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Aspects of the Excavations in the Altinova, Elaziǧ
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
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Anyone associated for twenty years and more with Anatolian archaeology through the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and thus with Anatolian Studies, has ample reason for respect and gratitude for the long, patient and understanding editorship of this journal by Oliver Gurney. For many years he has proved that efficiency and humanity can go hand in hand; and that the light touch on the editorial helm is normally sufficient. Perhaps at some sacrifice of his own interests, he has a record of service to Anatolian scholarship quite unsurpassed in our time, for to him is due the shape of Anatolian Studies as we have long known it.
This necessarily brief appraisal of aspects of the work achieved in the area of the Keban Rescue Project, under the overall auspices of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, concentrates its attention especially upon the excavations at one site. The results of these have now been published in part in final form, with praiseworthy speed. The writer is responding to a request for a review of these publications. To attempt such a review without reference to the other reports on this site of Korucutepe, or in total isolation from the many other excavations by different teams in the same area, would of course be of little value and less interest. Yet the literature is by now so great, if in some degree repetitive, and the cultural implications for surrounding regions are so far-reaching, that a definitive assessment can scarcely be approached, and must await the final publications of the other excavations.
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References
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70 Ibid., pp. 229–30.
71 Ibid., pp. 29–37.
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