?ang?r Ma?aza: Mountain Pilgrimage in Hellenistic and Roman West Central Anatolia (20 min)

Presenters

Peri Johnson, University of Illinois Chicago

Abstract

Several months before the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project began in 2010, the sinkhole sanctuary at Şangır Mağaza was looted on an industrial scale. The sinkhole is high in the mountains between the principal northern and southern east–west routes running through western central Anatolia. Although our project focused on salvaging the disturbed deposits early on, pilgrimage roads to the sanctuary and its principal deity gradually emerged as our survey of the landscape progressed. First surveyed was the pilgrimage road from Toriaion (Ilgın) in the south; then, in 2018 we encountered a road from Laodicea (Ladik) passing by a Roman marble quarry at Halimli and in 2022 locals informed the project of a road from the north, presumably from Pessinus (Ballıhisar). In 2023, we completed the study of the copious tablewares and terracotta figurine fragments collected in 2010 and 2011. The contrast between the tableware assemblages derived from surveyed agricultural settlements and the sanctuary confirm the urban connections of the worshippers. Although not worn from repeated use, the tablewares have fire damage from their deposition with the ashy embers and greasy bones of sacrificial feasts. Two newly identified fragments of Meter enthroned between lions support Meter as the principal deity worshipped at the sinkhole. Fragments of candelabra and a few lamps studied this year show the similarity in the nighttime feasting at Şangır Mağaza with Meter sanctuaries in the western Pergamene kingdom. My earlier presentations focused on the transition in the ritual landscape from the Hittite mountain deity worshipped at Yalburt Yaylası 2 km distant to Meter at Şangır Mağaza. This paper argues for the construction of the sanctuary at Şangır Mağaza following Eumenes II’s founding of Toriaion as a city after 188 B.C.E. and places the worship of Meter as central to the consolidation of his eastern border.