ISSN: 3062-0902
Volume : 1 Year : 2024
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All articles in Valonia: A Journal of Anatolian Pasts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
VALONIA: A JOURNAL OF ANATOLIAN PASTS - Valonia: 1 (1)
Volume: 1   - 2024
1. Editorial Introduction: A New Journal From ANAMED
Christopher H. Roosevelt
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.58066  Pages 7 - 10
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2. In Memory of Robert G. Ousterhout
Tolga B. Uyar
Page 11
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RESEARCH ARTICLES
3. Cappadocia: Old Questions, New Approaches – A Historian’s Perspective
John Haldon
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.21931  Pages 17 - 33
Cappadocia has been a focus for historians of the Byzantine world and of Anatolia for many decades, a reflection both of its very distinctive landscape and geography as well as its importance as a “peripheral” province. Its so-called “underground cities”—numbering over 200 known sites—make it hardly surprising that Cappadocia has attracted the attention of historians, archaeologists, and more recently mass tourism. Research into the cultural history and the archaeology of the region has depended on well-established, tried-and-tested approaches rooted in the traditions of art and architectural history, textual analysis, and archaeological survey, with occasional excavation. From the 1940s and 1950s, improvements in natural scientific dating techniques helped to expand archaeological and scientific research horizons; but, in the last two decades, a revolution in both methods and approaches has greatly improved our knowledge of all aspects of Cappadocian history. Reflecting advances in fields such as numismatics and sigillography or shifts in method and approach among historians of late Roman and Byzantine art and architecture, it also results from increasing interest in broad-brush archaeological field survey aimed at capturing settlement profiles, as well as the landscape history of a region. More broadly, there has been a dramatic expansion in the technologies of data capture, processing, and interpretation relevant to the ancient environment, ecology, and climate of the region, as well as the development of new ways of working and integrating different specialisms that can be applied to historical and archaeological research. The application of an integrated approach combining traditional with up-to-the-minute methods and techniques has meant that, for Byzantine history in particular, Cappadocia has become something of a testing ground for new approaches to old questions. This brief introductory survey aims to describe these developments and provide a framework for the chapters that follow.

4. Byzantine Rock-Cut Architecture in Cappadocia and Beyond: The State of Scholarship
Görkem Günay
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.43531  Pages 35 - 63
As outcomes of an alternative mode of architectural expression, rock-cut sites are found ubiquitously in Byzantium. Caves and carved spaces assume a diverse set of functions and meanings in the life and death of Byzantine society. Accordingly, a substantial sum of surviving evidence of Byzantine material culture is related to the hewn-out spaces; however, rock-cut architecture has been often associated with a lowly status in the early scholarship and excluded from the general narratives of Byzantine history. Growing interests in the various aspects of carved settlements and new approaches to rupestrian landscapes started to alter this general picture in the current research and necessitated a work of synthesis, focusing on the study of Byzantine rock-cut architecture. This review is intended to make a critical assessment of this particular assemblage of archaeological material and discuss the phenomenon as comprehensively as possible. Here, I regard rock-carving as a primary way for Byzantine society to transform and engage with its surrounding environment and lay special emphasis on the relationship between rock-cut and masonry architectural traditions. I examine the practical reasons and sacred associations that may have motivated the Byzantine use of carved spaces. I survey the advantages and pitfalls of the study of rock-cut material and maintain that, due to their excellent state of preservation, carved spaces potentially have much to contribute to the research on spatial practices, economic activities, daily life, and so forth. This critical historiographic discussion highlights the key concepts that changed the research trajectory and reviews the interpretative tools and future directions. Considered together, the literature discussed here underlines that the study of rupestrian landscapes with appropriate tools and theoretical frameworks admits a fuller and more nuanced understanding of Byzantium.

5. Some Notes on the Byzantine Houses of Cappadocia
Stavros Mamaloukos, Dimitrios Anastasiadis
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.29392  Pages 65 - 90
This study reviews the remnants of the rock-cut Byzantine elite houses of Cappadocia, unique examples of residential buildings of that period, which are still preserved in fairly good condition. The aim of the following study is to discuss issues of building planning, typology, and, secondarily, morphology concerning Byzantine residence complexes in Cappadocia. The study is based on the relevant scientific research and on the reexamination of examples of houses known from the literature. It presents the spaces that make up the houses of Cappadocia and notes their primary characteristics and function to the extent possible. Particular attention is paid to ceremonial and transitional spaces: courtyards, porticos, vestibules, and main halls. It outlines the common design principles of the complexes and attempts a typological classification of the elite houses based on the organization of their nucleus, namely the courtyard, transitional space, and hall. Considering the elite houses of Cappadocia not only as a regionally independent group of buildings but also as part of Byzantine residences in general allows us to examine the issue of the origin and evolution of the Byzantine house. Possible morphological influences from the capital and other building examples are pointed out, as well as the distinctive features of the houses as a result of particular local conditions. In terms of chronological order and the evolution through time of house architecture of Cappadocia, current research shows that the main elements of the elite houses of the area can be traced back to the sixth century. The elite houses of Cappadocia must be considered as an architectural exploration, which, based on the architectural prototypes of the era and on local conditions, attempted to produce an optimal house model for this remote outpost of the Byzantine Empire.

6. Byzantine Settlements in Cappadocia: Lives between Ostentation and Austerity
Fatma Gül Öztürk Büke
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.66375  Pages 91 - 109
In Byzantine Cappadocia, extreme opposites of lifestyles co-existed. This is especially remarkable in courtyard settlements such as those in Açıksaray. Here, on the one hand, we see elaborate mansions carved around courtyards and reception halls set behind monumental façades, and on the orther hand, we observe the existence of humble hermitages. Furthermore, in Açıksaray, the site organization indicates a degree of prior planning. Accordingly, courtyard houses form the core that is outlined with irregular forms of settlements, agricultural installations, and many churches. While a large medieval cemetery is located at the center, a Roman necropolis is found on the northern outskirts of the settlement. Correspondingly, this article, focusing on examining the physical evidence of daily life between formal and ceremonial spaces, religious and spiritual spaces, and utilitarian spaces and agricultural installations in Açıksaray, will question the contemporaneity and interdependencies of its medieval occupants.

