The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2026–2027 East of Byzantium lecture series.
November 6, 2026 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
Re-excavating Antioch: The First New Publication of Princeton’s Excavations of the 1930s
A. Asa Eger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Antioch is an invisible city, assumed to have faded out after the Islamic conquests in the early seventh century. Indeed, this perspective carries in scholarship until today. The Princeton archaeologists of the 1930s set Byzantine Antioch as their prize and documented extraordinarily little of the excavated remains of the medieval city. Synthetic analysis of urban transformations was not a priority. Recent research is beginning to demonstrate that the city did indeed have a rich afterlife and experienced meaningful change. This paper will present the first new publication of the Princeton excavated material of sector 17-O.
Excavated in 1937, 17-O was designated as a pilot area of the larger project and thus was not published. The area did not possess any mosaics and is supposedly located at the crossroads of the city, at the edge of the Forum of Valens. It also has a long stratigraphic record of the city’s occupation and therefore acts as a microcosm of larger urban transformations. 17-O began as a public space in the Early Roman period with a nymphaeum that was restored twice and continued until the 5th century when it and the entire area were destroyed by fire (and likely earthquake). Between the 5th and 7th centuries, a courtyard house with a series of shops on a side street off the cardo appeared and grew into three courtyard houses with attached shops by the 8th century. In the Middle Byzantine and Crusader periods, 10th–12th centuries, these houses were reused, subdivided, and fitted with kilns for ceramic production. The publication project harnesses recent studies on ceramics, glass, and small finds and situates these back in stratigraphic context using the archived notebooks, maps, and photographs. The transformations of this area are representative of shifts in Antioch and follow the trajectory documented in other Greco-Roman cities.
Asa Eger is Professor of the Islamic World in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/
Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.
