page_title: Sagalassos
section_title: Modern project
hierarchical_section_title: Sagalassos / Modern project
caption_attribution_description: English: Sagalassos - Nymphaeum
context_page_description: Sagalassos, also known as Selgessos and Sagallesos, is an archaeological site in southwestern Turkey, about 100 km north of Antalya, and 30 km from Burdur and Isparta. The ancient ruins of Sagalassos are 7 km from Ağlasun in the province of Burdur, on Mount Akdağ, in the Western Taurus mountains range, at an altitude of 1450–1700 metres.
  In Roman Imperial times, the town was known as the "first city of Pisidia", a region in the western Taurus mountains, currently known as the Turkish Lakes Region. During the Hellenistic period it was already one of the major Pisidian towns.
context_section_description: From 1990 Sagalassos, a major tourist site, has become a major excavation project led by Marc Waelkens of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The monumental city center is now exposed; four major restoration projects are (nearly) completed. The project also undertakes an intensive urban and geophysical survey, excavations in the domestic and industrial areas, and an intensive survey of the territory. The first survey documents a thousand years of occupation—from Alexander the Great to the seventh century—while the latter has established the changing settlement patterns, the vegetation history and farming practices, the landscape formation and climatic changes during the last 10,000 years.
  On August 9, 2007, the press reported the discovery of a finely detailed, colossal statue of the Emperor Hadrian, which is thought to have  stood 4-5m in height. The statue dates to the early part of Hadrian's reign, and depicts the emperor in military garb. It was carved in sections that were fitted together with marble tenons on the site, which was a thermae, a public bath. A major earthquake sometime between the late sixth and early seventh centuries CE brought the vaulting crashing down; the statue of Hadrian was felled, coming apart along the joins of its facture. The discovery of carved marble toes drilled with dowel holes to fasten them to the hem of a long mantle suggests the possibility of finding a companion sculpture of Sabina, the emperor's consort. On August 14, 2008, the head statue of Faustina the Elder, wife of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius (Hadrian's successor and adopted son) was discovered in the same site. On August 22, 2008, another colossal portrait head was found, this time of Marcus Aurelius.
  In a phylogenetic study the mitochondrial DNA of 85 skeletons from Sagalassos dated to the 11th–13th century AD was compared to modern populations. The research found a significant maternal genetic signature of Balkan/Greek populations, as well as ancient Persians and populations from the Italian peninsula. Some contribution from the Levant was also detected, whereas no contribution from Central Asian population was ascertained.
caption: Nymphaeum
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