Traces From Byzantine Era Tenedos (Bozcaada)

Tenedos (Bozcaada) is situated at the entrance of the Strait of Dardanelles, a strategic location in terms of marine transportation. From Antiquity onwards, Tenedos was a convenient port for fleets to take refuge and hide during wars, as well as for ships to stop over for supplies and maintenance. Tenedos frequently changed hands between the Byzantine Empire, the Genoese and the Venetians from the 13th to the 15th century and was a subject of negotiation in a number of treaties due to its geopolitically significant location. This was because the party to secure Dardanelles and Tenedos, at the strait's entrance, would also command Constantinople and the Black Sea trade. With the Treaty of Turin (1381), which marked the end of the War of Chioggia (1377-1381) between the Venetians and the Genoese over the control of the island of Tenedos, the island was evacuated and the buildings in its existing layout were destroyed, causing the fabric and building stock of the island to largely perish. Tenedos was captured from the Venetians in 1455 by the Navy Commander Hamza Bey, during the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror, thus becoming the first island in the Aegean Sea to be taken under Turkish rule. The abundance of spolia used in the Fort of Tenedos, rebuilt in the Ottoman Era, indicates layering from different periods. Within the scope of this paper, in order to understand the Byzantine Era architectural building stock, the existing surface/archaeological survey and the new excavation findings as well as the remains from Bozcaada in the Çanakkale Museum of Archaeology and Bozcaada Fort Museum were examined, and the spolia detected in Bozcaada were evaluated. The purpose of the paper is to shed light on the Byzantine Era in Tenedos (Bozcaada) through the surviving architectural works.