The Odeon at Kelenderis and its Documentation Works
Kamil Levent Zoroğlu
Selçuk Üniversitesi Emekli Öğretim Üyesi, Konya/TÜRKİYE
Keywords: Kelenderis, Odeion, Bouleuterion, Roman Period, Restitution, Restoration.
Abstract
Within the scope of 2020 project of Kelenderis Excavations, the documentation of the odeion was carried out under the support of the Turkish Historical Society. Relating to this project, visible remains of this building, which was unearthed during the excavations in recent years, were measured, and its parts such as scene, orchestra and lower and upper parts of the audience are documented in their present state of preservations, then, restitution and restoration projects were prepared.
Unfortunately, prior to the excavations here, except a large and thick semicircular wall, which was used to be the passage way (diazoma) of the building, there was no visible remains of the odeion. Excavations started in the area encircled by diazoma in 1989, some parts of the building were brought into light and depending on the remains of the lower audience (cavea) it was called theatron. In this first season, a few burials had been unearthed in the fill which belonged to a cemetery of a nearby small church built in the 19th century. During the excavations conducted between 2001-2005 and 2019-2020 all burials were cleaned and the remains of the building were mostly brought into light. Excavations here have shown that the scene placed in the eastern part of the odeion had been destroyed by the medieval fortification wall running to north-south direction and only the proscenium of it has partly survived. Adding to this, the rows of seats of the lower audience (cavea) and the whole upper audience are almost completely disappeared and only their substructure survived.
Although some parts of the building have not been unearthed yet, the surviving parts, that means, main plan scheme and other architectural parts of the building have been described in this paper, then some proposals have been presented for its restitution and restoration projects. Under the light of this work, we have also proposed that this building was constructed in the 2nd century AD and used both as odeion and bouleuterion.