This article is chiefly concerned with the chronology of the Byzantine fortifications of Amastris, which are the subject of current research by the authors, but, in order to set the settlement at Amasra and its fortifications into their context in the Black Sea area, the present study must commence with a brief account of some aspects of the monuments and history of the city in the Hellenistic and Classical periods.

The present Turkish town of Amasra on the south coast of the Black Sea (Fig. 1; Pl. XXXVII a) occupies the site of the ancient city of Amastris which has a long history extending as least as far back as the period of Milesian colonisation in the Black Sea zone from the seventh century B.C. Like the more famous city of Sinope to the east, the settlement at Amasra stood on the isthmus of a peninsula projecting into the Black Sea. At Amasra the isthmus leads to the upstanding promontory rock, Zindan Kalesi (Dungeon Castle) on which part of the Byzantine fortification stands, and which protects the east harbour. The whole site is further protected by the closely adjacent island of Boz Tepe which encloses the northern side of the west harbour. The site was doubtless chosen for settlement because of its good natural harbours which, as will be seen, have been of central importance throughout the history of Amasra.

LÚAGRIG, Akkadian abarakku, rendered usually as “major domo”, “steward”, “overseer”, “administrator”, or an office of a similar nature, is attested in the oldest of Hittite documents. In addition to late copies of texts belonging to the Old Kingdom (the Palace Chronicle and the Telipinu Decree) the AGRIG is also found in an original Old Hittite document, the Inandik Tablet, which is probably to be dated to Hattušili I. However, the vast majority of the references are found in later texts or copies.

The Hittite reading of AGRIG is not known. It must be an a- stem as shown by the complemented forms: sg. nom. LUAGRIG-aš (KUB XI 28 III 5′), acc.

This paper investigates why we lack convincing evidence for human activities in north-central Anatolia for the period between 10,000 and 6,000 BC cal. This paucity of data can be contrasted with substantial evidence for Neolithic communities in south-central Anatolia from about 8,500 BC cal, and of earlier hunter-gatherer communities in that region. This difference in our data is especially problematic because in terms of ecology both regions appear to be broadly similar. In this paper this enigmatic paucity of evidence for the Early Holocene occupation of north-central Anatolia will be scrutinised. In particular, this entails a discussion of the existing discourse on the paucity of evidence and an evaluation of the three types of argument that have been put forward to explain it: first, that the region was not occupied because of unfavourable ecological conditions; second, that the practices of Early Holocene groups in north-central Anatolia have left an insubstantial archaeological record; and, third, that the paucity of evidence is best explained by a combination of the factors of site preservation, site visibility and research intensity. Finally, a research strategy will be proposed for the future investigation of the Early Holocene occupation of north-central Anatolia.

Within the Aşvan Project we are concerned with the examination of the presentday architecture of the region, and utilizing this as a basic framework of reference, to investigate any areas of relevance, implication and relationship it may have to the stated objectives of the project.

As much of our work to date has been of a preliminary and exploratory nature, with our collected data still at a very basic and fragmented level, we have had to limit this paper to a very general synopsis of the various aspects of our work within the project.

Our paper consists of four main sections:

1. Outline of conceptual and methodological approach.

2. General appraisal of architecture within the region.

3. Preliminary appraisal of Aşvan village.

4. Summary of archaeological relevance.

The project objectives are concerned with the investigation of Man's activities, with particular reference to subsistence economy systems within the Aşvan region.

The second season of excavations at Büyüktepe Höyük, a collaborative project between the University of Melbourne and Erzurum Museum, took place between 5 June and 10 August. We are very much indebted to Mesut Güngör, Acting Director of the Museum, and his staff, in particular Hilmi Özkorucuklu, assistant at the museum and representative of the Ministry of Culture, for their cooperation. Thanks are once again due to the authorities in Demirözü for facilitating our work.

An outline of objectives appeared in the last preliminary report. In order to determine the nature and extent of occupation at the site for all major periods, the excavation strategy for 1991 was as follows (Fig. 1):

1. To investigate by means of broad, horizontal exposures the western flank of the site on the basis of the promising results obtained from last year's sondage in R35a.

