Rhamnous

As a class trip, we went out to Marathon and Rhamnous, two sites within Attica. I assume that you have heard of Marathon- if you haven't, there's going to be a post on it shortly- but you, like me, have probably not heard of Rhamnous a lot, other than in perhaps the occasional encounter with the name.

Rhamnous is an ancient deme site, and it is one of the most complete ones extant. During the reforms of Cleisthenes, in the late 6th century B.C., the old system of four Ionic tribes was reorganized into a system of ten tribes named after Attic heroes and each tribe was divided into three tritteis, which were composed of different demes, or towns, essentially. Rhamnous was one of those demes. Rhamnous is also heavily fortified, in part due to its location on the northern coast of Attica. Do you see those mountains off in the distance across the water in the picture below? Those are the mountains of the island of Euboea.
See, heavily fortified! This is the entrance to the city. During antiquity, there were young soldiers stationed here, where they would have trained. Rhamnous is also the site of a temple to Nemesis, which is located outside of the walls of the city and inland, up a hill.
This is a place outside the city where the young soldiers who were stationed at Rhamnous scratched a game board into the rocks. I don't know precisely what the rules were.
There is also a very nice view of the site! This part of Attica has been relatively untouched by the development that is all over the place- this is because of a law that prohibits building within a certain radius of archaeological sites. It doesn't usually get enforced- a lot of Attica is covered by sprawl from Athens- but in this case I think that there are some archaeologists who are particularly adamant about it.