Cremna in Pisidia: An Ancient City in Peace and in War.

Freeman, Phil

By way of introduction, let it be said, this is a nice book. Its attractiveness is the consequence of a number of positive features, not least because it fulfils the promise of the publishers' blurb: '. . . written in a style accessible to general readers as well as to specialists. It is not only a definitive account of an important city of the Roman East. It is also a case study explaining many of the common characteristics of civic life in the Roman world'. Its value lies in bringing to a wider attention a site which was by any standards, even those of many Classical archaeologists, never an important place. Its 15 minutes of fame came with a revolt and a siege in AD 278, involving the recapture of the city by Roman troops but one which is only described by the 6th-century historian, Zosimus. Despite an invaluable survey in 1885, Cremna remained an obscure and little visited site. This changed in 1978 when Stephen Mitchell and a team drawn mainly from the University of Swansea commenced what was to become a three-year (198587) programme of recording. Significant as the results of this were, Cremna became an important place once again with the discovery of what were interpreted as the remains of that siege. Not only was there addition to the corpus of Roman siegecraft but the discovery, in part at least, validated Zosimus' account.

It is also useful in that it leaves the reader frequently wanting to know more about particular aspects. That said, most of the conclusions about the evolution and quality of life in the city do not strike me as necessarily unusual or unexpected. Other than the evidence for the siege - which is well set out, even if one doubts the wider interpretation of it - the other significant addition to the account is the attribution of a overweening Hadrianic effect on the community, a phenomenon Mitchell has detected elsewhere in the provinces of Asia Minor and Anatolia.

The structure of this account is, by Mitchell's own admission, traditional. The seven chapters describe a chronological, narrative history of the site, as manifested by its (public) buildings and institutions. Chapter 1, effectively outlining the site's location, previous work and the backdrop to the most recent initiatives, is highly readable. It is also important because it determines what was done at the site, of which more presently. The second chapter marshals the meagre evidence for pre-Roman Cremna, before the third chapter describes the almost equally insubstantial evidence for the Augustan colony. One would have liked to have seen some consideration of why Augustus chose a place like Cremna for one of his Pisidian colonies. The core of the text is chapter 4, at 60 pages, with its account of the 2nd-century city, with particular emphasis on the effect of the emperor Hadrian. This leads into a fifth chapter on 'Living in Cremna', which means its water supply and its re-distribution as well as the populace's housing. The sixth chapter is devoted to the description of the archaeological evidence for the aforementioned siege, of the efforts of the besiegers to capture the city and the besieged to thwart them. This is complemented by an assessment of the wider historical context of the siege. The text concludes with a rather abrupt seventh chapter, which describes the eight or more churches which have been located by the Swansea team. There is no specific discussion of 4th-century and later Cremna. Its demise is attributed to a 6th-century earthquake which evidently devastated other communities in the region.

Although there are problems with the text, or more precisely what it concludes, the first thing to be noted is that the illustrations are horrible. The location maps [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 AND 2 OMITTED] are not especially helpful. A large proportion of the monochrome plates have not published at all well and/or have been over-reduced to the extent that the criterion for their inclusion is now lost. Plate 10 might be an example of the snow that can blanket the region: more likely, it is missing. Many of the line illustrations have also been over-reduced, conventions as to formatting have been ignored and there are several different styles of line illustration evident. The overall impression is that the illustrations were put together, partly in haste, partly with the cost-cutting factor in mind. For nearly [pounds]50, this is poor service, especially as the text is embellished by some very fine colour plates!

Perhaps more serious is the fact that Mitchell's easy reading style could lead the unwary to miss the caveats to many of his hypotheses which masquerade as conclusions. I lost track of the number of occasions where expressions such as 'conjecture . . . has been allowed to run so far, it will do no harm to compound the mischief' (p. 100) crop up. Part of the problem in this respect is that much of Mitchell's interpretation of the site hinges on the epigraphic material. Whilst the fullest working-up of that data is promised as 'forthcoming', it would have been useful to have a fuller presentation of the (small number) of inscriptions, perhaps as an appendix, which Mitchell frequently cites. Aiding and abetting the speculation is the use of parallel evidence derived from comparable Pisidian and more generally Turkish sites.

The emphasis on the inscriptions is indicative of another problem. Mitchell's survey, again by his own admission, was limited to recovering (more of) the ground plan of the city proper. It was in effect a traditional topographic survey of the site. In comparison with other Classical city surveys, conspicuous by its absence was consideration of the chora. Mitchell offers sensible reasons for why the emphasis was on the city but the failure to explore at least part of the countryside at the same time still strikes me as what could have been a lost opportunity. I note that since 1993 Mitchell has been conducting 'a study of (the) rural hinterland'. In the first instance, even a partial survey might have provided data on the scale of agricultural activity. Collecting surface material, even if the sites could not be dated, would have been of assistance for the future, especially if the region was under threat from modern activities. There must surely have been the beginnings of a stratified sequence, what with Inan's excavations at Cremna in the early 1970s as well as Waelken's work at Sagalassus (before the discovery of the kilns there). The failure to consider the city in itself leads Mitchell to write a history of the site which is based on its position with the outer world. All developments, shifts, actions and their consequences within the city's wall are attributed to events and decisions made in Rome or the wider Mediterranean. Cremna itself seems, in this reading of the evidence, to have been incapable of being affected by actions at the local, micro-regional level. Confirmation, or rejection, of this would surely lie with the relationship that Cremna enjoyed with its neighbours, a number of communities which are currently under exploration. It will be interesting to see just how perceptions of Cremna's evolution will develop in light of the field survey which has been undertaken in its territory. Just as interesting would be an attempt to read the evidence of the introduction and acceptance of Hellenistic and Roman social practices on the basis of monumental institutions (the agora and the somewhat incongruous idea of the introduction of a post-Industrial Revolution market monetary economy to Cremna from the time of Augustus onwards, as well as the basilica, the theatres and temples etc.), as not just acquiescence (of a limited elite) or to be judged by some sort of absolute standard but as a reflection of the conventions of a local population who clearly enjoyed a measure of independence and freedom of thought. That independence is reflected in the region's reputation in antiquity, its remoteness, why Augustus may have placed the original colony there and the events of the 3rd-century siege. In other words, how were these institutions manipulated by the locals?

Nevertheless, within it limitations, this is a highly readable, often fascinating, statement of how Classical archaeologists of the Classical period work in difficult terrains, where the sheer scale and monumentality of their data, making it even more difficult to disentangle it when it falls apart, complicate and inhibit their efforts.

PHIL FREEMAN Department of Archaeology University of Liverpool