[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Iasos is an important site, not only because of its settlement history but also because of its publication history (comprising books, edited volumes, articles, as well as a bulletin[1]) all of which shed light on the city’s trajectory from the Bronze Ages to the Byzantine period. Located on a small peninsula with a narrow isthmus (in antiquity an offshore islet) in the Gulf of Güllük (in ancient times the Gulf of Iasos), the settlement has been excavated by the Italian School of Archaeology intermittently since the 1920s and the University of Cagliari, while its territory has been explored more recently. The edited volume draws on archival research of excavations conducted primarily in the second half of the 20th century, and thus supplements, and in some cases also revisits, earlier publications.
Iasos was a mixed Greek-Carian city, which claimed its origins from Argos, but the history of which extends much deeper and shows continuity from the Bronze Ages. In the Classical period, it was a member of the Delian league and then controlled by the Carian satrap Mausolus. The focus of this edited volume is on the Archaic period, which presents a particular watershed in the city’s history, with more significant extant architecture on the peninsula and increased exploitation of its surroundings. We know that Iasos achieved the status of a polis in the Classical period,[2] but its Archaic history and path to community formation is still murky. This volume provides new and revised information that adds to this topic. As outlined in a brief introduction by the editors Marina Albertocchi and Fede Berti, its goal is to describe some of the changes experienced during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE and to outline Iasos’ manifold regional and supra-regional connections both west and east. Iasos ultimately serves as a point of comparison for other central coastal settlements in the region across the Ionian-Carian border, from the ancient Milesian (modern Didim) to the Halicarnassian (modern Bodrum) peninsulas, as well as beyond across the Eastern Mediterranean. An update like this is welcome also for the reason that coastal Caria, together with western river valleys, has been a locus of accelerated research that helps situate later forceful developments instigated by the Hekatomnids.[3]
The eleven chapters in this volume circle around the themes of connectivity and the rise of the polis of Iasos by considering constituent parts of its civic and religious spaces. However, this focus, as Nicolò Masturzo discusses in the first chapter, is anachronistic and does not necessarily do justice to the particularities of the local development or the ways in which community formation was enacted. Chapters focused on a spectrum of material classes manage to heed this warning and highlight locally specific forms of cultural, artistic, and social entanglements at Iasos in the Archaic period.
In the opening chapter, Masturzo outlines the radical transformation of the agora during its pre-Classical history and suggests that pervasive changes to the structure of the community were exhibited in a new structuration of space and the phenomenon of urbanization. Masturzo provides a careful overview of the early structures that framed the open space—walls, water channels and fountains, altars—as well as roads that led to it. This chapter productively discusses earlier work at the site, making it a valuable contribution. This area had previously been used as the Middle to Sub-Geometric burial ground, which was oriented along a slightly different axis (rotated 12 degrees clockwise) than the extant Roman agora in order to align with a major route into the settlement located just east of this area. At some point in the sixth century BCE, it was turned into an open space framed by a number of structures as reconstructed based on isolated walls of monuments and architectural fragments, with some retaining the previously established orientation.
The chapters that follow can be divided into a number of thematic clusters, not necessarily in order of appearance.
Several contributions give attention to reconstructing sacred topography and activity. Romina Carboni contextualizes four architectural terracottas and the contents of deposits from the borders of the sanctuary dedicated to Zeus Megistos, also located on the isthmus in the vicinity of the agora. She suggests that they point to a presence of architecturally elaborate buildings, naiskoi and the like, with decoration that incorporated trends seen in Archaic period regional centers in western Anatolia. The focus on the isthmus and the agora is counterbalanced by the presentation of work in the southern promontory of the peninsula, as far as possible from the civic center of the settlement to the north. Simonetta Angiolillo discusses the presence and significance of Archaic period terracotta horsemen figurines, often (but not always) considered as attesting links with Cyprus. Marina Albertocchi and Carolina Ascari Raccagni consider a small sanctuary situated on a terrace overlooking the sea that was actively in use from the middle of the sixth century BCE and significantly architecturally elaborated in the late fifth century BCE. This contribution illuminates the earliest episode of cultic activity centered on an eschara, an enclosed altar, in the center of the terrace. The sacred rites here also took advantage of rocky outcroppings as niches for small terracotta dedications of figurines, protomes, lamps, and similar. Taking a broader comparative perspective drawing on Anatolian and Aegean examples, the authors conclude that rather than serving as a sanctuary dedicated to Demeter, this space might have been sacred to a different female divinity. Better candidates are those of mistress of animals (whether Kybele/Artemis or Kore/Persephone) celebrated in liminal spaces of settlements.
Pottery features in three contributions. Francesco Muscolino offers a study of fragments of Wild Goat style vessels. His central example, an oinochoe, comes from the Archaic levels east of the bouleuterion. He argues that it can be associated with sacred rather than funerary space, which leads him to suggest that the area of the agora might have had public—or at least sacred—function already in the mid to late seventh century BCE, in contrast to Masturzo’s assertion of a sixth century BCE date based on his restudy of excavated standing architecture. This proposition, however, must be regarded as tenuous. Fragments of the Wild Goat style are limited and only a few can be matched to secure stratigraphic findspots, as author admits.
