After five years of survey and the rescue excavation in 1989, large scale excavations started at Sagalassos from July 11th until August 22nd 1990. The work was directed by Professor Marc Waelkens (Dept. of Archaeology, Catholic University of Leuven) and by the Archaeological Museum of Burdur, represented by Ali Harmankaya, temporary director of the museum, who also represented the Turkish Antiquities Department. During the excavation the Council of Ministers granted a full scale excavation permit to Marc Waelkens. The team included 18 scientists and students from the Catholic University of Leuven, three from Britain and four from Turkey. Financial support came from the Research Council of the Catholic University of Leuven, from the Belgian Fund for Collective Fundamental Research, the Flemish Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Flemish Community (Foreign Relations), the ASLK/CGER Bank, the Belgian tour operator ORION, and from the association “Friends of Sagalassos”. Thanks are due to the Anıtlar ve Müzeler Genel Müdürlüǧü and the Bakanlar Kurulu, who gave permission for the excavation, to the staff of the Emniyet Müdürlüǧü and the Archaeological Museum in Burdur, and to the Belediye officials and the inhabitants of Aǧlasun.

Since the discovery of the Midas Monument in the nineteenth century, Phrygian civilisation has emerged as an area of great scientific interest, and research has provided important evidence for Phrygian religion by studying the rock monuments, which reflect the artistic discernment of that period by their workmanship and architectural details. Though the connection of these rock monuments with the Great Mother has been made plain, the function of some details has not yet been adequately explained. One of these details is the vertical shafts that are found behind the façades of certain monuments. In this paper it is proposed to discuss the functions and use of these shafts and their relation to the monuments.

The following notes represent the results of two visits to Turkish Thrace made by the authors during the summers of 1987 and 1988. In 1987 we visited Edirne, Vize and Enez, as well as several Byzantine fortifications at other locations. We returned to Edirne, Vize and Enez in 1988, and in addition we explored the coastal region southwest of Tekirdaǧ. We encountered numerous monuments of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods in these areas that have not been subjected to scholarly scrutiny—at least not since the population exchange of 1922–3 dramatically altered the demographic picture of Thrace. Our purpose in presenting this information is not to provide the complete documentation for each site visited, nor to provide a complete listing of the historical monuments of the region. Rather, we would like to make the scholarly community aware of the unpublished or unstudied monuments of Thrace, as well as the possibilities for further research in the area.

The Hittite kings were the first to record the events of their reigns in annalistic form, beginning, it seems, with the first king of the Empire, Tudhaliyas I/II. His successors continued the practice, and annals are preserved for Arnuwandas I, Suppiluliumas I (composed by his son), and above all for Mursilis II. There is no reason to think that the following kings were any less proud of their achievements, but Muwatallis II's archives have not yet been discovered, nor has any continuous text been found for the reign of Hattusilis III. For the reigns of Tudhaliyas IV and Suppiluliumas II (nothing is known of Arnuwandas III) it seems that with the development of the “hieroglyphic” script and the Luwian language these kings adopted the practice of inscribing their “deeds” (LÙ-natar “manliness”) in a new form beginning “I am …” on monumental inscriptions or commemorative statues.

Renfrew has rightly remarked that in Anatolian Early Bronze Age chronology “the basic problem is to decide how to correlate the Trojan early bronze age periods … with the sequence of Tarsus”. It is largely to this problem that the following article is addressed.

Professor Mellink has argued that Troy I is contemporary with Tarsus EBII on the grounds that Troy II and Tarsus EBIII appear to her to be contemporary. Since she places the start of Tarsus EBI at c. 3000 B.C. this scheme places the beginning of Troy I considerably after that date, perhaps at c. 2700 B.C. Mellaart, by contrast, disputes the equation between Troy I and Tarsus EBII and argued at first that Tarsus EBIIIa must begin later than the beginning of Troy II, envisaging a period of overlap. He has subsequently suggested that it actually follows the end of Troy II. According to this correlation Troy I would be contemporary with Tarsus EBI, and not Tarsus EBII.

