reproduced by permission of Archaeological Institute of America (Boston).
World History
