Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ANNALI DELL ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI NUMISMATICA, cilt.66, ss.37-70, 2021 (Hakemli Dergi)
Patara, a city of Western Lycia, is located at the end of the Xanthos valley, between the coastline from Cilicia to Caria in Asia Minor. Thanks to its harbors and its rich water supplies, Patara was an important port city on the sea routes of Eastern Mediterranean. During the excavation carried out since 2013 on the Tepecik settlement, which dominates both the road to the city from the north and the inner harbor, defense system and a settlement connected to it in the Tepecik settlement upper plain were revealed. Archaeological data show that Tepecik was resettled and used for military purposes since at least 334/3 BC. Numerous material such as arrowheads, ballista tips, slingshot bullets, spearheads, daggers, pilum, and catapult cannonballs uncovered in the North Bastion and the area inside the North Wall, indicate that the settlement upon Tepecik settlement was a Ptolemaic military garrison at the latest from the second quarter of the 3rd century BC. As establishing a garrison at each strategically important port on the maritime sea routes is known as a result of the security policy of Ptolemies. The existence of the garrison whose existence we know from ancient sources is also confirmed numismatically based on 85 Ptolemaic coins and a gold trichryson hoard of 19 coins found in the excavations.