Syedra Dig Finds a City Built Over Olive Oil Presses

Excavations at Syedra, an ancient city on Türkiye’s southern coast near Alanya, have uncovered nearly 20 olive oil workshops and identified more than 100 across the site, many of them built right under people’s homes. The archaeologists say the city was a major olive oil production center that shipped oil across the Mediterranean. Here is what was found, why the layout is unusual, and what it says about how central olive oil was to an ancient economy.

What the dig found

Syedra lies about 20 kilometers east of Alanya, in Antalya province, and has a history of some 3,000 years, running through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Anatolian Seljuk periods. Systematic excavations began in 2019 under the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s “Heritage for the Future” project, led by Associate Professor Ertuğ Ergürer of Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University’s Faculty of Tourism.

“Through excavations, we have uncovered nearly 20 olive oil workshops. Beyond that, we have identified over 100 such workshops across the entire ancient city,” Ergürer told the Anadolu Agency this week. Olive oil workshops, he said, are among the most frequently encountered architectural elements on the site.

Presses under the houses

What sets Syedra apart is where the workshops are. In most ancient production centers, oil was made outside the urban area. At Syedra, many workshops sit directly beneath residential and public buildings. Houses of two or three stories had production spaces on the lower level and living quarters above. “This clearly shows how intensive olive oil production was in Syedra,” Ergürer said.

The process will look familiar to anyone who has seen a traditional mill. Olives were crushed, then pressed with wooden lever systems and mechanical presses, and the oil was run into storage containers and large jars known as pithoi. In 2024 the team found a workshop on the city’s southwestern street with almost all of its stones still in their original places, including a pithos for collecting the oil. It has since been partly restored to show visitors how oil was made, and routes with information panels are planned once the site opens to the public.

An oil town on a trade route

Ergürer says the city likely exported its oil through the harbor known as Ada Taş to the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, especially after the population of Anatolia grew in the fourth century. Reports of the find point to North Africa and the Levant as likely destinations.

That fits what we know about the ancient oil trade. Oil was fuel for lamps, a base for perfumes and medicines, and a staple food, and it moved by sea in amphorae between regions that had too much and regions that had too little. A coastal city with olive groves behind it and a harbor in front was in the right business.

• Workshops under houses may mean oil making was a household trade, not only a big landowner’s industry.
• More than 100 workshops in one city points to production on a commercial scale.
• The restored workshop will let visitors see the whole chain, from crushing to storage jar.

Sources

• Anadolu Agency: Excavations in Türkiye’s Syedra ancient city reveal it was major olive oil production hub (December 29, 2025)
• Archaeology Magazine: Olive Oil Production Hub Excavated in Turkey (December 30, 2025)
• Hürriyet Daily News: Syedra served as major olive oil production hub (December 31, 2025)