1. Location-Excavations

The site is situated on the bank of the river Cholokhi, in a swampy region near the river mouth. Excavations of the city and the necropolis started in 1960 under the direction of N. Berdzenishvili, A. Inaishvili, D. Kakhutaishvili and A. Kakhidzeand. They are still ongoing, the present directors being A. Kakhidze (Batumi Archaeological Museum) and M. Vickers (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

The settlement was situated on several low hills slightly rising above the surrounding swamps. The period of occupation spanned from the Middle Bronze Age to the 2nd c. BC. The Greek settlement was founded in Pichvnari in the mid-5th c. BC and probably co-existed with a local Colchian settlement, occupying an area of about 100 ha. Excavations on the settlement were conducted only on a very limited scale; the archaeologists concentrated their efforts mainly on the surrounding necropoleis. They singled out three cemeteries, which lay to the west of the settlement occupying an area of about 20 ha. The North, so called Colchian, Cemetery is situated on a natural slope called Napurvala. It dates to the 5th c. BC. More than 300 burials were excavated. The Western, or ‘Greek’, Cemetery lay about 100-120 m to the west of it and contains burials of the 5th and 4th c. BC. Approximatelty 340 burials were excavated.

2. The grave finds

In both cemeteries burials contain both Greek and local artefacts and the difference between them is determined by the abundance of Greek objects among the funerary equipment. This is why one cannot exclude that the differentiating criterion between the two cemeteries is not ethnic, but social. Based on the current state of research, it cannot be affirmed whether there were two different cemeteries separated by an empty space, or there were simply two sectors of the same necropolis. Bone remains are scarce due to the adverse environmental conditions of the Pichvnari necropolis, making it very difficult to reconstruct with any confidence the burial customs, in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the burials are not robbed or otherwise disturbed. It is, however, clear that inhumation and not cremation was practiced on both cemeteries. The custom of burying the dead with a coin in the mouth, the so-called ‘Charon's obol’ is well attested in both sectors of the Pichvinari necropolis as early as the 5th c. BC. Grave goods include local and imported painted and black-glazed Greek pottery (Attic and Ionian), amphorae (from Chios, Lesvos, Thasos, Mende and elsewhere), glass vessels, several gold jewellery items, fibulae, and beads. Many burials contained coins (mostly Colchian, but also from Panticapaeum, Theodosia, Sinope, Apollonia, and two electrum coins from Cyzicus). Several infant pithos burials are also attested. To the south of the Classical cemeteries lies the South Cemetery which dates to the Hellenistic period (end of the 4th – 2nd c. BC). Approximately 170 burials of this cemetery have been excavated. The grave goods in the Hellenistic cemetery are similar to those of the preceding period.