摘要: Description　　Koramaz Valley is situated within the boundaries of modern Kayseri Province in central Anatolia. The valley is an earthquake fracture which is 12 km long and sweeps from the east and to t

Description

　　Koramaz Valley is situated within the boundaries of modern Kayseri Province in central Anatolia. The valley is an earthquake fracture which is 12 km long and sweeps from the east and to the west. The base altitude of the valley is 1500m in the east edge and 1665 m in the west edge. Some of the surface waters form their own valleys and the others soak into underground and rise to the surface in the form of fountains. All the waters of these streams and fountains slowly met each other and form Koramaz Stream.

　　Kayseri Province is covered with pyroclastic rock that was erupted by the Mount Erciyes and other surrounding volcanoes since Upper Miocene Period, and these rocks are mostly of easily-eroded, cellular structure such as tuff and ignimbrite. These soft rocks structured the valleys by eroding.

　　Today, there are seven residential areas and some abandoned settlements of ancient period in the valley. Pigeon lofts, columbaria, mausoleums, tumuli, underground defense structures, caves, temples and churches, sheepfolds, observation points are still seen in the valley.  These structures date back to the first millennium especially during which Pagan-Christian struggles emerged in Roman Empire. The typical structure of the valley and people’s daily lives continues harmoniously.

　　There have been determined 42 rock churches so far in the thereabouts and in the seven different settlements in the valley.  The biggest of these churches is 1,5 by 4 meters.  They are dated to the middle of the first millennium. Some of the churches were converted into store houses and pigeon lofts later. Only four of them have fresco and some others have ceilings with tunnel vault and apsis in the shape of horseshoe.

　　The watercourse flowing in valley bottom, the plant structure, and dry farming all together fed the ecosystem of pigeons. As a consequence, there have been hundreds of pigeon lofts in Koramaz Valley and its neighbor valleys.  The waters flowing from inside the valley feed the Engir Lake which is located in the west exit of the valley and protected as a natural site. The common pigeon loft culture in the valley is thought to be strengthened by the ecosystem in this lake. While some of the pigeon lofts were made directly as pigeon loft, some others were converted from columbaria to pigeon lofts by adding pipes.

　　Koramaz Valley was quite an ideal place for graves because of their location on outbound route and their ideal distance to the city center. Accordingly, 21 columbarium - the mass graves where the ashes of the non-elite Roman citizens used to be kept in special ceramic bowls after incremation- were determined in Koramaz Valley so far. Of these columbaria, 14 carry domed architectural features. There is at least 100 bays and 200 bays uttermost in each columbarium and they are easily distinguished from the other grave structures thanks to the grave niches operated on the walls.  They are known to be generally managed by an organization called collegia as social clubs. Collegias’ most important function was burial operations. However, these group burial places lost their importance with the transition of the Paganism to Christianity. These structures later started to be used as pigeon lofts by opening pipes on the ceilings.

　　Both in the villages and around the villages in Koramaz Valley, there are lots of defense structures (underground cities) carved in the rocks. The characteristic feature of these defense structures is that they are connected with each other through tunnels and that these tunnels are protected against external attacks with circular rock doors. Although their exact construction date is unknown, it is generally accepted that these structures were carved by Christians for protection purposes from the Arabic raids.  There are lots of small “underground cities” in the valley  but out of 15 underground defense structures only five big underground cities in three settlements have been certified, measured and mapped.  The tunnels of underground cities in the two villages are thought to be covering all the settlements, of which some have come to a deadlock and the others have been blocked by stuffing rocks and stones.

　　Since the valley has been in use for thousands of years, there are hundreds of historical stone houses as an example of civil architecture, 6 historical stone bridges, 26 historical fountains, 5 historical watermills, 5 tumuli. Majority of the stone houses were built on the houses formerly used as a cave.

　　Among some settlements in the valley, it is possible to come across some industrial structures such as linseed oil houses where linseed oil was produced and used for illumination during ancient periods and afterwards. It is known that, the plants such as safflower, rocket seed and quarter are transformed into oil in these houses after agriculturally produced. Until the recent period these houses were used actively and three of them still remain standing.