Change and Decay

One of the key narratives for late antique studies is to present a story of Decline and Fall, the traditional Gibbonian narrative, which one either endorses or rails against. One of its most popular arguments concerns changes in building style – the reuse of older materials. However, we have been able to show that even in the 6th c. this can be highly sophisticated, with adaptions made to make blocks fit closely and a high degree of selection and disguise practiced. The worst use of old blocks seems in fact to come just after earthquakes, when such protocols are disregarded, in a ‘free for all’, as people try to clear up broken materials and get on with their lives – normal protocols are disregarded. One is often surprised to discover that such phases of apparent decline are then followed by rather better examples of the spolia art, as conditions of building returned to what they were before any catastrophe intervened, to break architraves, smash statue bases, or cause walls to fall down.

Nonetheless, our survey area of the Lower Agora and Colonnaded Street does exhibit some signs of what can only be termed ‘decay’, from the last years of the 6th or early decades of the 7th c. There are, above all, several signs of a programme of monumental renewal that stalled. After the earthquake of ca. 500, there had been an injection of cash, with the street paving, stairs, and portico renewed. On the agora itself, a cleanup had taken place, a church had been constructed, the west portico and its back wall restored, the east portico part restored and part converted into a multi-room restaurant. In a secondary phase, a public building was being established in the west portico, perhaps towards the middle of the 6th c., if we leave the first half as the period of the initial rebuilding. Yet, despite having large stone blocks laid between intercolumnations and a new porch, the building was not completed. Instead, the rest of the portico was turned into cellular shops, using brick and tufa. The main route out of the agora never saw its paving laid or had it was removed, whereas the Severan nymphaeum seems to have been abandoned, as a new drain was established from its base. This was clearly done at a very late stage, after a lot of hesitation, a long channel being cut in front of the portico, within the cracked agora paving.

On the Colonnaded Street, the final repaving section is of strips to allow the insertion of new waterpipes, where slabs are replaced in tile and heterogenous spolia, without thought as to aesthetics.  There are more obvious signs of ruin around the Lower Agora. Sometime in the late 6th to 7th c., the church on the agora was stripped of its opus sectile floor and graves were cut into the robbed mortar. Its walls stood for longer, until they were demolished to provide a passage for a water channel of 7th c. date, shortly after the 640s, based on the last coins. The shops on the agora were abandoned around the same time and a level dump placed over the agora to provide a gradient for the channel. Now, a set of guardrooms (from which militaria were recovered) stood by the north entrance to the square, full of complete architectural blocks that showed the ruin of both the nymphaeum and the 6th c portico of the Colonnaded Street, including a distinctive pentagonal block used to support arcading there. The bottom of the Colonnaded Street was also closed by a new fortification wall, tied to the water channel, which included further complete elements (e.g. a pedestal) that seem to have come from the now ruined porticoes of the Colonnaded Street.

So, we do have a late 6th to 7th c. sequence of some interest to a ‘Gibbonian’ view of the end of the ancient city. But we now have investment in new shops, in the time of Maurice, on the Colonnaded Street, coming after 592, as our work has revealed this year. Thus, it is probably sensible to push this ‘decay’ sequence into the 7th c. Even so, it is not all ruin, rather a history of replanning, new priorities, perhaps of poverty, and then of major works, that set up a new organisation of the site, going into the Middle Ages. This is a ‘transitional period’ well worth studying, where there was order and there were large-scale initiatives, as well as obvious challenges and some breakdown of the classical city as an architectural reality. It is probably a story seen in other parts of the late antique world, where cities survived the 7th c., notably in Italy, but where subsequent building removed sequences of repair, recovery, and partial decay. It gives us a window on urban order in which monuments fell but property boundaries survived to some degree, as did planned water supplies, and collective efforts over fortification. But here in Asia Minor, the later failure of some 7th c. cities gives us a window on what it was like, in other places, to live through this period.

26.1 Water pipe, 7th c. running across our ‘church’, south side of Lower Agora.

26.2 Monumental building in west portico. Not the large blocks which close the portico and the pedestals for a porch on the agora paving, in front of a doorway. This building is only present at the south end of the portico, it not being completed in the north end where the closure of the portico was completed with rough cellular shops.

26.3 ‘Guardrooms’, N end of Lower Agora, 7th c.. Composed of mixed poorly sorted reused material including some architectural elements, such as  pentagonal block taken from the western portico of the colonnaded street.