An Assessment of the Urban Development of the Ancient City of Sillyon

Abstract

The ancient city of Sillyon is located on a rocky hill with a height of about 235 m in the Kocagözler locality of the Yanköy neighbourhood in the Serik district of the province Antalya and is one of the important ancient cities of the Pamphylian Region. The cite is a prominent ancient city with its archaeological multi-layered texture and with its historical and cultural assets. Throughout history, at the point of unification-conflict of cultures and civilizations, Sillyon bears the traces of many civilizations. It should be said that city planning, which became evident in the Hellenistic Period and then became institutionalised with the Roman Imperial Period, continued with similar standards and concerns in Late Antiquity, Byzantine and later Turkish-Islamic Periods. Thus, a traditional urban logic (eigenlogik) emerged in Sillyon, which represents an example of a multi-layered city that had been inhabited continuously from the early Iron Age until the Ottoman Period. This urban logic has a visual value that can be experienced even under the most unfavourable conditions and shows the high limits and strong tendency of the city. The main dynamic of this diachronic urban development is the morphological structure of the terrain, but, on the other hand, the urban planners of Sillyon created a successful and pragmatic urbanistic culture suitable for the city’s difficult topography, according to the political and social structure of each period. In this paper, the urban logic (eigenlogik) of Sillyon is analysed from a diachronic perspective through the process of urbanisation and the city-specific practices and dynamics are shown. In addition, the buildings in Sillyon’s city centre (core) will be analysed holistically from the perspective of settlement archaeology and a complete view of the urban fabric (panoptikon) will be created. Furthermore, the territory of Sillyon is analysed in terms of the territory owned or dominated, and the relational situation between the main city and its surroundings are discussed here.

Keywords

• Pamphylia
• Sillyon
• Urban Development
• Urban Logic
• Ancient Buildings.

References

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