Telmessos Survey

Understanding the negotiated identities of ancient Telmessos expressed in its hundreds of funerary monuments, and with the aid of new digital recording technologies developed by the project team, this project will engage modern Fethiye’s diverse contemporary communities with the deep history of their city.

The aim of the project is to improve the heritage awareness of its people and conservation outcomes for its surviving archaeology. This project will give critical insight into East-West cultural dynamics in Lycia by tracing the changing ethnic, linguistic and cultural character of the city of Telmessos over the past three millennia. This project is timely and important because, although Telmessos is one of the largest and most important dynastic seats of ancient Lycia, the site is almost completely unexplored due to having been covered by the rapid rebuildingof Fethiye following an earthquake in 1957. This made excavation and recording of its ruins difficult until the advent of rapid, lightweight digital recording methods and culturally sensitive long-term engagement with local stakeholders.

In 2024, the team carried out archaeological and geoarchaeological survey at the sites of Hıdırlık and Karakeçiler in the Fethiye district of Muğla Province. Work included digital recording of tomb inscriptions in the ancient Lycian and Greek languages at Karakeçiler. At Hıdırlık, archaeologists continued the survey using GPS and digital photography to trace the site’s extensive and impressive city walls. New features were found at the site, despite there being a very dense covering of tress that obscures much of the surface. The survey also involved the participarion of a team of geologists from Muğla Sıtkı Koçman university, who used a drone to model the site’s topography from the air to better understand its geology and hydrology.