Identity confusion of a multifaceted landscape: revisiting the isolated Rum Heritage in rural Ayvalık (late 19th/early 20th century)

Abstract

The district of Ayvalık by the Aegean Sea in Turkeyʼs Balıkesir province is one of several places affected by the 1923 Greco-Turkish population exchange. Ayvalık is perceived as a city rich in cultural heritage, notably for its architectural legacy from the 19th to 20th centuries, when it was inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks. Recent studies and conservation attempts are mainly focused on its settlement centres. The UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List designation, dated 2017 and themed ‘industrial landscape’, portrays the Ayvalık countryside as being full of olive groves. Through an interdisciplinary methodology that centres on landscape archaeology, historical topography, and written primary sources, this chapter discusses the rediscovery of rural monuments, which were abandoned by the emigrant Greeks and have been almost completely neglected. Contrary to the common belief on which even the UNESCO listing was based, the chapter also demonstrates the intertwined agricultural, industrial, and sacred landscape of the Ayvalık countryside through archaeological and historical evidence.