Porthmion - Greek city near the way across Cimmerian Bosporos
The article summarizes the main achievements in the investigation of the Greek Bosporan city of Porthmion (fig. 1). Traditionally, Porthmion is identified with the remains of ancient town situated north-east of the modern city of Kerch on the outskirts of the village Zhukovka (fig. 2). Information about a settlement called Porthmion is provided by ancient authors. That the name is derived from the Greek πορθμός (crossing) is fairly obvious and has never been questioned. Indeed, both written and archaeological sources suggest that one of the traditional routes arcoss the Strait of Kerch linking the Kuban region with the Crimea ran close to the city. The proximity of Porthmion to the routs connected European and Asiatic parts of Bosporos Kingdom, which have been also used by nomad tribes with no doubt reflected at the history of the Greek settlement. From 1953 the excavations at Porthmion were carried out by the Bosporan Archaeological Expedition of LOIA (now IHMC/IIMK) RAS. Quite a number of important discoveries are connected with the name of E.G. Kastanajan, who directed the excavations till 1986. Under her guidance the remains of Porthmion fortifications and residental constructions of the Late Hellinistic period have been uncovered (fig. 28) [Kastanajan, 1970; 1972; 1975; 1983]. During the next period of excavations from 1986 till now the spasial attention was given to investigation of the remains of Late Archaic and Early Classical periods. From 2003 the excavation at Porthmion necropolis began. A considerable amount of evidences concerning the initial stage of the occupation of Porthmion has been gathered [Vachtina, 2003; 2006]. The results of excavations suggest that that originally the town was designed and founded as a small fortified settlement. The building remains dated from the second half of the 6th to the first third of the 5th centuries BC were uncovered in the eastern and south-eastern parts of the site. The most remarkable are the traces of the Archaic fortifications (fig. 3-9). The early fortification walls revealed at Porthmion are comparable in terms of their age and the construction technique only with the defensive walls of Myrmekion. They can be dated to the second half of the 6th century BC. The erection of defensive walls at Porthmion was not a mere tribute to caution, but was rather dictated by the harsh realities of life. Towards the very end of the 6th century BC the settlement was involved in a largescale catastrophe, during wich the site were destroyed by fire. Immediately after the catastrophe mentioned above Porthmion was rebuilt. The foundations of the walls of the big dwelling complex excavated in the eastern part of the site (fig. 22) were put directly on the burnt level. In the first third of the 5th century BC this complex was in its turn also destroyed by fire. It would be natural to suppose that the immediate causes of those fires and catastrophes were most probably the aggravation in the connections with nomad tribes. The next important period of the city’s existence is connected with the building of the new fortifications (fig. 29-30) and new buildings (fig. 31), concurrently erected by a single plan in the mid.-second half of the 3rd century BC. Life at Porthmion finally ceased around the middle of the 1st century BC. The fortress was abandoned and never was restored again. Having survived all the calamities of the preceding period, the inhabitants of the city left it after the Mithridates wars, during the epoch of prolonged crisis. In recent years the investigation of Porthmion necropolis to the west from the site began. The excavations revealed several types of funeral constructions: burials in simple pits, burials in pits, covered with limestone plates, burials in crypts made of limestone blocks with collective burials. All the buried were put in graves with their heads towards the west; the funeral rite was obviously Greek (fig. 34). All the uncovered graves belonged to the Hellenistic period.