A sizeable part of the epigraphic record of the North Lycian city of Balboura concerns the erection of statues honouring athletics victors of the Antoninia Meleagria, a “musical” festival founded A.D. 158–161 by the local notable Meleager, the subject of J. J. Coulton, N. P. Milner, A. T. Reyes, “Balboura Survey: Onesimos and Meleager Part II”, AS XXXIX (1989) 41–60. In this paper the whole series of 12 Meleagria bases is published, five for the first time, together with other inscriptions demonstrating the victors' membership of the leading families of Balboura, with one possible exception (Inscr. 11). The Meleagria bases are presented in chronological order, and are referred to by the same numbers as the inscriptions they carry. The tops and front elevations of the better-preserved ones are shown on Fig. 2.

“Das Hauptmerkmal der phrygischen Felsfassaden, das sie von allen anderen zeitgenössischen kleinasiatischen Felsdenkmaelern unterscheidet, ist der geometrische Dekor. Dieselbe Ornamentsprache haben die Schmuckelemente der gleichzeitigen phrygischen Terrakottafriese und auch die viel aelteren Vasen des schönen Stils”; so lautet die Ansicht von E. Akurgal über die motivische und zeitliche Identitaet der beiden bekannten architektonischen Schöpfungen von Phrygern, der Felsfassaden und der tönernen Verkleidungsplatten. Diese Beziehungen sind schon früher bemerkt und in der Forschung immer wieder zitiert.

Eine Gegenüberstellung des Kultdenkmals der Arezastis mit der—wenn auch phantasiereichen—Rekonstruktionszeichnung einer Gebaeudefassade von Pazarlı oder des “Tempels” von Gordion macht in der Gesamterscheinung tatsaechlich den gleichen dekorativen Eindruck.

The salvage excavations and related surveys carried out both in the Keban and in the Karakaya reservoir areas during the last twenty years have made the Elazıǧ region one of the most thoroughly examined areas of Anatolia. Our archaeological information about this region, which previously was extremely limited, has now reached a significantly high level. Surveys conducted by the present writer during 1985–87, especially in the outlying areas of the reservoir regions, have resulted in the establishment of an archaeological sequence for almost the whole of the area. In spite of all this, it cannot be said that the history of the region is yet fully understood. For example, the two questions, when did the Early Iron Age begin in the region and what were the reasons behind its beginnings, are still far from being answered.

In written documents relating to the Hittite ruler Shuppiluliuma I, the region is referred to as a kingdom, while in the time of Tudhalia IV it is clearly understood that the area, known as Ishuwa, had become a vassal kingdom of the Hittite empire, where people of Hurrian origin were living.

In 1984 the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) began the excavation of a Late Bronze Age shipwreck, which lay close to Ulu Burun near Kaş, in south west Turkey. In subsequent seasons the Institute's excavation team, under the directorship of George F. Bass and Cemal Pulak, has systematically recorded and excavated a large area of the shipwreck, which has been provisionally dated to the 14th century B.C. Although the nationality of the ship is still unknown, it has been deduced that it was travelling from the eastern Mediterranean coast westward when it sank. The ship was carrying an exceptionally varied and rich cargo reflecting complex and sophisticated trading on a large scale. Amongst the items recovered in the 1986 season were fragments of a wooden writing-board set found in the sediment of one of the large pithoi (KW 252) carried onboard the ship. The importance and implications of such a find in the Late Bronze Age was recognized by Pulak who was able to loosely fit together the small fragments, enabling on site recordings to be made. Despite careful sieving and extensive searching, smaller fragments of the boards and one of the hinges were never recovered.

In the fall of 1988, Cemal Pulak, acting field director and assistant director of the Ulu Burun excavations, asked the authors to identify the wood used in the diptych found on the fourteenth- or very early thirteenth-century Ulu Burun shipwreck. Although it has been stated generally that Greco-Roman writing tablets were made of boxwood, other woods were also used for writing tablets in various periods of antiquity. The second oldest known writing-boards, from 8th-century Nimrud, were made of walnut (Juglans nigra), and from Assyrian records we know that writing-boards were constructed of tamarisk, cypress and cedar woods. Geography clearly played a role in the choice of wood. At the port of Roman London, for example, “most of the twenty-two fragments of writing tablets recovered from the recent waterfront excavations were of the wax-impressed type made from larch, cedar or silver fir, suggesting that they … were brought over [from the continent] as finished products”; the only boxwood tablet, perhaps locally made, was not of the type that held wax.

It has been known from textual sources for some time that besides clay tablets, the traditional writing material in the Ancient Near East, wooden writing-boards were also used by the scribes.

