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At the community-wide and neighbourhood scales the Project aims to produce a comprehensive picture of the extent and layout of Pella at different times. A combination of geophysical survey and field survey are being used to define and sample the various neighbourhoods, characterising occupation and assessing the facilities available.

Geophysical Survey

Geophysical survey is being used to investigate the extent of the Hellenistic street grid and document city walls, ditches and other features. Ground penetrating radar, in particular, is being used in areas with multiple occupation phases, since the ‘slices’ through the ground at different depths that it provides offer the best chance of documenting change through time in the urban plan and in the size and layout of individual buildings. Magnetometry is also being used to highlight anomalies caused by industrial or domestic activities (e.g. respectively, kilns or large storage jars). Electrical resistance provides a supplement where a more detailed picture of individual features is required.

Field Survey

In addition to geophysical survey, field survey is helping to characterise neighbourhoods and document change through time. Previous work on the Hellenistic city centre traced an orthogonal street grid known to comprise insulae (blocks) 47m wide and varying in length between 110 and 152m. This grid is usually extrapolated to cover the entire area within the Hellenistic city walls, approximately 1.5 by 2.5 km. In many neighbourhoods, however, the density of occupation is unknown and it is possible that not all of the space enclosed within the Hellenistic walls may have been built on.

Excavation

At the household level work is focusing on the excavation of a non-elite, house in the southern part of the site, inside the Classical city wall. The goal is to reconstruct how the residents constituted their social and cultural identities through their daily practice, and how that practice may have changed through time. Topics addressed include, for example, how they organised their activities within the space of the house; what foods they consumed and the ways in which it was stored, prepared and served; and their choice of consumer goods (including pottery, but also commodities such as the wine and oil that once filled transport amphorae). The practices and preferences of the excavated household will eventually be contextualised using the evidence from field survey to assess how representative (or otherwise) the excavated assemblage is in comparison with the larger body of contemporary material from various neighbourhoods and the city as a whole. Change through time will be explored both by comparing the results of these excavations with legacy data from later, Hellenistic housing and also by excavating a stratigraphic trench.

Archaeobotanical Study

The Project places a significant emphasis on studying the evidence for the uses made of different plants within the ancient city. To this end we are engaged in a substantial program of flotation and archaeobotanical analysis of soil samples collected during excavation. This work is carried out in collaboration with the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research in Archaeology and the PlantCult (CIRI-AUTH) laboratory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.