The first stage of a five year (2009 2013) excavation project in Ancient Tegea, near Tripolis, has been completed by an international team of archaeologists led by the Norwegian Institute in Athens in Collaboration with the Greek culture ministry's 38th Ephoria for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and 25th Ephoria of Byzantine Antiquities.
The area of excavation is a field located to the west of the theatre and the Basilica of Thyrsos, where magnetometer survey 2003-2004 documented the probable location of a major north-south street and a stoa bordering the agora.
The two ongoing field-projects at Tegea, a survey of a side-valley to the east of the urban centre and an excavation in the centre of the ancient city, started in June, 2009.
Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a municipality in modern Arcadia, with its seat in the village Stadio.
Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece,containing the Temenos (Temple) of Athena Alea . The temenos was founded by Aleus. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer; there are sealstones and fibulae. In the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism form one city.Tegea was listed in Homer's Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships and men for the Achaean assault on Troy.
Tegea struggled against Spartan hegemony in Arcadia and was finally conquered ca 560 BCE. In the fourth century Tegea joined the Arcadian League and struggled to free itself from Sparta.
The Temple of Athena Alea burned in 394 BC and was magnificently rebuilt to designs by Scopas of Paros, with reliefs of the Calydonian boar hunt in the main pediment. The city retained civic life under the Roman Empire; it was sacked in 395 by the Goths.
The site of ancient Tegea is now located within the modern town of Alea, which is located about 10 kilometers southeast of Tripolis.
Originally Posted @ Archaeology News
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