Adilcevaz lies on the north shore of lake Van, almost due south of the summit of Süphan Dağ (14,547 ft.). At its west end substantial remains of a lofty wall of later than Urartian times run down from below the Ahlat road to the shore of the lake (and actually into the lake, of which the relative level has evidently risen since the construction of the wall). It was on a largely concealed face (at right-angles to the line of the wall) of a stone block in this wall that it was reported that cuneiform writing could be seen.

Accordingly, in September, 1956, the writer inspected the wall, accompanied by his wife, who located the block some fifteen metres below the road in a short secondary wall-surface of dressed blocks, with hard rubble filling behind, parallel with the line of, and running inland from the broken end of a further wall projecting three or four metres in the Adılcevaz direction from, the main wall. The cuneiform writing proved to be visible as a result of the absence, close to the surface, of mortar between the inscribed block and the one lake-ward of it in the same course; and on poking away more mortar between the two blocks and up to the under surface of a third, larger, block, forming part of the next higher, and uppermost surviving, course, it was found that this under surface also bore cuneiform signs.

The Museum of Yalvaç contains a large and important collection of Greek and Latin inscriptions, mostly from the adjacent colony of Pisidian Antioch, but including a number from other sites in the region. Among the latter is an important text from the reign of Trajan, which has claimed some attention in the scholarly literature although it has never been fully published. Since it presents some points of difficulty, and contains matters of interest which have not hitherto been discussed, it seems worthwhile to do so now.

The inscription was found at the village of Fele, now called Yassıbel, south of the town of Şarkıkaraağaç in what was once the Cillanian plain, and was brought to the museum in 1966. It is carved on a large rectangular block of yellow/white limestone; Ht. 0·62; width 2·31; depth 0·20. The text is engraved inside an elongated tabula ansata, and the letters measure 0·11 (1. 1), 0·07 (1. 2), 0·06 (1. 3), 0·055 (1. 4), 0·05 (1. 5). The stone has been broken into three pieces but is complete, and except at one point in 1. 4 there is no doubt about the reading. The museum inventory number is A.445.

The site of Horum Höyük is located on the Euphrates, near the modern town of Nizip. It was excavated in advance of the flooding caused by the Birecek dam. The prehistoric ceramic assemblage contains stylistic elements that relate to the Halaf, northern Ubaid and earliest Late Chalcolithic periods. Studies of the Late Chalcolithic in the region of the Syro-Turkish border have tended to take a Mesopotamia-centric focus, as characterised by the so-called Uruk Expansion. Recently, however, research has begun to examine Syro-Anatolia as a discrete entity. The precise chronology for the Late Chalcolithic period remains an issue of discussion. The main source of chronological evidence in the region is the pottery from the Amuq sequence, which exhibits a hiatus in the crucial Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic phases (E–F). Most of the prehistoric assemblage at Horum Höyük falls within this period and therefore has the potential to contribute to the debate. Three issues will therefore be addressed, namely, the chronological relationship between ceramic ware types, Horum Höyük's regional stylistic relations and the pottery assemblage's overall chronological position.

The Malatya-Elaziğ area is one of the most intensively studied regions in eastern Turkey, but archaeologically the general picture is still not very clear. Most of the archaeological excavations and surveys in the area were conducted as part of the Keban and Turkish lower Euphrates salvage projects within a very short period of time. Although the project results were published, still most of the original data is not available and few intensive field projects have since undertaken to fill the gaps between the previously studied areas. As the survey areas are now under water, there is no opportunity to re-survey the areas covered. Under these circumstances, it seems useful to re-analyse the available material in conjunction with evidence provided by other disciplines like geography, geology and even biology up to an extent, aided by certain computer applications; predominantly GIS software but also certain computer programs used by other disciplines for specific analyses. This re-evaluation of the current evidence has made it possible to identify a settlement system that was formed of small clusters of sites, and it can also be suggested that the area was divided into three cultural zones during most of the Middle Bronze Age.

This seal, one of the earliest with a linear alphabetic inscription, was found in 1959 at Kibbutz Revadim in the Shephelah (Fig. 3). Its find spot lies about three kilometres west of Tel Miqne (Khirbet el-Muqanna'), identified with Ekron of the Philistine Pentapolis. The seal is a scaraboid of hard limestone, most probably mizi hilu, measuring 16 × 13 × 7·5 mm, intended for a ring, as indicated by the two drilled holes that do not meet. The back and sides of the seal are plain. The base carries the owner's name and a scene engraved in a linear, schematic style (Fig. 1, Pl. XLII).

