Stone beads from the site of Troy, Turkey, have been studied in order to understand better the nature of lapidary technology and trade during the third to second millennium BC in this part of Anatolia. Eighteen carnelian and two rock crystal beads were documented through visual examinations, measurement and photography to identify the raw material, as well as general aspects of manufacture and style. Silicone impressions of the drill holes as well as some of the engraved surfaces were made in order to study the nature of drilling and abrasion under a Scanning Electron Microscope. Through these studies, it is possible to identify the presence of different types of bead production and drilling technology during each major chronological period at the site. Some of the beads may have been produced at Troy or at nearby sites in Anatolia while others have links to the southern Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions as well as the more distant regions of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

In 1943 the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian S.S.R. published at Tiflis, as Part XIII.B of the Bulletin of the Georgian Government Museums, a book of 171 pages by the late B. A. Kuftin (1892–1953), entitled Urartskii “kolymbarii” u podoshvy Ararata i Kuro-Arakskii Éneolit [An Urartian “Columbarium” on the slopes of Ararat and the Copper Age of the Kur-Araxes basin]. The terminus technicus “columbarium” (Latin = a pigeon-cot) is translated in German as “Urnenhalle”. More appropriate here would be to call it an “Urn-field” but “columbarium” is retained here as having no adequate English translation. In the original the Russian text is followed by a version in Georgian and a very brief English summary. This book in fact contains two essays, the first dealing with the “columbarium”, the second with the Copper Age remains under the lava to the south of the “columbarium”, and called the “Clay Citadel”. We are here only concerned with the first.

The peculiar document here studied is an example of what has been called the “narû literature”. A narû was an engraved stele, on which a king would record the events of his reign; the characteristic features of such an inscription are a formal self-introduction of the writer by his name and titles, a narrative in the first person, and an epilogue usually consisting of curses upon any person who might in the future deface the monument and blessings upon those who should honour it. The so-called “narû literature” consists of a small group of apocryphal narû-inscriptions, composed probably in the early second millennium B.C., but in the name of famous kings of a bygone age. A well-known example is the Legend of Sargon of Akkad. In these works the form of the narû is retained, but the matter is legendary or even fictitious.

Between 547/6 and 541/0 Cyrus the Great defeated Croesus and the Persian Empire reached the Aegean. In the years following, his general, Harpagus the Mede, subdued the coastal Greek cities and sacked Xanthos which put up a struggle to the last. It is to be assumed that the rest of Lycia fell without event. Western and southwestern Asia Minor was divided into two administrative areas, Lydia and Ionia (Yauna). Although the Lydian satrapy was often predominant, the basic unit in the southwest was Ionia which comprised during much of its existance Ionia proper, Aeolia, Caria, Lycia, Milyas, and Pamphylia. This large area left Lycia without a satrap in the proximity and consequently without a provincial court with its attendant strong official influence.

The Northern Anatolian region under consideration here, the Bafra plain with its main site of Ikiztepe, and the Samsun area with Dündartepe, should be seen as a contact zone between Central Anatolia, the Balkans and the Eastern Aegean. Several items of material culture from Northern Anatolia can be linked with Southeast Europe, the islands off the coast of Western Turkey and Central Anatolia. These connections were established at least by the end of the fifth millennium B.C. Strong similarities in pottery and metal finds from North and Central Anatolian sites with the Cernavoda cultures in Romania indicate that close linkage did in fact continue into the third millennium B.C., thus giving proof of a long tradition. Here, only a small segment of this huge time-span, viz., the last quarter of the fourth millennium, equated with the last stretch of the Late Chalcolithic period, is my concern.

The fourth and final season of excavations at Hacılar, carried out under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, lasted from 1st August till 7th September, 1960. In spite of a number of difficulties such as shortage of staff, workmen and time, a most successful season of work was accomplished.