Maurizio Landolfi presents an Attic Black Figured crater from the Sanctuary of Zeus Megistos. Some readers might recognize it as the cover image for the Karia Arkhaia volume (see fn 3), as it bears one of the earliest Carian inscriptions mentioning the Anatolian storm god Tarhunt (trqud in Carian (inscription C.Ia 3: see also Adiego this volume). Landolfi’s close reading of the iconography leads to a suggestion that the Dionysiac theme of the vessel might be a proper complement to the inscription, as Tarhunt is occasionally known to be associated with wine. His discussion of a niche Athenian artistic production of Perserie (referring to the adoption and adaptation of Persian style of material culture) is couched in explicitly Iasian terms. He outlines how local elite agency might have expressed its place in this complex period of socio-political environment.
Carmelo Colelli and Ignasi-X. Adiego present a Late Geometric/Subgeometric skyphos fragment with a single alphabetic character, previously dated to the second half of the seventh century BCE. The authors argue for an early seventh century BCE date based on parallels in western Anatolia and the Greek mainland. Ignasi-X. Adiego then presents an authoritative update on Carian inscriptions from Iasos from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE including a supplementary commentary on the krater featured in Landolfi’s chapter (inscription C.Ia 3).
Statuary represents another thematic cluster. Landolfi discusses international links at Iasos through the study of sculptural decoration from the sanctuary of Zeus Megistos. He demonstrates that while Iasos was open to artistic exchange east and west, its closest regional inspirations were shared with central and southern Ionia and coastal Caria. Yet it is his last example of a draped kouros statuette with Ionian and Cypriot characteristics but an Achaemenid-style garb that allows him to carefully explore the realities of existence on the fringes of the Persian empire.
The final set of chapters continue with the focus on portable objects, statuary and terracotta, including new comments on a previously published fragment of a basalt statue of Osiris by Emanuele M. Ciampini. While the involvement of Caria with Egypt is well documented, not least through the site of Naukratis and the presence of a significant corpus of early Carian inscriptions in Egypt, this artifact is a singular find at Iasos. It is difficult, however, to read it as foreshadowing the spread of popularity of the cult centuries later in the Roman period, as the author suggests. Perhaps it has more to do with the military involvement of the Carians in Egypt, bing transported here as a token of that experience.
Olivier Mariaud examines Archaic terracottas from coastal Caria that are now housed in the Archaeological Museum in Bodrum. Terracotta figurines, in general, show artistic connections between Caria, the rest of western Anatolia, the Aegean and Greece, as well as the broader Eastern Mediterranean. Cypriot and Cretan styles can be easily detected, but a lack of excavated moulds and analytical studies of the clays precludes the author from identifying exact mode of production and distribution. This contribution is followed by a brief appendix discussing a sixth century BCE figurine from the Aphrodite group produced in southern Ionia.
Iasos provides a wealth of information for those interested in the archaeology of southwestern Anatolia, and this volume adds data to this cause. A more substantive introduction or conclusion to the volume, however, would be welcome. This would allow the reader to better understand how the research agenda will develop in the future.
I conclude with a quick note on the presentation of this volume. Most of the contributions are in Italian, which is clear and easy to read, in addition to one English (Adiego) and one French contribution (Mariaud). All chapters provide Italian and English abstracts of varying lengths. Black and white photographs are clear, but not all figures are clearly labeled in all the chapters (Adiego) or provided (Mariaud’s appendix would benefit from a photo of the figurine discussed), but these are minor points that do not significantly detract from the usefulness of this volume.
Authors and titles
Presentazione (Marina Albertocchi and Fede Berti)
- L’agora arcaica di Iasos. Considerazioni sulla nascita della polis (Nicolò Masturzo)
- Su alcune terrecotte architettoniche di Iasos (Romina Carboni)
- Frammenti di ceramica del Wild Goat Style da Iasos (Francesco Muscolino)
- Note su un frammento di skyphos dalla Fontana arcaica 1 dell’agora di Iasos (Carmelo Colelli and Ignasi-X. Adiego)
- Iasos tra Atene e la Persia: nuove osservazioni sul cratere a colonnette attico a figure nere con iscrizione caria C.Ia 3 (Maurizio Landolfi)
- Carian epigraphy from Iasos (Ignasio-X. Adiego)
- I kouroi dal santuario di Zeus Megistos di Iasos (Maurizio Landolfi)
- Cavalieri arcaici a Iasos (Simonetta Angiolillo)
- La fase arcaica di frequentazione del santuario sulla punta meridionale di Iasos (Marina Albertocchi and Carolina Ascari Raccagni)
- Frammento di statua di Osiride da Iasos: una nota su Caria ed Egitto (Emanuele M. Ciampini)
- Terres cuites archaïques de Carie. Un aperçu, con Appendice: Personnages ventrus dans les mibiliers funéraires et votifs égéens et méditerranéens (Olivier Mariaud)
Notes
[1] The open access Bollettino dell’Associazione Iasos di Caria.
[2] Flensted-Jensen, Pernille. 2004. “Karia.” In An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, edited by M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, 1108-1137. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3] E.g., Henry, O., and K. Konuk, eds. 2019. Karia Arkhaia: la Carie, des origines à la période pré-hékatomnide. 4. Rencontres d’archéologie de l’IFÉA , Istanbul 14-16 novembre 2013. Istanbul: Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes Georges Dumézil.