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Shoreline Survey

Project Team

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Koray KONUK

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

Dr. Asil YAMAN

Director of the Project, Archaeologist, Penn Museum

We aim to conduct an in-depth exploration of the rugged and rocky coastline of the Phoenix territory. We expect to find traces of various installations connected to commercial, military, funerary, and ritual activities, such as harbors, defensive systems, tombs, and cult places. Our survey will be conducted both on land and underwater, with the help of marine geology and geomorphological analyses. We will document and preserve the archaeological heritage on the shores within the official research area, which is heavily threatened by human activities.

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).

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.