The late antique opus sectile pavement of tarsus roman bath

Abstract

During the salvage excavations in the ruins of the Roman Bath in the city center of Tarsus, In trench 2 of area II, a well-preserved opus sectile floor was discovered. The aim of this article is to introduce and evaluate the opus sectile aforementioned. In this study, the pavement was firstly examined on site. Measurements and photographs were taken, measured drawing was made by 3D scanning and the missing sections were completed by the restitution drawing of the ruins, partly destroyed and partly under the cross sections. The dating and interpretation of the opus sectile was based on the data in the stratum and was compared with the similar ones. The pavement is of geometric opus sectile type and consists of 15 rectangular panels. Five different types of decoration were used in the panels and the panels were separated by wide bands. Octagonal, hexagonal, square, rectangular and triangular, small and medium-sized plates are used in motifs. The plates used here are predominantly composed of black / smoked marbles (nero antico/bigio antico), gray /white veined marbles (marmo bianco) and yellow (giallo antico?) tones of miocene limestones and travertines. The opus sectile was probably paved for the section which was converted into a lounge or a chapel after the bath shrank, considerably and it was used from the beginning of the Vth century to the middle of the VIIth century AD (Late Antiquity). The damage to the pavement in this process is understood from the traces of renovating and repairing because of using stones of different colors, in some panels than they should have been in the pattern that forms the ornaments. © 2020, Bursa Uludag University. All rights reserved.