This study of Pisidian Antioch is based primarily on two seasons of archaeological work on the monuments of the site carried out in 1982 and 1983. The aim of the project, which was directed in the field by Stephen Mitchell, was to survey and record, without excavation, as much as possible of the visible remains of antiquity at the site, including inscriptions, stray architectural pieces, but above all traces of ancient buildings, and to produce an accurate, contoured site plan. We hoped thereby to be able to reconstruct the building history of the city in antiquity and to place its remains in their proper historical and cultural context. During the survey itself we concentrated particularly on architectural remains and buildings. Architecture, and especially public architecture, was a supremely important component of Graeco-Roman cities. Perhaps to a greater degree than any other urban settlements in history, the cities of the Roman Empire were defined and characterised by their public buildings. As the travel writer Pausanias put it in a famous passage written towards the end of the second century AD: How could you call a place a city, which had no state buildings, no gymnasium, no theatre, and no agora; which had no running water at a fountain and whose inhabitants lived on the edge of a torrent in hovels or mountain huts (Description of Greece X.3.4)? By this criterion the study of public architecture should be at the centre of any investigation of a classical city, and it was with this in mind that we approached Antioch.
The chapters that follow are, in the first instance, a report of what we found and an attempt to make sense of our discoveries. We make no claim to have studied all aspects of Antioch exhaustively. It has not been our intention to reappraise the documentary sources for the history of the city in detail, for that would duplicate much excellent work which has already been done, most notably by Barbara Levick. We have simply provided in chapter 1 an introductory account, whose main object is to place the buildings which we studied in their historical context. Although several new inscriptions were found, they too have not been included except where they throw light on the building record. We have also not attempted to examine the free-standing sculpture and the many votive reliefs found on the main site or at the sanctuary of Mên, although we have taken this evidence into consideration in discussing the interpretation of the monumental remains.1 We did not collect surface pottery from the site.
Even within the terms of a survey of Antioch’s buildings there are some significant gaps. We made only cursory observations on the bath house, we did no detailed work on the small stadium at the sanctuary site, and we did not investigate the remains of cemeteries, except to note numerous reused grave monuments and funerary inscriptions in the buildings of Yalvaç itself. We are fortunate to be able to replace our own observations on the main Roman aqueduct with a detailed account of a survey carried out in 1995 by M. Jean Burdy of Lyon and Mehmet Taşhalan.
After our work in the field was finished we were able to acquire a considerable amount of further information from other sources. In August 1984 Marc Waelkens made a study of the architectural and other material from Antioch which had been taken to the museums of Istanbul, Afyon and Konya, either after the excavations directed by W.M. Ramsay in 1912–14 or by D.M. Robinson in 1924. It is worth noting that some of this has now been returned to the local museum in Yalvaç, which is the most important repository of finds from the site. Mitchell and Waelkens were able to take the first steps towards preparing this report in the early months of 1984 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and during that period Mitchell also visited the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where records of the 1924 Michigan excavation of Antioch have been preserved. Information on this and other archives has been updated as a result of a recent visit to Ann Arbor by Dr Maurice Byrne (see appendix 2). We have been able to incorporate relevant information from the Michigan records into our discussion of the site and we have also been able to use some of the splendid photographs taken by George Swain for the 1924 expedition. Also in 1984, by the invitation of Professor Machteld Mellink, we lectured jointly on our work at Bryn Mawr College, and through a chance meeting with Professor Darby Scott, who was about to take up the position of director of the American Academy in Rome, we learned that many of the drawings made by the expedition’s architect, Frederick Woodbridge, were still in the possession of his widow, who lived in Rome and maintained contact with the America Academy where her husband had worked. Waelkens visited Rome in the autumn of 1984 and was given access to these drawings, which provide much information that would otherwise have been lost, by Mrs Woodbridge. Her generosity in handing over this material means that Frederick Woodbridge’s architectural work for that 1924 season can now be appreciated for its outstanding quality and importance. Dr Michael Ballance carried out a plane table survey of Antioch in 1962 and has put the plan he made at our disposal. We are also grateful to him for permission to use several excellent black and white photographs taken at that time.
