Bizans Dönemi'nde Myra hinterlandında yerleşim kilise ve yol ağı

This thesis examines the network of roads and churches in the Byzantine Period in the hinterland of Myra, which was not only the religious and administrative capital of Lycia but one of the most important pilgrimage centers. The mountainous hinterland of Myra within its rugged topography housed many small settlements and ecclesiastical buildings that were linked to each other through a rural road system and experienced a period of prosperity in the fifth to mid-seventh centuries as in other parts of Asia Minor such as the Isaurian Countryside and the Konya Plain. However, Myra can be distinguished from these other examples as it embraced a combination of three pilgrimage activities; the pilgrimage to the Holy Lands, the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Nicholas and the local pilgrimage to the monastery of Nicholas of Sion. In this thesis, I investigate how pilgrimage influenced the built environment in the hinterland of Myra in the early Byzantine Period. This work will also present relevant data and new discoveries made in the course of the systemic field surveys conducted in the region in 2010 and 2011. In addition to the material evidence, a sixth-century vita, the Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion, which illustrates the life in the countryside and provides local toponyms, which are re-interpreted for the mapping on the topography of the villages and churches mentioned in the vita. Further, in this work, a network graph with "nodes" and "ties" was modelled and applied to the region using textual evidence to visualize the local pilgrimage and communication network as well as the central position of the monastery of Saint Nicholas of Sion in this system.