Negotiating archeology and urbanization at Bodrum peninsula

Abstract

The archaeological heritage is the non-renewable part of the ongoing process from the past to the future. Nevertheless, tourism related rapid urbanization is experienced especially in coastal regions of Turkey since the 1980s. Therefore, this study aims to create a broader perspective to evaluate archaeological heritage in tourism destinations to create early measures for conserving archaeological heritage. Cultural landscape concept provides a wider perspective to analyze Bodrum peninsula. Therefore, layers of the geography (topography, ground cover, soil, and water data), built environment, (settlement areas, transportation network and land use) and protected areas, are created using the QGIS program, which helps to create various data sets by superposing layers. Archaeological site layer, and the urbanization process analysis (1985-2022) is combined to identify archaeological sites in rapid urbanization zones. The vicinity of Myndos is one of the rapidly urbanized regions. Myndos is located in the Gümüşlük neighbourhood and is directly influenced from the settlement growth of Peksimet neighbourhood. Therefore, in-situ observation, land use, inventory map and urbanization process analyses were combined on Gümüşlük and Peksimet. The results demonstrate that tourism-related urbanization in Gümüşlük and Peksimet continues rapidly risking the archaeological remains. On the other hand, archaeological sites could not be conserved. Therefore, a conceptual proposal is developed to ensure the conservation-use balance in tourism destinations. Concept of buffer zone and slow tourism was proposed for sustainable development of Gümüşlük and Peksimet neighbourhoods.