The archives of the American School excavations in the Athenian Agora
contain a remarkable series of watercolors and drawings (well over 400)
by Piet de Jong, one of the best-known, most distinctive, and
influential archaeological illustrators of the 20th century. They show
landscapes, people, and, above all, objects recovered during many
seasons of fieldwork at one of the longest continuously running
archaeological projects in Greece. This volume brings these
illustrations out of the storage drawers and assembles in color a
representative sample of some of the finest of Piet de Jong's
contributions. Along the way, the book tells the story of the Agora
excavations and assesses their contribution to scholarship. It includes
essays by 15 scholars currently working at the Agora, and surveys the
entire span of the material they are studying, from Neolithic pottery to
the Late Byzantine and post-Byzantine frescoes from the Church of Ayios
Spyridon.