THE ECONOMY OF CILICIA IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Abstract

At Domuztepe in eastern Cilicia, about 12 km north of Castabala and 55 km inland, there is a late Roman country house. With no inscriptions recovered from the site, we know little about the owners. Although the house lay on the river Pyramus, it lay above the point where the river was navigable. Nonetheless, the house owners were able to buy pottery imported from other parts of the Mediterranean world. From western Anatolia they received Phocaean red slip tableware and LR 3 amphorae, while from North Africa they received more red slipped tableware.1 The imported ceramics thus show links between Cilicia (here broadly defined as the area between the river Melas in the west and the Amanus mountains in the east) and the Mediterranean economy as a whole during the fourth to seventh centuries AD. Domuztepe was not simply a residential site, but was also involved in the production of olive oil. It had a large oil press with a tank that seems too big for domestic needs (1.85 m in diameter, capacity 5000 litres). Domuztepe can be used not just to show links, but to outline a much more complex understanding of the way in which Cilicia was integrated into the Mediterranean economy.

THE ECONOMY OF CILICIA IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Abstract

References

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