7. Two Cappadocian Pseudo-Mosaics
Ivan Drpic
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.03511  Pages 111 - 134
Attempts to simulate mosaic in paint are exceptionally rare in the monumental art of Byzantium and the countries within its cultural orbit. Two isolated examples, both produced by covering the wall surface with dots of paint, survive from medieval Cappadocia, one in the Sarnıç Kilise near Göreme (first half of the eleventh century) and the other in the Bezirana Kilisesi in the Ihlara Valley (late thirteenth century). In the Sarnıç Kilise, feigned tessellation is applied to the Deēsis in the sanctuary apse, while in the Bezirana Kilisesi, it graces the dedicatory inscription above the entrance. The present article seeks to recover the logic behind the creation of these two pseudo-mosaics and to reconstruct how they may have been perceived by medieval audiences. Far from being little more than feeble imitations, cheap substitutes for real mosaics, the pseudo-mosaics of the Sarnıç Kilise and the Bezirana Kilisesi bear witness to a profound confidence in the power of the paintbrush. The rupestrian environment of Cappadocia, with its hyperbolic, simulacral architecture carved from the living rock, encouraged illusionism, overt artificiality, and visual wit. It gave free rein to painters to exploit the full potential of their medium and transform the church space into a spectacle of fictive materials and art forms.

8. Deconstructing an Iconography: Depictions of Constantine and Helena in Middle Byzantine Cappadocia
Lynn Jones
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.54264  Pages 135 - 155
Middle Byzantine Cappadocian depictions of Constantine and Helena offer a case study for the deconstruction of “standard” images.* All such depictions can be considered to be Feast Icons, as they present both Constantine and Helena, reflecting the Synaxarion text for May 21. The image compresses the narrative, allowing the viewer to contemplate some, or all, of the acts related in the Synaxarion. I suggest that we can go further; in an analysis of specific iconographical components gleaned from twenty-seven images in Cappadocian rock-cut churches, I recognize two types of Feast Icons: that of the Invention Cross and that of the Vision Cross. Regardless of classification, all Middle Byzantine representations of Constantine and Helena share multiple meanings: all reference the salvific promise symbolized by the Cross, all attest to the authenticity of the Cross and tie the Invention and ownership of relics of the Cross to the divine approval accorded to the Byzantine Empire, and all serve to link the first and current Emperor. The variables found in all of the images offer specific iconographical prompts for the viewer that could evoke any and all of these meanings. A third category can be justified, one that features only variables in which images feature both Constantine and Helena but do not conform to any single type. This group evokes meanings that both encompass and move between those of the Invention and Vision imagery. Their variability is not a misunderstanding of a standard, but a reflection of the needs and desires of a patron or community in order to convey a specific message within a specific space.

9. The Mavrucan Valley: Documentation of a Byzantine Agricultural Settlement
Nilüfer Peker, Tolga B. Uyar
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.32042  Pages 157 - 171
In the past few decades, settlement analysis became a well-known component of new research approaches to Byzantine Cappadocia. The nature of the existing material evidence indeed requires a perspective focusing on the social environment in which the monuments, along with their adornments, are situated. A particular challenge in doing this is the difficulty of the irregularities of the Cappadocian landscape and the extraordinarily large scale of the sites in general—in other words, the lack of locational precision via an accurate topographical map, which is critical to understanding the spatial relationships of human intervention across the large valleys. Our paper seeks to present preliminary results of exhaustive fieldwork in a remote valley of Cappadocia. The survey shows that previous scholarship focusing separately on the single monuments of the valley lacks crucial data for any sort of detailed analysis to determine the nature of the site. Our intention was therefore to implement, in a harsh and erosive area, an integrated methodology to produce as complete a record as possible of an entire settlement. The only way to do this appears to be through the combination of high-tech and traditional survey methods. As the settlement stretches throughout a large cultivated river valley, aerial documentation and georeferencing were the best choices to make sense of the massive amount of physical evidence for the life of a medieval agrarian and religious community.

10. Visualizing Mobility in Cappadocia
Scott Redford
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.09719  Pages 173 - 191
Was Cappadocia the hinterland of the largest city in the region, Kayseri? Or did the confluence of roads and routes meeting here give it another status, what Jacopo Turchetto has called a central periphery? This essay argues that it was indeed more than a hinterland. It was a landscape that drew on this confluence, as well as its extraordinary geology. This quality of central periphery was certainly reinforced during a thirteenth-century Seljuk building campaign, although it likely was present during earlier Byzantine centuries. In this essay, I draw on the work of Byzantine art historians, two of them the editors of this volume, and my own work on caravanserais of Seljuk Anatolia in an attempt to assemble scenes of landscape, mobility, and convergence in thirteenth-century Cappadocia. The convergence, painted in broad strokes, comes at the end of the essay, preceded by sections examining the 1950s’ attempts to recuperate and reanimate the Seljuk architectural heritage in Republican Turkey and the extraordinary building campaign of large caravanserais in Cappadocia in the 1220s–1240s.

11. Soil Story: An Earthly Investigation
Sibel Horada, Robert G. Ousterhout
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.65375  Pages 193 - 205
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12. Imagining a Cappadocian Future
Robert G. Ousterhout
doi: 10.5505/valonia.2024.46338  Pages 207 - 213
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