Panel 1: Everyday Life
North-Central Anatolia in the kitchen: the Iron Age as mirrored in cooking tools
Giacomo Casucci (Pavia)
This paper provides data and information on the daily food preparation and cooking activities that were widespread in the North-Central Anatolian Plateau during the first part of the 1st Millennium BCE (1200-650 ca. BCE). In a phase of governmental and social reorganization following the collapse of the Hittite Empire at the end of the Late Bronze Age, this micro-region appeared to bear particular local characteristics in material culture, in comparison to those presenting in surrounding areas. In the almost total lack of written sources for the reconstruction of the local history of this territory, cuisine and the foodways represent a lens through which to identify and evaluate broader political, social, and economic phenomena. In fact, the choice, methods of use, and sharing of certain utility tools – especially those connected to the preparation and consumption of food – are actions full of cultural significance. Therefore, this paper will analyse fire installations and kitchenware (hearths, bread ovens, platters, cooking pots) discovered during the last century of archaeological activities. These instruments and their synchronic and diachronic comparison with ones of the neighbouring areas will allow to highlight and individualise the processes of crisis, resilience, transitions and continuity which are posited to be integral to the transition from the centralised phase of the Hittite Empire to the so-called “dark age” and subsequent “regeneration”.
(Barely) Scratching the surface. Identifying graffiti culture in late antique Sagalassos (SW Anatolia)
Andrés Rea (Leuven)
Ancient graffiti studies have long been monopolized by philologists and overshadowed by the attention paid by scholars to more “formal” epigraphy. However, in the last decades, the field gained broader academic attention from an archaeological viewpoint following the work of Baird and Taylor (Ancient Graffiti in Context, 2011). The visual capacity of these marks in carrying meaningful messages for the study of religious, socio-cultural, economic and political aspects of ancient daily life is now widely acknowledged, yet cohesive case studies are still few and far between. This paper therefore presents the graffiti from Sagalassos, an ancient town in southwest Turkey, which have only partly been studied. The graffiti record has allowed to identify the characteristics of the graffiti culture of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine people in Sagalassos. Specifically, the question why people were drawn to this medium to express and materialize certain desires is highlighted. This was accomplished by using a methodological framework supported by three pillars: space, materiality and content, which all attribute to the final interpretation and meaning of a graffito. This analysis allowed to demonstrate that the graffiti share universalities with other graffiti sites in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, they still display an original and unique character. The marks indicate how Christianity permeated secular spaces such as the Bath-Gymnasium and important thoroughfares. They also attest of the presence of different (religious) groups and associations which all played an important part in the religious and ceremonial life of the late antique town.
Panel 2: Group Identity
Beyond One Nation, One Language: In Search of a Multilingual Ionia
George Downs (Liverpool)
Over the last 300 years, British scholars have been captivated by Greek inscriptions and ancient texts from Ionia, western Anatolia, and their interpretations have significantly shaped the academic perception of ancient languages and how they operated. However, as the epigraphic and literary corpuses from the Archaic period are limited, one should exercise caution when attempting to construct a linguistic history of the region. This is particularly important in light of recent work seeking to fully appreciate the role of the Anatolian languages, placing Archaic Ionia in its regional linguistic context. Furthermore, the profound scholarly interest in the Ionian Greek language cannot be separated from the contemporary paradigm of monolingualism that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries as a hegemonic ideology of British nation-building. There remains a lingering default presumption amongst many to this day that societies and nations, both ancient and modern, should be defined by a discrete single language. Such a presumption risks underplaying the linguistic and cultural diversity that existed within Archaic Ionia and only compounds colonialist interpretations of the ethno-historical composition of its population – one example being interpretations of Herodotus’ story about the foundation of Miletos and the place of the Carians in the Ionian Migration narrative. This paper concludes that, by setting aside the monolingual normativity present in the academic communities of practice operating within Ionia, the extent of multilingualism within western Anatolia during the Archaic period can be fully discussed and appreciated.
(Mis)understanding the Galatians – the importance of choice
Bianca Miranda Cardoso (Leicester)
Literary evidence always presents a challenge to the historian. In the case of the Galatians, who settled in Anatolia during the Hellenistic, the fact that they did not produce texts themselves and about themselves is an additional complicating factor to the research of Galatian identity.
An analysis of Greek and Roman authors who mention the Galatians has shown that their choice of identifying terminology was not always consistent or secure. However, modern attempts to correct the terminology used by ancient writers may in fact have clouded our understanding. Interesting choices seem to have been made both by the ancient writers but also, and surprisingly, by modern translators. Some of those language choices have led to misunderstandings that have in turn contributed to a questionable historical and academic consensus about who the Galatians were, particularly regarding their ethnicity.
