Trench 1D

Anita Cvijanovic

Looking down 1D to the south. The Roman boundary wall to the orchestra can be seen at the bottom of the seating, and to this side of it, a walkway inserted at the same time. Beyond is the concreted floor of the orchestra. Along the centre of the picture are the grooves cut into the stairway when the theatre served as a quarry for building stone at the end of Antiquity. 1D has been the largest and deepest trench of the excavation and it was excavated over two seasons in 1995 and 1996. It was superimposed over an existing trench opened by the German team in the 1980s. The initial dimensions were 4 x 8.5 m but they were changed in the course of excavation to a maximum length of 14.25 m while the width at the southern end was reduced to 3.13 m. The maximum depth at the southern end was almost 5 m. The aim of the trench was to expose a sample of the cavea from the top down to the orchestra; it included one of the main stairways. Systematic removal of deposits revealed a consistent stratigraphic sequence from Late Roman to Byzantine and Medieval. There was abundant pottery at all but the topmost (agricultural) levels.

The lowest level, lying directly over the remains of the stone seating, was a fairly orange deposit with many small stone chips, evidently the waste from the quarrying process in which all the original seating was removed. In and on this was a great deal of heavy rubble, including the front parts of a number of seats from which it has been possible to form a good idea of the form of the original seating (see archtiectural seating). Doubtless as part of this quarrying process, the treads were knocked off the steps of the stairway and channels were roughly carved down either side: it is likely that this was done to allow some sort of trolley to be run up and down to carry the stone as it was removed. (There are traces of a similar arrangement on what is left of the next stairway to the east.) At the base at the seating area, at the edge of the orchestra, were found the remains of a lower barrier wall. It is about 0.8 m high and 0.45 m wide. The side facing the orchestra is significantly eroded, probably by the water used for aquatic spectacles so popular in the Roman period. The associated orchestra floor was covered with three layers of pinkish waterproof cement. On the other (northern) side of the barrier wall was a cemented floor surface with a base made of large pebbles. It covers the first row of seat and, although the evidence is not yet clear, it was probably laid down in the Early Byzantine period. The structure with which it was associated is still unknown. The pottery in the deposit lying immediately over the remains of the seat runs no later than 700 AD on traditional dating, perhaps as much as 100 years earlier on modified dating (see under Trench 3A). Other finds from this trench include two fragments of marble inscriptions, one of which, to judge by its wreaths, certainly once recorded a victory in the dramatic contests. There is also part of a substantial granite column, probably introduced after the life of the theatre, and a fragment of a spirally-fluted column in grey marble of a type seemingly popular in theatre-façades in Cyprus in the Roman period.