A Neolithic structure was rebuilt three times at Çukuriçi Höyük, on the central Anatolian Aegean coast, despite its unfavourable location on unsettled fill. We draw upon this seemingly incongruous case to make inference about the siting of buildings in Neolithic times. Through detailed cross-comparison with other sequences of vertically superimposed buildings in Anatolia and the Aegean region, we retrace the contours of a Neolithic practice aimed at maintaining occupation in one place. Over time, building continuity transformed into a strategy by some households to claim authority over a place and appropriate it for their own benefit. With regard to the location of Neolithic buildings, we conclude that choices about location dominated over practical considerations. Once a commitment to place was made, there was no turning back, even when this meant living in an unstable house that needed to be rebuilt repeatedly.

The following article discusses the archaeometrical dimension of a well-known Early Bronze Age metal figurine from Hasanoğlan, Turkey, on permanent display in the Anatolian Civilisations Museum in Ankara. The transfer of the object to a new display case allowed for an examination with a portable x-ray fluorescence (P-XRF) device in order to reveal the chemical composition of the statuette and its attached ornaments. The figurine was confirmed to be made of silver. However, it is alloyed with a small but still substantial amount of copper. The applications are basically made of gold, but with a suspected substantial (up to 23%) amount of silver involved. The final section of the article is dedicated to a critical comparison with recently published figurines from Alaca Höyük, together with an archaeological and chronological reappraisal of this unique piece of art.

Prior to the emergence of the fully officialised temples of the Hittite state, formal religious space in Anatolia is recognisable in a handful of small shrines or sanctuaries. Presumably at the service of local communities, but neither monumental nor formulaic, such shrines attest to a modest if eclectic range of religious activities in the early second millennium. Also to be included in this range are rituals which took place within the domestic sphere, pointing to private family-based concerns, rather than a communal agenda, guiding ritual activity. Such spaces are conspicuous in the Lower Town settlement of the well-known site of Kültepe-Kaneš, where a small number of private houses were furnished with a cultic installation in the form of a stone stele. Associated with a range of other symbolically charged elements (such as ritual vessels, foundation or votive deposits), these stelae are a stark testimony to the practice of delineating permanent, formalised ritual space within quotidian domestic space. This article offers a detailed examination of stone stelae at Kültepe-Kaneš in order to identify meaningful frameworks of contextual analysis, cross-cultural comparanda and correlation of the archaeological data with visual and textual accounts of cult activity in a society in which local Anatolian and northern Mesopotamian elements intermixed over several generations from the beginning of the 20th to that of the 17th century BC.

The presence of imported and locally produced Mycenaean pottery in western Anatolia has long caught the attention of scholars, and various explanatory models have been proposed to explain the apparent attractiveness of the pottery. In most cases, however, emphasis is placed on the (stylistic) differences between Mycenaean pottery and the various local plain wares, and it is assumed that these differences were actively recognised by local communities and exploited in the formation of social identities. This paper, however, pilots a different approach that focuses not on the stylistic differences between Mycenaean pottery and the various Anatolian wares but on the (perceived) common ground(s) between them and argues that the attractiveness of Mycenaean, and previously Minoan pottery, lay not so much in its cultural origins or its ‘foreignness’ as in its potential to fit in with existing local material assemblages and enhance a sense of communality among cosmopolitan communities.

The focus of this article is the recently published, near-duplicate ARSUZ inscriptions carved on two stelae found near İskenderun in southeastern Turkey and dating to the later tenth century BC. Particular attention is given to the historical section of these inscriptions, and its reference to a land called Hiyawa (Assyrian Que) in eastern Cilicia, previously attested in only one other Iron Age inscription, the Luwian-Phoenician bilingual found at Çineköy near Adana. The article discusses what new information can be deduced about Hiyawa, including its relationship with the land of Adana(wa) in eastern Cilicia, the implications to be drawn from the findspot of the stelae and the much-debated question of whether the references to Hiyawa reflect Greek settlement in southeastern Anatolia during the Early Iron Age. Fresh attention is also given to the two Akkadian texts from the archives of Late Bronze Age Ugarit which refer to a group called the Hiyawa-men, who were located at that time (late 13th to early 12th century) in Lukka in southwestern Anatolia. The controversial identification of this group with Ahhiyawans/Mycenaean Greeks is re-examined within the broader context of a comprehensive reconsideration of the Ahhiyawa-Hiyawa equation and the role played by ‘Hiyawans’ and the land of Hiyawa in the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean world from the end of the Bronze Age through the succeeding Iron Age.

