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Cult Project

Project Team

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Koray KONUK

Archaeologist - Numismatist, CNRS - Bordeaux Montaigne University, Ausonius Institute

Dr. Taylan DOĞAN

Archaeologist, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University

Dr. Asil YAMAN

Director of the Project, Archaeologist, Penn Museum

Religion and cults will be considered as a separate subproject within the scope of the Phoenix Archaeological Survey. A wide variety of sources are used to identify deities worshiped in an ancient city (polis) and/or a rural settlement (kome). Architectural remains, coins, inscriptions, small finds, and ancient sources are data that provide information about religion and cults. All of these source materials are used when researching the religious life of a particular region, city, or village, and this can only be achieved when an interdisciplinary perspective is developed. Within the scope of the Phoenix Archaeological Survey, our research into cults will follow this approach, insofar as scholars with different specialities will come together to assess the religious life of Phoenix and its surroundings with a holistic approach. Research questions that we will seek to answer within the scope of this project include:

  1. What deities were worshiped in Phoenix and its surrounding areas?
  2. What were the rituals performed for these deities?
  3. What were the natural features and influences that contributed to the formation of certain cults and sacred sites?
  4. Were there sacred paths connecting komai and sanctuaries/temples in and around Phoenix?
  5. What were the local/rural cults in Phoenix and surrounding areas?
  6. What was the possible influence of Rhodes on religion and cults in the area?

Timeframe

It is expected that the Phoenix Cult Project will last for five years, in various phases, between 2021-2025.

Koray Konuk holds a tenured position at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as an Associate Research Professor. His main interests are in the history of early coins as well as the history and archaeology of Caria, a region of southwest Asia Minor.

After studies in Classical Archaeology and Political Science in Louvain followed by a doctoral degree in Oxford, he was appointed as a Curator of ancient coins at the Fitzwilliam Museum and an invited university Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics of Cambridge University.

He has led archaeological field surveys in the Ceramic Gulf in Caria and headed the French archaeological mission at the ancient site of Euromos. He has been a visiting scholar in Oxford, Istanbul, and at the American Numismatic Society in NYC. He is currently directing a collaborative internet-based project called Historia Numorum Online which aims to record Greek coin types, the current volume being on Carian mints: http://hno.huma-num.fr/.

He is a co-editor of the new Bulletin Numismatique de l’Asie Mineure and of the International Journal of Ancient Mediterranean Studies: Philia; as well as a member of the editorial board of the following academic journals: Anatolia Antiqua (Istanbul), Anadolu (Ankara), Archaeologia Maeandrica (ARMA, Aydın), Arkeoloji ve Sanat Dergisi (Istanbul).

Dr. Taylan Doğan graduated from the archaeology department at Ege University in 2007. Since 2004, he has joined several archaeological fieldworks at Antandros, Claros, Dascyleum, Perre, and Euromos. He completed his MA at Archaeology department at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University in 2012. He finished his Ph.D. in the same department in 2020, where he worked there more than eleven years. Dr. Doğan investigates the material culture like unguentaria, architectural terracottas and strigilis. He also researches temple architecture of Asia Minor during the Roman imperial period, the burial customs of the Geometric and Archaic periods.

Asil Yaman is faculty at Villanova University and serving as consulting professor at the Mediterranean section of Penn Museum. Previously he was a research assistant at the Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University (Turkey), where he worked there for seven years. He has been excavating in the eastern Mediterranean since 2003, working on various field projects in Turkey. He focuses on the material culture such as late roman pottery, food culture, and trade relations between the Levant and Anatolia in late antiquity.

Currently, he is investigating the archaeology of Carian Chersonese, which is part of his post-doc project and directing the Phoenix Archaeological Project (PAP). He has also been serving as co-editor of the Levantine Ceramics Project (LCP) since 2018. Asil received the research grant of the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) in 2018 and project grant of th Hellenic College, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture.

His teaching repertory includes courses such as; ‘The Archaeology of Religion and Rituals’, ‘Anatolian Archaeology’, ‘The war between the East and West in Archaeological and Historical perspectives’, and ‘Asia Minor in Late Antiquity’ at both undergraduate and graduate level.