 me too. Thanks to you, to Professor Karl Reber for the invitation to participate in this very interesting session, as well as to Tobias Krab for all organization and kind care. The main ancient city-states of ancient Yubia were Halkis and Eretri in the center of the island, Karestos in the south and Istiaoreos in the north, as we have already heard. Research of Yubian sites started in the early 19th century with a number of scholarly visitors to the island and it has continued with rich results to the modern period. As we have heard from Jan Paul Krilar, excavation at Plakari near Model Karestos in southern Yubia began in the early 21st century following previous periods of surveys and I'm referring to Don Keller here and test trenches by the same. The excavation was a joint project of the University of Amsterdam VU and the Greek Archaeological Service under the direction of Professor Jan Paul Krilar, the late Maria Kosma, Archaeologist of the Service and other scholars. Feliz Sungou's work and help is invaluable in this project, of course, as well as Xenia Jarlambidou's wonderful research. A terrace building complex, of which you have heard, came to light on the hilltop plateau with various phases and finds covering the period from the 11th to the late 4th century BC. An almost square building, building A, this is where I'm going to focus on, came to light, was excavated in the north end of the complex on terrace 2. A number of black-placed banded and plain vases of various shapes, as well as lamps, were found during the excavation of this building. Most of these objects were found in a layer deep enough to correspond to the floor level of the building and some were found near a hearth discovered in its interior and possible hearth. The vases are in a hoi, jags, kifoi, cups, such as one handlers, top row, Rhinia type cups, second row aside, and local mugs, plates handled and handled as bowls, incense burners in this corner here. Olpe, ongoing containers, leads with relief decoration and cooking pots such as hitre and lopades. Some of the vases are local limitations of attic types, others find parallels to vases from Eretria and a few bare affinities to Corinthian pottery types. Most of the vases and lamps are dated from the early 5th, if not earlier, to the late 4th century BC, last quarter of the 4th century, 325 BC. A period most probably corresponding to the time building A was in use. A number of the vases found in building A bear graffiti, often monograms or abbreviations. In this presentation, we will mainly focus on graffiti examples from Placari and then briefly comment on graffiti in short inscriptions from other sites in Euboea, mostly from the southern part of the island, with one exception. The Grafito, Itaiota, or aspirant, H.I., which is usually interpreted as Ieron or Ieros, is found on a black-laced cup of Rhinia type and on a handlers bowl, both of the 5th century BC, as well as on other pots and fragments from Placari. Black-laced pot fragments with the graffiti Itaiota, Ita, and Iota-epsilon were also found in the sanctuary of Apollodilio, S.A., since then in the Euboea, as Athena, as Dimitriou, already presented. The Grafito, a P or P-alpha, I'm sorry, you have to listen to this three times, as a monogram, was inscribed on a small stemless cap and on a handlers bowl, both black-laced. The cap is dated from the second quarter to the end of the 5th century BC and the bowl in the same century. Since both pots were found in a sanctuary site, the graffiti could probably be interpreted as an abbreviation for the word Apollo, Apollonos Apolloni. Other types of abbreviations, such as a knowner's name or other mark, can be suggested, and similar ones are known in classical contexts. If the first suggestion is right, the one connecting the abbreviation to a god's name, then at least two of the graffiti offer an indication as to the name of the deity worshipped at the site of Placari, which would then be Apollo. Another small find from previous salvage excavation work on the south slope of Placari Hill bears the graffito alfaro or alfacapa, a fragment of a word or perhaps another abbreviation, made, however, while the clay was still soft. The ancient sources and finds testify that from the late classical to the early Roman period, Apollo and Artemis were important figures of the Carestian panthen. Other graffiti on vases from building A at Placari belong to various categories. They can be read as numerical notations in the form of alphabetical numbers corresponding to inventorying practices attested in sanctuary deposits, together with the more frequent attestations in the acrophonic system. The graffito yota alpha on a handless pole of the last quarter of a fifth century BC could represent the arithmetic symbol 11. If it is a numerical notation, it could be interpreted as part of the inventory vessels stored in the building or as a merchant's mark. Another hypothetical form of abbreviation, such as ieron, yota, apolonos, alpha, cannot be altogether excluded. The rather random, I think it's a careless sign, graffito o of 100 cap of the first half of the fifth century BC has been interpreted elsewhere as oxiva, which is a rather very imaginary reconstruction here, an abbreviation of content quantity, describing how much of a content of a liquid the container could hold. Similar alphabetic and non-alphabetic graffiti often interpreted as trader's marks have been found on vases of the archaic and