ostracon

plural ostraca · alternative ostrakon

1. A piece of pottery or stone, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel, especially one used to cast a vote during the Ancient Greek process of ostracism.

   Also on view are ostraca, pottery fragments on which Athenians inscribed the names of persons they felt too powerful for the good of the city and deserving of ostracism, or 10 years’ exile, a procedure formalized by Cleisthenes.

   1993, John Fleischman, “In Classical Athens, a market trading in the currency of ideas”, in The Classical Outlook, volume 71, number 1, →JSTOR, page 11

   2 more examples

   The process in this condemnation was thus : the people being assembled, every man took a tile called ostrakon and carried it to a certain part of the market place, surrounded by wooden rails for that purpose, in which were ten gates for the ten tribes to enter distinctly : in this place the tiles were deposited by each person, and numbered in gross by the archons.

   1804, William Fordyce Mavor, chapter I, in Universal History, Ancient and Modern, volume III, New York: Stansbury, page 5

   If there was sufficient interest, the Athenians could vote once per year to ostracize someone, exiling him from Athens for a period of 10 years. To vote, Athenians scratched the name of the person to be ostracized on potsherds, broken pottery pieces called ostraka—hence the name of the procedure.

   2009, Debra Hamel, “Citizen Tyrants”, in Military History