Ancient pottery workshop discovered


Laying at the depths of the Aegean Sea, a few meters off the northeastern coast of the island of Delos, the ruins of an ancient pottery workshop was discovered, leading archaeologists to certainty that an ancient settlement rests on the sea floor. According to the announcement of the Ministry of Culture, archaeologists found 16 terracotta pots and remains of a kiln similar to workshops found in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The large stones in front of the workshop probably belong to the settlement’s waterfront, while other lined stones suggest wall structures, reinforcing the belief that this was indeed an ancient town, and unlike theories of the past that the ruins were of port facilities, the new search, conducted by divers from the National Hellenic Research Foundation and the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, leads to the conclusion that rather than a dock, a pottery workshop and other buildings stood there once. Among structure remains and fallen columns found in shallow waters along the shoreline, archaeologists identify parts of buildings and they are now certain that these were trade or crafting facilities, as Delos had flourished for seven centuries, from the 8th to the 1st centuries B.C.
 

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Christos Kalloniatis (Professor of the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean), Iris Kritikou (Archaeologist-Historian of Art), Konstantinos Maniatopoulos (Director of the Stratis Eleftheriadis-Tériade Museum – Library, Visual Artist-Historian of Art), Irine Vasilopoulou