classical periods in various sites in Greece and Magna Graecia. A banded one handler of the first half of the fifth century BC bears the word niki, victory, inscribed on its center. A stone graffito with a partly raised word niki is known from Caeristos. The short lines of two inscriptions, A, aminitos, a friend of the city, aminitos tipoli filos, and B, savior niki, soter niki, were carelessly inscribed on a rock at Paleochora, and I'm sorry for the bad quality of the photograph of the rock, to the north of modern Caeristos in the late fifth or in the first quarter of the fourth century BC. The rock was moved to the local museum in Caeristos in the early 1970s. The inscription, apparently a political graffito in the form of one or two slogans, has been connected to a Caeristian victory of the late fifth century BC, in which aminitos, probably a Caeristian citizen, played a crucial role as a savior of the city. Caeristians are attested to have participated in the coup of the 30 tyrants against the Athenian democracy in 411 BC. In the same year, the UB and cities, with the exception of Oreos, revolted against the Athenian rule. The placari graffito could also allude to a political or military victory related to Caeristos and its inhabitants. An interpretation of the placari graffito as an individual's victory at a religious contest cannot be excluded either, and I think this is the more probable explanation. Games and contests are known from many long-lived Greek sanctuaries, and the fragmentary inscription with a religious decree of the fifth century BC from placari mentions cult objects and animal parts, a context often connected to rivalry, contests, or hierarchy. Another perhaps stronger possibility is that the niki graffito refers to a victory in a sympathetic context. Drinking contests and jibes, social and political jokes, how much one could drink, are attested for symposia from various sources. A niki graffito on a cup could probably be interpreted as an expression of a victory in a sympathetic drinking game, or some form of rivalry among youths that could be typical of the competitive spirit of their age. For comparison reasons, we will now briefly overview other representative graffit and short inscriptional evidence from Yubia. In the late 1950s, a group of similar local black-laced and plain types of vases were found during an excavation Nicolaus Mutzopoulos, late professor of architecture in the University of Thessaloniki, conducted inside and in the nearby area of the well-preserved ancient building known as the Ohi dragon house. This dragon house is a block house, probably with many uses, on the homonymous mountain of southern Yubia. Many of the pots and small objects were found stuck together, as we see in the black and white photo, near the southwest corner inside the building and some outside. Some of the black figure pots, shirts and loom weights from the dragon house Apothetes, their graffiti. They provide evidence of Celtic use with a possible mention to Hira, although the same graffiti fragments, different fragments, joint reconstructed together, have been read in a different manner by Mutzopoulos. Other graffiti can perhaps be read as trademarks or personal names, possibly of dedicators, Pirias standing as an example. Here, last line of this shirt, Thai shirt. In his time, Mutzopoulos also noted some well-known rupestral graffiti of the late classical period that denotes the sacred character of the feature of the landscape, namely a cave in the region of Stira in southern Yubia, with the names Hermes and Zeus, savior, or referred to the beauty of certain youths and the female Kali in the second inscription. An example of a religious inscription, rather than graffiti, is offered by a bronze vessel in the National Archaeological Museum. And unfortunately, provenance data are sadly missing for this. This object, the cadiscos, or small container, was found in 1879 in Caeristus or its region. It bears the inscription Apollonostiliu Kappa-alpha. Based on its parallels from Athens, Olympia, and Perahora, it was used for measuring quantities of liquids at the sanctuary of Apollonostiliu. And can be dated in the 4th century BC. One final example comes from a funerary context. I added it here just to show the extent of information a graffiti could take for study purposes. Among the large number of finds from the ancient cemeteries of Halkis that were excavated in the early 20th century by George Kappa Vasiliu and the Archaeological Society of Athens, there is a black lace 200 cups in Athens. It bears a graffiti with a sentimental epitaph of the 4th century BC that laments the premature death of a man called Detton, for whom good things present and future and all the things he had hoped for are now beyond reach. We may visualize the time a close relative or friend inscribed the sad lines on the small pot, a very small pot, probably during the short period of mourning and burial or during some early funerary rite. We conclude, as a whole, the majority of black clays and plain vases from building A in Placari, an important site in view of its early historical finds, as well as many of the finds with graffiti from the Ohi Dragon House, can be dated from the early 5th to the late 4th century BC. We can claim that this is the period that are after corresponding to Celtic activities in building A at Placari and also probably in the area of the Dragon House Ohi. Wine libation and communal feasting probably