Seleucia on the Tigris
The Stoa
In 1985, excavations resumed in Seleucia, on the east side of the Archive square, with a sounding in the north end, which eventually became the main excavation site of subsequent campaigns,conducted in 1987 and 1989. It brought to light an extremely interesting architectural layout originally dating to the Seleucid period and a continuous stratigraphical sequence (levels I–V from the surface), and an abundance of artefacts of hitherto undiscovered types were found.
Level V
Level V, excavated to the maximum depth allowed by the presence of the water table, revealed a monumental front that extended for at least 40 metres towards north and south, overlooking the square with a stoa, of which eight rooms separated by nine walls at regular intervals were brought to light. On the square, the stoa was bordered by a brick sidewalk, along whose entire length ran a very well-made drainage channel. Behind the stoa rose two blocks of parallel buildings, composed of rooms and courtyards, that we are tempted to interpret as residences of the Seleucid Archives’ officials. Here, Hellenistic-type tableware of very good quality (fish plates, amphorae, glazed lagynoi and amphoriskoi with rouletting) was brought to light amid the remains of burned beams, a palmette antefix and syma fragments.
A medallion mould depicting a scene of a marine thiasos with Nereid and Triton confirms a strongly hellenized context dating to the late 3rd century/early 2nd century B.C., which also agrees with architectural and numismatic data. This allows the documentation from the Archive complex to be completed, so that the Square, with its administrative facilities and public spaces may be interpreted as a unitary urbanistic project of an Agora, perhaps dating to the reign of Antiochus III.
Level IV
Level IV represents an intermediate occupation characterized by the presence of burials, open areas with irregular and burnt floors, kilns and garbage pits, and by the absence of autonomous constructional phases. The burials (in pits, in jars, saddle-roofed, vaulted) partly damaged the structures of the stoa, and at the same time were greatly damaged, by both the foundations of the Level III walls and by the especially high water table. The most significant find is a small treasure of 51 bronze coins from the city mint, datable to the late 2nd century B.C.
Level III
Level III, which lasted for a long time, displays a complex constructional transformation (sub-phases IIIa-IIIb) in which new walls were built on a silt filling using the walls of the stoa as foundations. The new constructions overlooking the Square include a succession of small rooms, connected with passages, that were used as craftsmen’s shops, probably by bakers. New drains, gutters and sumps equipped the open areas where fireplaces, bread ovens, garbage deposits and a pottery kiln attest to household activities and crafts. To the east of this area, a housing block, separated into two parts by a narrow alley, is composed of a cluster of rooms, some of which still contain remains of plaster, and courtyards. In addition to numerous findings of pottery and terracotta figurines, valuable objects were found, such as an alabaster statuette of a reclining woman, fragments of glass tableware and glazed terracotta tiles.
The findings, the burials and the coins, from Seleucia’s city mint and datable to the 1st century B.C- first half of the 1st century A.D., confirm a context belonging to the middle Parthian period.
Levels II-I
In levels II-I (Parthian and late Parthian), the walls use the underlying unbaked brick walls as foundations, which were reinforced and adapted with joints made from layers of straw, while the elevation was made from pisé, with the façade made from baked bricks. The spaces brought to light are courtyards equipped with torpedo amphora drains, alleys with drainage gutters and a storeroom, found full of foodstuff jars and bowls that were perhaps used to collect grains. Bitumen instead of mortar and the use of fragments of baked bricks as flooring characterize the structures of level I.