UBC Library and Archives

A career in ruins : memories of excavating an ancient Roman City in Turkey Russell, James

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Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College's Lecture Series: Senior Scholars' Series: The Passions that Drive Academic Life. Anemurium, the subject of the lecture, was a medium-sized Roman and early Byzantine city located on the southernmost promontory of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, which was abandoned around the end of the 7th century CE. It has been the subject of investigation by a UBC sponsored archaeological team directed by James Russell for forty years. The work has concentrated on the excavation and conservation of the city’s public buildings—theatre, baths and civil basilica as well as three early Christian churches with well-preserved mosaic floors and certain tombs in the city’s large cemetery decorated with interesting figured wall-paintings. The lecture will include a brief overview of the excavations and their results demonstrating how the team has applied its discoveries, including architecture, mosaics , inscriptions, pottery, coins and small artifacts of bone and metal, to provide a rich picture of the history, economy, religion and social life of a city for which very limited literary testimony exists.

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