Phratries were associations based on kinship. As any other association, they needed seats, places where they could meet and perform the Apatouria festival, during which they introduced new members. In Attica, Athena and Zeus Phratrioi were the phratries’ main deities, but other heroes and gods were worshipped too. The contribution deals with a selection of documents certainly or possibly pertaining to the phratries of Attica between the 5th century and the 3rd century; such documents are particularly important in the debate concerning their cult and/or gathering places. From the extant evidence, it is difficult to understand whether a cult place was used as a seat (either with temporary or perennial functions) or it was linked to different cult activities. The investigation is complicated by the fact that many documents were found out of context and by the lack of a sharply defined corpus, since some documents can equally be attributed to phratries or to other kinship groups, e.g. gene, with similar characteristics. The aim of the paper is to review the main interpretations of this evidence and to check if other possibilities can be considered. For example, flexibility is called for what concerns some “sanctuary markers”, bearing the name of one or more heroes or gods and, most of all, the name of the phratry: information provided by them is not enough to link them necessarily with a seat (which requires the presence of an altar) or to an architectonically structured cult place. These considerations certainly do not help reconstructing an overall picture of the geographical distribution of phratries, but they help us reflect on the fact that their cult activities might go well beyond those described in written sources.