M. San Nicolò first drew attention to the fact that writing-boards were widely employed in temple and palace administration in Mesopotamia in the first millennium B.C. and the textual evidence gathered by him was soon to be confirmed archaeologically by the discovery of several such writing-boards at Nimrud. Equally, the existence of wooden writing material in Hittite context has long been established, but no example has ever been found. It is generally thought that private and economic records which are almost totally lacking in the archives at Boǧazköy must have been written on perishable material.

The elusive nature of wooden writing-boards manifests itself not only archaeologically by the unlikelihood of their survival but also by the fact that, as a rule, they deserved little mention in the cuneiform texts. Consequently, the quantity of wooden writing material that may have been in use and did not survive is impossible to gauge. Similarly, it would be unwarranted to deduce that centres whose archives have not contributed to the subject, were unfamiliar with writing on wood.

The only substantial collection of decorated chalcolithic pottery discovered in Central Anatolia by Ian Todd during his survey in the years 1964–6 is described here. Background to the survey is given by Todd (1980: 9–12) who recognized the importance of these sherds (Todd 1967: 12; 1980: 56, 151 n. 37). They are of sufficient interest to merit presentation here, in advance of the full publication of Todd's survey pottery which is being prepared by the author. I must express my thanks to Ian Todd for generously passing on his notes and encouraging me to work on the material, to Helen Boyd for the drawings, Tuǧrul Çakar for the photographs and David French for his invaluable advice.

Some twenty-three objects in the Bronze Age Aegean have been identified as “Hittite” in previous literature. Scholars investigating the nature of the relations between Hittites and Mycenaeans continue to cite one or more of these objects, although many have since been shown to be of non-Hittite origins. In this paper I propose to reexamine the “authenticity” of the Hittite objects reported within the Bronze Age Aegean. The twenty-three objects in question can readily be grouped as to (A) those which might be and (B) those which are not Central Anatolian Hittite in origin.

A new inquiry into the archaeology of north-eastern Anatolia was initiated in the summer of 1990 at Büyüktepe Höyük, alternatively called İkiztepe. Located about 1·8 km. north of the village of Çiftetaş, in the mountain-girdled Bayburt plain, some 1500 m. above the level of the Black Sea, the site comprises layers of human occupation stretched across two distinct natural hills joined by a saddle (Figs 1–3). Orientated along a northwest–southeast axis, Büyüktepe rises impressively some 20 m. above the floor of the Beşpınar valley. In a direct line from Bayburt, Büyüktepe is only 30 km. to the southwest, although, if one follows the Bayburt to Demirözü road, the distance is increased to about 35 km. From the village of Çiftetaş, a track leads to Büyüktepe and bifurcates roughly 350 m. from its southern end. One branch skirts its eastern base on its way to Çayıryolu; the other runs toward the spurs of Baltakaya Tepesi which were also settled in antiquity.

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”.

In 1974 a group of copper alloy objects, including two figurines and a number of weapons, was taken to Adana Museum by a dealer from İslahiye. The objects were said to have come from a site near Kilis. One of the figurines, which has gold foil on the face, was bought by Adana Museum. Temporary closure of Adana Museum has precluded examination of this figurine. In 1975 fourteen copper alloy objects from this same group, including a figurine wearing gold and silver ornaments around the neck, were purchased from the same dealer by the Gaziantep Museum for the sum of thirty thousand Turkish Lira, then about one thousand pounds sterling. This time they were said to have come from the vicinity of Sakçagözü. Staff of Gaziantep Museum brought the existence of this hoard to the attention of the British Institute which was engaged in a restudy of material from earlier British excavations in the Sakçagözü region (French and Summers 1988). The author is extremely grateful to the Museum for allowing access to the finds, to David French for his encouragement and advice, Tuǧrul Çakar for the photography and Jane Goddard who made the drawings. This paper has benefited greatly from discussions with Drs. John Curtis, Roger Moorey, Graham Philip and Trevor Watkins. Any faults remain, of course, the responsibility of the author.

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.

This was the third season of excavation at Amorium in east Phrygia, and the team worked for four weeks, from 1 August 1990. The archaeological aim was to study social change and development from the Hellenistic period to the Medieval, in particular the Late Roman period and so-called Dark Ages. We completed a detailed survey in the Upper Town, worked in three trenches (two of them initiated last year [L and AB] in the Upper and Lower Town, and one which was new [the Church] in the Lower Town), and further study was made of pottery and small finds. This is a new archaeological subject in this period in central Anatolia, and the first stage is to sort out the pottery, small finds, two or three buildings, levels, and chronology. The next stage will be to study the faunal, botanical, and other samples.

In the Roman period the town lay at the eastern end of the province of Asia. It was probably fairly small, consisting of the Upper Town and part of the Lower (the area of the modern village). Nonetheless, Amorium was mentioned in classical texts and has produced Hellenistic and provincial-Roman coins, Phrygian marble sculpture and architecture, inscriptions, non-local pottery, and a Roman carnelian intaglio.