--KAPAK ARAÞTIRMA kopya - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

technique shown in this piece is good, the marble has been properly cleaned and smoothed
so as to give a luminous quality to the carving.
d) Pilaster of a Chancel Barrier (in the 1924 depot 16)
The marble pilaster seems to be complete. Its catalogue number is 31 and its dimensions
are the following: high 80 cm., width 18 cm., thickness 23 cm. (Fig. 6). Two
sides are decorated, and the ornamentation on either side plays with floral motifs encompassed
by interlacing circles. On one side, two highly stylised flowers border on
both sides the central circle with a rosette within, and a flat moulding limits the outer
border of the decoration. The technical quality of the piece does not touch high levels,
but from its dimensions we may deduce an average height (ca. 80 cm.) of the low parapet
made of slabs and piers, right at the bottom of the barrier.
It has often been mentioned that there was the presence of a (or some) Middle
Byzantine church (churches) in Antioch. The evidence, briefly produced in these pages,
requires the presence of such building(s). From the several pieces gathered outside
the museum (not mentioned in this report), as well as from those kept in the depot,
the variety of the fragments, their dimension and qualities certainly require a Medieval
continuity of the Church in Antioch. In addition, we should reasonably imagine
some marble officina at work during this time. C. Barsanti has, and with a certain degree
of validity, pinpointed the presence of such officina in Phrygia, and one ought to visualise
another one here. On a purely hypothetical reading, one might imagine a Medieval
phase applied to the church under the plateia: the plan of what has been left of
the building may give credibility to this hypothesis. It is, in any case, true that only an
excavation of the building can give foundation to this possibility.
Small fragments of slabs (6 th century) are scarcely discernible within the huge
and dusty piles of archaeological material kept in the underground room of the museum,
called in this campaign "the 1924 depot". By now it is quite evident that not all of
the material of this room can be ascribed to the American digging and to make things
worse, we are not always told whence the later acquisitions have come. From the position
within one of the piles, a beautiful marble urn (Fig. 7) might belong to the primitive
excavation; we do not know, however, from which part of the city it came. On the
same site, a marble thin piece (48 cm. long and 11 cm. high; Fig. 8) carries a fragment
of a Christian funerary inscription, possibly of the 5 th century. It reads: …] TA ONOMA-
TA YDEN †. Bits and pieces of other Late Roman (capitals, mainly) and Byzantine furniture
can be seen in the depot, unfortunately untouchable this year as they were in
such a perilous state of abandon and instability. We hope, in the near future, to do justice
to these as well.
16 Although we found the piece in the depot, its entry into the museum is classified as follows: "Kaş Camii Mah. avlusunda"
and it was purchased by the museum in 1953.
15