H κατοικία στην επικράτεια της Κορίνθου από την Αρχαϊκή έως και την Ελληνιστική περίοδο. Μια πρώτη κριτική προσέγγιση
Authors: Γκιώνη Μαρία 
Published: March 2023

Τhe examination of the evolution of the Corinthian houses from the Protocorinthian to the Hellenistic period through published material has shown that their walls were mostly made of stone foundations, on which were placed mud bricks. Initially the walls are sometimes curved and tangled in slightly blunt or acute angles. Gradually this trend tends to be reduced until the 4th c. BC. The openings between the inner rooms probably didn’t bear doors.

During the Protocorinthian period the houses are carefully constructed. They already have courtyards, whose place is not yet at the southern part of the house. The arrangement of each house is very different. The great majority of the archaic houses in Greece had just one or two rooms, so the number of five or six rooms of Houses 2 and 6 (see Appendix 4 with the catalogue of houses) respectively in the city center displays a complex social differentiation in Corinth during the Protocorinthian period, that is relevant with the commercial and industrial bloom of Corinth, as well as the making of the city-state. In the 6th c. BC the houses are equally good constructions, almost rectangular in plan, some of them more irregular. The court appears in the middle and there are series of rooms around it. From the 5th c. BC onward the tile roof appears, the courtyard is located in the southern part or in the center of the house, and a pastas appears at its north or west. Pastas is absent during the centuries to follow, even though it occurs elsewhere during this period, e.g. at Olynthus. During the 5th c. BC the houses had no regular plan or common size. However, in the houses that were not erected on previous constructions one can better discern the new characteristic elements of the era, such as the direct course of the walls, the right angles, the big cut stones for the walls. Even in the 5th c. BC, the spaces cannot be identified with a certain use, except for the court. In the beginning of the 4th c. BC the cellar for the storage of food appears. Cellars are also used in the Hellenistic times. In a fourth c. BC house the possible traces of the evolution of the pastas, the peristyle was also found. In the 3rd c. BC the Long Building no. 28 in the Panagia Field and the long 5-room Building in the north side of the Rachi settlement at Isthmia probably were used as storage buildings that served houses with industrial character. The houses themselves on Rachi have a simpler plan than those of the previous period, less rooms with more linear arrangement, but they usually include a court at the south. Pits for storage amphoras with a formed floor occasionally occur through all the periods examined.

During the whole period examined there are a lot of examples of house industry, however due to lack of further evidence we do not know the percentage of them in relation to the non-industrial houses. A new type of house industry emerges on the Rachi settlement in the 3rd c. BC, with alike pressing rooms for making oil or wine. The character of the settlement on Rachi suggests that there was a central organization of its enterprise, probably forced by the Macedonians who held Corinth at the time.

The Protocorinthian wells were a distance of a few meters away from the houses they served. From the 6th c. BC onward the wells appear in the courtyards, in the course of change of the house plans towards a more introverted character. In the Hellenistic settlement of Rachi at Isthmia, one single well and one pear-shaped cistern served the whole of the settlement, showing that the settlement was under central management. During the Hellenistic period pear-shaped cisterns are dominant. The first example lies beside House no. 41 at Perachora.

The great cisterns that were used as part of a house industry appear in the 4th c. BC. The hard plaster with which they are covered inside shows their probable use as rainwater collectors.

The floors of the Protocorinthian houses are quite elaborate. Pebble floors are mostly preferred at the time. In the 5th c. BC the most common floors were made from clay or from plaster. The plaster floor appears then for the first time and is mostly used in the andrones. From the end of the 5th c. BC appear the pebble floors with a presentation of animals or plants that are used in the andrones as well. The floor from chipped limestone is used in the courtyards because of its great endurance. The pebble and the hard plaster floors are more elaborate to construct, whereas the clay floor is more careless.

The first andron appears in the 6th c. BC at Perachora. This innovation maybe has to do with the nearby Heraeum which at that time was an important centre of circulation of ideas from all over the known world, especially from the East. In the 4th c. BC andrones occur at the Houses nos 12 and 40, but then they disappear.

In the Archaic Era no traces of decoration have been saved. From the end of the 5th c. BC there is a tendency to decorate the interior, for example with painted walls, pebble mosaics in andrones and a peristyle. In the circumference, Perachora doesn’t follow the trend for decoration. In the 3rd c. BC there is a turn towards industrial or rural houses, probably due to the Macedonians holding Corinth at the time.

Three Protocorinthian houses in the city centre were built in linear alignment, which is a characteristic element of the making of the asty throughout the Archaic era. The same alignment appears at the same spot in the 4th c. BC during the erection of three new houses, however, we’re left with no other traces for a similar system of city blocks in the city. In the 5th c. BC the houses (especially those with older phases) have a lack of symmetrical elements in plan, and the public streets follow the course of the irregular house walls. The houses at Perachora are mostly solitary structures and not parts of an organized settlement plan. In the Hellenistic period the Rachi settlement grows in between streets that cross each other at right angles, however the houses are irregular in plan and different in size.

Aqueducts are used for the first time along with wells in the 5th c. BC and continue in the 4th c. BC. In the 3rd c. BC only one example of a house aqueduct is known.

In the 6th and 5th c. BC local sanctuaries were occasionally established over abandoned houses within the asty, a practice not found elsewhere.