2. To enlarge the exposure of the circular structure on the summit of the site first identified in 1990.

3. To examine the saddle between the two hills of Büyüktepe.

Gümüş—“Silver” in Turkish—is the name of a small town of something over 2,000 inhabitants about 7 kilometres north-east of Niğde, capital city of the Turkish vilayet of the same name, and not far to the south of an earth road which branches from the main Niğde–Kayseri highway. Another 3 kilometres towards Kayseri is the modern hamlet of Andaval, the ancient Andabilis, where the so-called Church of Constantine is a familiar sight to travellers on the Orient Express as the train makes for Niğde, Ulukışla and the Cilician Gates. Andabilis existed as early as the principate of Hadrian, and thus was on the main route from Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri) to Tyana (Kemerhisar). Gümüş, whatever may have been its ancient name, was then at no great distance from an arterial road linking Constantinople with the Orient by way of the great Taurus pass. The modern town, its economy almost entirely based on extensive apple orchards, now consists of two closely linked villages, divided by a shallow stream with steep banks, and the monastery is in Eski Gümüş—Old Silver—where an outcrop of volcanic tufa, honeycombed with caves, natural and artificial, rises to a height of between 12 and 25 metres.

The great bilingual of Karatepe is one of the best understood inscriptions in Hieroglyphic Luwian, though not all problems have yet been solved. On the one hand some readings remain uncertain, since no full set of photographs is available, and on the other hand the grammatical and semantic interpretation is not always clear in spite of the help provided by the Phoenician version. In this paper we propose to tackle some of the problems still open, taking as a starting point the text and interpretation published by Piero Meriggi in his Manuale (II/1, 69 ff.), which at present offers the most complete and up-to-date version of the inscription.

In transliterating we adopt the values listed in Anatolian Studies XXV (1975), 153–5, which we also used in our transliteration and discussion of the last part of KARATEPE (JRAS 1975/2, 124 ff.). We here use the same section and word numbering as in the latter contribution.

In this article, 13 cylinder and stamp seals are examined. They were found at Tatarlı Höyük during the 2008–2012 excavations. The interesting and significant collection of cylinder and stamp seals of the second millennium BC reveals the importance of Tatarlı Höyük in the archaeology of Kizzuwatna. Stamp seals from earlier periods were found out of context and shed light on prehistoric Tatarlı Höyük. We believe that Tatarlı Höyük is ancient Lawazantiya – the famous ‘lost’ city of the Hittites and of Kizzuwatna.

A large number of Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and Neo-Hittite reliefs were uncovered in Carchemish by the British Museum expeditions. The profusion of Hittite hieroglyphic texts enabled Woolley and Barnett to attribute many of the monuments to different kings and to establish a reliable chronological list of the kings of Carchemish. Sangara, who reigned in Carchemish during the middle of the ninth century, is known from the Assyrian annals only and is not mentioned in even one of the hieroglyphic inscriptions found in Carchemish or elsewhere. Therefore, none of the buildings and monuments unearthed there could be attributed to him and he is not considered to have played a significant role in the history of this Neo-Hittite state. The main purpose of this article is to try to prove that Sangara was an important and prosperous king, victorious in battle and a great builder, to whom a large part of the reliefs found in Carchemish must be assigned.

There has been much recent research in archaeology on the dynamics of imperial systems, and valuable work has been done on the complex relationships between the Hittite state and groups on its imperial periphery. The nature of the available source material means that these relationships are usually studied from a Hittite perspective, and that interactions with the Hittites are often seen as centrally important for these groups. In this paper, however, it is argued that archaeological evidence can be used to gain insight into alternative views – views which may not necessarily privilege relationships with the Hittites over those with other groups. One well-documented example of such a group is Arzawa, a quarrelsome coalition of principalities in western Anatolia. This paper will focus on the western Anatolian site of Beycesultan, caught between the Hittite and Arzawan heartlands. It will show that people at Beycesultan did not define themselves primarily in relation to either the Hittites or the Arzawan confederacy, but had their own dynamic and shifting world-view.

Pilgrimage happens when a place becomes the focus of veneration because of its association with a person or event. Pilgrim cults from the past can sometimes be identified by grouping certain types of material evidence, although interpretation of a cult's historical meaning is only possible once the material has been fully assessed. This study considers what sorts of information can be drawn from the archaeological context of a group of clay ampullae; miniature flasks originating from Asia Minor in late antiquity.

