The Battle of Phoenix (modern Finike) in AD655 was a watershed event in eastern Mediterranean history. The emperor Constans II (641-68) was in personal command of the Byzantine fleet which the Muslim Arabs roundly defeated, and only escaped capture or death by exchanging clothes with a subordinate and fleeing quietly while the outcome of events remained still undetermined.[1] This defeat shattered Byzantine domination of the eastern Mediterranean, shifted the dynamics of power, and altered geopolitical realities in this region.  By itself, it was not ultimately decisive, but rather served only as a harbinger of the numerous sea battles to be fought between the Christian and Muslim empires in the centuries ahead. Its impact on the southern coast of Anatolia, however, was immediately and apparently critical. Although this naval victory did not presage an invasion of the littoral, Arab corsairs seized upon their advantageous situation and began to plunder coastal settlements. The main objective may have been timber for shipbuilding in Egypt and elsewhere, since that seems to have been the reason for the establishment of that arsenal at Phoenix which had provoked the disastrous Byzantine response. Devoid of a covering imperial naval force, such communities, both large and small, were unaccustomedly vulnerable to piratical attacks from the sea. Lacking the resources to defend themselves adequately once the umbrella of Byzantine military support had proven porous, they became very attractive and potentially lucrative targets. Furthermore, the maritime trade from and along this coast, driven by the needs and wealth of Constantinople, became an uncertain shambles.[2] Hence many seaside communities seem to have surrendered to the realities of the changing world order in the late 6^th and early 7^th centuries AD.[3] Their inhabitants abandoned their coastal cities and moved to the more rugged and remote interior to escape the depredations caused by maritime marauders, or they simply migrated west to seek safety in territories still under effective Byzantine control. A long epoch of peace and prosperity, fostered by the Pax Romana and sustained into the early Byzantine era with intermittent blips of turmoil followed by renewed growth, had come to an end.

with the sea. When the eastern Mediterranean had truly become a safe and open highway following Rome?s permanent intervention in the 1^st century BC, Aperlae appears to have reaped the fruits of participation in her sea-borne trading network.[5] After AD655, however, its artery to the world beyond its micro-region was severed. The Late Antique curtain walls, so prominent today in the abandoned city?s landscape, were built or rebuilt sometime during the last phase of urban life to enclose only a portion of the city including most of the waterfront area. They proved insufficient to guarantee communal safety in those times of troubles.  As Aperlae?s sense of security eroded and then vanished, probably so did its prosperity.

Whatever specific vicissitudes and terrors the Aperlites faced in the years following the Battle of Phoenix can only be surmised. What is certain, is that sometime late in the 6^th century or in the early decades of the 700s, they abandoned their city en masse and disappeared from our historical view.[6] The imperative of survival offered no other option. Yet their distant misfortunes have become our archaeological opportunities. The ruins and surface oddments of Aperlae offer the face of an early Byzantine coastal city that may have reached its peak during the early reign of Justinian I (527-65), before the outbreak of the plague in 541.[7] No ancient source links Aperlae and this scourge that devastated the Mediterranean world, but it is most unlikely that any coastal settlement would have escaped its ravages. It might even be that the decision to fortify only the core of the urban area reflected a diminished population that permitted or demanded such a retrenchment. The site seems to have been largely unencumbered by any significant building after AD655, with one exception. Part of the fortifications of the so-called Upper Church is of a different masonry mortared rubble and ceramic fragments, and has been tentatively dated by Foss to a later period.[8] His suggestion, however of a Lascarid provenance for this wall (1204-61) seems far too late for Aperlae. For now, one can only say this is one of those inexplicable temporal anomalies that cause archaeologists to flirt with insomnia. Seen as a whole, therefore, the site is not quite the secure time-capsule afforded by Pompeii or Akrotiri on Thera, but it is closer than most Late Roman archaeologists usually get to a sealed locus of such size and importance.

When Professor R. Lindley Vann of the University of Maryland and the author began our restricted fieldwork on this site in 1996, we were authorized only to survey extant remains on land but without the benefit of sondages.[9] As to the investigation of the underwater remains of the now submerged waterfront, we could not employ SCUBA. Our retrograde or ?back to the future? snorkel-survey, reminiscent of similar fieldwork done at Kenchreai, Greece in the early 1960s, was all that was possible.[10] Although these limitations were cumbersome and dilatory, we still enjoyed the opportunity to attempt to reconstruct the maritime life and times of a secondary or tertiary coastal settlement beyond the great harbors of antiquity about which we normally read. Obviously, our archaeological data are limited, although with proper treatment, the ruins of Aperlae may one day have a detailed story to tell. For the present, however, these stones only faintly whisper to us.