Since 1984 and the appearance of brief preliminary reports,2 the preparation of the final account of our work has been delayed for longer than it should have been by the commitments of the authors to other projects and to the often unpredictable circumstances of academic life. During this period there have been important developments, which have significantly altered the archaeological picture of Antioch. In 1981 Mehmet Taşhalan became director of the Yalvaç Museum, and since then he has committed himself with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm to investigating and promoting the site. His lectures in Europe and the USA have been one cause of an ever growing number of visitors, and his championship of Antioch has converted it into one of the regional cultural centres of the province of Isparta. In the mid-1980s he began excavation and restoration work on the site itself, and this has transformed Antioch’s appearance. The area of the imperial temple has been cleared as it was at the time of Robinson’s excavations, and this has clarified many small points regarding the ground plan and the reconstruction. The results of these investigations combined with an important study of the architecture of the temple were submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Selçuk University, Konya, and the main findings have been briefly published.3 The decumanus maximus from the city gate to the central part of the site, and the southern end of the cardo maximus have been cleared, as has a large part of the bath house. Work has also been undertaken on the area next to the large basilica (Church of St Paul), and in the theatre. Much of this work has been published in a preliminary form, and we have drawn on these reports at appropriate points in our study.4 T. Drew-Bear has undertaken the publication of new or rediscovered inscriptions from these excavations and from the environs of Antioch, some of which have a bearing on the building history of the city.5
The limitations of non-intrusive survey work on a site such as Antioch are bound to be exposed by subsequent excavation.6 The uncovering of the city gate, the decumanus maximus, part of the bath house and of the large basilica church in particular has provided much data which could not be obtained by survey alone. Information from the excavations has also been valuable in clarifying some of the problems concerning the imperial sanctuary, although it has not led us to conclusions radically different from those we had already formed. In general, the recent reports have enabled us to amplify and correct plans and reconstructions of buildings, but have not suggested major changes in chronology or other matters of interpretation.
In July 1997 Mehmet Taşhalan, aided by Thomas Drew-Bear, organised an international conference on Pisidian Antioch, which attracted archaeologists, epigraphists, historians and theologians from many countries. Papers concerning the rock reliefs from the sanctuary of Mên, the basilica church, and the city’s water supply marked further progress in the archaeological study of Antioch. The publication of the conference will mark an important milestone in the modern rediscovery of the ancient city.
In preparing the present publication Mitchell has been responsible directly for chapters 1–2 and the appendixes. In writing chapter 3 he made use of notes on the architecture of the temple prepared by Waelkens. Waelkens wrote the first draft of chapter 4 and completed much of the research for chapter 5, which has been written up by Mitchell using his detailed notes. The discussion of the aqueduct in chapter 6 is the work of Jean Burdy, although we have been able to add some illustrative material from the records of the 1924 Michigan expedition and some excellent photos taken by Michael Ballance. Jean Öztürk wrote the original draft for chapter 7 on the churches, and information has been added from the reports on Mehmet Taşhalan’s excavations. Mitchell has carried out the final revision of all these contributions. The maps of the site are based on a survey begun by Robin Fursdon, Timothy Fursdon and Jonathan Western, who established a series of tachyometrically surveyed fixed points in 1982, and completed by Ian Cowell and Kevin Hainsworth with a plane table in the following year. The latter also made the plane-table plan of the Mên sanctuary in 1983 and produced drawings of the maps of the main site and the Mên sanctuary. Brian Williams made new drawings of the map and of the elevation of the imperial temple during the final preparation of the copy for the press. Other drawings used in the publication have been the work of Woodbridge, Burdy, Mitchell and Waelkens.
