The site of Amorium was surveyed in 1987, and the Turkish authorities kindly issued a permit for excavation in 1988. Our purpose was to study the site from the late Hellenistic period to the Medieval, in particular its growth, development and change from a small Roman town to the Late Roman and Early Byzantine city, which was destroyed by the Arabs in 838. After Constantinople and Thessalonica, this was probably the third city of the Byzantine Empire, and thus the first in Asia Minor (W. Treadgold, The Byzantine Revival 780–842 (1988), 41).