Nadire Atici

Archaeological investigations at the Archaic through late Roman harbors associated with Burgaz (“Old Knidos”) on Turkey’s Datça peninsula have been conducted since 2011, with the aim of exploring the long-term development of the ports and their integration within the urban settlement. As a collaboration between Brock University, Stanford University and Middle East Technical University, the Burgaz Harbors Project focuses on the changing maritime and economic landscape of the site, before and after the Late Classical expansion of New Knidos at the tip of the peninsula; around this time activity at Burgaz shifts toward large-scale industry. In 2015, fieldwork and analysis focused on research related to the earliest phases of harbor use. Ongoing excavation in Harbor 1 is providing evidence for the development of Burgaz’s initial maritime facility: an enclosed but now largely silted basin adjacent to the city center. The expansion of an excavation area opened in 2014 has revealed well-preserved ceramics and organics. Within the context of these recent finds we explore the relationship between harbor and settlement at Burgaz. As the residents’ needs and the city’s political, social, and economic circumstances changed, so did the urban-harbor matrix. In the settlement’s early stage as a center of regional agricultural activity, a single harbor with minimal architectural embellishment may have served as a multi-functional space. During the Late Classical period, however, Burgaz dedicated significant resources to the construction of a fortified port south of the acropolis, which divided the functional attributes of the harbors between military to the south and communication and commercial activities further north, while retaining physical connectivity to the settlement core. Even after the decline of Burgaz as a primary regional cultural center after the 4th century, the site’s maritime connections appear to expand again, with an emphasis on industrial and commercial activity that shifted focus back toward the north. While investigations in 2015 are revealing clues to the settlement’s early maritime connections, that maritime exchange and investment continues at Hellenistic Burgaz even after its presumed “abandonment” should be no surprise. Evidence from the harbors suggests long term socioeconomic activity along the peninsula in which different small ports and production centers play complementary roles in overlapping local, regional, and interregional maritime networks.