Pottery and Transformation in Roman and Byzantine Limyra

When we travel to other regions and countries, we encounter various worlds: the landscape might change, people might speak and dress differently, have different kinds of food, and the crockery could vary as well. In short, even if we live in one world, each place offers us something unique. In the past, this was not any different, which is of course what we as archaeologists do: by excavating and studying what people have left behind we want to understand where and how they lived, worked, thought, and how they and the societies they lived in changed through the course of history. Take, for example, the ancient city of Limyra in the region of Lycia, in todays southern Turkey. In the last few years, a team of archaeologists under the direction of the ÖAI/ÖAW has excavated many building remains such as walls and floors, as well as what we call material culture: numerous artefacts such as coins, roof tiles, and pottery sherds. In the Roman world, pottery was made in many different places, and was used for everything: people used cups for drinking, pans for cooking, and remember, there was no electricity oil lamps for lighting their houses. These functions did not change people always needed to eat, and light their houses but the shapes and decoration of pottery vessels, and where they came from, was different from region to region. Shapes and decoration also changed frequently, and because of many reasons. In fact, this still happens: just compare your cups and plates with those of your grandparents. Or imagine: 500 years ago, there was no coffee in Europe, so there were also no coffee cups. So, the pottery that people used informs us about local traditions and their society. To come back to Limyra, in the project Pottery and Transformation in Roman and Byzantine Limyra (FWF-Lise Meitner Program M 3170-G) a series of pottery groups that date from the third to the eighth century AD uncovered by the recent excavations will be studied. The first main idea is to research these groups from the perspective of change, reflecting the transformation of Limyra and the wider world it was part of: much of the pottery from, for example, the third century looks very different and came from different places than that from the sixth or the eighth. Because changes did not happen by accident (think of the tea cups and coffee pots), when did the pottery change in shape, decoration, or where it came from, and can we understand why? Did things change locally, for example a potter who tried something new, or in the wider Roman world that also had an effect on Limyra? The second main idea is to show that despite these changes much of Limyras pottery was unique, and reflected the citys local traditions. The study of thousands of such pottery sherds will help us breathe life back into the people and the city of Limyra.

Pottery fragments are found in the millions each year at ancient sites, and because of their durability, recognisability and other aspects, are an extremely valuable source of information on the ways people in the past lived, cooked, ate, believed, traded, built. In other words, pottery was used in basically any sphere of daily life. The FWF-funded project "Pottery and Transformation in Roman and Byzantine Limyra" lasted from December 2021 until November 2023, and focused on the ancient city of Limyra, located in southeast Lycia (southern Asia Minor). More specifically, in this project I wished to reconstruct ceramic patterns from the third until the seventh/eighth century AD using pottery excavated during older but especially recent excavations in Limyra. Creating such a basic framework is crucial, as for most ancient sites we actually know very little about long-term ceramic patterns. While the basic functions of pottery did not change in Limyra in the course of these five-six centuries, many other things did, and I specifically wanted to understand what within these patterns changed, when it did, and why so! These questions were focused on changes and continuities in typology (what shape did pots have, and when/why did new shapes emerge?), provenance (where were they made?), and proportion (how much came from where, and when, and carried what?). Being a goal in itself, this framework, however, also makes it possible to look into how the city of Limyra functioned and changed during the Roman and Byzantine periods. Much of the pottery that was found was manufactured in Lycia, while tablewares (for serving, eating and drinking) and especially amphorae (transport/storage vessels) were imported from across the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. For example, now recognised are amphorae from Spain and Portugal which carried fish sauces, an important commodity and flavourer in Antiquity. In terms of reconstructing the urban history of Limyra, for example, in the third century AD, there are clues for a major reorganisation in the Western City, possibly because of widespread unrest in parts of the Roman Empire. Somewhat later, in the late third or early fourth century AD, pottery from a large fill bears traces of a substantial fire which must have raged nearby, damaging and breaking the pottery beyond use, so people had to throw it away. Perhaps the most profound change happened in the seventh century AD, when the Western City had lost all of its 'classical' glory and pottery began to be imported from new sources. By this time, it seems, Limyra was no longer located in the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire, but became geographically marginalised: centuries-old ceramic patterns began to break up and a new historical reality was dawning.