Acknowledgements are due to many people who have been involved directly or indirectly in bringing this report to its final stage. In the first instance thanks are due to those who took part in the survey itself. In 1982 we worked from 15 August to 7 September. The team consisted of Stephen Mitchell (University of Wales, Swansea), Marc Waelkens (then of Gent, now at the University of Leuven), Jean Greenhalgh-Öztürk (then a postgraduate in the department of archaeology at Newcastle University, now of Bilkent University, Ankara), Robin Fursdon (then lecturer in the department of surveying, Newcastle University), his son Timothy Fursdon, and Jonathan Western, a student of the department. In 1983 the same archaeological team worked from 5–30 July, while the survey work was in the hands of Ian Cowell and Kevin Hainsworth of the Newcastle department. In both years the Turkish government representative was Bay Durmuş Kaya of Isparta Museum. We are deeply grateful to the Turkish Directorate General of Monuments and Museums, and to its then director Dr Nurettin Yard1mc1, for granting permission for the survey to be carried out, and in particular to Dr Mehmet Taşhalan, who gave every possible assistance, and has continued with characteristic unselfishness to help with our work on Antioch during the period that his own researches on the site have taken place. The project was sponsored by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and owes much to the then director, David French, and assistant director, Ann Murray, for their backing and practical support and for the loan of one of the Institute’s landrovers. Many of the photographs were also processed by the Institute’s photographer, Tuǧrul Çakar.
The work was financed by grants from the British Academy (£2700), the Roman Society (£1000), the Craven Committee of Oxford University (£800), and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (£500). A further grant of £1000 from the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara has been used for the preparation of some of the drawings. The Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research provided travel and maintenance grants for Waelkens in both years. We would like to thank all these bodies, whose generosity enabled the field work to be carried out.
We have also to thank those people who aided our work subsequently: Dr Nuşin Asgari (Istanbul), Saadat Özgündüz and Ahmet Ilasli (Afyon), and Ismail Karamut and Necip Çay (Konya), who made possible Waelkens’ work in 1984 on their museum collections; Professor J.W. Eadie, the director, and Pamela Reister and Robin Meador-Woodruff, registrars of the Kelsey Museum in Michigan, who provided access to the records of Robinson’s excavation; Professor Darby Scott and Mrs F.W. Woodbridge who put us on the trail of Woodbridge’s architectural records; and Dr Michael Ballance for information from his own survey of 1962. In the final stages Dr Maurice Byrne has been of great assistance not only in discussing the problems of dating the propylon and the city gate, but also in the overall interpretation of the records of the Michigan excavation. He also compiled most of the information contained in appendix 2.
There is much work still to be done at Antioch. We hope that this volume forms a useful and practical discussion of the present state of our knowledge, and will attract proper attention to one of the most important cities of the eastern Roman empire.
Stephen Mitchell
Marc Waelkens
Notes
1 For the sculpture from Antioch, see I. Karamut, Pisidia Antiocheia’si Heykeltraşhǧi, Konya Selçuk Üniversitesi Ph.D. thesis 1987.
2 S. Mitchell, AS 33 (1983) 7–9; 34 (1984) 8–10; I Araş. (1984) 79–81; JHS Arch. Reports 1984/5, 99–100; M. Waelkens, III Araş. (1986) 191–8.
3 Taşhalan 1995.
4 Taşhalan 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998; see also his two guide books to the site, Pisidian Antioch. The Journeys of St Paul to Antioch (Istanbul 1991), and (in Turkish) Yalvaç. Pisidia Antiocheia (Istanbul 1991).
5 T. Drew-Bear, ‘Pisidia Antiocheia’sinin parlak dönemlerini yansitan yazitlar’, XII Araş., 13–17.
6 We may cite the example of Sagalassus, surveyed by us between 1985 and 1989 (on which see Mitchell and Waelkens, AS 37 (1987) 37–43; 38 (1988) 60–5; and 39 (1989) 67– 74; 40 (1990) 185–98). The site has subsequently been excavated on a large scale by Waelkens, and the results are published in Sagalassos I–IV (1993–1997). A detailed comparison of survey and excavation results is very instructive.