Choices about the relative importance of gender can also be detected in both ancient and modern authors, since most descriptions of Galatians are in fact of Galatian men. Some accounts of Galatian women do exist, by Greek and Roman authors, and with a particular moral flavour. Why these few women are singled out by these authors, and why so few modern scholars include them in their assessment of Galatians is significant. It also stresses how the Greco-Roman gender dynamics biased accounts of Galatian men and women, and their gender dynamics.
This presentation will share the initial results of my research on Galatian identity by looking at the original terms used by Greco-Roman writers, the choices made in translations of those terms, and by comparing accounts of Galatian men and women. The objective is to question what we understand as apparent consensus about the Galatians.
Panel 3: Literature & Rhetoric
Greek Metrical Inscriptions from Anatolia Dated to the Imperial Age (1st-3rd Century AD): Definition and Analysis of the Corpus
Pietro Ortimini (Pisa)
A rich production of epigraphic poetry flourished in Anatolia during the Imperial Age (1st-3rd century AD). A corpus of about 1000 Greek metrical inscriptions exhibits significant diversity in the socio-historical, archaeological contexts, and in the literary aspects. Indeed, a wide range of poetic forms is written and enjoyed by authors, clients, and recipients from various socio-cultural backgrounds.
This paper redefines the corpus and provides an overall evaluation of the epigraphic production. Firstly, the corpus of the Merkelbach/Stauber edition (SGO, I, II, III/13-16, IV/17-19) is expanded by the inscriptions discovered and edited after 2001. Secondly, the corpus is comprehensively evaluated from a socio-historical and literary perspective. The following aspects are analysed: the places of discovery and the archaeological contexts; the different types of authors, clients, and recipients; the transmission of the texts and the conservation of the epigraphic supports; the literary genres, the length of the texts, the use of meters, the technique of versification, and the literariness.
The results are examined in order to assess the spread of Greek culture in Anatolia during the Imperial Age. In this perspective, the literary forms, metrics, and literariness of the inscriptions are studied in their socio-historical and archaeological contexts, as expressions of Greek culture in its various local variations. Subsequently, the possible ways and levels of reception are illustrated, considering the different social status, gender, religion, culture of the clients and recipients. The analysis takes into account the spread of Greek culture through the classical paideia and the levels of literacy.
In a broader perspective, the results will also be presented in an online database and can be useful for a new edition of the corpus.
Modes of Self-representation in Grave Stelai from Hellenistic Smyrna: Grammar of Honours and Allusive Textuality
Chiara Battisti (Princeton / Paris ENS)
This paper examines the interaction between texts and images in Hellenistic grave stelai from Smyrna. It analyses discourses of self-representation as articulated through the figurative and epigrammatic media and distinct choices made within the civic community, drawing upon the work of Paul Zanker (1993). While this paper reflects further on the dynamics of visual homogenization and “serialization” of honours dictated by local social norms and expectations, it also attentively engages with the distinctiveness of textual choices in verse inscriptions, and more broadly, with the role of texts in Smyrnean grave stelai. On the one hand, the study of the stelai’s features allows us to understand aspects of the selective processes behind the choice of images, architectural features, and symbols in these monuments, while placing in context all the small-scale variations within an expected visual grammar. On the other hand, the analysis of textual hapaxes, the bricolage of Homeric and contemporary poetic vocabulary, and the elaboration of small vivid vignettes in inscribed epigrams enables us to comprehend how stelai foregrounded individual histories and family memories. Moreover, it helps us understand how texts engaged with the circulation of poetry in Asia Minor, and the selection of a “literary canon”, and ultimately, how literacy, as already noted by Zanker, was a value put on display. Finally, this paper will show through a selection of examples, how the local mixture of social customs and desire for self-representation communicated to the viewer the same complex verbal and visual vocabulary of olbos, public recognition, and literariness, which manifests more broadly in Hellenistic literature and inscribed poetry.
Hellenistic oratory in Asia Minor: geographical shifts and stylistic innovation
Ariadne Pagoni (Oxford)
This paper will examine the development of oratory in Asia Minor in the Hellenistic period. Firstly, the geographical shifts in oratory will be assessed through the cities or areas orators came from and where they chose to practise. The former can tell us where there was an opportunity for an education in rhetoric, the latter where the most culturally significant hubs were. By the late-second century BC Rhodes had superseded Athens as the most important centre for attracting students and teachers of rhetoric. There was also a concentration of orators in south-west Asia Minor suggesting this was an important zone of activity. When this movement away from Athens and towards Asia Minor and Rhodes occurred will be explored.
