1,750-year-old pithos, or large ceramic jar burial, has been uncovered during ongoing excavations at the ancient city of Hadrianapolis in the Eskipazar district of Karabük.
Excavation and restoration work at the site, which was inhabited during the Late Chalcolithic, Roman and Early Byzantine periods, is being carried out under the direction of Professor Ersin Çelikbaş, head of the Archaeology Department at Karabük University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Archaeologists found a skeleton inside the jar burial along with a range of grave offerings, including seven vessels, an oil lamp, a coin, a knife and two bone hairpins.
“The finds themselves are important, but the fact that this is a pithos burial is even more significant,” Çelikbaş said. “No pithos tomb has previously been identified in any survey or excavation conducted in the inland areas of the western Black Sea region. In that sense, this discovery can be considered a first.”
According to Çelikbaş, a coin found in the tomb belonged to Roman Emperor Probus, who ruled between A.D. 276 and 282. The coin indicates that the burial likely dates to the late third century.
“The pithos burial provides an important opportunity to better understand funerary traditions in the region,” he said. “We can now say that a pithos tomb has been documented for the first time in Hadrianapolis and its surrounding area.”
Çelikbaş also noted that many of the ceramic vessels recovered from the tomb belong to the Black Sea pottery tradition known as Pontic Sigillata, examples of which have been found throughout the excavation area.
The archaeologist added that the discovery of bone hairpins may indicate that the individual buried in the tomb was a woman. He said studies on the artifacts are continuing and that the finds are expected to contribute significantly to understanding burial customs in ancient Hadrianapolis.