This article explores the battle scene on a small bronze plaque recovered during the 19th-century excavation of Pergamon, initially published in 1913 and subsequently lost. It argues that the most likely identification of the scene is the Battle of Magnesia, fought in 190 BC. The scene features Attalid cavalry riding to the rescue of distressed Roman legionaries, both fighting in opposition to Antiochus the Great's heavy phalanx and Gallic cavalry. The heroics of the Attalid cavalry are central to the scene, and likely reflect a courtly narrative that gave Eumenes II and his small contingent outsized credit for the joint victory.

A new building inscription (no. 1) from Oinoanda, found beside the baths building Ml 1 in 2011, dedicates the building to the Roman emperor Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian in AD 73. This article places the new find in the setting of the whole building complex, including the adjacent building Ml 2, which is likely to be a palaistra (wrestling-school), though rebuilt over a century later. The inscription supplies new evidence for the date of the governor of Lycia-Pamphylia, Firmus. It also points to the existence of earlier baths, which is compared to other similar indications from elsewhere in Lycia. A second, but illegible, inscription was recorded in 2012, outside a doorway leading from building Ml 1 into the peristyle building Ml 2 (no. 2). A third inscription on a statue base in building Ml 2 was also recorded (no. 3), along with two other illegible statue-base inscriptions (nos 4 and 5). The article places them in the context of the inscribed monuments found earlier at the building complex (nos 6 and 7), which may have included the small building Ml 3, and discusses them in the light of the broader phenomenon of Julio-Claudian and Flavian baths buildings in the region, and the role of the provincial governors and procurators in overseeing such building projects. This allows us to draw some conclusions about the nature and impact of Roman rule in first-century Lycia, which brought within the reach of many Lycian cities piped water, Italian-style bathing and new, improved facilities for the regionally popular heavy athletic sports of boxing, wrestling and pankration (unarmed combat).

This paper presents the initial results of an epigraphic survey of a Roman imperial estate, carried out in 2014 in northern Choria Considiana, today encompassing the area of Mihalıççık in Eskişehir, located between the Sakarya (Sangarios) river to the north and the Porsuk (Tembris) river to the south. The paper focuses on ten funerary inscriptions found in situ in the Çalçak Roman necropolis, 4km distant from Dinek village in Mihalıççık. All these inscriptions, found on the northern edge of the Choria Considiana, contain information relating to the social and economic status of the inhabitants of the estate, and also offer evidence about stone quarries and stonemasonry in the region. The paper begins with a presentation of the historical geography of the region, and then evaluates the new inscriptions against the existing evidence about the Choria Considiana with reference to the social and economic infrastructure of the area; important questions about the social, economic and cultural life of the region are posed. The article concludes with a catalogue of the inscriptions.

Franz Cumont's influential article on pagan angels in Revue de l’histoire des religions, published just over a century ago in 1915, remains the point de départ for work on that subject. The present essay offers a brief evaluation of some of its features, and then concentrates on Greek epigraphic evidence from Asia Minor in the Roman imperial period. Most of these texts were not published when Cumont wrote, or else he treated them briefly since his focus lay largely on ancient philosophical discussions about angeloi by both insiders and outsiders to the Christian movement; and geographically he ranged more widely than we have chosen to do. The main aim of the present essay, however, is to test the widely-accepted hypothesis of A.R.R. Sheppard (1980/1981) that Jewish influence on pagan notions of angeloi is visible in these inscriptions even though that influence was applied by non-Jews in a confused manner.

Sites of ceramic production have been discovered throughout the area that was once the Roman Empire; as a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that this industry was, in the Roman and late antique worlds, organised in numerous ways. In consideration of the organisational diversity in ceramic production attested during the period, this article presents some of the findings from the excavations of a late antique complex of ceramic workshops at the site of Sagalassos in order to consider archaeological evidence in terms of, not only the organisation of the manufacturing process, but also structures of workshop decision-making. Several lines of archaeological evidence are outlined, and argue for a model of independent work units integrated into a larger organisational structure of decision-making, and possibly even ownership, across the complex. In addition, the motivation to invest in a multi-workshop complex during the late antique period at Sagalassos is contextualised within the wider history of local and regional economic development.