Two New Funerary Altars with Figural Niches from Patara: An Assessment of Local Production and Reuse

This study focuses on two inscribed funerary altars with figural niches recovered in the vicinity of the City Gate during the 2025 excavations at Patara. The monuments are examined through typological, comparative, architectural, stylistic and epigraphic analysis. Their place within the Lycian tradition of altars with figural niches and the processes of their reuse are also discussed. The study demonstrates that economic factors played as decisive a role as burial customs in the distribution of altars with figural niches. It is suggested that the adaptation of funerary altars for reuse may have been related to production costs, individual preferences and the organisation of local workshops. Considered together, the quarries identified at Patara, the abundance and variety of funerary monuments made of local limestone, and unfinished monuments suggest that the city was a prominent regional centre of altar production from the Hellenistic period onwards. Thus, beyond presenting two newly discovered monuments from Patara, the study offers new assessments of the typological development of funerary altars with figural niches, local production practices and processes of reuse.