Secondly, the development of oratory’s style over time will be examined. Orators from Asia Minor developed new stylistic trends which privileged snappy rather than expansive prose, patterning, emotionalism and sometimes rhythmic prose. The orators of Asia Minor do not seem interested in imitating the canonical Attic orators and instead were agents of innovation. When and where different aspects of this developed will be examined through stylistic analysis of extant fragments. This will establish a possible periodisation of the cultural practice of oratory in Asia Minor in the Hellenistic age.
Keynote
Kingly Cloth: Power Dressing in Iron Age Anatolia
Prof. Naoíse Mac Sweeney (Vienna)
‘Clothes make the man’. From Homeric wonderment at “shining cloth” in the Greek west to the ritual veneration of “the vestments of the king” in the Neo-Assyrian southeast, ideas about elite power dressing were surprisingly similar across the Anatolian peninsula between the tenth and the seventh centuries BCE. Certain forms of bodily adornment and dress seem to have formed part of a shared visual language of power that operated across the many political, cultural, and linguistic boundaries of the time. In this paper, we will explore together some of the literary and iconographic evidence for this power-dressing koine. But if clothes made the (elite) man, then who made the (elite) clothes? We will also consider new archaeological data for hitherto-unattested traditions of textile manufacture in western and southern Anatolia. These suggest that kingly cloth was produced not at the main centres of elite power, but instead on the geographical peripheries – in the frontier lands between polities.
Panel 4: Sanctuary Spaces
Parameters determining the location of the archaic sanctuary of Larisa (Aeolis)
Figen Öztürk Akan (Istanbul)
The sanctuary in the ancient settlement of Larisa (Aeolis) consists of structures built at different periods: an altar, a small oikos-shaped temple, a stoa, and a propylon, all constructed on the highest spot of the acropolis on solid bedrock. The architectural remains of the sanctuary, dated between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, are mostly preserved at the foundation level. During the 20th century excavations, “a rectangular building with a hearth inside” was found under the temple and dated to the early Bronze Age. Another arrangement made of circular stone features with “baitylos” and large rocks is thought to have been used as part of cultic practices, presumably related to Cybele. The archaic-Greek temple and its dependencies were built on the Bronze-Age core articulation of the acropolis. The prehistoric cup-marks and the small finds are associated with the cult of Cybele to indicate the cult continuity.
In numerous sanctuaries, which became widely known during the archaic period in Western Anatolia, cult activities can be uninterruptedly followed back to the “pre-Greek” periods. Furthermore, most urban sanctuaries were deliberately chosen to be located at the highest rocky point of the settlement and dominate the surrounding areas close and far. Besides the “sacredness” of the cult place, its “visibility” was likely to have been another essential consideration in the choice of location. The primary purpose of this research is to question the significant parameters for choosing the location of the archaic sanctuary in Larisa in a comparative context with other sanctuaries of Western Anatolia.
Questioning the Monastic Identity of Değle Settlement
Gözde Demir (Istanbul)
Located roughly 29 kilometres north of Karaman Province, the ruins of “Binbirkilise”, also known as the “Thousand and One Churches”, are dispersed throughout the hills and plains of the long-extinct Karadağ volcano. In addition to the cluster of numerous structures in the two ancient settlements known as Madenşehir and Değle, Karadağ hosts other Byzantine-era remains on different hilltops. From the end of the 18th century, early travellers have been lured to the region, although academic research did not begin until 1895. Because of yet-unanswered research questions related to the individual monuments and settlements in the region, academic interest in Karadağ is still growing. Along similar lines, in this proceeding, I focus on the settlement types and hierarchy in Değle, one of the most contentious issues since the early explorations in the region. Many complexes of Değle, the purposes of which are unknown, have been misidentified as monasteries due to the methods and approaches employed in earlier research, the lack of intensive surveys and comparisons, similar to other Byzantine complexes in the vicinity. Recent Byzantine studies in both monastic and secular settlements, however, have focused on solving the function enigma for these structures and questioning the monastic identity of the settlements. Besides, it appears that the so-called Alahan monastery and Cappadocia’s rock-cut courtyard complexes serve totally different functions than previously thought. The Alahan settlement is currently considered to have served as a pilgrimage site, whilst Cappadocia courtyard complexes might have functioned as dwellings.
