The Attic deme of Acharnai: History and identity

The intention of the present study is to examine the Attic deme of Acharnai in terms of its archaeology, presence in ancient literary works, topography, institutions, epigraphical documents, settlement structure, and role in the larger Athenian socio-political system. While the organization of government and society in Classical Athens, and in particular the demes, have received much scholarly attention, these studies have largely confined themselves to a generalized picture of the role of the demes in the Athenian democracy rather than an intensive investigation of one particular deme. This has caused difficulties for reconstructing a detailed picture of Athenian society outside of the city itself and for attempts at modeling the settlement patterns of ancient Attica. Therefore the current work examines the available evidence for Acharnai, the largest of the demes in the Athenian system, in the period c. 700 B.C.E. to the sack of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in the first century B.C.E., with the intention of partially filling this gap in current scholarship. In addition to creating a picture of the internal organization of the deme and examining its place in the Athenian democracy, I have investigated current scholarly models of settlement pattern and structure in ancient Greece and concepts of territoriality and constitutionality in the formulation of the Athenian demes. Acharnai is thus used to test scholarly conceptions of the deme system. Moreover, I have used current theories of identity formation and politics to identify a method of negotiating regional tensions between Acharnai and the city of Athens itself, and have included an historical analysis of Aristophanes\u27 comedy Acharnians which reads certain key scenes in light of the character of the inhabitants of Acharnai and the position of the deme in the Athenian organization. The dissertation culminates with appendices detailing the current state of archaeological finds in the area of ancient Acharnai, texts of inscriptions that provide information concerning the internal workings of the deme, and a prosopography of all known Acharnians in the period under examination which supersedes previous prosopographical research