ANALYSIS OF THE ANCIENT TARSOS CITY BY SPACE SYNTAX METHOD

Abstract

The excavation of ancient cities involves a long process. many ancient cities such as Tarsus, on the other hand, can be partially excavated due to the city layers that have been formed over the centuries. For this reason, when the in situ findings of the ancient city and the maps obtained by following the traces of the city remains are supported with aerial photographs, many data on the use of the city can be obtained before excavation is carried out. By applying space syntax analysis techniques on these maps created by excavation, in situ trace tracking, remote sensing, archaeological geophysical methods, the most frequently used regions of the city or the most isolated regions can be determined. With these analytical results, the core region of that city, the most frequently used pedestrian axes and the regions with the highest accessibility can be determined. In this study, it is aimed to determine the development area with the formal features of the ancient city fiction of Tarsos, one of the ancient cities of the Cilicia region, which has been part of the Anatolian lands from history to the present. Accordingly, the space syntax method was used in the study and integration analysis in the urban area was applied. The most integrated axes and the most isolated axes are shown by coding the results of the integration analysis with colors ranging from red to blue. Important findings about the formation setup of the ancient city of Tarsus have been reached by interpreting the analytical data encoded with color. It has been observed that the district of Tarsus, where the continuity of settlement continues today, spread from the city core that was formed in ancient times and formed the present settlement form. As a result, this study, which is carried out in the historical city center of Tarsus, will create a discussion area for other similar cities.