Work commenced in August 1994 on a new archaeological rescue project to survey, excavate and protect the remains of a Classical and Byzantine site at Çiftlik, near Sinop on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea (Pl. XXIX (a)). The work was a collaborative project including staff from the Sinop Museum and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and staff and students from the University of Warwick. The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara has adopted this as a new “in-house” project, run in collaboration with Mr. İsmail Tatlıcan, Director of the Sinop Museum.

The remains at Çiftlik lie at the mouth of a valley on the west side of the great bay in the Black Sea which runs south of the peninsula on the isthmus on which the city of Sinop stands. The remains of two buildings were studied in 1994. These buildings were originally constructed on silty soil consisting of winter wash material which was deposited at the valley bottom over a long period of time prior to the Classical occupation of the site. The project is very much concerned with rescue, since the coastline in this area is being seriously eroded by the sea. At least 1·5 metres of the church (the south building) has been eroded since 1990, and the low shelf in the water beside what survives has underwater remains from various Classical and Byzantine buildings.

The investigation of the building which is the subject of this paper was undertaken in 1975, 1977, and 1981 in the course of the survey of Oinoanda conducted by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. I am most grateful to Mr. A. S. Hall, director of the survey, for inviting me to participate in it and for supporting my work on the site, to Bay Sırrı Özenir, Bay Osman Özbek and Bay Edip Özgür, successive representatives of the Turkish government, for much assistance, and to Mr. P. Forster and students of the Department of Land Survey of the North-East London Polytechnic for more technical aid.

Before discussing the building itself, some general remarks on the development of the survey are required. The initial survey of the site was begun in 1974 by a group from the North-East London Polytechnic led by Mr. A. Slade. An arbitrary bearing was defined as grid north and a datum point for levelling was arbitrarily allotted a height of 1000 m. Extension of the survey in 1977 established that the level of the acropolis summit in terms of this arbitrary datum is approximately 1095 m., whereas the actual height above sea level is 1532 m.

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.

It is hoped that one of the advantages of the creation of the R.E.C.A.M. archives in Ankara and of the eventual publication of the regional catalogues will be that the synoptic study of particular topics in a given region will be made easier. A provisional reassessement of the relations between Jews, orthodox Christians and related groups in two Phrygian cities is here attempted.

Jewish settlements were established in Phrygia as military colonies by Antiochus III, in the last decade of the third century B.C. Evidence from both inscriptions and rabbinic literature suggests that, by the Roman imperial period, these communities were distinctly Hellenized. The Talmud provides an interesting anecdote, which appears to refer to the Jews of Phrygia and neighbouring Lydia:

The aim of this paper is to discuss different possibilities for the function of the shaft found behind certain Phrygian cult façades. The purpose of the shaft is unknown, but various theories exist.

In the highlands of Phrygia, between Afyon and Eskişehir, around Türkmen Dağ, which is covered by volcanic tuff, the Phrygians created their sanctuaries and other monuments from the rock itself. These monuments have been the subject of study by several scholars. Haspels (1971, 3–19) gives a thorough account of earlier travellers and scholars. The rock-cut shrines and sanctuaries to be found in this area can be divided into two basic categories. The first category comprises monuments which consist of a façade, varying in size, generally depicting the front of a house and usually with a niche as its focal point. Sometimes there is no façade, just a niche. In the niche we can assume that the cult statue of the Phrygian Mother goddess Kybele was placed, as in a few cases the cult image of Kybele was cut straight from the rock and is still in situ.

This article is based on material collected by Charles Burney, who carried out a survey of the province of Tokat and the northern part of the Sivas province in 1955. His aim was to study the pre-Classical remains of the area and pottery from the Chalcolithic period to the Iron Age was collected. This study is concerned with the Iron Age.

