Old Smyrna Excavations

Book excerpt: "Excavations at the early Greek city of Old Smyrna were carried out jointly by British and Turkish teams. This volume presents a detailed account of the temples themselves, as cleared by the British team. The most important was that under construction c. 610-600 BC, though this was never completed; most of its superstructure apparently ended up in emergency walling, evidently constructed during the siege and sack of the city by Alyattes of Lydia in c. 600 BC. Nevertheless it was already a monumental Aeolic stone temple of superb quality, and it is of the greatest importance for our understanding of the emergence of East Greek architecture. The evidence for its increasingly ambitious predecessors and, mostly more modest, successors is also presented."--Jacket.