Archaeologists excavating the agora of Dara Ancient City in southeastern Türkiye uncovered a nearly 50-square-meter mosaic floor that had been sealed beneath earth for about 1,500 years, reported Anadolu Agency. The pavement, preserved inside a residence adjoining late Roman shops, carries wave, droplet, wavy, and diamond motifs set in small tesserae.
“We recently uncovered a mosaic covering the floor of a large room; a coin from the reign of Justinian I embedded in its mortar lets us date the work to 525–575 CE,” said Devrim Hasan Menteşe, the excavation director, according to NTV. Menteşe added that the discovery revealed repairs carried out in antiquity, indicating that the owners maintained the floor until the city’s abandonment.
The room stands directly behind a row of commercial stalls. “We realized that many shop floors were also paved with mosaics. With the trenches we opened, we saw that it forms one continuous surface,” Menteşe told reporters.
Fieldwork, led by the Mardin Museum and funded through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Future Heritage Project, has run without interruption for five years. Crews have identified nearly 20 shops, several houses, and a Roman water system.
“We extracted a unique 1,500-year-old mosaic almost entirely intact. We plan to lift it as a single piece and present it to visitors,” said Ayhan Gök, the provincial director of culture and tourism, according to Sözcü. He stated that the panel would remain in situ until conservators decide on a removal method and that other artifacts are already on view at the Mardin Museum.
Excavations in the marketplace have yielded more than 10,000 objects—arrowheads, oil lamps, glass, ceramics, and jewelry—evidence that Dara was both a military fortress and a hub of long-distance trade. Religious inscriptions suggest that pilgrims stopped in the city, and earlier campaigns documented necropoleis, three churches, a palace, armories, cisterns, and a Roman aqueduct.
“Each trench deepens our understanding of commercial and social life in late antiquity,” Menteşe told En Son Haber, noting that further mosaics and domestic spaces likely wait beneath the fields surrounding the modern Oğuz Neighborhood.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.