The Gediz valley of modern, western Turkey is a major gateway linking the Aegean spheres with the central Anatolian plateau. The making of cultural heritage in Anatolia plays out in very different ways depending on the physical location of the community and the level of implementation of the post-1923 social- and political-engineering agendas of the authorities of the Republic of Turkey. In this case-study we analyse one community, a village of just under 200 people known as Hacıveliler in the Marmara Lake basin of the Gediz valley in western Turkey (province of Manisa). We explore how this community continues to (re)define its heritage (from the 19th century to the present day) in light of contemporary policies. The approach combines historiographical, archaeological, preservation and ethnographical datasets.

Turkey has always served as a bridgehead between the continents of Europe and Asia and there are four main ways of crossing it (Fig. 1). The southerly route ran up one or other of the west coast valleys onto the Anatolian plateau, and crossed by the great lakes of Eǧridir and Beyşehir to Konya and thence down through the Taurus mountains by the Cilician Gates into the plain of Adana. From here the routes southwards into Syria and Egypt or eastwards into Mesopotamia and Persia were clear of further geographical obstacles. This was the great route of the Hellenistic and Roman periods when the trade and communications network of Asia Minor were channelled westwards through the ports either of Ephesus or one of the other west coast cities.

In our 1949 budget, the Directing Committee of the Institute put at my disposal a sum of one hundred pounds, for the purpose of an excavation in collaboration with the Turkish Department of Antiquities. On discussing the matter with the Director, Dr. Hamit Koşay, I found that the mound in which he was at the moment most interested was near the small modern town of Polatli, about forty miles from Ankara, on the main railway line to Istanbul. I understood from Dr. Koşay that a large part of this mound had been quarried away by peasants in need of earth for making bricks, and that, as a result, a number of whole pots and metal objects of the Copper Age had found their way to Ankara. I was subsequently shown these objects by Bay Nuri Gökçe, Director of the Hittite Museum, and a few days later visited the site in his company.

The hüyük, which takes its name from Polatli (Plate II), is situated on the outskirts of the modern town, near a spring of water. Its height is impressive, though the area which it covers suggests that the ancient settlement which it represents would have been hardly more than a village.

This article presents some results of a survey of early sites begun in the summer of 1962 within the area bounded by the modern towns of Kayseri, Sivas, Malatya and Maraş. Only a small body of relevant published material from within this area is available, and of that the bulk is datable to the later part of the Early Bronze Age, the earlier date of the remainder being variously interpreted. By undertaking this survey it was hoped to establish two things: the distribution of prehistoric pottery “cultures”; and the kind of imports from the south and east into this boundary region, which may accordingly be expected also in the deeper levels of Central Anatolian sites now being excavated, and be of assistance in dating the earliest phases of Central Anatolian prehistory.

The Antitaurus is the general name for that part of the Taurus mountain chain which separates Inner Anatolia from Cilicia, northern Syria and Mesopotamia. It comprises the sector of mountain terrain between Niğde and the Cilician Gates in the west, and the Sivas–Malatya road in the east; the southern boundary of the mountains being formed by the plains of Maraş, and Cilicia, separated by the steep Amanus ridge which runs down to the sea behind İskenderun. This extensive mountainous area, broken by steep-sided valleys and relieved by upland plains and pastures, was the barrier which, in the past as now, cut off the population of Central Anatolia from the open lands of the so-called Fertile Crescent to the south.

This article presents the results of scientific analyses on a selection of sherds associated with two kilns from the site of Kinet Höyük (Hatay). The kilns are dated to the eighth century BC and the end of the seventh century BC. In between these two periods, archaeological evidence suggests a period of occupation by the Neo-Assyrians. The present study assesses the impact of this occupation on the pottery industry at the site using a combined approach of thin section and neutron activation analyses. The results of these analyses additionally allow for a new classification system of local wares.

This article reviews progress in extensive survey work using satellite photographs along the course of the reservoir of the Birecik dam, completed in June 2000. Particular attention has been paid during field work to routes both along and across the river; here it is the east-west routes crossing the river which are examined in detail and in the context of the region's historical geography. The city of Zeugma, which has been the object of recent excavations, was the principal such crossing point but by no means the only one on the middle course of the Euphrates. A subsequent article will discuss north-south routes in the vicinity of the middle Euphrates and the question of its navigability.

In this article, the authors present a first edition of the recently found inscription TÜRKMEN-KARAHÖYÜK 1, propose an eighth-century dating and explore some of the consequences of this date for the group of inscriptions mentioning Hartapu, son of Mursili.

