Amorium 2014 - Excavation at the Large Building. Part 1 - A new start

This summer Amorium Urban Archaeology side-project continues at welcome Hisarköy under the guidance of the new excavations director Prof. Zeliha Demirel Gökalp of Anadolu University/Eskisehir with a new and exciting team. Our season started with explorations at the western part of Amorium’s Lower City. This extended area between the lower city-walls and the city center hosted most probably important civic functions and residential neighborhoods. Today this area offers a unique opportunity for both intrusive and non-intrusive exploration, as it has remained largely non-built by the modern village’s buildings or covered by cultivated fields.

Our team taking a break from the arduous effort of uncovering the new building.

Until now excavation attention was drawn by the Large Building, where Martin Harrison had mainly excavated during the 1988-89 seasons. In previous seasons we renewed and cleaned the old trenches and started to create new and more accurate plans. This year we decided to explore some substantial remains, visible on the surface, that stand less than 20 meters SE of the old excavation trenches. The surface remains are part of four massive piers - their cores created in opus caementicium and surfaces covered with bricks and ashlar stones - and imply the existence of a centrally designed building connected with the Large Building complex.  We are all very anxious to see what lies hidden under the Anatolian dust and earth in this little known part of the city of Amorium.

Our excavation team this year consists of archaeology assistants: Selda Uygun and Görkem Işık, and archaeology students: Sevinç Özen, Burcu Tutar, Ceren Uzun, Serhat Akoğlu, Oğulcan Avcı, Arda Güldoğan and Ahmet Levent-Zeybek.