The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is pleased to announce the publication of Hesperia 88.3. Topics in this issue include a Late Helladic terracotta bovid from Pylos, a look at the preference for Aiginetan cooking pottery at Kanakia on Salamis in the Late Bronze Age, a detailed examination and reconstruction of a burned textile fragment from Phyrgian Gordion, and a comprehensive study on how ancient Greeks viewed and defined public space.

Subscribers can read the issue online at JSTOR, which now hosts all current issues of Hesperia as well as an archive of past volumes. The printed version will be mailed shortly

A Wheelmade Bovid from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, by Emily Catherine Egan, examines fragments of a wheelmade terracotta bovid of “Myce­naean” type from the so-called Palace of Nestor at Pylos. The first such figure to be identified in Messenia, the bovid is considered in light of its physical features, excavation contexts, and similarities to published comparanda. An original storage context inside the palace at Pylos is proposed, as is a produc­tion date in Late Helladic (LH) IIIA2 or LH IIIB. The use of the figure is tentatively explored in view of local iconographic, faunal, and textual evidence, which points collectively to the bovid’s ritual, and perhaps explicitly royal, use.

Late Bronze Age Aiginetan Coarse Pottery at Kanakia, Salamis: A Macroscopic Study, by Christina Marabea, presents a study on the Late Bronze Age Aiginetan coarse pottery from the excavations at the Mycenaean acropolis at Kanakia on Salamis and the nearby cult area at Pyrgiakoni. The cooking and noncooking shapes are presented and discussed, and macroscopic observations are offered concerning the construction of certain types of pots and their performance characteristics. For the cooking pots in particular, a systematic macroscopic examination of external burning marks and internal carbonization has allowed for insight into their placement in relation to fire, and also into cooking modes. Finally, all data are used in an effort to interpret noted modifications in Aiginetan ceramic technology and to understand the presence of Aiginetan kitchenware pottery on Salamis.

Unfolding a Geometric Textile from 9th-Century Gordion, by Samuel Holzman, examines in great detail a portion of an ornate woven textile that was preserved when a catastrophic fire swept through the site of Gordion ca. 800 B.C. A new visual reconstruction of this artifact shows a complex composition combining slit-tapestry weaving and soumak wrapping. A unique find from Early Iron Age Anatolia, the textile shares geometric motifs and design elements with many other types of Phrygian artifacts, such as painted pottery, inlaid furniture, and a pebble mosaic, and shows weaving to have been part of the koine of geometric design of the era.

The Myth of the Ionian Agora: Investigating the Enclosure of Greek Public Space through Archaeological and Historical Sources, by Christopher P. Dickenson, explores how Pausanias’s famous comparison of the loose arrangement of stoas in the agora of Elis to the more formalized plan that he associated with Ionia triggered modern scholars to assume that the “Ionian agora” was therefore a specific type of public square. The classification of agoras by type has supported the interpretation that the enclosure of agoras by stoas in Hellenistic and Roman times is symptomatic of civic decline. Using historical and archaeological evidence, the author argues that the Ionian agora is a modern construction, making the case for a new approach to agora enclosure that takes greater ac­count of how the Greeks used and experienced their public squares over time.

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