Relevant literary sources are also meager. A few casual references to the existence of Aperlae in familiar periploi and a reference to an early Byzantine bishopric by the 7^th-century geographer Hierocles in his Synekdemos offer little more than a confirmation of the existence of this city and an affirmation of its longevity. In the absence of a meaningful database, we have observed what the extant remains seem to indicate and have attempted to interpret their messages against the larger archaeological and historical mosaic of this region. I am the first to admit that our conclusions are preliminary and largely hypothetical. Informed conjecture is the best our data permit at this time.

Although Aperlae seems to be a Lycian word, no irrefutable evidence of a permanent community before the early Hellenistic era is now visible. The site sits deep in the recess of Asar Bay, an open embayment devoid of any natural shelter that faces w-sw into the Mediterranean. Local coastal subsidence has widened the bay where Aperlae is sited, but in antiquity it would have been considerably narrower. Although at some point the shoreline was defined with permanent walls that served as a continuous quay, the community never chose to build an enclosing arm from the shore west of its waterfront to provide an all-weather safe anchorage.  Clearly, this decision not to construct even a simple stone breakwater, although the technology and the finances for its construction were available at various times during Aperlae?s millennial history, provides a clear message: it was not built because it was not needed. Its harbor was never intended to accommodate large ships like the those that routinely called at the great Mediterranean emporia such as Portus, Alexandria or Caesarea Maritima. Small coastal craft, such as the ones that still ply the Lycian coast today connecting small communities, were the ones that frequented its waters. They engaged in cabotage and various types of fishing, probably the staples of the city?s maritime activities.

An open harbor with a stabilized shorefront met the city?s needs adequately. A careful eye on weather conditions and knowledge of local wind patterns would have permitted captains to operate safely in Asar Bay. And, of course, if the unexpected happened and violent weather or heavy seas did trap any coasters within the bay, they could be beached at the head of the bay or pulled onto an undeveloped area in the waterfront intentionally left for that purpose and also for boat-building, storage, or repair.

The original Hellenistic settlement was perched some 100m up a steep slope away from the uncertainties and dangers of the unprotected shoreline. The fortified core area was blocked from easy access to the interior by ridges of mountains that marched down to the sea. Trekking inland was possible, but always difficult, for no natural features like a river breached the difficult terrain. To its east, was an isthmus (c. 1.5 k wide) that connected the mainland to Sicak Yarimadisi, once an island off the coast. During Aperlae?s floruit this natural land bridge was in place thus forming part of an oddly hammerhead-shaped peninsula. A small satellite seaside community was built probably no earlier than the 1^st century AD on the eastern side of the isthmus on the bay today called Öludeniz the Dead Sea. From this location, an ancient coaster could easily have sailed to Andriake, the international harbor of Myra (c. 15 k), in waters almost completely sheltered from the open sea by the eastern extent of Sicak Yarimadisi and then Kekova Island.

No readily arable land beyond the isthmus itself existed in Aperlae?s chora. No signs of springs, aqueducts, wells, or non-seasonal streams were found. Water would have been a carefully regulated commodity with late summer or early fall shortages likely. But with expeditious terracing and judicious storage of all available rainfall, the Aperlites seem to have been able to sustain themselves well beyond mere subsistence.

Aperlae?s exposed bay and lack of protected anchorages, a perennial shortage of water, its limited arable land, and its terrestrial isolation from neighboring inland settlements were disadvantageous features that must have caused persistent problems and concerns. In a cruel twist of nature, even the local limestone was too weathered for satisfactory quarrying. It certainly was not a site that was blessed. Yet harsh though their circumstances were, the Aperlites accommodated their marginal environment and managed their resources and landscape wisely enough to sustain their city for a 1,000 years, even if the details of their achievement elude us. Why they chose to do so in such an inhospitable setting is less obvious. Perhaps the key to this puzzle rests with a highly marketable resource that was in abundance in that particular geographical micro-region, one that compensated for all other deficiencies. Asar Bay was, and remains today, a very productive breeding ground for the murex trunculus from whose glandular excretions the ancients produced purple dye, arguably the most precious commodity known in antiquity. More on this counterpoint blessing in a moment.

