Keramikos and National Archaeological Museum 2/4

After a morning lecture we set out for a fairly easy day. Our only real site was the Keramikos, which was the primary cemetery for ancient Athens, just outside the town walls. It was also near all of the pottery workshops, which explains the name (Latinized as ceramicus).

See those plants? In mainland Greece that qualifies as a river. In all fairness, there's probably actual water in it during the colder months.
"City wall". The Keramikos was right outside the main gate into the city.
I don't remember what this was for, but it looks like a civic building. It probably had something to do with the Panathenaic festival.
"Kerameikos street". That's Dr. Bloy in the background, with his awesomely nerdy guide to ancient Greek pottery t-shirt.
"Tomb of the Lacedamonians". After winning the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans installed a friendly tyranny in Athens to keep them in line. But a year later the Athenians overthrew them, bizarrely enough with help from the Spartans. A few of those helpers died in the fighting and the Athenians built a tomb for them, most of the remains of which are the wall to a church's basement.
Funeral markers.

Afterwards we went over to the National Museum to look at some Dark/Geometric age pottery and Archaic age sculpture.
Really big Geometric vase. Dark age pottery gets this name from their decoration, which is almost exclusively lines, circles and various shapes and patterns. If you look closely you can see a rare example of a picture on one of these. It's some stick figures at the funeral of another stick figure.
A statue of a dead girl. She's intended to resemble Persephone, because she died unmarried and was thus another "bride of death". I think thats a lotus blossom she's holding there. Anyway, if you can make out the red coloration on her skirt, that's all that's left of the painting on her.
A goat. This is Corinthian pottery, which was the really big thing in the Greek world during the Archaic period. In the 5th century it loses its position to all of that red and black pottery from Athens that most people are more familiar with.
A piece of a box or something. This is painted wood, which is really cool because generally wood doesn't survive and paint usually fades off of things in museum lighting.
It was so hot outside that day that even the pigeons were smart enough to take a siesta.