The Southeast Fountain House in the Athenian Agora: A Reappraisal of Its Date and Historical Context

Abstract:The Southeast Fountain House, consistently associated with the Peisistratids and often included among their additions to the built environment of Athens, stands at the center of a historical controversy surrounding the Late Archaic use of the Athenian Agora. Its identification and date have crucial ramifications for our understanding of the Agora in the late 6th and early 5th centuries b.c. A reappraisal of the pottery from the fountain house, overflow channels, and pipelines, together with an examination of the in situ architectural remains, demonstrates that the building should instead be placed among the earliest buildings of the new democracy; it is one of the structures that helped to define—both spatially and conceptually—the area of the new Agora.