The Demes of Attica and the Peleponnesian War - A New Archaeological Approach

Abstract

This thesis tries to answer the question in how far the Peloponnesian War affected the demes of Attica. In the first part of this thesis, sources and scholarly research on this subject are analyzed. Thucydides, Xenophon and Aristophanes, the leading sources on the subject, are discussed as well as the most important scholarly contributions on the demes of Attica and the Peleponnesian War. In this way, in the first part an overview of the sources and scholarly debates is created. In the second part of this thesis the archaeological material of rural Attica in the period 450-350 is collected and analyzed. In the third part, the overview of archaeological evidence is compared to the overview of sources and scholarly studies. I show that the archaeological evidence paints a different picture than the literary sources. Instead of total abandonment and destruction of the countryside, an interpretation based primarily on the work of Thucydides, I show that some more nuance is required. As I demonstrate both in my text and by means of an interactive map, the Attic countryside remained in use during and after the war.