To comprehend the original function of the settlements and the complexes, it is necessary to take into account the significance of the location of the site in relation to other settlements, especially in remote and seemingly desolate landscape such as Karadağ, its proximity to the strategic points, notably fortresses and military routes, and their position on the landscape. The main objective of this study is to reexamine the Değle settlement and its built environment in light of contemporary debates, modern research techniques, and unpublished evidence from the site.
Panel 5: Priesthoods
Studying Priests and Priestesses in Roman Ionia using Digital Tools
Inès Bonnabot (Tours)
Historiography has long since challenged the thesis of a decline in traditional cults in the Greek world under the Roman Empire: cults to deified emperors were part of existing traditions and never competed with older deities. The relationship between Greek communities and their gods remained a major concern for the cities. The priests and priestesses who were responsible for ensuring this relationship on a daily basis, by ensuring that the rites were performed, did not form a separate group from their fellow citizens and were often involved in public life. While a comprehensive study has already been devoted to the civic priests of the imperial cult in the province of Asia, a similar investigation remains to be carried out for the holders of priesthoods of traditional deities. Ionia offers a good field of research, because of the prestige of its sanctuaries, the vitality of its religious life and the wealth of its epigraphic documentation.
I am approaching this topic using the resources of Digital Humanities by creating a database that I will be exploited with quantitative methods (including descriptive statistics and network analysis). For each priest or priestess, thanks to this relational database, I study the nature of his or her priesthood (the deities served, the ways in which the priesthood was exercised, the priestly activities attested), the place of the priesthood in his or her civic career, and finally his or her social and family environment, through a prosopographical survey.
I would like to present a programmatic intervention based on a case study, in order to show how digital tools – statistical processing and network analysis – allow us to study the cultural and institutional aspects of Antiquity.
More appropriate and more pleasing to the deities: shifts, changes and variations in the mode of attribution of priesthoods in Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia
Julien Dechevez (Liège)
In Ancient Greece, there were four ways by which one can acquire a priesthood: by election, by lot, by inheritance or by sale. Ignored in continental Greece, the practice of selling a priesthood by auction to the highest bidder became widespread in the Aegean islands and Anatolia between the 4th century BC and the 3rd century AD [1]. The practice naturally came to replace some older habits of assigning the priesthoods in Anatolian cities and sanctuaries. These variations could indeed take the form of the replacement of a system by another (e.g. from election to sale), but also could combine different systems (e.g. sale and lot) or adapt the modalities of priestly assignation (hereditary sales) [2] [3]. By taking into evidence priestly contracts and civic decrees from Hellenistic Caria (Hyllarima, Mylasa, Heraclea, Sinuri), the paper aims to draw attention on some cases where civic groups or priestly elite decided to change the existing way of attributing priestly offices.
By highlighting the contexts in which these changes took place, the motivations that lead to implement these changes, and the purposes which lay behind such shifts, the paper argues that these variations in attributing the priesthoods in fact reflect the social, political, and religious frameworks of the functioning and management of sanctuaries in Anatolia, in which the sale of priesthoods takes its roots [4]. Conversely, through the insights from the cities of Anatolia, the talk also aims to highlight on a broader level some possible explanations for the flourishing development of the sale of priesthood in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor.
[1] DEBORD, Aspects sociaux et économiques de la vie religieuse dans l’Anatolie gréco-romaine, Leyde, 1982.
[2] SEGRE M., « Osservazioni epigrafiche sulla vendita di sacerdozio », RendIstLomb 69 (1936), p. 830.
[3] DIGNAS B., « ‘Aus seine Kosten kommen’ – ein Kriterium für Priester ? Zum Verkauf von Priestertümer im hellenistischen Kleinasien », in WINTER G.H.-E. (éd.), Neue Forschungen zur Religionsgeschichte Kleinasiens. Elmar Schwertheim zum 60. Geburstag gewidmet, Bonn, 2003, 27-40.
[4] DIGNAS B., Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Oxford – New York, 2002.