My aims were firstly to record the pottery found, including the plain wares, and to plot any distinguishable groups. I wanted to look for parallels outside the area, establish the direction of any outside influence and then to test the pottery groups against physical boundaries and consider their relationship, if any, to known political boundaries. Any conclusions must be seen in the light of the extremely limited material available.

The results of a survey in the territory of Oinoanda led by Stephen Mitchell in 1994 are presented. A number of lost Hellenistic and Roman settlements could be identified through ancient cemeteries and cult furniture such as images, symbols and footings for stelai. A clear association between tombs and cults permitted the term ‘cemetery cults’. Other types of settlement included traces of an ancient village near Patlangiç Yayla, a fortified hill-top site at Düǧer, and a puzzling planned complex on an island in Girdev Gölü. Architectural fragments at Çukurceylan, Kinik and Girdev told of vanished Byzantine churches, and their associated settlements of later date.

The survey of Ariassos, which we had begun in 1988, was completed between 24 August and 24 September 1990. The team members were Dr. Stephen Mitchell, Dr. Eddie Owens, Linda Keyes, and Ian Williams (University College of Swansea), Sabri Aydal (Antalya Museum). Ian Pollet and Danny Gysen (Leuven), Sarah Cormack (Yale), Armin Schulz (Münster), Claudia Rutherford (Oxford), and Yusuf Gül (Izmir Museum, representing the Turkish Department of Antiquities). Funds for the season were provided by the British Academy, the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, the Roman Society, and the Craven Committee. The student members of the group were also aided by travel grants from their various universities. The Institute at Ankara, as ever, provided invaluable logistic support, notably the use of a landrover, and I am particularly grateful to Chris Lightfoot for helping to arrange our accommodation before work began. Special thanks are due to our many friends in the small town of Bademaǧaç, notably to Ramazan Şener and his family and to Ayfer Orbay, our “landlady”.

The votive reliefs presented here are previously unpublished. No. 3 was discovered by M. F. Smith in 1981, when he was participating in the epigraphical and topographical survey of Oinoanda conducted by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (B.I.A.A.) under the direction of the late Alan S. Hall. The fountain (if that is what it was) bearing four reliefs and inscriptions (no. 4) was also discovered by Smith, who recorded it in 1968 and 1972. The other reliefs (nos. 1 and 2) were seen almost a hundred years ago, in June 1895, by Rudolf Heberdey, whose notes, with a sketch of no. 2, are preserved in his Skizzenbuch Lykien III/1895 (referred to hereinafter as Heb.) in the archives of the Kleinasiatische Kommission of the Austrian Academy in Vienna. Inaccuracies and omissions in his records suggest that he did not view the reliefs in the most favourable of lights. The two were rediscovered and photographed by Smith in 1968 and re-examined and rephotographed by him in 1972 and 1981.

The Amorium Project's eighth season of excavations took place between July 4 and August 19. The team comprised Dr. Chris Lightfoot (Director), Dr. Eric Ivison (Assistant Director), Dr. Margaret Gill (Glass), Karen Barker (Conservator), Yalçın Mergen, Simon Mortimer (Field Archaeologists) and Osman Kızılkılıç (General Assistant). Seven students from universities in Turkey, Britain and the United States of America also took part in the excavations and contributed greatly to the success of the season; they were Mücahide Koçak, Ayşe Taşkın, Ferüzat Ülker and Hasan Yılmazyaşar (all from the University of Anatolia, Eskişehir), Betül Şahin (DTCF, Ankara University), Paola Pugsley (Exeter University) and Thomas Bihl (Indiana University). The government representative was Mrs. Sema Dayan from the Directorate of Monuments and Museums in Ankara. Fourteen workmen, all from Hisarköy, were employed for the four weeks of digging, while another eight men were employed on conservation and repair work both on site and at the Dig House during the full season. Kazim Eryiğit again took charge of the cooking, ably assisted by two of the village women, İlknur and Gülnur Usluer.