The extant ruins themselves provide few clues to the history of the site, since they largely date from the moment the city was abandoned in the 7^th century, with one major exception.The fortification wall that still rings the east, north, and west sides of the upper city, seems to date from the late 4^th or early 3^rd century BC and thus provides a terminus post quem for the building of Aperlae as a permanent polis or a military outpost. Perhaps Ptolemy I of Egypt (323-282BC), who was attracted generally to Lycia because of its strategic importance in the unfolding struggle of the diadochi for portions of Alexander?s kingdom and specifically for the region?s timber resources, may have established this city during his reign. Unfortunately, Aperlae?s role in the volatile and convoluted centuries that followed cannot be recovered from a simple examination of physical remains. The conflicting ambitions of great and lesser Hellenistic kings, the maritime thalassocracy of Rhodes, the various federalist political experiments in Lycia, or any other force majeure that may have swept the southern Anatolian coast and embroiled Aperlae, cannot be seen in ruins of our largely Byzantine settlement. Barring a proper excavation, this early chapter of the city?s history remains lost.

Important, tangible changes may have occurred when Rome extended its authority to Lycia in the 1^st century BC. Maybe it was then, or a bit later when the region was joined to Pamphylia by the emperor Claudius in AD43 to form a new imperial province, that the Aperlites dismantled their southern fortification wall to permit an urban expansion down to the shore.[11] The result was a lower city with substantial structures on the waterfront along with an orthogonal street plan for the new seaside district.  Such a communal decision would provide potent testimony to the perceived security of the regionthe gift of Roman peace that salved the loss of political independence. Pirates did not completely vanish from the eastern seas after Pompey the Great?s extraordinary commission to remove them in 67BC, but at Aperlae, there seems to have existed a considerable confidence both in the promise and the immediate stability of Augustus?s imposition of order throughout the Roman world.[12] Permanent buildings could safely be constructed beyond the narrow confines of the upper walled city for the first time. The very development of the waterfront suggests the existence of a favorable economic climate conducive to such expansion, as well as a communal confidence in a secure political future. We know from many contemporary sources that trade on the Mediterranean increased in response to new economic activities that were concomitant with the advent of the Pax Romana. We believe that Aperlae shared in this imperial good fortune. It was then at the beginning of Augustus?s long reign, and after Lycia?s political stability was assured and its vulnerability to sea marauders had ended, that Aperlae enjoyed an economic florescence.

The construction of the only Roman road found to date at or around Aperlae, a short (c. 1.5 km) pathway across the Isthmus, likely dates to that time as well.[13] It was situated on a low ridge above the terraced isthmian fields and terminated at the satellite settlement on Öludeniz. Its construction provided a safe transport link from the city to the essentially protected sea route to Andriake, the harbor of Myra and the international emporium of Aperlae?s micro-region. The dangers and uncertainties of transporting commodities down Asar Bay and into the open sea could then be avoided whenever circumstances warranted. With the building of this road, Aperlae?s focus was clearly to the east. Perhaps it always had been, but with this road in place, this orientation became more permanent.

At the same time, Aperlae?s political fortunes took a positive turn as well. Sometime between the reigns of Augustus and Claudius, a new sympoliteia formed in this Lycian micro-region.[14] Aperlae joined with Isinda, Apollonia, and Simena to create this new alliance, perhaps to preserve some independent political identity at a moment when larger cities of the Lycian League were swallowing smaller ones (Myra/Andriake, Cyanae/Teimioussa or Tristomon in Late Antiquity, and so on). Aperlae, once thought by M. Zimmermann to have been the port of Apollonia, became the head of a new micro-cooperative alliance.[15] One can only speculate why our city earned or garnered this leadership role. An obvious explanation would be its relative size and wealth. Its new political role may simply have reflected its existing or emerging status in a mutable economic environment.

There is considerable evidence to suggest that this small city had a specialized economy that produced a high prestige-trading commodity purple dye.[16] Our investigations have revealed large middens of murex trunculus shells to the west of the city core covering approximately 1600 m² on hillsides on both side of a ravine, extensive reuse of fragments of shells in late antique mortar, and numerous scatters of broken shells throughout the city. Underwater at the base of the hillside deposits, many other shell fragments also litter the bottom. Their presence suggests that dumping in the sea was a favored means of disposal of shells after production of the dye.