The seal was published in 1961 by R. Giveon, who assigned it to the wellknown class of late Iron Age (mainly 8th—7th century) personal seals from Palestine and neighbouring countries. In an article published a year later, F. M. Cross, on palaeographic grounds, dated the seal to the 12th century. His view won wide acceptance. In this paper, offered with gratitude and admiration to Richard D. Barnett, whose student I had the privilege to be, I wish to re-evaluate the Revadim Seal and its date.

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of the gens, or even to reconstruct its stemma in outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge between ca 50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.

At least as early as the day, nearly eighty years ago, when Hans Rott gained access to “Doghalikilise” through an entrance reduced to a narrow cleft by heaps of rubble and alluvial soil, the monument has been recognized as the largest and most important in Göreme. Many of the wall-paintings of both the Old and the New Church at Tokalı were published by Jerphanion who correctly appreciated the relative chronology of these successive phases. This pioneering and still fundamental survey was supplemented by the excellent photographs of Jeannine Le Brun in Restle's corpus of 1967. In the same year, Cormack suggested on stylistic and iconographic grounds a probable date of ca. 913–920 for the decoration of the Old Church, a period little less than half a century before its relatively gigantic successor was cut transversely across its eastern end. Now, within a year or two, Tokalı Kilise will receive the ultimate accolade of monographic treatment by Ann Wharton Epstein in a book which treats the church as a cultural whole and finally recognizes the frescoes in the New Church as the supreme achievement of Byzantine wall-painting to survive from the tenth century.

The number of known Hittite rock-reliefs in Anatolia is limited: Karabel, Manisa, Yazılıkaya, Gavurkalesi, Fıraktin, İmamkulu, Taşcı, İvriz, Gezbeli, Sirkeli, and Hemite. Except the Late Hittite relief of Ivriz, the monuments, mostly scattered on the fringe of the highland, have to be ascribed to the Imperial Age (1450–1200 B.C.). Their geographic distribution allows some conclusions as to the extent of the Hittite sphere of influence. The question of the monuments' function is but one of the numerous problems still to be solved.

Apart from the reliefs of Yazılıkaya, Gavurkalesi and Fıraktin, which are all part of a sanctuary, the majority of the monuments at first sight seem to have been put up to demonstrate political power and may be interpreted as representations of the kings (Imamkulu, Taşcı, Gezbeli, Sirkeli and Hemite) or of local dynasts (Karabel and Manisa). This applies especially to the reliefs of Gezbeli and Hemite, which in their overall conception are so designed that the political element seems to dominate over the religious. Upon closer examination, however, we must admit that this explanation applies only perhaps to some of the Imperial Age monuments; those monuments in which the kings are shown in an attitude of prayer or as gods appear to have been erected with religious motives in mind. A further indication of religious function is the fact that the monuments are often associated with water in the form of a spring or a river.

The following random lot of inscriptions was noted during three brief trips into the territory around Olba-Diocaesareia, in the spring of 1966, while we were guests at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. These trips were part of a year of archaeological wandering made possible by the grant of the Olivia James Travelling Fellowship, administered by the Archaeological Institute of America.

1. Seleuceia-Korykos: This inscription was discovered by the able and energetic curator of antiquities at Silifke, Mr. Mehmet Belen, to whose great kindness we owe our knowledge of it. It is cut on a rock face above some faint traces of an ancient road from Korasion to Korykos, which runs parallel to the modern coast road at this point. About 19 km. east of Silifke, the modern road turns north away from the shore, and runs inland along the west side of a seasonal watercourse called Kuru Dere, “dry river bed”. Just north of the gravel bank at the mouth of Kuru Dere, at a point where the rock wall cuts back from the west side of the road to form a very small tributary stream bed, there are faint traces of rock cut steps some 5 metres above the road. Above these, on the south side of the tributary stream bed, a roughly dressed rectangular panel, 0·80 × 0·45 m., has been cut into the rock.

