Despite the fact that extensive studies about Hellenistic pottery of Asia Minor lacked until the 1960s, some systematic excavations on the Western and Southern coast of Asia Minor, such as Pergamon, Cnidus, Tarsus and Antiocheia, provided some general knowledge about this pottery. Many details as regards local workshops and their production, distribution, typological evolution, trade factor and chronological development of Anatolian Hellenistic pottery, however, still remain unknown.

In 1987 an important pottery workshop located in Pisidia, Southern Turkey, was discovered by a Belgian archaeological expedition. This workshop, based in ancient Sagalassos, capital of Roman Pisidia, was a flourishing regional center in the Roman period and played a critical role in the Eastern Mediterranean pottery trade. Sagalassos pottery, commonly called "Sagalassos red slip ware", has been uncovered, in about thirty other sites of Eastern Mediterranean, as well as on a small Pisidian city, Seleuceia Sidera, which is situated approximately 45 km north of Sagalassos. Almost all the recognized red slip table ware found at Seleuceia Sidera was produced in Sagalassos. It occurs in large quantities and predominates in all of the Roman and Late Roman periods.

Seleuceia Sidera was founded by Antiochus the first of Seleucides, in the third century B.C., as a colony for preserving the northern frontier of Pisidia and the famous "Syria-Asia Minor Road". During the Early Roman period, the name of Seleuceia Sidera was changed to "Claudioseleuceia". The purpose of this short report is to examine and make a general and final review of Hellenistic ceramics from this site. The pottery, which will be presented in this report, was excavated by a Turkish Archaeological Expedition from Ankara University during one solely campaign in the year 1993.

Our project hoped to place the existing Hellenistic material in its context, sadly lost through the circumstances of its original acquisition. Although clear evidence for the Hellenistic phase of the city still prove elusive and this period is almost completely lacking in excavations areals, some Hellenistic sherds were retrieved as part of surface collections. The excavation itself produced very few Hellenistic sherds which may confirm the historical presence of Hellenistic activity on the site. Four sherds were of the type of local imitation of West Slope ware and were mainly ornamented with ivy leaves. This ware which has so far received little attention from the students of Hellenistic period appears on some other sites throughout the inner parts of Western Asia Minor (in Lycaonia, Pisidia and Northern Lycia). We cannot say, however, whether this is also true of the West Slope ware group. Two of them belong to the skyphos shape. Apart from these local imitations of West Slope ware one unstratified unguentarium which can be dated to Hellenistic period was recovered.

The chronological basis for Hellenistic pottery of Eastern Mediterranean mostly derives from historically dated deposits. In Pisidia there is no such a dated deposit of Hellenistic pottery contain yet. Recent searches on ancient Pisidia, such as surveys of M. Ozdogan and S. Mitchell, excavations and surveys at Sagalassos, Oinoanda, Antiocheia, Hacimusalar and other Pisidian-Northern Lycian sites provide us mostly with unstratified examples which can be identified as the product of a local country or rural style. The distinctive clay and slip features point to a local source which can be easily identified among the later Sagalassos red slip ware found at later phases of the same Pisidian sites. It remains unclear to what degree the Sagalassos workshop might have been involved in the production of this fabric during the Hellenistic period. All in these sherds, floral and geometrical ornamentations, are frequent and were used freely. The decoration is often less carefully, and occasionally, less tastefully, executed than what we know of similar wares from Pergamon and Cnidus, which, although not yet fully published, provide the most extensive repertory of fabric, shape and motif comperanda for the Anatolian Hellenistic pottery.

Back to Cover