The Assistant Director was in charge, ably assisted by Mrs. Mellaart (housekeeping, accounts, registry and photography), Miss Clare Goff (surveyor) and Mr. David French (pottery expert). Bay I. Ebcioğlu represented the Turkish Department of Antiquities. Once more the expedition was accommodated in the large school building. For this final season we are especially grateful to Francis Neilson, Esq., Mrs. I. Ainley, the British Academy, the Russell Trust and the Munroe Fund of Edinburgh University, without whose timely help this season might not have taken place.

This paper is not a discussion of archaeological evidence for past population levels in our area, nor of likely sequences of change in population through time. Instead, it is a set of estimations of upper levels of population that would have been possible at recent and ancient agricultural settlements in the Aşvan region, assuming certain combinations of territory, land management systems and levels of productivity. This contrasts, therefore, with the approach more frequently adopted in estimating past population levels which uses settlement size and structural remains.

The points in time at which these hypothetical situations (with their corresponding population levels) were likely actually to have existed in the Aşvan region are not considered in detail here. We may be in a position to fix time correlates in some cases once we have more data on local erosion and sedimentation history and once we have assembled all data arising from the site materials, in particular the data from the very large quantities of plant and animal remains.

Tribute must be paid to Richard Barnett for his contributions, inter alia, to the interpretation of many of the scenes on the Assyrian sculptures. His studies have drawn attention to the detailed information which may be drawn from this important source. In many conversations with me as a colleague in the British Museum he showed particular interest in the Assyrian landscape and representation of nature. Thus he identified the Assyrian garden in the reliefs of Ashurbanipal's N. Palace at Nineveh (Plate XXXIIIa). In this the garden is drawn as planned around a hill, or high feature, on top of which is a garden house. Watering was by aqueduct and channels arranged so that in the downhill flow no material part was inaccessible to irrigation. Trees which provided some shade, also served as supports for vines planted between them. In the Assyrian tradition temples also had similar gardens associated with them.

Mr. Cohen has proposed, above, the hypothesis that the formation, in the earliest Holocene, of the alluvial soils of the Konya basin, was an influential factor in the appearance of settlement-sites which may have played some role in the history of early domestication of plants and animals. In order that the hypothesis may be fully tested this article presents the basic evidence for a chronological analysis of the high concentration of mounds on or around the alluvial plain of Çumra by means of maps which combine distributions of ancient sites and modern soil conditions.

More than 50 years of archaeological survey work carried out in Cappadocia in central Turkey has produced a number of important contributions to the understanding of long-term settlement histories. This article synthesises and critically evaluates the results of three field surveys conducted in Cappadocia which recorded material remains dating from the Early Holocene through to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Results from the combined Cappadocia surveys reveal temporal patterns over the longue durée that include a lack of detectable pre-Neolithic occupation and important exploitation of obsidian as a raw material during the Neolithic. There was growth and expansion of settlement during the later Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, a steady continuation of settlement during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, followed by rupture in settlement at the end of the Bronze Age. A new phase of settlement expansion began during the Iron Age and continued through Hellenistic and Roman times. This in turn was disrupted during the Byzantine period, which is associated with increased numbers of fortified sites. The succeeding long cycle of settlement began in Seljuk times and continued through to the end of the Ottoman period. Comparison with systematic archaeological site surveys in the adjacent regions of Paphlagonia and Konya shows some differences in settlement patterns, but overall broad sim¬ilarities indicate a coherent trajectory of settlement across central Anatolia over the last ten millennia.

The Greek word bomos usually means ‘altar’, but in inscriptions of the Roman period it sometimes refers to statue bases and other forms of support, where the meaning ‘altar’ is not appropriate. Many scholars believe that in addition to its normal meaning of cult or votive altar and (by extension) funerary altar, bomos could also mean a pedestal, socle or platform in general. This paper examines the use of the term bomos in Roman Asia Minor for statue bases, for pedestals for sarcophagi, ash chests and columns, and for other structures which are not altars, concentrating particularly on their shapes. It concludes that in all these cases the element called bomos had the shape of a normal type of altar, and that in many cases (but not all) it also carried some of the symbolic value of an altar.

