{"title":"The episcopal palace of Parnassos in Cappadocia and its Early Byzantine floor mosaics","authors":"M. Arslan, P. Niewöhner, Y. Yeğin","doi":"10.1017/S0066154623000078","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Roman mansio or way station and Byzantine bishopric of Parnassos in Cappadocia is chiefly known through inscriptions and bishops’ lists and identified with the small Turkish village of Parlasan/Değirmenyolu. It came as a surprise when a salvage excavation unearthed a large building with sumptuous floor mosaics beyond the outskirts of the village. Previous excavation reports misrepresented the building as a basilica church, when it was in fact an apsed hall and may be identified as the reception unit of an elite residence, as this article shows. A large central room had an elevated apse where the landlord would have sat. An animal mosaic in front of the apse is comparable to similar compositions in fourth-to-sixth-century urban palaces but avoids any reference to pagan mythology and employs stylistic features that are otherwise known from church floors. A mosaic inscription identifies the reception unit as belonging to the bishop and thus as part of the episcopal palace. This discovery is augmented by the find of a Late Roman sarcophagus and three Early Christian gravestones. Later, after the original palace was mostly destroyed, the building complex underwent a second, utilitarian phase that appears to date from the Invasion Period, when the Arabs raided central Anatolia from the seventh to ninth centuries.","PeriodicalId":45130,"journal":{"name":"Anatolian Studies","volume":"73 1","pages":"171 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anatolian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066154623000078","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHAEOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The Roman mansio or way station and Byzantine bishopric of Parnassos in Cappadocia is chiefly known through inscriptions and bishops’ lists and identified with the small Turkish village of Parlasan/Değirmenyolu. It came as a surprise when a salvage excavation unearthed a large building with sumptuous floor mosaics beyond the outskirts of the village. Previous excavation reports misrepresented the building as a basilica church, when it was in fact an apsed hall and may be identified as the reception unit of an elite residence, as this article shows. A large central room had an elevated apse where the landlord would have sat. An animal mosaic in front of the apse is comparable to similar compositions in fourth-to-sixth-century urban palaces but avoids any reference to pagan mythology and employs stylistic features that are otherwise known from church floors. A mosaic inscription identifies the reception unit as belonging to the bishop and thus as part of the episcopal palace. This discovery is augmented by the find of a Late Roman sarcophagus and three Early Christian gravestones. Later, after the original palace was mostly destroyed, the building complex underwent a second, utilitarian phase that appears to date from the Invasion Period, when the Arabs raided central Anatolia from the seventh to ninth centuries.
期刊介绍:
Anatolian Studies contains articles focused on Turkey and the Black Sea littoral in all academic disciplines within the arts, humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences as related to human occupation and history. Articles are in English and are accessible to a wide academic readership. Anatolian Studies is a refereed journal.