The ancient city of Sebastopolis, one of the largest Roman cities in the Black Sea region, is located within the present-day borders of the Sulusaray district of Tokat province. Excavations were initially conducted at the site under the direction of the Tokat Museum between 1987 and 1990, 2010, 2013 and 2018, and 2021 and 2023. These excavations uncovered a city wall, a Roman bath, a Byzantine church, and mosaic fragments. After a two-year hiatus, excavations resumed with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, under the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Davut YİĞİTPAŞA of the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ondokuz Mayıs University.
The ancient city of Sebastopolis was a significant settlement during the Roman Period, with archaeological excavations revealing an uninterrupted history of settlement from the Bronze, Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman periods. Excavations were conducted in two sectors containing the remains of a Roman Bath and a Byzantine Church. The Byzantine Church, with its three-apse, three-nave basilica plan and east-west orientation, has an excavated section measuring 27x29 meters on the exterior. The surviving support system indicates that it had a dome approximately eleven meters in diameter, supported by four large piers at the center of the main nave. In the church's central nave, the opus sectile pavement, flanked by the solea and ambo, is centrally located beneath the dome. At the center of the composition is a square panel with an eight-pointed star motif. This panel is surrounded by a large circle decorated with four knotted circles at its corners. The entire composition is framed by rectangular borders featuring various geometric patterns. Remains of a mural were identified on the west face of the southeastern one of the four massive piers supporting the dome, beginning at the lower part of the wall, just above the marble facing. This partially preserved remnant offers important clues about the church's original decorative program. The depiction consists of an imitation of a curtain and bears a two-line Greek inscription.
Following our work at the Roman Baths, it was determined that the bathhouse dates to the Roman period, and the dressing rooms (apodyterium), frigidarium, tepidarium, and caldarium (hot room) were largely uncovered. These social service structures, sometimes built in addition to the baths and sometimes located in the immediate vicinity, such as libraries, galleries, parks, educational, sports, meeting, and ceremonial spaces, have not yet been discovered. The remains of mortared rubble masonry walls, located above the remains of the bathhouse's cut block walls, indicate that the building was used for various purposes during the Byzantine period
