The site of Amorium was surveyed in 1987, and the Turkish authorities kindly issued a permit for excavation in 1988. Our purpose was to study the site from the late Hellenistic period to the Medieval, in particular its growth, development and change from a small Roman town to the Late Roman and Early Byzantine city, which was destroyed by the Arabs in 838. After Constantinople and Thessalonica, this was probably the third city of the Byzantine Empire, and thus the first in Asia Minor (W. Treadgold, The Byzantine Revival 780–842 (1988), 41).

The seventh season of excavation at Can Hasan began on 9th September and stopped on 28th October; a further week was spent working on the finds and on the site. Site supervisors were Bay Altan Atılgan, and Messrs. S. W. Helms, R. Howell, and J. N. Postgate. In the House the work was undertaken by Bayan Behin Aksoy, Bayan Ülge Göker, Miss Carolyn Prater, Mrs. Cressida Ridley and Miss Monika van der Zwann. Bay Bedri Yalman represented the Turkish Government for a short period until called away to military service; his place was taken by Bay Cengiz Karadağ.

A new method of sieving was introduced this year at the suggestion of Mr. Sebastian Payne. Instead of small hand sieves, “shakers”, built under Mr. Payne's supervision, were used. Basically this type of “shaker” is three removable trays with mesh of differing size (10 mm., 5 mm., 1 mm.) set on a sprung metal framework. It was also found more practicable with soils containing a lot of grain to “wash out” the grain from the soil remaining in the last tray after the soil had received preliminary hand-searching.

The analysis of eight samples of carbonised plant material from the Patnos area (Aǧri), an important site of the Urartian period in eastern Turkey is presented. Bread/macaroni wheat (Triticum aestivum L./T. durum Desf.) and domesticated emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum Schübl.) are the main crop plants. Hulled barley (Hordeum L.) is less abundantly represented. Pulse seeds, bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia (L.) Willd.), lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) and Latyhrus L.-type were found in smaller numbers. A few wild seeds were also recorded.

This paper aims to reappraise and evaluate central Anatolian connections with the Black Sea region and the Caucasus focusing mainly on the third millennium BC. In its first part, a ceremonial item, the knobbed or ‘mushroom’ macehead, in its various appearances, is discussed in order to reconstruct a possible pattern of circulation and exchange of shapes and values over a longer period of time in the regions of Anatolia, southeast Europe and the Caucasus in the third and late second to early first millennium BC. The second part is devoted to the archaeometrical study of selected metal and mineral artefacts from the Early Bronze Age necropolis of Resuloğlu, which together with the contemporary settlement and graveyard at Kalınkaya-Toptaştepe represent two typical later Early Bronze Age sites in the Anatolian heartland. The high values of tin and arsenic used for most of the smaller jewellery items are suggestive of an attempt to imitate gold and silver, and the amounts of these alloying agents suggest a secure supply from arsenic sources located along the Black Sea littoral in the north and probably tin ores to the southeast of central Anatolia. This places these ‘Hattian’ sites within a trade network that ran from the Pontic mountain ridge to the Taurus foothills.

The site of Pednelissus in Pisidia, southern Turkey, was first visited by an Italian expedition in 1914. Fieldwork was resumed by a joint project of L. Vandeput (University of Cologne) and H. Bandt (University of Bamberg) in 2001. This article presents the results of the first epigraphical campaign in 2002, which led to the revision of 21 texts as well as the discovery of five new inscriptions. The majority of these texts are building and honorary inscriptions, and, with one possibly Hellenistic exception, they date from Roman imperial times (first to early third centuries).

During the 1962 excavations at Aphrodisias, a number of marble storage jars and a marble basin were discovered which were tentatively associated with wine production. The area was further excavated in 1970 when more pieces were uncovered in situ and then placed west of their original positions where they now remain (fig 1) (Erim 1970: 60, figs 44, 45).

These remains have since been identified as equipment used in the production of olive oil. This article provides a record of the individual items excavated, a discussion of their original findspots, and a hypothetical reconstruction of the operation of the press, followed by a discussion of the production capacity and date of such a processing plant.

An inscription from a private collection in Fethiye tells part of a court case concerning the illegal sale of land to ