"In the classical period, the remote region of Lycia supported up to forty cities. The coastal centers grew to considerable size and importance, perhaps owing their prosperity to the fact that the main shipping lanes from wealthy Egypt and Syria lay right along the Lycian coast, with its numerous safe harbors. In late antiquity, a population shift seems to have occurred.

The urban populations along the coast appear to have declined, while smaller settlements (monasteries, villages, and towns) began cropping up in the sheltered mountain vales farther up and farther in. To be sure, the coast was not abandoned - indeed, evidence suggests a mutual dependence between the inhabited centers of mountain and plain.".

"The current study is the result of Martin Harrison's forty years of travel and research in the area that was once Lycia, where the silent ruins of monasteries and churches, towns, villages, and hamlets remain largely inaccessible and unexplored. Also presented are the findings from his excavation of the Phrygian city of Amorium, which became more important as the great classical cities declined and which, at its peak, ranked second only to Byzantium, until it fell to Arab invaders."--BOOK JACKET.