The Demes

This chapter focuses on monumental building in the demes (villages and towns) of the Attic countryside. In total, twelve demes and one independent sanctuary are considered. The deme structures include sacred buildings and civic or infrastructure projects, such as fortification walls and theatral areas. After mapping the demes with building activity, the chapter shows that a pattern of border articulation emerges. This attention to the borders, when combined with the shift toward the use of the demotic, highlights the role of deme identity and autonomy under the reforms, as well as the integration of the demes with the wider polis.

The Astu of Athens

This chapter evaluates buildings in the astu (city center) of Athens, excluding the Akropolis and Agora. Buildings and monuments within distinct areas are treated together in order to consider the broader impact of discrete sectors of the city. The chapter concludes with an examination of the sight lines and viewing axes that crisscross the city, connected to and independent of the roadways and paths. These sight lines, axes, and roads link various parts of the city together via the built environment, thereby underscoring relationships in both architectural form and function. The chapter emphasizes how the changes to the built environment in the late sixth and early fifth centuries also transformed the ritual landscape and lived experience of the astu.

The Agora

This chapter focuses on the Athenian Agora, the civic center and marketplace of the polis. At the heart of this chapter is the issue of when the government buildings and functions shifted from the older Archaic Agora to this new area, and how the new buildings articulated the changed political landscape of the polis. This chapter progresses monument by monument. Three buildings in particular are highlighted—the Old Bouleuterion (Council House), the Stoa Basileios (magistrate’s office), and the Southeast Fountain House—due to their unique forms and decoration, their important functions for the polis as a whole, and their siting within the Agora. This chapter also considers the role of movement and sight lines within and around the Agora.

Buildings and Democracy

This final chapter addresses the links between the built environment as outlined in the previous chapters and the historical context of the early democracy. In total, as many as forty-five monumental structures were built in a twenty-eight-year period. This represents an incredibly high level of coordination, exploitation of resources, and financial expenditure that Athens had not seen prior to this. This chapter, therefore, draws attention to the economic ramifications of such building activity, before turning to a consideration of the term “building program” and what it implies about demotic agency. The chapter concludes by evaluating what the building activity tells us about the state of the new government system in the Late Archaic period.

The Akropolis

This chapter focuses on the buildings of the Athenian Akropolis. A brief survey of earlier building activity is provided in order to consider how the Akropolis looked at the time of the Kleisthenic reforms and to highlight some of the problems and controversies in the architectural material. The issue of the “H-Architecture” (the Bluebeard Temple or Hekatompedon) is fully considered, including the ongoing controversy regarding its appearance and location. An account of the Akropolis at the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth centuries then follows. The chapter closes with two sections that place these buildings within their broader topographical and historical context, including a calculation of the financial cost of the Old Athena Temple and a suggestion for how it might have been funded.

Introduction

This chapter provides an historical summary of the events in Athens in the Archaic period, including the rise and fall of the tyranny of Peisistratos and his sons, the period of aristocratic stasis that followed, and the eventual passage of the Kleisthenic reforms. Attention to the historical record reveals the tremendous degree of transformation in all aspects of Athenian society during the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.E. It is this deep contextualization that facilitates a robust understanding of the changes in the built environment that occurred simultaneously with the changes in the sociopolitical structure of the polis. The chapter also outlines the rest of the book.