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.
Birincil Dil | İngilizce |
---|---|
Bölüm | Araştırma Makalesi |
Yazarlar | |
Yayımlanma Tarihi | 1 Kasım 2003 |
Yayımlandığı Sayı | Yıl 2003 Sayı: 8 |