In Antiquity the opinion was strongly held that the Etruscans came from Asia Minor, and in modern times their many connections with that country have long been self-evident.

There have been three theories about their origin; the oriental, the northern and the autochthonous. Of these even Pallottino, who favours the autochthonous theory, says that the oriental is the best known and the most widely accepted, though he rejects it on the ground that there is little evidence for a settlement in central Italy in the Bronze Age. Then, though he mentions the Teresh of the Egyptian monuments and the probability of the identity of that name with that of the Tyrsenoi, he passes on to a discussion of the Orientalising civilisation of the 8th and 7th centuries. In the same way Brandenstein discusses Herodotus' account of Tyrsenos and other similar records and the Turuscha (Teresh), yet later on uses the alphabet, the Urartian connections, etc., as evidence for the oriental origin of the Etruscans. But these of course belong to the 8th and 7th centuries not to the time of Tyrsenos and the Teresh.

The Türkmen-Karahöyük Intensive Survey Project (TISP) has identified the archaeological site of Türkmen-Karahöyük on the Konya plain as a previously unknown Iron Age capital city in the western region of Tabal. Surface collections and newly discovered inscriptional evidence indicate that this city is the early first-millennium royal seat of ‘Great King Hartapu’, long known from the enigmatic monuments of nearby Kizildağ and Karadağ. In addition to demonstrating this Iron Age city's existence, supported principally by (1) the site's size at the time and (2) the discovery of a royal inscription authored by Hartapu himself, TISP has documented the site's existence from the Late Chalcolithic period until the late first millennium BCE, with a maximum size reached between the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods, suggesting that the city was at its greatest extent and the regional political centre from at least the late second to the mid-first millennium BCE.

When I was still a student, Dr. Barnett gave me the part-time job of sorting the cylinder seal collection in the Western Asiatic Department of the British Museum, of which he was then Keeper. Now, some twenty years later, the catalogue of Akkadian to Ur III seals, which this led to, has just appeared, and this article is based on two “firsts” (as S. N. Kramer would put it) to which my attention was drawn while I was studying the seals. I have found seals a fascinating and continuous source of inspiration and information and the fact that I am still writing about them after twenty years is a measure of the debt I owe Dr. Barnett.

Hunting: Cylinder seal BM 105159 (Pl. XVII(a)), is cut with a presentation scene: a deity leads a worshipper before a seated god. Behind the worshipper is a figure (Pl. XVll(b)), who wears a skirt, raises his left arm and holds, in his right hand, what I thought was a footed cup in which was a stirring rod or spoon. However, when I took this, and other seals, to the British Museum (Natural History) for identification of the animals, it was pointed out to me, by Mr. Colton, that the “cup” might be a falcon sitting on a falconer's wrist.

The excavations at Kilise Tepe in the 1990s inevitably left a range of research questions unanswered, and our second spell of work at the site from 2007 to 2011 sought to address some of these, relating to the later second and early first millennia. This article gathers the architectural and stratigraphie results of the renewed excavations, presenting the fresh information about the layout and character of the Late Bronze Age North-West Building and the initial phases of the Stele Building which succeeded it, including probable symbolic practices, and describing the complex stratigraphic sequence in the Central Strip sounding which covers the lapse of time from the 12th down to the seventh century. There follow short reports on the analyses of the botanical and faunal materials recovered, a summary of the results from the relevant radiocarbon dating samples and separate studies addressing issues resulting from the continuing study of the ceramics from the different contexts. Taken together, a complex picture emerges of changes in settlement layout, archi¬tectural traditions, use of external space, artefact production and subsistence strategies during the centuries which separate the Level III Late Bronze Age settlement from the latest Iron Age occupation around 700 BC.

The results from five seasons of extensive and intensive survey in north-central Turkey, Project Paphlagonia, are here considered in relation to the prehistory of the region and the broader geographical scene. While the evidence remains limited and patchy it is possible to discern some clear patterns through these long time-periods, which in some respects match those of other regions of Turkey and beyond. They include: a strong Middle Palaeolithic presence; no detectable Upper Palaeolithic or Epi-Palaeolithic sites; an apparent absence of Neolithic settlement; a Chalcolithic settlement pattern that appears to be related to exploitation of raw materials of the region, and; a massive increase in settlement through the centuries of the Early Bronze Age, with evidence for fortification, cemeteries and strong connections to regions well beyond north-central Turkey.

