Iasos

Iasos

Türkiye · Muğla

Ancient cityExcavation ongoing
Approximate period3,000 BCE — 1,600 CEBronze Age, Greek, Roman and Byzantine See on the map ↓

In brief

Iasos, in the Kıyıkışlacık neighborhood of Milas, is a coastal city with a history extending back to the Bronze Age. Excavations have revealed the city council house and sanctuaries, as well as early finds demonstrating connections with the Aegean world.

What was found?

  • 1Bouleuterion

    The city council's meeting building; its seating rows and multicoloured marble pavement have been preserved. It makes visible the architectural arrangement of council life.

  • 2Bronze Age walls

    Wall remains of the settlement dating to the 2nd millennium BC. They show that construction at İasos began long before the Greek and Roman periods.

  • 3Sanctuary of Artemis Astias

    The sacred precinct south of the agora. Inscriptions concerning Roman Imperial Period repairs and additions enable the identification of the area as dedicated to Artemis Astias.

  • 4Monolithic Doric entablature block

    It combines the architrave, triglyph–metope frieze, and upper cornice elements in a single piece of white marble. Its reuse in a Late Roman/Early Byzantine wall documents the incorporation of older architectural elements into later buildings.

What does it point to?

The remains of İasos show the accumulation of buildings and building materials from different periods in the same place. The council building and sanctuary indicate that administrative and religious life existed side by side in the city centre.

What did it teach us?

  1. The Bronze Age walls provided tangible evidence of the city's early settlement phase.
  2. The visible arrangement of the bouleuterion was determined to belong to a phase after its initial construction.
  3. The monolithic marble block provided direct evidence of stoneworking in Doric architecture and of later reuse.

Images

Iasos Bouleuterion 5489
Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Sanctuary of Artemis Astias in Iasos AvL
AlexanderVanLoon · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Iasos House of the Mosaics wall paintings 02
Mark Landon · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Latest news / selected archive

In 2023, a single-piece superstructure block in the Doric order was found during excavations in the temenos of the Sanctuary of Artemis Astias.

Record

Culture
Carian and Aegean cultural spheres; Roman and Byzantine
First modern dig
1960
Team / historical
Asuman Baldıran / Selçuk University
Coordinates
37.2778°, 27.5864°

Sources

  1. mugla.ktb.gov.tr
  2. iasoskazisi.selcuk.edu.tr
  3. jaha.org.ro
  4. en.wikipedia.org

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12.000

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