The people met, not as usual in the Pnyx, but in the Agora, in the presence of the Archons, and recorded their votes by placing in urns small fragments of pottery (which in the ancient world served the purpose of waste-paper) (ostraca) on which they wrote the name of the person whom they wished to banish.
To the " Pelasgic " era may perhaps be referred (with Curtius and MilchhSfer) the immense double terrace on the north-eastern Pnyx.
It seems inconceivable, however, that any other site should have been preferred by the primitive settlers to the Acropolis, which offered the greatest advantages for defence; the Pnyx, owing to its proximity to the centres of civic life, can never have been deserted, and that portion which lay within the city walls must have been fully occupied when Athens was crowded during the Peloponnesian War.
The remains on the Pnyx and its neighbourhood cannot all be assigned to one epoch, the prehistoric age.
The site of the primitive Agora (apXaia etyopa) was probably in the hollow between the Acropolis and the Pnyx, which formed a convenient meetingplace for the dwellers on the north and south sides of the fortress as well as for its inhabitants.