The cathedral complex at Nisibis sits within what is currently a large excavation site. The excavations, continuing on and off over the last 12 years, have yielded exciting discoveries. This article is not a report of the excavations as such, but, in the light of them, it revisits the cathedral complex in an attempt to reconstruct the possible cathedral on the site and to establish the building phases of the only standing structure on the site, known as the ‘Church of Mor Yaqub’, which was the baptistery of the cathedral.

Excavations during the 1960s of the site of Canhasan I in Karaman province in central Turkey revealed that the Chalcolithic ornaments of the region were both complex and varied. The ornaments of the site, consisting of beads (including pendants and plaques), bracelets and plugs or labrets, were made in many forms and from a variety of different materials, and thus hint at a connected world where ideas, resources and products moved from one place to another. While a catalogue of some of the artefacts has been produced previously (French 2010), this article details these ornaments and considers their temporal and geographical positions within the history of beads, bracelets and other decorative items for the first time. It explores legacies from the past, new fashions and the complicated relationships between material sources, technology, forms, style and use during a period and in an artefact category that have often been overlooked.

There are as yet no temples in Western Anatolia prior to the first millennium; no counterparts for the Hittite temples further east. This may be an illusion which further discoveries will dispel, but more probably it is because the west had not yet been brought into contact with the architects and religions which influenced their eastern neighbours. Crete, Greece and the islands built no temples either in those early days: shrines, principally in palaces or private houses, were used for worship instead. There were undoubtedly shrines, as opposed to temples, in Anatolia as well; mostly from private houses, some better authenticated than others, differing in character according to time and place. It may be useful to review the evidence for shrines both in the western and the eastern regions, though with more emphasis on the former, to deduce as much as we can about their nature, and to decide which of them have acceptable claims.

Oliver R. Gurney hat mit seinen formvollendeten Kopien von Keilschrifttexten, die dem assyriologischen “Leser” zusätzlich zu reicher Belehrung seltenen ästhetischen Genuss schenken, auch das Unikum einer assyrischen Provinzbibliothek erschlossen und damit der uns bekannten altmesopotamischen Literatur nebenher unter anderem zwei Werke zugefügt, welche zwei neue literarische Gattungen vertreten. Das Schelmenmärchen vom “Armen Jungen aus Nippur” ist dank Gurneys Bearbeitung und Kommentar ein Klassiker der babylonischen Literatur geworden. Neben ihm hat der “Brief des Gilgameš”, in seiner Art ebenso überraschend und neu, nicht zu Unrecht anscheinend wenig Beachtung gefunden. Der Gratulant, seit seinem Erscheinen von ihm angezogen, hat sich zweiundzwanzig Jahre lang immer wieder vergebens bemüht, die Geheimnisse des ihm rätselhaften Textes zu ergründen. Statt eines Ergebnisses legt er nunmehr eine Reihe von Fragen und Überlegungen dem Herausgeber des merkwürdigen Briefes und den Mitstrebenden vor.

Probably the best-known, and certainly the most individual, of the monuments of the Classical period from Lycia (in south-west Anatolia) are the pillar tombs. At least 33 are known, and perhaps as many as 43, ranging in date from the mid-sixth century B.C. to the mid-fourth. It seems likely that these were the tombs of local ruling dynasts, who are known chiefly from the numismatic record, a supposition supported by the small number of pillars in comparison with all other types of tomb in Lycia, the ornate sculpture on the finest specimens, their rough chronological coincidence with the coin-issuing of dynasts in the country, and finally, the fact that the one example that can be almost positively attributed belongs to one of these dynasts (this will be discussed later). Each tomb was probably erected during the owner's lifetime, since inscriptional evidence from tombs of lesser figures certainly indicates that these were prepared during the owner's lifetime. At most of the cities in Lycia knowledge of the local dynasts is not sufficient to allow an attempt at any sort of attribution of these tombs to individuals, at least not without a great deal of work on the monuments and coinage, but at Xanthos, chief city of Lycia, knowledge of the dynasty is perhaps enough to allow some speculation.