Page "Kerameikos" Paragraph 12

Archaeological excavations in the Kerameikos began in 1870 under the auspices of the Greek Archaeological Society.

They have continued from 1913 to the present day under the German Archaeological Institute at Athens.

During the construction of Kerameikos station for the expanded Athens Metro, a plague pit and approximately 1, 000 tombs from the 4th and 5th centuries BC were discovered.

Thucydides describes the panic caused by the plague, possibly an epidemic of typhoid which struck the besieged city in 430 BC.

The epidemic lasted for two years and killed an estimated one third of the population.

He wrote that bodies were abandoned in temples and streets, to be subsequently collected and hastily buried.

The disease reappeared in the winter of 427 BC.

The Greek archaeologist Efi Baziotopoulou-Valavani, who excavated the site, has dated the grave to between 430 and 426 BC.