In the submerged portion of the waterfront, three large basins, possibly vivaria or holding tanks for the snails until sufficient quantities had been obtained for processing or sale, also speak to the existence of a dye production industry. Several buildings underwater and on land may also have been part of the industrial installations that supported what today might be called a niche economic activity. Whether the dye itself, the live snails, or dyed cloth or all of these products formed the basis of Aperlae?s economy cannot be ascertained from a mere survey of the archaeological ruins.  But one is confident postulating some connection to the prestigious and profitable commerce in purple dye.

While purple may have been always produced at Aperlae and transported by coaster to Andriake in the east or earlier to Patara in the west as well, the new commercial opportunities occasioned by Rome?s adventus served the city?s interests well. An intensification of its principal economic activity was now possible and highly profitable due to new circumstances. An international sea-borne distribution network was now available at Andriake only a few kilometers away.[17] There, grain clippers came to call to collect the tribute due from this region. Paul, his entourage and his Roman jailors, while en route from Caesarea Maritima to Rome for his trial and ultimate execution (Acts 27, 5-6), had caught up with one of these supertankers of antiquity late in the sailing season and had transferred from a smaller coastal vessel headed for Admyrittium to this larger one for the rest of the trip westwards. By transshipment to such ships or other merchantmen that routinely called at this emporium, Aperlae?s specialized product could have reached markets throughout the Roman world at a time when general prosperity assured product demand.

With the building of the transisthmian road, the local segment of the transport system for this prestige commodity by cart then coaster was easier, faster and safer. Cabotage was always Aperlae?s lifeline to the world beyond Asar Bay, but beating up the waters of Asar Bay was usually difficult and sometimes impossible or too dangerous. The open sea beyond posed even more hazards. By building a road that led to a calmer, leeward bay, some of the vagaries of the sea voyage to Andriake were neutralized. Such an expenditure of effort and capital to carve a road from the bedrock on the north side of the isthmus made no sense until there was compelling justification for such a major public works project (no matter how it was financed).

Reliable access to the Mediterranean economy that Roman political rule now offered provided such an incentive. The prevailing situation could not have been more advantageous for Aperlae. It had a high prestige product in great demand beyond its micro-region and easy entry to an international trading network to carry it to its customers. While only a cog in a much larger system, Aperlae and the micro-region it now headed appears to have shared in the prosperity of the times.

The Augustan Age provided a climate for dynamic economic growth.[18] What we might call today ?the first globalization of the economy? was in place. More to the point for the Aperlites, this new Mediterranean reality was completely consonant with their local, specialized economy.  They appear to have seized this moment. In his Natural History 14.1.2), Pliny posed a rhetorical question:  ?Does anyone not know that because the world has been united under the majesty of the Roman empire that life is better thanks to trade (commercium) and the shared blessings of peace?? If the ancient polymath had queried the Aperlites directly, I doubt if there would have been a single dissident response.

How long this cycle of prosperity driven by purple dye exportation continued is not known. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the demand for luxury items quickly saturated the available market and then steadied.[19] It is most likely that in the 3^rd century AD, global conditions and local contingencies altered Aperlae?s status. The coming of the Goths to the eastern Mediterranean in the 260s, the reappearance of local pirates, the general malaise of troubles that swept the empire, were negative factors from which Aperlae could not have been immune.[20]

But by the time of Diocletian, the city?s fortunes were improving again, and prosperity returned. A milestone from the Tetrachic period that once stood as the caput viae of the Roman road has been found in secondary usage as door lintel in the Late Antique walls. Its presence suggests a rededication of the Roman road by Diocletian and hints at renewed imperial interest in this remote city and most probably in its principal export. With Constantine and/or his successors, an era of church building began throughout Lycia. At Aperlae, we have found five of them, all about the same size, c. 10 x 20 m, and design, a basilica style with minor structural differences. One is located in the upper city and appears to have been converted into a kastron in the last days before abandonment.[21] Another was located near the main gate to the upper city. A third existed at the head of bay where the only permanent resident of the region now lives. Travellers as late as the 1970s reported ruins of a church at this location, although it has now vanished.[22] Our underwater investigations revealed a fourth church in 1998 just south of the West Bath complex,[23] and a fifth church with an attached chapel was uncovered nearby in the summer of 2000. Both of these basilicas were located at water?s edge, which must have been one of the more active, vibrant, and frequented areas of urban activity.

