Micaceous White Painted Ware from insula 104 at Hierapolis/Pamukkale, Turkey

The study of the changes that affected urban communities from Late Antiquity into the Medieval period has been one of the most debated issues over the past twenty years of scientific research on Asia Minor. For several years, the study of the changes that affected urban life in Asia Minor from late Antiquity into the Medieval period have been hampered by the lack of reliable and extensive evidence, whether in the form of literary and documentary sources, or in the form of archaeological evidence and material culture. Only recently, trends have changed and archaeologists working in Turkey have been increasingly focusing their attention on the period comprised between the V and the Mid-Byzantine period, in search of the evidence necessary to understand and define the social, cultural and economic transformations that affected local communities and their lifestyle after late Antiquity. It is within this general context that the article presents and discusses the Mid-Byzantine ceramics and related archaeological data, retrieved from recent excavations in insula 104 at Hierapolis.