Middle Byzantine Aphrodisias: The Episcopal Village, AD 700–1250

Aphrodisias is one of the best-known archaeological sites in modern Turkey. The Aphrodisias Excavations Project has been ongoing since 1961, and in 2017 the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The settlement flourished as a monumental city from the first through the sixth centuries AD.

This monograph addresses the archaeology of the settlement from the eighth through to the thirteenth century. It collates and integrates material already published and presents important new bodies of archaeological evidence, providing a holistic view onto a Middle Byzantine episcopal village.

After a historiographical introduction, the second chapter presents a topographic gazetteer of Middle Byzantine activity at Aphrodisias. The third chapter addresses the monetary economy of the Morsynos Valley, offering an interpretation of a large numismatic catalogue.

The fourth chapter analyses a corpus of over two hundred items of liturgical sculpture, tracing medieval interventions in the settlement’s ecclesiastical architecture. The fifth chapter presents the medieval intramural cemeteries, before discussing the potential of funerary archaeology to contribute to the social history of the settlement. The sixth and final chapter compares the medieval settlement at Aphrodisias with those at Amorion, Miletos, Ephesos and Hierapolis before commenting on the historical development of the ruralised settlement pattern the Middle Byzantine Maeander.

The past decade has witnessed a burst of archaeological research into the archaeology of Middle Byzantine Asia Minor, testifying to the vibrancy of a subject that until recently had been marginal to the agenda of Classical Archaeology in Turkey. The volume will be of interest to scholars of Byzantine history, economy and society. But it is also written so as to be accessible to those who have less experience of Byzantine Studies. The monograph contributes to the study of one of the most significant sites of the Roman Mediterranean, and shows how the archaeology of such sites is inevitably mediated through medieval curation, occupation and construction.