Panel 6: Lycia from Antiquity to Modernity
Abundant Death: Wealth and Power on the Telmessos Great Sarcophagus
Eloise Jones (Liverpool)
This paper will assess an as-yet unpublished Lycian sarcophagus, referred to here as the Telmessos Great Sarcophagus, in its role as an expression of political and economic dominance by its original owner. This stone sarcophagus, characterised by the archetypal Lycian ogival lid shape, as well as the reliefs on its exterior, currently resides outside the West Lycia Research Centre in the town of Fethiye (ancient Telmessos). It likely dates to the first half of the 4th century BC, when it would have stood at the water’s edge. Significantly, this is the largest known Lycian sarcophagus. The immense physical presence of the tomb is intensified by the dramatic effect of the iconography, in which violent, ultra-masculine battle scenes on each side are juxtaposed with a domestic scene depicting a seated woman removing her veil, and a partially intact image of two dancing figures, which may have been apotropaic. Unfortunately, the lower half of the sarcophagus is now buried, so any reliefs thereon are inaccessible. Within this paper, I will firstly present a fundamental analysis of key statistics relating to the corpus of known Lycian sarcophagi, providing a measurable context for the physical presence of this tomb. This will allow us to consider how its physical characteristics (size, material, location, decoration) can be viewed in relation to comparable contemporary examples. Secondly, I will examine the tomb’s iconography, discussing the ways in which this too can be interpreted as an expression of wealth and power. By combining the metric understanding of the size of this tomb compared to its peers with the iconographic power of its images, as well as our knowledge of the historical geography of its location, this interdisciplinary methodology will form the basis for a phenomenological approach to the impact of the Telmessos Great Sarcophagus’ presence on its contemporary audience in 4th century BC Lycia.
“Much new to an European eye”: scholars, sailors, and Ottoman communities in George Scharf’s Lycian sketchbooks
Sebastian Marshall (Cambridge)
Among the many archaeological projects orchestrated by European imperial powers, Charles Fellows’ expeditions to the Teke Peninsula (‘Ancient Lycia’) in southwestern Türkiye in the 1840s were seminal, as Holger Hoock notes, as the first pre-planned collaboration between the Royal Navy, British Museum, and Foreign Office to remove ancient sculptures in a ‘military-style operation’ (2007). Little attention, however, has been paid to the archive of unpublished material produced by George Scharf, a young draughtsman who accompanied Fellows, which offers a rich resource for balancing agency between antiquarians, Ottoman decision makers, naval labourers, and the Peninsula’s Greek and Muslim inhabitants. To this end, this paper explores how Scharf recorded interactions between this diverse body of actors, including Maltese stonecutters, British naval ratings, Italian cast-makers, and communities of Oghuz Yörüks and Romani Çingân whose land the expedition occupied. I argue that Scharf’s private sketchbooks and illustrated journals both prefigure and diverge from ethnographic tropes, challenging the conclusion that local actors merely serve as indications of scale and exoticizing ‘staffage’ in depictions of ancient ruins. In the past couple of decades historians of archaeology have striven to explore ways in which local populations in the Eastern Mediterranean have engaged with their archaeological heritage (e.g., Quirke 2010, Bahrani, Hamilakis & Eldem 2011, Çelik 2016, Anderson & Rojas 2017). Faced with the obstacle of western European claims to superior knowledge and the concomitant suppression or misidentification of local discourses pertaining to the past, I suggest that visual sources like Scharf’s drawings – while no means innocent – can provide a suggestive alternative for understanding the labour, leisure and lived complexity of the archaeological site. By comparing Scharf’s on-the-spot-sketches with the expedition’s official published account, this paper foregrounds hierarchies of race and class which underpinned the picturesque Mediterranean landscape.
Lycia on Display: Decentring Fixed Hellenism in the British Museum
Batuhan Ozdemir (Durham)
Lycia is a unique cultural region located in the southwest of Anatolia on the peninsula known today as Teke in modern Turkey. It has been a subject of research since Choiseul Gouffier’s investigations in the region in 1776. However, Charles Fellows’ discovery of the ancient city of Xanthus in 1838 intensified exploration and attracted the attention of top British Museum officials. As a result, Fellows conducted two separate expeditions to Lycia on behalf of the British Government and the Trustees of the British Museum between December 1841 and May 1844. During these expeditions, several impressive tombs were transported to Bloomsbury, including the Nereid Monument, the chamber of the Harpy Monument, and the Payava and Merehi Sarcophagi.
This presentation considers Lycia as the first step in transforming the doctrine of the British Museum from fixed Hellenism to a more pluralistic and open aesthetic approach. It aims to examine how the Lycian monuments were initially received by the Museum, taking into account the geopolitics of the period. In other words, how was the exhibition doctrine of the museum incorporated into the preparation of Lycian antiquities for display? Furthermore, how did this framing shape Lycia as both a place and a culture? This presentation also seeks to explain how the public viewed the collection and which ideas contributed to the evolution of displaying Lycia over time.
New Voices on Anatolia 