Olynthos as a source on Domestic Architecture

Maps.  Maps are cool.
[Map locating Chalkidiki in Greece, source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Map of Ancient Chalkidiki, 1923, source: Wikimedia Commons]

One of the major archaeological sources in the study of Ancient Greek domestic architecture (houses, in other words) is the ruins of Olynthos, a city of Chalkidiki in northeastern Greece.  It seems an odd place to have such prominence, being so far from any of the major cities, but its history gives it numerous advantages as a source.

Unfortunately, this map doesn't show the street plan of the South Hill.
[Map of Olynthos in Nevett, Lisa C. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.]

The southwestern part of Olynthos grew organically; its haphazard street plan shows its origins.  The rest of the city, however, shows far more planning and far more regularity.  In 432 BCE the inhabitants of several towns in the region banded together and moved to Olynthos for protection a few years before the Peloponnesian War.  Houses had to be built quickly in order to shelter the city’s new inhabitants.  Just under a century later, Phillip II of Macedon conquered the city, razed it to the ground, and sold those inhabitants he caught into slavery.  Small portions of the city were briefly resettled, but the rest was totally abandoned.

[Plan of an insula (city block) in Olynthos in Nevett, Lisa C. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.]

As a result of the city’s rapid expansion, all of the houses in the newer part of the city seem to have been based on the same basic plan, giving us some idea of what was commonly accepted as typical layout of a Greek house, though many people took the opportunity to alter their houses to suit their own purposes.  The city’s rapid fall and abandonment meant that though the walls do not survive, their foundations do, giving us the layout of at least the ground floor.*  It also meant that many personal and practical items were left near where people used or stored them, giving us some idea of what people actually did in various parts of the house.

There are, however, several problems with Olynthos as a source.  Its rapid fall also means that many people would have tried to hide valuable or extremely personal items while others simply ran off with them.  Additionally, the city is in the northeast, far from other important cities in Greece, and the very small number of ancient houses uncovered elsewhere makes it hard to know what regional differences there might have been.


*While we cannot know what any upper floors would have looked like, stair bases can tell us which houses had another floor and where the stairs leading up to it would have been.

Sources/Further Reading:
Nevett, Lisa C. “Gender Relations in the Classical Greek Household: The Archaeological Evidence.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 90 (1995): 363-381.
Nevett, Lisa C. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Olynthos - Wikipedia
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