constituted one group of these activities at the site of Placari and some similar communal feasting practice or activity could perhaps be claimed for the site on top of Mount Ohi. Ritual meals held in sacred sites of various Greek cities and involving groups of citizens are testified by the sources and also corroborated by finds. A number of the vases used in these sites bear meaningful graffiti, such as abbreviated declarations of the sacred year on, or perhaps the date is named Apollo, maybe Iraq. In general, the graffiti, public or private, on objects from sanctuaries and other sites are shown to connect these objects as sanctuary utensils to functions and events of their sites of provenance, such as dedication, measuring and inventorying practices, declaration of sacred property, reference to some memorable communal or private victory in vocation of the gods in connection to landscape features, a cave, expression of sentiment, funerary, admiration, khalid and other. More examples of graffiti from Hubean sanctuaries as well as cemeteries can be illuminating as to the range of public or private activities, individual or communal sentiments, vows and declarations, these ancient factories could encompass. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. And now the final presentation of this morning would be the Sanctuary of Artemis Samaritia in Amarintos, UBI Greece, excavation results 2018 and 2019, presented by Tobias Krupp. It's the results of the excavations of the Swiss Archaeological School and also under the name of Dönig Nebfler, Thierry Döria and Samuel Wertham. Okay, so I have the pleasure to present you this work at Amarintos Valley of Glesias, an excavation conducted by the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece in collaboration with the F-Rate of Antiquities of the Island of Ubia at Valley of Glesias at Amarintos, where we identified in 2017 the Sanctuary of Artemis Samaritia, thanks to stamped tiles of a roof, actually of the Roman period. And it is this year that we read for the first time the toponym of Amarintos, uninscriptions from the site itself, so probably En Togiero Artemidos and Amarintoi, at least the second half is preserved on this stone on the other side of it. So the Sanctuary has been identified at about 11 kilometers east of the town of Eretria and I think about its importance, I don't have to mention much, this was known actually already before it has been found by several inscriptions and ancient sources, inscriptions mentioning for example Caristians taking part in the festivities or of course the famous inscriptions about the Artemisia festivals found at Avlonari in second use quite far away from the from the site. And after all it was a quite central place, at least in the Ubian world as there has been found, an armful of stone, again in second use at the church nearby to the site. But it certainly thanks to Denis Knafler that this sanctuary has been found now at about 11 kilometers from Eretria, much further away than Strabo mentioned in his text or at least the copies of Strabo mentioned as his hypothesis that now has proven to be true by Denis Knafler who corrected these copies, probably not Strabo's original text but the copies of it where there was not mentioned the seven stadia, so Zeta but 60 with Xe and this would correspond exactly to the distance from Eretria to the site where the sanctuary has now been found. So excavation work continued in 2000, started in 2006 after geophysical survey of a larger region around the Polybisius hill and it was certainly one of the a bit sad but first important moments of the excavation when during the construction of this house in 2006, just when the first excavation started a bit like 100 meters away, this marble block has been found on the construction site and has disappeared on the next day and has not yet been found. And in 2007 then not far from this house, I mean after all this event led us to the excavation at this site. This first monumental foundation of definitely a public building of late classical to early helmistic times superimposed to earlier walls has been found and until 2018 the work has progressed a lot so you can see the first excavation in the middle of the now excavation site or the 2018 excavation site around. So with this house in the middle and after further geophysical work and test trenches around the house we decided to remove it after we bought it. The house in December 2018 making way now for the exploration of the central zone of the sanctuary as I will show in this presentation today. It is thanks to to our grant by the Swiss Confederation and of course the support of the National Science Foundation of Switzerland that we were able to not only conduct excavation work now systematically the last years but also to buy systematically the fields and actually also plots with houses around and within the sanctuary and now so protecting and making available for excavation a site of 11600 square meters around the central part of the sanctuary bit though even goes further beyond. So I'd like just to present to you but the 15 minutes is very short for this. The the major buildings we have excavated so far of the sanctuary which cover a long period maybe from the geometric to the late antique or even visiting period and the the main building excavated so far and on which we concentrate and which is as the one we first found in 2007 this foundation is Adorix d'Or from the late classical