The geographies of ancient ephesus and the Artemision in Anatolia

Abstract

This study is a sedimentologic and geomorphologic analysis of ancient geographies of the floodplains and delta of the Küçük Menderes (ancient Cayster River) around the city of Ephesus and the Artemision in Aegean coastal Anatolia. The authors emphasize the interrelationship of archaeological dating and structure, and historical comment in interdisciplinary analysis of ancient geographies and their paleoenvironments. In some cases, the historical literature is specific and factual. In other cases, legend from prehistory may provide important clues to the reconstruction of ancient environments as related to archaeological and historical settings. Ephesus and the closely related Artemision, or Temple of Diana of the Ephesians, offer a chance to link the disciplines of geology, physical geography, archaeology, history, and epigraphy in a composite of paleoenvironmental/paleogeographical interpretations of geomorphology over the past three millennia. Holocene sea-level rise and marine transgression provide the raised paralic settings of the harbors of Ephesus and the Artemision. The settings of the harbors were altered by continuing progradation of the ancient Cayster River delta-floodplain over the past three millennia. This research shows how interdisciplinary research greatly enhances our understanding of the ancient geographies of Ephesus and the Artemision.

Demise of a harbor: a geochemical chronicle from Ephesus

“…Geoarcheological research has been carried out at the Ephesus site and in the delta of the Cayster river since the 1990s (Brückner, 1997(Brückner, , 2005Kraft et al, 1999Kraft et al, , 2000Kraft et al, , 2001Kraft et al, , 2011Stock et al, 2013Stock et al, , 2014. Besides reconstruction of the successive paleo-environments and the coastline as it has existed since 6000e5000 BC (Fig.…”

“…Such a component attests to a contribution from spring waters contaminated by marine intrusions into the karst. As for other water inputs, Kraft et al (2007) pointed out that all the city sewage was diverted into the Great Harbor.…”

“…The harbor canal, whose construction may have started as early as during the first century BC when the shoreline swept past the harbor, was narrow at the harbor entrance (Kraft et al, 2007). Assuming a crosssection at the narrowest point of~50 m 2 would imply that aqueduct-delivered water was leaving the canal at a rate of 145 m per hour, probably fast enough to limit water ingress from the sea under fair weather conditions.…”

“…Its importance remained prominent during Hellenistic and Roman times and during the entire history of the Byzantine Empire, and only declined as a result of the Turkish conquest. Because sediments gradually filled in the inlet of the Cayster River (Küçük Menderes), the harbor of Ephesus repeatedly moved down river over the centuries (Kraft et al, 2000(Kraft et al, , 2011.…”

The drowning of ancient Limyra (southwestern Turkey) by rising groundwater during Late Antiquity to Byzantine times

“…Akyüz and Altunel, 2001;Karabacak, 2011;Karabacak et al, 2013;Öz-daş and Kızıldağ, 2013;Passchier et al, 2013). Geomorphological studies additionally constrained the interaction of humans and landscape (Kraft et al, 2007(Kraft et al, , 2011Brückner et al, 2013;Stock et al, 2013Stock et al, , 2014Seeliger et al, 2014;Delile et al, 2015). Geoarchaeological work therefore contributes to a better understanding of ancient life in southwestern Asia Minor.…”