Writing in Carchemish, Vol. III (1952), Richard Barnett brought the evidence of the two Hieroglyphic Luwian stelae found at Tell Ahmar (the Assyrian Til-Barsip) to bear on the Karkamiš chronology. At that date, immediately after the discovery of KARATEPE, the value of a number of Hieroglyphic signs was still not established, which hampered the readings of some of the rulers' names. Also the actual dynastic information provided by the two mutilated stelae lay still largely out of reach. It is nevertheless remarkable that the progress in interpretation of these and related monuments over the last thirty years has tended to confirm the datings originally proposed by Barnett. Thus it is with great pleasure that I offer to Richard Barnett in this volume a new piece of information which elucidates some points on the TELL AHMAR stelae and permits an interesting new interpretation.

1. The tablet published here for the first time belongs to the Musée d'art et d'histoire of Geneva. In 1960, as my employment at that museum was drawing to a close, I copied the tablet for publication but circumstances beyond my control (to borrow that well-worn but convenient cliché) delayed its publication long enough to enable me to offer it here as a modest tribute to my old friend and former colleague, “R.D.B.”, an archaeologist who has always appreciated the services epigraphy could render to archaeology.

2. The text (copy on p. 74 below) reads in transliteration and translation:

(1) 3 ma-na na4 za-gìn

(2) mu urudualam lug[al]

a-ab-ba sig-ga a-a[b] -

ba igi-nim-da gú-[ ḡar-šè]

(3) mu sukal-mah-šè

(4) ki lú-diḡir-[ra]

du[b](!)-[sar-ta]

(5) a-a-ḡu10[šabra]

(6) šu-ba-an-[ti]

(7) iti á-ki-[ti]

(8) mu dšu- d E[N.Z]U

[1]ugal

During 1993 the excavations at Sagalassos continued for their fourth season from 3 July until 19 August. From 21 until 28 August a survey was carried out in the district immediately south and south-east of the excavation site. The work was directed by Professor Marc Waelkens (Dept. of Archaeology, Catholic University of Leuven). A total of 45 Turkish workmen and 62 scientists or students from various countries (Belgium, Turkey, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Austria and Greece) were involved in the project. The team included 25 archaeologists, 8 illustrators, 8 architect-restorers (supervised by T. Patricio and directed by Prof. K. Van Balen and Prof. F. Hueber), 4 cartographers (directed by Prof. F. Depuydt), 2 geomorphologists (Prof. E. Paulissen and K. Vandaele), 2 archaeozoologists from the Museum of Central Africa at Tervuren (Belgium), 6 conservators (directed by G. Hibler-Vandenbulcke), 1 photographer (P. Stuyven), 2 computer specialists and 4 people taking care of everyday logistics. The Turkish Antiquities Department was represented by Mrs. Nurhan Ülgen for the first and by Mrs. Aliye Yamancı for the second half of the season, whom we both thank for their much appreciated help and collaboration.

The article discusses the introduction of Ottoman legislation on antiquities and its implication for the Ephesus excavations of 1863–1874, led by John Turtle Wood on behalf of the British Museum. It is argued that instrumental in the termination of the archaeological works at the site was the Ottoman law on antiquities of 1874, which was about to be promulgated and the recurrent difficulties in obtaining renewal of a firman, necessary for any archaeological endeavours undertaken by foreigners. Attention is drawn to the close relationship between the rise of the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, the promulgation and implementation of the Ottoman legislation on antiquities and their effect on circumscribing the archaeological activities of foreign nations. Growing contemporary Ottoman interest in antiquities, reflecting an increased awareness of their role in the re-definition of the identity of the country, laying claim to participation in European culture, is briefly touched upon.

The following article is an attempt to reconstruct the Roman road-system of Eastern Lycaonia from the Peutinger Table (the only ancient itinerary that refers to this region), from published and unpublished milestones and from impressions received on journeys there in 1956 and 1957. I am indebted especially to Sir William Calder for his help at all stages, including the use of his note-books, and also to Messrs. A. S. Hall and J. G. Macqueen, who travelled with me in 1957.

The area covered is in the main that between Laodiceia Combusta on the west and the foot of Hasan Dağ on the east. It is divided into two parts by the great sweep of Boz Dağ, a quarter circle of mountains rising some 500 m. above the surrounding country and separating the fertile and monotonously flat plain of Iconium from the undulating steppe to north and east (map, fig. 1). In Strabo's time the area outside Boz Dağ was a semi-arid waste grazed by vast flocks of sheep and even wild asses, and until the introduction of mechanised methods of farming in the last few years, sheep have always been the principal livelihood of the local population. Water is scarce and many of the wells are over 50 m. deep.

