Monday, March 7, 2016

The Inscription's Debris Field

The term "debris field" is most associated today with crashed airliners, rather than archaeological sites. But it is particularly apt in the case of the Great Epicurean Inscription of Oenoanda where a disaster left the once epic construction shattered into a myriad of pieces scattered across a wide area as if it had been smashed by some divine mallet.

I came across this interesting representation of the intensity of the finds from the destroyed stoa. This was created by Konrad Berner of the Deutsche Archaeologisches Institut in Istanbul. 


As one can note the most intense occurrence of pieces is around the site of the stoa which stood on the south side of the Esplanade. This is understandable considering where the stoa was located and the fact that many pieces were reused as filler in the defensive wall which was created across the site and may have been the motivation for destruction of the structure in the first instance. 
    

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