periods or the second half of the fourth century that the bordered the eastern and actually even part of the northern and southern limits of the sanctuary and it was this year when we found also the corner of the southern wing enabling us now to reconstruct the building in its entirety as a p-shaped style it's actually quite short northern and southern wings but human activity goes much further back at the site and is actually known for the prehistoric periods on top of the paleo-PCS hill from test trenches from the F-rate in the 70s and 80s and this is also the first traces of human activity we found in 2006 when we started excavating when we found the Middle Hellenic house which actually proves the site the prehistoric site is also much larger than the hill itself and we continue but not focusing on this to find prehistoric remains for example at the very depth of this stratigraphic trench linking the slopes of this of the hill to the interior and central part of the sanctuary we reached layers on the sea level on the modern sea level of the late Middle Bronze age again and now that we have the top on him of the site and we identified the sanctuary becomes even more probable and a hypothesis that had already been expressed to identify this site with Amaruto mentioned the thieves tablets as it is also actually in the east of Eretria the main Mycenaean sites of our known you'll be in central you'll be in plain as soon I mean we did the drillings all in the area west of the hill and can reconstruct that actually this area was still kind of a lagoon during the Bronze age forming a natural harbor and as soon as this is silted up by the nearby surrounding Potoms River we can find traces of the geometric period so when people move down to the beach or to the seaside and they start to build a small village now not on the top of the hill but down here and so we find now when we slowly start to reach deeper levels within the sanctuary we start to find geometric traces houses at least three upside buildings but also tombs all over the site actually but it's certainly this very central zone that we find the main traces and that have been later superimposed by by the buildings related to the sanctuary so you can see one upside of building of the eighth century and two further walls that have not been explored in that greater detail and which were then or here you can see them in more detail which were then superimposed by a huge early archaic building that we reconstructed until last year as a building with two ante in about the northeast southwest orientation with a long central room about 24 meters long but something that we have definitely to change after this year's campaign when we found not only a second room behind with a side entrance but more side entrances one just here in the last days of the excavation campaign but also maybe having so these results we can even reconstruct the further room towards the north making a building that has definitely the length of a of a hundred feet maybe even more and that's definitely much more complex that that than what we thought before and I hope we can tell more about this in the future campaigns it is then in the in the mainly in the classical and of course the Hellenistic periods the century gets monumentalized so first there is a several buildings here appearing so a central building here with a more or less east-west orientation another building here oriented to this central part of the century or then later the alter of the century will be built and then mainly this in the in the relate the fourth century phase of economic growth of retro in general where there were many public buildings within the town itself that this big store uh been constructed framing the sanctuary towards the hill and a bit later or the same time a further store a further store has been built but this has not yet been excavated in detail in the north this is the one that has been covered with these roman tiles but we found this year we found out the Hellenistic roof tiles below so we have at least two building faces and then we have a so the construction of this monumental platform in the center of the century and the further extension in the second century towards the hill which are the red structures and it's certainly that the greatest news from this year at the the most important impact from this year's excavation is now at the trenches in the central area after the removal of removal of this house and it is very badly preserved but still we were able to identify one big building which is about 11 meters wide and we do not have its length so far with the two layers foundations preserved but nothing above and at least two interior columns with the east i mean and the building with the east west orientation and just in front of it in the east we have this big platform of about five of about five by 12 meters here in a in a closer view unfortunately there is nothing preserved on top of it of course we are really tempted and I guess this is the correct hypothesis to identify this platform in the central center of the area a platform with actually two layers of foundations as we can see for a very monumental structure with the altar in the center of the sanctuary we received all the soil and we didn't find anything of these uh of bones or a charcoal but this corresponds to the very bad state of preservation of the site itself in general where we don't have almost no layers covering the the