Burial practices in Byzantine Ephesos: new archaeothanatological data from the Church of Mary cemetery

The Church of Mary in Ephesos (Türkiye)—a major early Christian site—was founded in the early fifth century CE and used as a funerary space until the fifteenth century. While burials have been documented in excavations at the site since the 1980s, mortuary practices were not systematically evaluated. A new campaign in 2023 permitted the application of modern archaeothanatological methods during the excavation of three graves, identifying reduction and reuse practices previously undocumented at the site. Together with the reanalysis of earlier excavation reports, these findings allow a more nuanced understanding of burial practices at this early Christian centre.