22 - Stone Worlds: Technologies of Rock Carving and Place-Making in Anatolian Landscapes

Summary

This chapter explores practices of rock carving on the Anatolian peninsula from a diachronic perspective, with special emphasis on the Late Bronze Age and Early-Middle Iron Ages. Linking together the materiality of monuments, rock-carving technologies and issues of landscape imagination, it focuses on the commemorative rock reliefs across the Anatolian landscape. The monuments of concern range from Hittite and post-Hittite commemorative rock reliefs to Urartian, Phrygian and Paphlagonian practices of carving the living rock for cultic, commemorative and funerary purposes. The chapter also critiques the specialised art historical and epigraphic approaches to rock reliefs and rock-cut structures, which portray them as stand-alone monuments and show a certain disregard for their micro-geographical context. Finally, it contributes to studies of landscape and place in Mediterranean archaeology by promoting a shift of focus from macro-scale explanations of the environment to micro-scale engagement with located practices of place-making.