The Byzantine Church TH 16 at Thimari-Kolymvithra (Southern Attica)

Abstract

The ruin known as TH 16, discovered near the Oikismos Thimari in 1982 in the course of a archaeological field survey of the southern Attic demos of Atene, was subsequently re-investigated in 1995 with the help of cleaning (katharismos) lasting several days. This measure resulted in some new insights, which are presented in this study. Based solely on the evidence of the survey, the ruin was originally interpreted as the oikos of a Classical­era farmstead upon which an early Byzantine ›chapel‹ was built. This interpretation must now be revised to the extent that the supposed oikos was in fact an (early?) Byzantine church on top of which later a small, single­nave church was built. This fact adds a new facet to the Byzantine settlement morphology of the area. From the methodological point of view it comes as no surprise that survey findings from sites with a multiphase architectural record cannot be reliably attributed to specific construction phases.