Eight graves of various types were discovered and investigated during a recent rescue excavation by the Ilia Ephorate of Antiquities on a privately owned plot of land at “Droumbes or Paliambela” in the local community of Augeio, in the Ilia Municipality, the Region of Ilia.

A preliminary examination of the grave offerings shows that the graves date from the end of the 4th to the 2nd century BC. Specifically, three jar burials, four cist and one tile roof grave were found. These are part of the western necropolis of the ancient city of Ilis, from which to date over 200 graves of the Late Classical and Hellenistic period have been excavated.

The findings of jar burial 1 are particularly important. These include a bronze funerary urn with its base, bearing an anthemion design on the handles and lion heads at the join of the handles to the urn’s rim and a folding bronze mirror. A first evaluation of its grave offerings, dates the burial jar from between the end of the 4th to the beginning of the 3rd century BC.

Apart from a large number of mainly Hellenistic vases, standing out among the findings of the other tombs is a marble funerary stele crowned with a pediment.