With the patience of a monk, the conservation team--led by Emine Kocak, and further composed of Canan Ustabay, Filiz Zeyveli, and Ozan Tanriöver (ITU, Istanbul)--tackled hundreds of objects of all possible material categories. Each object is carefully cleaned and treated according to the raw material category to which it belongs, before being drawn, photographed, and stored. Not all of the thousands of potsherds every week are being washed. Some bottom parts and rim fragments of storage and cooking vessels are sampled uncleaned, together with the earth that surrounded them, in order to extract lipids and fatty acids by means of liquid-gas-chromatography and gas-chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry at the Center for Catalysis and Surface Chemistry (KULeuven and now also part of the recently established Center for Archaeological Sciences, KULeuven, dir. M. Waelkens). In the past, this technique developed within the team by Katrien Kimpe and now continued by Kerlijne Romanus under the supervision of Pierre Jacobs and Dirk De Vos, has allowed us to distinguish among vessels those that once contained fish, pig, sheep/goat, cattle, palm oil, olive, and other vegetable oils, as well as beeswax. We are now focusing on identifying wine or oil in imported or locally made amphorae or other containers.

Other objects include window and vessel glass, all types of metals, coins, worked bone, mosaic, and stucco fragments etcetera. Some characteristic examples of which are shown here.

Early Byzantine glass vessel, left, and nicely worked bone handle, right, from the Macellum