During the most recent campaigns (1976–79) carried out at Arslantepe, excavations were concentrated on the south-west area of the hüyük, where a stratigraphic sequence belonging to the period covering the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third millennium was identified; large areas of several levels were brought to light. With reference to this period two main phases can be clearly recognized: VI A and VI B. The former is characterized by its strong Syro-Mesopotamian connections, the latter by the considerable presence of East-Anatolian-Transcaucasian elements beside elements typical of the Upper Euphrates region.

The wooden writing boards frequently mentioned in Hittite texts have given rise to much debate, mostly regarding the scale on which they were used and the type of script that was written on them (cuneiform or hieroglyphs). In this paper, the evidence for the use of wooden writing boards in Hittite Anatolia will be (re-)evaluated. It will be argued that they were used for private and economic documents, and that they were written on in Anatolian hieroglyphs. Important indications of this are the distinct terms consistently used in connection with writing on wood, which point to a separate scribal tradition. Further, the form and nature of the hieroglyphic script itself and the fact that it survived after the fall of the Hittite empire confirm that the script must have been widely employed. It is thus proposed that two parallel scribal traditions existed in Hittite Anatolia: a (lost) hieroglyphic tradition on wooden writing boards used for private and daily economic records, and a Hittite cuneiform tradition reserved for palace administration.

During the years 1953 to 1959, under the directorship of Seton Lloyd, with James Mellaart, the British Institute in Ankara carried out excavations in the mound of Beycesultan, the site of successive ancient habitations. The remains of cultivated plants recovered during this operation are the subject of the following communication.

Beycesultan is situated some 5 km. west of Çivril in the Denizli Vilayet of south-western Turkey. The locality is a flat upland plain in an intermontane valley at the south-western approach to the Anatolian plateau, some 2,500 feet above sea level. It is enclosed by low hills and watered by the upper reaches of the Meander river. The mountains above the plain are still partly wooded, and the drainage from these tracts accounts for the moisture and fertility which make the cultivation of cereals, pulses, poppy, grapes and fruit possible in the valley plain in spite of the comparatively low precipitation of some 14 to 16 inches. As suggested by the huge quantities of timber employed in the construction of the Middle Bronze Age palace the surrounding hilly area was once generously forested with oak, juniper and fir, but now the area is largely deforested in consequence of overgrazing.

The Sea of Marmara straddles one of the greatest of the natural routes between Europe and Asia. Along this route, it might be expected, passed the movements of objects and materials, the trade, the transference of ideas, the migrations of peoples between Anatolia and the Aegean and Balkan worlds. One small part of this region is presented archaeologically in this article. This is not the first publication of the sites and pottery in this area but since the last presentation there have been new discoveries, both in this region and in other areas of Anatolia. At the same time it has become clear that the theories of Kulturtrift and the like can be evaluated only by an investigation of the areas and routes along which Kulturtrift may have moved. After the excavations at Nea Nikomedia in Central Macedonia, the problem of connections between Anatolia and the Aegean in the early pottery phases must be studied anew. In any assessment, Northwest Anatolia must be considered as a possible source or intermediary for ideas or developments that may have passed between these two areas.

The site of Aşıklı Hüyük lies in the vilayet of Niğde, ca. 25 km. south-east of Aksaray and ca. 1 km. south of Kızılkaya Köy, on the right bank of the Melendiz Çay. The existence of a mound here was first made known to the writer by Dr. Edmund Gordon who was examining the area for Hittite remains, and the site was visited by the writer several times during the summer and autumn of 1964 when the collection of obsidian implements discussed in this paper was made.

Set in the narrow but very fertile valley of the Melendiz Çay beside the river, there is an ample water supply, and the sides of the valley are suitable for the growing of crops. The mound has been considerably eroded by the river, and in places six metre high sections have been laid bare. This erosion of the site is mainly responsible for the very large quantities of obsidian implements and small finds that were found. Originally a very large hüyük, the site is still very considerable, and it is impossible to tell how much has been destroyed by erosion. The size of the mound is also difficult to judge because the ground slopes up gently from the site to the hills which form the edge of the valley, and only by excavation can the limits of the occupied area be established.

