On display in the public galleries of the stoa is a selection of the thousands of objects recovered in the past 75 years, reflecting the use of the area from 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1500.
Most significant perhaps, is the material—unique to the site—illustrating the mechanics of the world’s first attested democracy. This material includes ostraka (inscribed potsherds used as ballots to exile over-ambitious politicians), allotment machines and bronze identification tags (used in selecting an Athenian jury), and clay tokens and inscribed lead strips (used in the administration of the Athenian cavalry).
Context is essential in understanding archaeological material. The great museums of Europe and the United States often display magnificent objects with little or no information as to where they were found and what else was found with them. What sets the Agora project and museum apart from most collections is that this context information is known for almost every single object.
Because the excavation began comparatively late, a generation or more after other large-scale digs in the Mediterranean (Pompeii, Ostia, Knossos, Dephi, Olympia, Pergamon, Ephesos, and Priene, to name a few), the same record-keeping system adopted at the beginning has been used to the present day. This means that every object found in the Agora excavations is stored in the Stoa of Attalos, together with the record of its recovery. The inventory is large: 35,000 pieces of pottery, 7,600 inscriptions, 3,500 pieces of sculpture, 5,000 architectural fragments, 6,000 lamps, 15,000 stamped amphora handles, and over 70,000 coins. This vast collection has all been entered into a unified database, part of a collaborative project with the Packard Humanities Institute. Because of this correlation of objects and archives, the museum collection serves as a center for archaeological research, used every year by hundreds of scholars from all over the world.