TURKEY - APHRODISIAS
The first systematic EXCAVATIONS at the site were begun
in 1961, these EXCAVATIONS concentrated on the city's central monuments,
with spectacular results. In addition to the Temple of Aphrodite, major
areas of investigation included the Bouleuterion or Council House, the
Theater, and the Sebasteion or Sanctuary of the Emperors. Other important
public buildings are the Hadrianic Baths, and the Theater (seated 30,000
people, and is the best-preserved of all ancient stadia). The buildings
of the site are remarkable not only for the preservation of their architecture,
but also for the many inscriptions, statues, reliefs, and other objects
associated with them. Since 1979, the most important finds have been
on display in a specially designed museum on the site.
History of site
Two prehistoric settlement mounds mark the earliest habitation of the
site, in the sixth or fifth millennium BCE. In spite of its long occupation,
Aphrodisias remained a small village until the second century BCE, the
date of the earliest coins and inscriptions recording the name of the
city. In the late first century BCE, Aphrodisias came under the personal
protection of the Roman emperor Augustus, and a long period of growth
and good fortune ensued. The first several centuries CE. were especially
prosperous and cosmopolitan. The cosmopolitan character is demonstrated
by the presence of an active Jewish community (attested in a famous inscription
listing benefactors of the local Synagogue) in this quintessentially
pagan city. The continued vitality of the city in later antiquity is
evident from the wholesale reconstruction of the Temple of Aphrodite
as a Christian Basilica in the late fifth century. In the troubled times
of the late sixth and early seventh centuries, Aphrodisias was reduced
once again to the size of a village; it survived until the fourteenth
century, when the site was finally abandoned.
Technology has enabled the surveyors to generate maps of buried walls
and other structures. A total area of about 200,000 square meters was
surveyed. The resistivity survey has already transformed our understanding
of ancient Aphrodisias, showing, as never before realized, that the city
was laid out on a grid plan. In residential areas, individual city blocks
are 35.5 meters by 39.0 meters. There was probably an extra 12 feet left
for an alleyway running between back-to-back houses. The public squares
and civic buildings of the city-center are planned according to the same
grid, as seen most clearly in the layout of the North Agora (the main
public square), which is bisected along both its east-west and its north-south
axes by the lines of streets. Only the Temple of Aphrodite and the Theater
have different orientations (which may predate the city grid). The exact
date of the new street plan is uncertain, but it probably falls in the
second or first centuries BCE.
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