late classic to the mystic foundations unfortunately and it is in this zone that we made one of the most important and also enigmatic in the first moment finds just 10 centimeters from the foundations of the modern house which was at this spot and which could be identified after some research with a quiver attached to a small bone statue that we would of course like to identify with Artemis a bit later in the second century BC the the space of the sanctuary was apparently not anymore big enough I mean we have those inscriptions mentioning processions with 3 000 hoplites 600 cavalrymen and 16 geriots coming from Eretria important military display and so we can imagine really big crowds coming to the sanctuary and it has been further extended towards the east maybe also as protection against the slopes of the hill with this second etc or a retaining wall at east that has been built here and you can actually see five layers of the wall as they collapsed with the pressure of the hill we excavated this year the interior and below the blocks that we couldn't find any structures or or or finds that would tell us more about the use of the space a part one uh john's find let's say part of the hairs of the bronze statue that we already found last year certainly the the sanctuary was crowded by many statues and we have the foundations of about 30 bases for bronze and marble statues and inscriptions as you can see they they are crowded around all the major buildings of the site and especially before and behind the store you can even see a small etc for a monument for at least a three bronze statues but these are just the foundations for those bases and we were lucky to find those bases um in the last three years reused in a roman well that has been excavated after a destruction phase probably related to the mythodontic war just in front of the store and they were reused so after a destruction for building this well and we are now cleaning those bases and also refitting some from fragments and you and you as you can see there is now almost 10 of them and all they are dedicated to Artemis apolloni and letoi so they were found as in the in the walls and in the steps actually for me the steps of this late of this roman well that has been built just in between the monuments after as i said probably i mean a destruction phase making available all those all these building material a well that certainly served some uh uh cultic use as a is a tested not only by miniature vessels and clay lamps but also by about the 180 bronze coins uh from dating from the late uh uh helistic period the ubean league but mainly then from the roman imperial times and mainly the antonine period found at the bottom of the well but also everywhere on the steps and inside the walls so that were dedicated by by the the pilgrims in the sanctuary as prosaenas for example describes it for a sake for the sacred well in the sanctuary of amphiarios at or a pause but after this use in the third and maybe even to the fourth century a d the sanctuary has all the the major sanctuaries and especially the one also apollo da fenethoros in eretia they have turned to probably a christian side of worship we have reused in church's blocks from an early christian basilica that has not yet been identified and we find so far there are just two of them with four skeletons tombs of the latin period with finds that are exactly the same as those that we have in the small cemetery above the sanctuary of apollo in eretia but after this uh short reuse uh people just start to take the blocks away from the sanctuary for building churches and probably the dissenting village uh some are even inscribed with the blocks but we have also found two of the lime kilns in which the material was burned and a nice find from this year either shot on the side or made from the material of the site uh cannon wall maybe from a Byzantine or Venetian times after all we also found the shirt with the inscribed incise the Venetian galley on the site so this was really brief um for a for a many finds and now made in the last 10 years uh we believe this now that we can slowly understand the topography of the sanctuary after all we excavated more or less the eastern half of it we do not yet have the any propelone or entrance from the western site certainly where it should be found the processional way towards eretria but now we have the frame of the sanctuary on three sides we have uh these uh at least one if there were several of the central buildings here oriented east west that would be hard to identify definitely with something but the orientation towards this um foundation that we like to identify as the altar is quite uh quite clear and a small sketch that has been made just after the excavation season this year that certainly will change over the next years gives you an impression of this sanctuary built so on the coast of central iubia just one of course of many sanctuaries that were bordering sanctuaries of artemies that were bordering the iubian gulf and certainly were uh also part of a navigational system and the points of reference for people so in ships traveling up and down the iubian gulf by concluding i especially just want to thank all those people that were involved these were many people over the last years this year it was about a bit more than 60 students workmen specialists involved in the site and I mean without them this would never have been possible thank you everyone very much