Collaborative Australian–Turkish archaeological investigations in north-eastern Anatolia, begun in 1988 in the Bayburt province (then an ilçe of Gümüşhane), continued for six weeks during June–July 1994 with excavations at Sos Höyük near Erzurum. The decision to extend the limits of the research project beyond the Bayburt plain, eastwards into the adjacent province, was based primarily on the need to address questions raised by our work in Bayburt, most notably the apparent gaps in its culture sequence. Further, we were acutely aware that in order to establish a sequence for north-east Anatolia we would need to reexamine by systematic excavations the human settlement of the Erzurum plain, long known from the early campaigns of H. Z. Koşay and his colleagues at Karaz, Güzelova and Pulur, and I. K. Kökten's pioneering surveys. Our interest in the site of Sos Höyük was roused by material excavated during a three week campaign in the summer of 1987 by a team from Atatürk University (Erzurum) and Erzurum museum. While some of the material clearly keyed into the Bayburt sequence, much of it did not. A visit to the site revealed a dense surface scatter of artefacts, especially obsidian, and substantial stratified deposits exposed by the diggings of the local villagers. The potentialities of the site were clear. With the material excavated at Büyüktepe and collected in the Bayburt province overlapping and complementing that at Sos, we would move closer toward an understanding of cultural developments in north-east Anatolia.

The main purpose of this article is to publish material collected from surveys in Western Anatolia, Thrace and Thessaly which were made with the intention of discovering possible links between these three areas in the period which in South-West Anatolia is called Late Chalcolithic. Such suggestions as are put forward for the construction of a relative and absolute chronology in each area are only tentative; throughout the aim has been to emphasise the problems of equating pottery cultures of adjacent regions which are thought to be contemporary.

In 2007 two stelae, each bearing figures of the Storm-god leading a ruler and a duplicate Hieroglyphic Luwian text, were discovered at Uluçınar (formerly Arsuz), on the Turkish coast south of Iskenderun. The inscription is the work of a Suppiluliuma, son of Manana, king of the land of Walastin, now understood as the Luwian designation of the Amuq plain with its capital at the Iron Age site of Tell Tayinat. The stelae, probably dating to the later tenth century BC, record the successful reign of the ruler and his happy relations with the Storm-god. Historically important is a passage which describes this Amuq king's victory over the Cilician plain, the city of Adana and the land of Hiyawa.

An overland route by which oriental merchandise and ideas were transmitted to the Ionian Greeks via the Anatolian plateau and the river valley routes of the west was long ago posited by Hogarth, and supported by Karo, Barnett and others, although there was little evidence from central Anatolia to confirm it. More recently this route was virtually discounted in favour of a sea route from N. Syria, especially Carchemish, through the port of Al Mina, to Greece and Etruria, via Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, discussed by Sidney Smith, Humphrey Payne, Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop and others, which is assumed to have been at its height in the earlier eighth century; and Barnett has also shown the importance of a third route, from Azerbaijan to Trebizond and west via the Black Sea, for which the main evidence, a tomb group from the Caucasus, is probably later seventh century.

It is clear that the second of these three routes carried the bulk of Oriental trade to Greece and the west. Undoubtedly the most important Orientalizing influences on Greece, as shown by Payne, were those from the Cypro-Levantine cultural province, and there is ample evidence of the exchange of pottery, terracottas and ornamental bronzes of Cypriot and Phoenician production between the Syrian coast, Cyprus, Rhodes, Samos, Miletus, Chios, Delos and the west.

In this paper we deploy both archaeological evidence, principally from survey, as well as topographic textual evidence in an integrated attempt to localise a broad range of place-names attested in the Hittite period of the Late Bronze Age. The geographical focus is on the north-central region of Anatolia, particularly relating to the survey area of Inner Paphlagonia. Investigated toponyms include rivers, mountains, regions and settlement names. By these means we aim to situate the recurrent Hittite-Kaska conflict of the Late Bronze Age more firmly within its physical environment.

At the end of a passage in Strabo's Geography (XIII, 631), where he gives an account of the foundation of Kibyra and the extent of its power in the first century B.C., we find a succinct definition of the territory of the neighbouring Milyas (τῆς ὀμόρου Μιλυάδος):

In spite of its precision, Strabo's definition of the Milyas is inadequate in several ways. First, the geographical limits are set from south to north, but not from east to west. Secondly, it is only a brief footnote to his account of the Kibyratis, and lacks comparable information about the language, settlements and history of the inhabitants of this neighbouring region. Probably a dearth of information in Strabo's sources restricted him to a statement of what was agreed to be the core of a once extensive territory; earlier writers, such as Herodotus and Polybius, had referred to the Milyas in terms which show that it extended more widely in earlier centuries.

When in the late nineteenth century inscriptions from Oinoanda in the Kibyratis (Fig. 1) began to be recorded and published in quantity, the relationship between Termessos Minor and Oinoanda caused a good deal of discussion. For it was in the city which everybody agreed to be Oinoanda that inscriptions set up by the boule, demos, and gerousia of the Termessians were to be found. Holleaux and Paris supposed that the two communities shared the Oinoanda hill, and Cousin added the suggestion that the late Roman fortification wall (traditionally known as the Great Wall) separated them.