In a city not distinguished by large buildings, five churches would have dominated the urban landscape, although it is unclear whether all were contemporaneous or were built and used seriatim. But such a large number raises an interesting question. Why did a community, with a population of no more than 1,000 occupants at its maximum during Late Antiquity when the population density for all of coastal Lycia seemed to have peaked, need or build so many ecclesiastical complexes ?[24] It is true, of course, that in Late Antiquity churches had become the appropriate architectural status or prestige symbols, replacing more traditional urban buildings as foci of local euergetism. While this investment in infrastructure seems excessive for such a small community, this phenomenon is not atypical for coastal Lycia. Sacred edifices in excess of what normal usage might dictate distinguish this entire coast. Piety, prosperity, and prestige might all be in evidence here, as well as competition with one?s neighbors for the most tangible signs of communal commitment to the new faith and to the political regime in Constantinople that supported it.

It is clear, however, that these basilicas offer proxy evidence for a high level of prosperity. The purple industry was still functioning, as the existence of the vivaria at the time of abandonment indicates. Andriake and Tristomon, the classical harbour of Teimioussa for the inland city of Cyanae, were both international ports of call in Late Antiquity and available as transshipment points for Aperlae?s specialized export commodity.[25] There still was a demand beyond local needs for Aperlae?s highly prized and priced export.[26] Its importance as a source of purple would only have increased, as traditional sources of supply from the Phoenician coast became uncertain as Byzantine hegemony of the Levant first weakened in the late 6^th century, then vanished after the Battle of Yarmuk in 636. If, as Kennedy has argued, maritime trade and urban life declined dramatically in Syria during this period, with the coastal region particularly diminished, Aperlae?s fortunes might well have benefited from this regional reversal.[27]

 Whatever specific reasons motivated Lycians in general and Aperlites specifically to spend so much of their expendable capital on non-economically productive buildings, the net effect of all this regional ecclesiastical construction was the creation of a new sacred place for Christendom. As Horden and Purcell remind us, sacred places were mutable and could come into existence for many reasons, especially when the sea was involved as a medium of transport.[28] Particularly in the early Christian era, opportunities existed for the emergence of new holy areas that were not grounded in pagan traditions. The construction of so many churches and monasteries along the Lycian coast produced a remarkable concentration of holy buildings in an area not associated intimately with the life of Jesus or directly with the activities of his disciples. There was probably no official or regional policy at play here. Rather a series of independent decisions taken by local communities yielded an unplanned, summary result. Regardless of how or why this assemblage came to be, these sacred buildings were along a key maritime route taken by pilgrims heading to and from the Holy Land. Perhaps for contemporaries, this coastline itself acquired a sanctity because of its association with pilgrimage, an attitude created, then confirmed by the presence of so many holy buildings.[29]

In addition, St. Nicholas of Myra, the 4^th century bishop whose miracles and particular association with the sea and sailors, cast his shadow over this coastline. As his fame spread in Late Antiquity, pilgrims may have came to his region to venerate his memory.[30] Many of Lycia?s now nameless shrines were surely identified with the region?s most famous saint, or the 6^th-century namesake with whom he was often confused subsequently.[31] One is tempted to speculate that one of Aperlae?s churches must have borne the name of St. Nicholas, whether of Myra or of Sion.  Either one of the two submerged basilicas on the waterfront would be a good candidate for addressing the spiritual needs of sailors, fishermen, or sea-borne pilgrims.

Aperlae did not alone create the new sacred place that coastal Lycia became in the early Byzantine era nor by itself attract the pilgrims who sailed along its shore, but it did its share to enhance the religious sanctity of its micro-region through its ecclesiastical building program.[32] Perhaps in its last centuries, addressing the needs of pilgrims became a local commercial activity to supplement, but certainly not replace, the purple industry. Our city might have done well by doing good.

Snails, the sacred, and cabotage. There is surely more to Aperlae?s economic story than that. Certainly this city and its chora produced wine, olives, and grain and probably engaged in transhumance. Timber might have been an export commodity until deforestation of its hinterland took a toll, although, as already noted, sufficient supplies still existed in the 7^th century to attract the Arabs to nearby Phoenix.[33] Even after timber had become scarce, charcoal might have been produced from the maquis in quantities to justify export. By Late Antiquity, however, tall timber must have been available only inland or at some distance from the site itself. For now, details beyond the readily apparent escape us and await more thorough archaeological investigations in the future.