The subject of this paper, which I dedicate in gratitude and affection to Professor Seton Lloyd after twenty-three years of close association and friendship, was suggested to me by an article published by Professor Cyril Mango in the Festschrift of F. Dölger. This article, entitled “Isaurian Builders”, drew attention to the material contribution of Isaurians to early Christian architecture and, more generally, to the merited reputation of their rugged province as a home of skilled masons and builders. Most interesting, from the present writer's point of view, was Mango's belief that four famous Isaurian churches (at Alahan, Daǧ Pazarı, Meryemlik and Corycus), might all be dated fairly confidently to the last quarter of the fifth century, i.e. to the period of the Emperor Zeno.

During 1988 the Pisidian survey project continued at a new site, Ariassos, and for a fourth season at Sagalassos. The team, directed at Ariassos by Dr. S. Mitchell and at Sagalassos by Professor M. Waelkens (Dept. of Archaeology, Catholic University of Leuven, Research Associate of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium)) consisted of Bay Sabri Aydal of Antalya Museum (topographer), Dr. E. Owens, Y. Day, and A. Millard (University College of Swansea), S. Cormack (Yale University), Dr. M. Lodewijckx, R. Degeest, L. Vandeput, and C. Nuitjen (University of Leuven), D. Roberts, R. Johnson, and S. Corker (University of Newcastle), A. Schulz and D. Pohl (University of Münster), and Osman Ermişler (Konya Museum), who represented the Turkish Antiquities Department. The main financial support for Ariassos came from the British Academy and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and for Sagalassos from the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium) and from the Flemish Ministry of Education (Belgium). Thanks are due to the Eski Eserler ve Müzeler Genel Müdürlüǧü, who gave permission for the survey and provided surveying equipment, to the staff of the Emniyet Müdürlüǧü in Antalya and in Burdur, and to the Belediye officials and the inhabitants of Bademaǧacı and of Aǧlasun.

With the publication in 1952 of Carchemish, part III, Sir Leonard Woolley attempted to allocate the excavated buildings and monuments to reigns and dates. For the epigraphic evidence of the Hieroglyphic Hittite inscriptions, he relied upon the chapter contributed to the publication by R. D. Barnett. Here Barnett constructed a chronological framework based on the names and genealogies appearing in the inscriptions. He was, however, working in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Karatepe, before even the preliminary publication of the bilingual was complete, so that a number of his readings required subsequent correction. Detailed epigraphic criticism was offered particularly by Güterbock and Meriggi in their reviews of the volume. The efforts of all these scholars considerably advanced our knowledge of the chronology of the buildings and sculpture, and subsequent treatments of the art and archaeology of Carchemish have naturally relied heavily upon them.

More recently however, the study of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, which are for the most part concerned mainly with the erection of buildings and sculptures, has fallen behind that of the monuments to which they relate. This remains true even after the new edition of some of these inscriptions published by Meriggi in what is primarily a philological study. It would therefore seem desirable to present editions of the Carchemish building inscriptions as complete as their fragmentary nature and persistent difficulties interpretation will permit; and on this basis to review the chronology of the buildings and sculptures described therein. It is the purpose of this article therefore to examine the inscriptions relating to the Long Wall of Sculpture and the Great Staircase, which elucidate to some extent the history of the construction of that complex.

Recent studies of some of the leading families of Asia Minor in the early imperial period have shown the value of a prosopographical analysis for elucidating the history of the region and, in particular, of bringing into sharp focus the complex and far-reaching connections among those families which formed the aristocratic elites in the Graeco-Roman cities. In her 1966 study, Shelagh Jameson dealt at length with the Lycian family of Licinnii from Oenoanda. Among its members was a certain Marcia Lycia who, as the daughter of Marcius Titianus, married into the family from Cibyra. Jameson did not turn her attention to these Cibyran relatives of the Licinnii and the following is offered, therefore, as a supplementary study of the history and significance of that network of families. The discussion has two aspects: the delineation of one of the connections of these Cibyrans with another family elsewhere in Asia Minor, and a discussion of the evidence provided about the nature of the title asiarch in the first century.