Archaeologists Make 1,500‑Year‑Old Discovery That Rewrites Early Byzantine Daily Life

The discovery of a 1,500-year-old knife set and rare sharpening stone by archaeologists in northern Turkey has offered historians an unprecedented glimpse into the day-to-day lives of Late Roman and Early Byzantine cultures.

Knife Set Recovered Alongside Extremely Rare Sharpening Tool

The astonishing find was made during an excavation led by Professor Ersin Çelikbaş from Karabük University’s Department of Archaeology. Çelikbaş and his team are working on the ongoing restoration of the Hammam Building Complex, a center which served as a settlement throughout history. Appropriately, the knife set was found in what researchers believe to be the complex’s kitchen. Alongside a sharpening stone known as a kösüre taşı, few of which have been found in the region, archaeologists found four iron knives of varying sizes. Kösüre taşı is a type of sharpening stone more commonly associated with the Ottoman Empire, but its discovery here indicates that they were in use much earlier than previously believed. The knives themselves have been dated back to the fifth or sixth century B.C.

"When the knives were first uncovered, they were in many fragments, around 250 pieces," Professor Çelikbaş told journalists. "We reconstructed these pieces in our laboratory and restored the knives to their original forms.”

Finding a United Set of Knives is Uncommon

Çelikbaş reiterated how uncommon it is to find an intact set of knives from this point in history. That they were found together confirms their intended use. "The fact that the knives were found in the same place indicates that the people living in the Hammam Building Complex were engaged in animal husbandry," he explained. "Archaeological data had already shown that livestock activities were intensive in Hadrianopolis during antiquity, especially in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods. The discovery of these knives confirms that families involved in animal husbandry lived in the Hadrianopolis region in ancient times."

Çelikbaş contends that this means the community was raising livestock for the purpose of food and labor, illustrating a successful and active community that was reliant on livestock production. “Therefore, this also shows that animal husbandry activities in the Hadrianopolis region – and in present-day Eskipazar – have continued uninterrupted for approximately 1,500 years," Çelikbaş concluded.