This article begins by examining the frequently-invoked metaphor of Turkey as a bridge between East and West. The use of this metaphor is questioned because it implies passivity, over-simplifies the complexities of ancient communications and inter-regional exchange, and is based upon the assumption of divides that are culturally constructed. The article then examines two case-studies (the Aegean west coast and the Euphrates valley of the southeast) in order to demonstrate that the existence of different archaeological communities of practice in these regions serves to distort further the perception of differences between eastern and western Anatolia. The conclusion is put forward that a clearer distinction is definable in the practice of these two communities than in the archaeology of the ancient cultures of these two regions. Only if the divide between contemporary archaeological communities is bridged can the existence of divides between ancient communities begin to be examined. The reasons for the differences between these cultures of practice are largely historical but continue to affect the data-sets for these regions and thereby hinder the direct comparison of evidence trans-Anatolia.

The cultural and political changes that happened in Anatolia after the collapse of the Hittite Empire have only recently been recognised as a significant, but as yet unexplained, phenomenon. Here we present the results of analyses of ceramics from three sites south and southwest of the present-day town of Sorgun – Çadır Höyük, Kerkenes Dağ and Tilkigediği Tepe – to identity how regional groups within the Hittite core area regrouped in the aftermath of the collapse. Ceramic analyses provide a means to assess both cultural continuity and the scale and nature of interaction in a region. Results suggest some evidence of cultural continuity at Çadır Höyük from the Late Bronze Age into the Middle Iron Age, and highlight the variable local responses in the aftermath of Hittite collapse.

Until very recently almost everything of substance that was known about the Galatians was derived from historical, more specifically Greek and Roman, sources. Modern perceptions of the Galatians have accordingly not only been one-sided, but have also depended on outsiders' views and representations of a complex culture. A stereotypical picture established itself in the modern literature, which itself was moulded by the preconceptions of ancient Greek observers. This view, which will also provide a chronological framework for an examination of Galatian culture, may be summarised broadly as follows: the Galatians were groups of Celticspeaking peoples who arrived on the borders of the Classical world, Macedonia, Greece and Asia Minor, around 281 BC (see fig 1). Warlike, barbarous and set upon raiding and plunder, they attacked cities and sanctuaries in Greece, before crossing to Asia Minor where they conducted themselves in similar fashion until the various efforts of Hellenistic rulers forced them to settle in north central Anatolia, the region around Ankara (see fig 2).

Due to its geographical position, the Anatolian plateau has always been considered as a bridge in transmitting cultural formations that originated in the Near East to southeastern Europe and to the Aegean. Such a standpoint downgrades the role played by the Anatolian plateau to a transit route between the East and the West, overlooking its distinct structure. It seems that the main bias is in considering the Anatolian plateau as a single cultural unit, ignoring the multifarious nature of its structure. The role the Anatolian plateau played between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ was much more complex and multi-facetted than assumed, even at times hampering all interaction. Yet another bias is considering Anatolia, in spite of its geographic extent, as the dividing line in defining the boundary between the East and the West. However, it is evident that the geographic limits of the peninsula do not necessarily correspond with the cultural entities. Thus, for example, while the cultural boundary separating the East and the West was somewhere in between the Aegean littoral and the central plateau during the Neolithic period, later it shifted considerably in both directions. On the other hand, through the earlier part of the Chalcolithic period, the extent of the Taurus mountains marks the dividing line between the Near Eastern and Anatolia-Balkan cultural formative zones, which by the Late Chalcolithic period moved much further to the west, up to the Marmara region, the Sea of Marmara then acting as a cultural barrier. Presented here is a conspectus of the recent picture on changing cultural boundaries through the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.

Professor John Cook died on 2 January 1994 at the age of eighty-five. His scrupulous and meticulously published field work in the western coastal regions of Turkey, in Caria, Ionia, Aeolis, and above all in the Troas, has made a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the East Greek world. Much historical research in the future will be built up on the foundations he laid. I hope that this present study, which is a product of the same methods of field research into the Classical sites of Asia Minor as he practised, will help to confirm the continuing value of these methods and serve as a fitting tribute to the memory of a great scholar.

Beginning in the early sixth century a large-scale rebuilding programme was undertaken by the Phrygians on the City Mound at Gordion, probably with the approval of their overlords, the Lydians. This renewed activity was no doubt one factor in the appearance at this time of several new imported fine wares at Gordion. These supplement the small number of imports finding their way to Gordion during the seventh century. One large group consists of Lydian pottery belonging to several fabrics including black-on-red, bichrome, marbled ware, and black-on-buff. Detailed study of this pottery has yet to be carried out. Work here will depend heavily on the study and classification of pottery from excavations at Sardis. Another, smaller body of imported pottery came from the cities of Greece. Study of this material, mainly from Corinth, Athens, and East Greece, is being conducted by K. DeVries and is now well advanced. A third small body of pottery, originating from areas to the west and south of Gordion, is presented here. The different wares of this group are very poorly known from other West Anatolian sites, so that the Gordion material adds considerably to our understanding of each of them.