The building Z3 of the Kerameikos in Athens offers a very good example of the questions arising when studying women at work in the iv th century BC and outside the private context of the household. The disposition of the rooms and the material excavated lead to the identification of building Z3 as a textile fabric and, perhaps, a place for prostitution.
Without offering answers to all questions about the organization of labor in the well-known Athenian workshops area, the document highlights some important features: the systematic use of slave-labor, the confusion between housing and working place, the versatility of activities, including sexual tasks.
Situated near the Dipylon Gate and the Sacred Gate, just within the internal boundaries of the city, it lies in what ancient authors call the Kerameikos district, a neighborhood on the periphery where pottery workshops grew up on both sides of the walls the classical necropolis being situated outside them. Excavations conducted by Greek archeologists beginning in the s, and since by a German team led by Ursula Knigge, allow us to retrace the history of the building, today identified as Building Z, and interpreted simultaneously as a textile factory and a brothel.
It was succeeded by a second building Z2 which, this time, did not survive the destruction of the city walls by the Spartans, after their victory over the Athenians in BCE. In the aftermath of that defeat, workshops and shops very gradually revived their business, especially from the middle of the fourth century, south of the Sacred Way, the principal axis of Athens that passes through the walls at precisely the spot that interests us here. This was the context in which the building Z3 was rebuilt and would remain in use down to the end of the fourth century when an earthquake completely destroyed it.
Figure 1. Figure 2. The sloping tiled roof channeled rainwater into three large, subterranean cisterns that were connected to one another by an underground network. The main entrance was from the northeast and opened onto a large courtyard furnished with a well. Most of the rooms were arranged along the western side of the large courtyard, and coated with red stucco β the floor of the largest one to the north being decorated with colored mosaics.
