2θ6

Philipp Niewöhner

Minor and two on the central Anatolian high plateau. Like Byzantine Constantino-
ple,127 the provincial sites are also known primarily through early Byzantine buildings
that dominated the town- and cityscapes, with few, if any, traces of ancient monu-
ments. The Byzantine buildings were uncompromisingly modern, without any obvious
concessions to antiquarianism, and their architectural sculptures reflected the latest
Constantinopolitan fashion rather than any ancient tradition. On the south coast,
in Andriake, Olympos, and Corycus, some buildings were equipped with imported
Proconnesian marble carvings and others with local limestone imitations.128 Amorium
employed marble from the leading central Anatolian quarry and workshop at nearby
Docimium,129 and at Binbirkilise local basalt was used to roughly imitate the more
sophisticated marble carvings of the period.130 Ancient Antioch appears to have been
destroyed by a series of disasters in the earlier sixth century -earthquakes, the Persian
conquest, and the plague, after which the city seems to have been reconfigured and
rebuilt on Byzantine terms.131
Andriake did not have city status, but its Byzantine buildings and townscape are
not unlike many cities in the region, and it is not clear whether the site of Binbirkilise
(Turkish: Thousand and One Churches) comprised the city of Barata or whether it
should be conceptualised in different terms. Byzantine urbanism was often undistin-
guished, reflecting the diminished value of the urban status on the one hand and rural
prosperity on the other.132 In this late context the ancient monuments of Miletus and
other similarly old and well-preserved cities would have stood out even more than in
antiquity and may thus have inspired antiquarianism as a claim to the now waning
status and privileges of former times.133
Lack of Byzantine architecture in western Asia Minor
In addition, such antiquarianism may also explain why western Asia Minor did not
develop a Byzantine architectural style of its own. Other regions like the provinces of
Lycia and Cilicia on the south coast of Asia Minor or those of Phrygia, Galatia, and
Lycaonia on the central Anatolian high plateau each produced a distinct regional style
of church building and architectural carving. Characteristic provincial features include
distinctive types of limestone capitals in Lycia and Cilicia,134 annexed chapels as well

127 See above, notes 3 and 4.

128 For Corycus, see also Mietke (2006), pp. 384-386.

129 For examples see Harrison (1988), p. 182 pl. 14 b; Lightfoot (1994), p. 120 pl. 20; Niewöhner (2007),
pp. 126-127 n. 708.

130 See also Mert/Niewöhner (2010).

131 Brands (2016), pp. 37-58.

132 Niewöhner (2017a).

133 Cf. Behrwald (2009) for a comparable scenario at late antique Rome.

134 Peschlow (1998); Grossmann/Severin (2003); Mietke (2006); Westphalen (2006) with some qualifica-
tions.