Some Byzantine bronze objects from Beycesultan

The British Institute excavations carried out during the 1950s at Beycesultan by the head-waters of the Meander near modern Çivril (figs 1-3) may not now be of great moment in scholarly enquiry. The overriding reason for this is, of course, that no epigraphic material of any description came to hand. The excavations are, however, of note in connection with the progress and development of field archaeology - its aims and methods. They must be about the last large-scale Middle East excavations planned and executed according to traditional ideas of work whereby what constituted material for the archaeological record was taken for granted, and was reckoned such that it could be controlled by one or two experienced men in charge: both during the field work and in its publication. In this fashion, the Beycesultan excavations were fortunate. They were under the joint control of Seton Lloyd and James Mellart (fig 4). At that stage Seton Lloyd had been active for 25 years in directing a variety of important excavations in the Middle East (both in Iraq and Turkey), and was, by training, a talented architect. James Mellart, on the other hand, had already crammed into three or four years of intensive excavation and surveying work the accumulated expertise and confidence to assess in a most penetrating way broad regional issues as manifested in objects (‘finds’). Indeed a great deal of what became standard practice in the later 1950s and 60s evolved from his example. This combination of talents and energies was thus a highly favourable one and carried the work through to a very successful conclusion.