The marketplace

This was the marketplace of the Ancient Greeks. What makes archaeology very difficult for those excavating Ephesus is the fact that there are so very many layers of history buried underground. As the archaeologists dig they go through Turkish, Ottoman, Medieval tribes, Roman, Greek, Persian and Hittite zones of occupancy. After a fire the Romans might reuse some of the old stone and marble to build a new structure on top of the previous one. The same piece of stone may have been used by the Ottomans who took it from an old Roman building while that Roman's may have taken that same piece from a deeply buried Greek edifice. The Greeks may have borrowed that stone from an earlier Hittite or Persian building or even brought it from elsewhere in Turkey. Like Delphi in Greece, many of the stones and columns were hauled away and used elsewhere over the centuries.