New Research and Discoveries at Aphrodisias in 2023

Join us to hear Roland R. R. Smith speak about the most recent work carried out by NYU-IFA at Aphrodisias in southwest Turkey, in collaboration with Oxford University. Aphrodisias is one of the most important sites of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean, with superbly preserved public buildings and monuments. Marble-carving was a noted Aphrodisian speciality in antiquity, and the excavated remains of the city’s statues, sarcophagi, and architectural reliefs are abundant and of spectacular quality.

The team’s eight-week research season last summer produced exciting results. The project on the Civil Basilica and Diocletian’s Edict of Maximum Prices was completed. Excellent progress was made in the Place of Palms and the conservation of its 170m-long pool. Excavation in the Tetrapylon Street with its unusual seventh-century Dark Age Complex was completed and publication work begun. A new project on housing and urban living was pursued with geophysical survey and excavation at the House of Kybele and the North Temenos House. There were important finds, and several marble statues were newly conserved and restored with their portrait heads.

Roland Smith is an expert in Greek and Roman art, with a special interest in the visual and urban culture of the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. He taught at the IFA from 1986 to 1995 and has been director of the NYU Aphrodisias project since 1991. He retired from his position as Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University in 2022, and now devotes more time to Aphrodisias publications.