On the basis of recent archaeological evidence unearthed in the course of systematic excavations by the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) in southwestern Turkey, this paper attempts to pull together different strings of ceramic data in order to bridge the era between late antiquity and the Middle Ages (mid seventh century to ninth century AD). Our aim is to present samples of the ceramic assemblages excavated at the site of ancient Sagalassos from layers that are most probably dated to the late seventh and eighth centuries. An attempt has been made to examine rigorously the stratigraphy and its contents that are admittedly completely different to the known ceramic forms of the late Roman/early Byzantine (fourth century to mid seventh century) and middle Byzantine (early tenth century to mid 13th century) periods at Sagalassos. Five different pottery types are presented, both kitchenwares and tablewares. The fact that all the ware types presented here are local products should not be seen necessarily as a result of a general decline in trade, rural and/or urban life, but rather as a local response to a generally changing economic system and an emerging local pottery tradition based on household-organised production. The shift from the Roman mass-produced and customised wares (that started to disappear from the market) to non-specialised local/regional production (that started to satisfy basic household needs) need not have been a sudden one. Our ultimate aim is to contribute to recent attempts to throw more light on the archaeologically ‘hidden’ material culture of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’.

Late Roman D Ware (or ‘Cypriot Red Slip Ware’) is one of the most widespread fine wares of the late antique Mediterranean. Its hypothetical origin in Cyprus is challenged by the discovery since 2008 of kilns in Turkey whose products include the whole of this ware's standard repertoire. This paper provides the first detailed account of the discovery of a network of seven production centres located near Gebiz, 32km northeast of Antalya and close to the Kestros river (Aksu çayı) and its tributary the Küçükaksu river, from where these products together with agricultural goods would have been traded inland and downstream to Perge and beyond. Results of the field survey during which these kilns were discovered are presented, together with a discussion of their far-reaching implications. The results establish southern Anatolia, and specifically the margins of the Pamphylian plain, as the only certainly identified production area of this ware. By challenging the origin traditionally accepted for ‘Cypriot Red Slip Ware’, which is distributed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, the discovery of these kilns raises questions also about other less archaeologically distinct Anatolian goods which also are likely to have been involved in this exchange network at both local and international scales.

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of ancient metallurgy in the Near East, and in particular, in Anatolia. Most of the work done in this field however, with the exception of analytical studies conducted in laboratories and geological surveys, hardly goes beyond the re-examination of known historical, archaeological and geological data. The results, as can be expected, are derived mainly from the re-evaluation of previous conclusions on the development of early technologies and the emergence of major production centres in the Aegean, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean.

Until a few years ago the origins of southeast European metallurgy were thought to be in northwest Anatolia. This traditional thesis of diffusion from the Troad to the Aegean and into the Balkans had rested on the chronological argument that the Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe were contemporary with the EB I in Anatolia and the Aegean. The “diffusionists” lost substantial support for their theory when the chronological priority of Old European cultures based on tree-ring calibrated C-14 dates over the more traditional Near Eastern chronology was generally accepted.

The village of Can Hasan is situated in the Kaza of Karaman, in the Vilayet of Konya, about 13 km. north-east of the town of Karaman. Can Hasan is a small village of about three hundred people, lying in a wide and fertile plain, not too far from the first low foothills of the Taurus. The approximate height of the village above sea level is 1,000 m.

Geographically the importance of Karaman and its surrounding villages lies in its unique position at the end of the route (Fig. 1) through the Taurus which begins at Silifke and follows the Gök Su (Calycadnus) as far as Mut, from where there is little difficulty in crossing the watershed between the river valley and the Karaman plain. This is one of the great routes through the Taurus and one of the easiest: there are others. All of them are used even to-day, when nomads with pack animals travel up to 300 km. through the Taurus from summer to winter pastures.