ARIT Ankara Center helped support a two-day workshop entitled “Joint Heritage of the Maritime Micro-Region of Lesbos and Pergamon,” a collaborative effort of the German Institute of Archaeology (DIA, Istanbul) and the Koç University Mustafa V. Koç Maritime Archaeology Center (KUDAR). Events took place in November, 2019 at Sanat Fabrikası Tiyatrosu in Ayvalık on the western coast of Turkey, in view of the Greek island of Lesbos. The program was spearheaded by Felix Pirson (the Istanbul Director of the DIA and the Pergamon Excavations) and Matthew Harpster (Director of KUDAR) and co-sponsored with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, Turkey (ICOMOS) and the Municipality of Ayvalık.
The workshop brought together an international group of scholars, from a range of national backgrounds and fields of study including Turkish, American, German, Greek and Czech. They aimed to present different ways of understanding the joint heritage throughout the maritime micro-region bounded by the Greek island of Lesbos and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Pergamon / Bergama in Turkey. The region is ideal for an extensive and diachronic study. It is rich in archaeological, textual, architectural, while the present-day communities are emblematic of innumerable entanglements in the past and present.
Held in the historic town of Ayvalık, Turkey, the center of this micro-region, the multi-disciplinary event was an opportunity to explore how this region’s rich history is a narrative of ongoing entanglement, communication, migration, and interaction.
