Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
The aim of this paper is to highlight the evidence for Achaemenid settlement in eastern Turkey and to publish the sherds from two sites, Altıntepe (Cimin Tepe I, CAB Site 112) and Cimin Tepe II (CAB Site 113) collected by C. A. Burney during his survey in 1955 and now housed in the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. An Achaemenid date for Altıntepe level II has often been proposed (e.g. Burney and Lang 1971, 158–9; Forbes 1983, 59) and the site is often now included in studies of the Achaemenid Empire without comment (e.g. Tuplin 1987, 201 n. 118 and map I p. 241; Cook 1983, 198), but the large amount of evidence for extensive and wealthy Achaemenid settlement at the closely related sites of Altıntepe and Cimin Tepe II has not been considered in detail.
Three recent papers concerned with the administration of the Achaemenid Empire in general (Tuplin 1987) and Achaemenid garrisons (Tuplin 1987 B and 1988) have highlighted the sparsity of sites in eastern Anatolia which are known to have been occupied in the Persian period. For the preceding era of the Median Empire, which stretched as far westwards as the Halys river (the modern Kızılırmak), archaeological evidence has been so thin that the very existence of a Median Empire has been seriously, if not convincingly, questioned (SancisiWeerdenburg 1988).