A small Roman bathhouse on the coast of Antalya province was converted into an agricultural workshop in Late Antiquity, with rooms once used for bathing reused to make wine and probably olive oil, according to a new study.
The building, known as the Small Bath, lies at Antiochia ad Cragum, an ancient city in the region historically called Rough Cilicia, within today's Gazipaşa district. It stands roughly 90 meters outside the city's main gate beside the old coastal road. The research, by Emlyn Dodd and Leticia R. Rodriguez, was published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology in 2026 and reported in Türkiye by Arkeofili on Sept. 27.
Geometric mosaics in red, black and white date the construction of the bath to the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD. The authors suggest bathing came to an end not long after the Persian invasion led by Shapur I in the 260s, which struck the coastal cities of Cilicia. Its position outside the walls may have helped ensure it was never restored to its original use.
Treading grapes on a mosaic floor
Sometime between roughly the 4th and 7th centuries, two of the unheated cold rooms were adapted for wine production. One was used for treading grapes, and wear on its mosaic floor suggests repeated trampling. A narrow channel lined with waterproof mortar carried the juice to the second room, where it split between a small basin and a large tank that had once been a plunge pool. The tank, given a new waterproof coating and a drainage pit, could hold about 2,900 liters, far more than a vat found in an older winery set up inside a temple at the same site.
The central hall was divided by a new wall. One side held a stone mill of the type used to crush olives; the other held a large press bed cut from a reused marble block, with drainage channels and a heavy reused counterweight nearby.
Wine, oil or both
The researchers consider a mixed operation, making wine in the cold rooms and oil in the hall, the most likely explanation, since grape and olive harvests fall in different seasons. At least six other mills or press bases have been found across the city, and the authors suggest surplus may have been exported, possibly linked to amphora kilns at the site.
They float a possible connection to the early Church, which was involved in the wine and oil economy of the period, but stress that this is only a hint. Later still, the building served as a Byzantine craft workshop and then as a burial ground, with graves radiocarbon-dated to the 10th and 11th centuries.
Sources
Photo: Selçuk Kara / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