The Roman mansio or way station and Byzantine bishopric of Parnassos in Cappadocia is chiefly known through inscriptions and bishops’ lists and identified with the small Turkish village of Parlasan/Değirmenyolu. It came as a surprise when a salvage excavation unearthed a large building with sumptuous floor mosaics beyond the outskirts of the village. Previous excavation reports misrepresented the building as a basilica church, when it was in fact an apsed hall and may be identified as the reception unit of an elite residence, as this article shows. A large central room had an elevated apse where the landlord would have sat. An animal mosaic in front of the apse is comparable to similar compositions in fourth-to-sixth-century urban palaces but avoids any reference to pagan mythology and employs stylistic features that are otherwise known from church floors. A mosaic inscription identifies the reception unit as belonging to the bishop and thus as part of the episcopal palace. This discovery is augmented by the find of a Late Roman sarcophagus and three Early Christian gravestones. Later, after the original palace was mostly destroyed, the building complex underwent a second, utilitarian phase that appears to date from the Invasion Period, when the Arabs raided central Anatolia from the seventh to ninth centuries.

This article uses spatial autocorrelation analysis in order to explore the social organisation of crop and herd management at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in south-central Turkey. Evidence for spatial clustering across the settlement is sought at different scales (house, neighbourhood, radial wedge, sector, sub-mound) in the different periods of occupation from Early to Late. The data used are sheep carbon and nitrogen isotopes, densities of weed species in archaeobotanical assemblages and the densities of weed species in sheep dung. The results are interpreted in relation to existing work both on crop and herd management and consumption at Çatalhöyük and on the social organisation of the settlement. Complex nested and cross-cutting social groupings shared many aspects of production and consumption activities across the site resulting in limited spatial clustering of values. The impacts of taphonomic factors on these results are considered. Especially by the Late period of occupation at Çatalhöyük, there is some evidence of distinct labour and consumption organisation linked to houses and house groupings.

The appearance of Aegean-style IIIC pottery at Tarsus occured at a time of unrest and of movement of peoples resulting in part from the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces on the Greek mainland. Mycenaean Late Helladic IIIB pottery exports from mainland Greece to Cyprus and the Levant disappeared and were gradually replaced by local imitations. Eventually Aegean-style IIIC pottery appeared in the East Aegean-West Anatolian Interface, in Cyprus and at various sites on the southern coast of Turkey and in the Levant. It was not exported from the Greek mainland, but seems to have been locally made at each site. A first series of neutron activation analysis (NAA) was carried out on pottery from Tarsus to determine how much of the Aegean-style 12th-century BC pottery was locally produced, how much was imported and, if imported, from whence it came. The favourable results of this first analysis gave rise to a second NAA of more Aegean-style pottery from Tarsus, bringing the total number of pieces analysed to 67. It has confirmed the local production of the pottery; the chemical group TarA is the dominant local group at Tarsus, comprising a third of the samples. A smaller group, TarB, may also be local. The analysis revealed a large number of Aegean-style IIIC imports from Cyprus from several different sites; these make up a quarter of the samples. There are a few imports from other areas, including the East Aegean-West Anatolian Interface. Influence from both Cyprus and the Interface can also be seen at Tarsus in the use of some shapes and motifs. A comparison with 12th-century BC imports identified by NAA at the site of Tell Kazel (ancient Simyra) in Syria directly east of Cyprus shows imports from the same two areas.

The contents of 118 inhumation burials (seventh to 12th century AD) excavated at Hacımusalar Höyük (ancient Choma) were studied in order to reconstruct the Byzantine population. Overall, the sample is similar to that of other Byzantine populations: burial customs appear typical of contemporary practices, children are overrepresented, males and females are represented roughly equally and heights fall within the average range calculated for Byzantine individuals in the eastern Mediterranean. Individuals from Hacımusalar experienced incidences of skeletal trauma, infections, degenerative joint disease, anaemia, dental diseases, spina bifida occulta and cancer. The dataset presented here is one of the most comprehensive of any Byzantine population in Anatolia and should advance our understanding of the region during this crucial time period.