Toon Putzeys and Ertug Ergürer continued clearing the debris in front of the southwest corner of the Roman (see July 27-August 2). In previous reports, it was noted that the bath building east of the Lower Agora was flanked by a street running behind the shops of the square's eastern portico. This week we cleared a huge layer of debris--building ceramics, limestone, disintegrated mortar, and some plates of the marble wall decoration (crustae)--originating from the Roman Bath's destruction. The layer contained few other artifacts. Among the crustae were some nice Corinthian pilaster capitals.

Of the bath's southwest corner, we cleaned two walls: one running from caldarium I's southwest corner to the east, the other making an 90-degree angle then running north-south again. The first wall, 8.5 m long and built of regular limestone, has in its eastern part an arched window providing light to the toilet below the caldarium. Originally the window was 2.5 m wide and 2.3 m high, but in a later phase--maybe after the abandonment of the city when the bath building was used as a quarry for removing the bricks from its vaults--the ashlars underneath the window were removed, creating an irregular door. The second wall, 11.5 m long, was clearly added to the original building during the sixth century, when a new praefurnium was built in the angle between caldarium I and II. This wall, made of mortared rubble alternating with layers of bricks, has built in it three brick vaulted openings, of which the left and the right ones were windows (1.6 m wide and 0.8 m high) situated at a height of 2.7 m above the current level of the excavations. The middle vault was a door giving access to the substructure below the praefurnium and to the two vaulted rooms underneath caldarium II (see Roman Baths, August 3-9). This door is 3.5 m high and a little wider than the two windows (1.8 m). We expected a staircase inside the door, as the floor level of the rooms behind it was a higher level than that of the street, but although we found the bottom of the doorway, we could not enter deep inside the door opening itself, because of the wood supports of the vault. Next week, the road in front of the bath building will be further cleared.