Sector 17-O: Late Antique Period

The principal building in sector 17-O in the late antique period (about 400-800 CE) appears to have been a commercial establishment with a porticoed entrance onto the adjoining street that connected to the main street of Antioch, famous for its elaborate monumental colonnade that went the length of the town. This was the type of building that would become known as a pandocheion or a funduq in the medieval period. Beyond the public space entered through a small colonnade and a room probably serving as a shop, was a large courtyard containing two wells, with five rooms opening onto it on three of its four sides. It is uncertain whether there was a second story to this complex, but it might correspond to a building illustrated in the famous Yakto mosaic in the Antakya museum, excavated by the Princeton team, which did have a second floor.

The objects found in this building support the interpretation of it as a commercial complex, with a greater concentration of fine, imported ceramic and coins than in the rest of the sector. The presence of numerous unused mold-made oil lamps with relief decorations suggests that these represented one of the categories of goods offered for sale there. The shift from Mediterranean ceramics of the fifth and sixth centuries to Iraqi lusterware in the Abbasid period is the main indication of the political transfer of Antioch from late Roman to Islamic rule discernable in sector 17-O. The representation of large follis coins of the fourth and fifth centuries as well as Islamic coins of the seventh through ninth centuries is heavier in this sector than on the site of Antioch as a whole, supporting the view of this area as a thriving commercial part of the city through the centuries represented in this level.

The account of this level is based on the analysis of structures by Jennifer El-Fakir ’18, and of objects by Margot E. Yale ’17.