Bone workshop, oil lamp shop unearthed in ancient city in Turkey

KUTAHYA, Turkey

A bone workshop and an oil lamps shop have been unearthed in an ancient city in western Turkey, according to an archaeologist working on the site.

The excavations in Aizanoi, which is home to the best-preserved Zeus Temple in Anatolia and is also called the "Second Ephesus," are being carried out by the Kutahya Museum Directorate.

Gokhan Coskun, the excavation coordinator from Kutahya Dumlupinar University, told Anadolu Agency that they are working in areas that have never been excavated before.

Coskun said they carried out work in two different wings of the agora (a public open space used for assemblies and markets in ancient Greece), and reached important findings that will shed light on trade and social life of the ancient city.

Underlining that they were able to identify two of the uncovered shops, he said thousands of bone fragments were found inside one of the stores. Some were unprocessed and it seems they were used as raw materials, he added.

“As far as we understand from this, there was a local bone workshop in Aizanoi during the Roman period, and located in the agora. It served as both a workshop and a sales place. Among the processed bone artifacts were mostly women's hairpins and spoons,” Coskun said.

He went on to say that the second shop was an oil lamp shop as they encountered many intact and broken oil lamps – lighting tools of the ancient period.

With a history dating back to 5,000 years, Aizanoi, situated 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Kutahya city center, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2012.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar in Ankara