A goddess among Storm-gods. The stele of Tavşantepe and the landscape monuments of southern Cappadocia

Abstract

Little is known about the geo-political landscape of central Anatolia after the collapse of the Hittite Empire. In particular, almost no archaeological evidence for stone monumental art dating to the post-Hittite period north of the Taurus mountains has survived. Now, the stele of Tavşantepe sheds new light on the history of southern Cappadocia during the so-called ‘dark age’ and offers us a unique insight into the artistic production of this region at the beginning of the first millennium BC. Moreover, its location along one of the most important routes connecting southern Cappadocia with central Anatolia, the Altunhisar valley, helps us reconstruct the socio-religious developments in this area in the period predating the emergence of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Tuwana in the eighth century BC.