Corpus of the Mosaics of Turkey Volume II Xanthos, Part 2 - The West Area

131 pp, color and b/w figures, hb, in English.

The present book forms the second volume in the Corpus of the Mosaics of Turkey, following upon the initial work on Xanthos published by Marie-Patricia Raynaud in 2009. This new volume broadens the documentation and appreciation of mosaic art in that city. Future monographs in the same series will turn to other archaeological sites in Turkey, whose vast mosaic treasures are gradually receiving the scholarly attention they deserve.

This entire project originated at a meeting of mosaic experts from six countries led by M. Şahin and D. Parrish and held at the American Research Institute in Turkey at Istanbul in 2004.

In this work, Anne-Marie Manière-Lévêque, a very experienced member of the French team that has been excavating at Xanthos for many years, carefully records and interprets mosaic pavements from the western part of Xanthos, which includes buildings with mosaic decoration on the Lycian Acropolis and in the “Roman” Agora. The pavements ornamented both domestic and religious structures, and they include several fine figural carpets in addition to geometric floors. The pavement techniques consist of both opus tessellatum and opus sectile, and chronologically they cover the late Antique and Early Byzantine periods. These floors complement the fine assortment of pavements found in the East Basilica inventoried in the first Xanthos volume.

In both its text and rich illustration, the present work maintains the high standard of scholarship employed in the earlier volume, and all of this is underscored by the author’s deep familiarity with the archaeological exploration of Xanthos. Both books in the series serve as models for future mosaic research in Turkey.