View from the Office

It is common to associate superlatives with Sagalassos: a habit that comes from its situation high in the western Taurus, as much as from the exceptional preservation that comes with its splendid isolation.

The building stone here itself is mainly grey limestone, rather than the marble of Attica, or varied stones of wealthy Ephesus. The early to middle imperial architecture is striking, especially thanks campaigns of anastylosis, although less-appealing late antique building, now removed in places, is more varied in its materials, even if the more extreme examples tend to be from the very end of the period, or originally hidden behind revetment or plaster. Finer examples of late antique architecture are also likely to find themselves vegetated, out of bounds, or covered for protection, as elsewhere in Turkey, with the accent in site narratives being on presenting the classical. This makes for some mixed aesthetics, with wonder and awe in front of working ancient nymphaea with a tone of sadness associated with late antique modifications, as if the result of militant foreign religious impositions, rather than curation and improvement of the classical heritage.

However, all round the site there are other atmospheres, especially at this time of year. The great industry of the anastylosis team, with its cranes and sculptors, can by hypnotic from its shouts and machine noises, overshadowing the brave efforts of hand-digger and lone researchers working under the heavy sun. Away from the main excavations, in the city centre, the presence of nature is quickly felt. Whether, through the varied smells of herb or the stab of thorny bushes, or the occasional tortus, it does not take much to remove one from the business of the archaeological park and leave one amongst bushes and limestone cliffs, tracing the shapes of arcosolia, or clambering over heaps of fallen columns. In these moments, when the pounding of one’s heart is the only noise louder than the wind, it is the mountain that becomes the most memorable part of a visit, as it presents a mighty obstacle to free exploration, imposing the setting and organisation of the site on interlopers in a direct corporeal manner. This impression is only increased as the day goes on.

The morning view gives us the mountain as a vantage point, as one surveys the plain, the hill of Alexander, and the steady advance of concrete buildings up the wooded valley. The late afternoon, when we finally raise our gaze above the blinding slabs, gives us a sub-red wall of high limestone cliffs, as we descend the mountain, as the air cools rapidly into the easy evening temperatures of Ağlasun. The classical monuments can still be picked out, but somehow seem to fade back into the mountain, as if the 30 years of work by KULeuven and others was but an interlude in the history of the site, so much of which remains unexcavated and will always remain so.