Lycian Civilization | Muğla & Antalya — 1980

Lycia occupied the mountainous coast of southwestern Anatolia, stretching across parts of present-day Antalya and Muğla. Its ancient cities developed a distinctive culture, expressed most visibly in monumental rock-cut tombs and stone sarcophagi with high, house-shaped lids. The Lycians spoke their own language and, over time, came under Persian, Macedonian and Roman rule. Their cities also formed the Lycian League, an important example of a federative political system in antiquity. Xanthos and the nearby sanctuary of Letoon, among the region’s most significant ancient sites, are now jointly recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1980, I spent three months in Kaş on a work assignment. It was then a small coastal town of roughly 1,500 people, difficult to reach and far removed from the busy tourism center it would later become. What initially seemed like an ordinary assignment gave me an unexpected opportunity to travel through the surrounding Lycian landscape with my camera. I photographed ancient remains in Myra, Fethiye, Kekova and Üçağız, as well as traces of history woven into everyday life. Looking back, I value these photographs not only as records of archaeological monuments, but also as glimpses of the region before decades of development changed its character.

At Myra, near present-day Demre, the rock-cut tombs rise dramatically from the cliffs. Their carved façades evoke the timber architecture of houses, as if the dead were to inhabit enduring versions of familiar buildings. Elsewhere in the region, sarcophagi stood beside roads, homes and settlements, not isolated from daily life but part of the landscape people moved through.

A particularly memorable sight around Kekova and Üçağız was the Lycian sarcophagi standing partly in the sea. These tombs were not originally built underwater. Over many centuries, earthquakes, tectonic subsidence and changes in relative sea level altered the coastline, leaving parts of the ancient landscape submerged. The stone tombs, with their characteristic pointed lids, still emerge from the water as striking witnesses to the meeting of history and nature.

Another detail caught my attention in the villages. When local people found old, already-worked stones nearby, they sometimes used them as convenient building materials. The final photograph in this series shows ancient dressed stones incorporated into a more recent building. For the villagers, they were ready-to-use materials at hand. I wanted to record this everyday practice without passing judgment: a reminder that the remains of antiquity were also part of the practical world of the people living among them.

My memories of those months extend beyond the monuments. I remember the sponge divers, the fish that seemed so plentiful then and can be hard to find today, and ice cream served on simple tea saucers. These small details belong to the Kaş I knew in 1980. Together with the ancient tombs and coastal villages, they form a personal record of a place and a way of life that have changed profoundly.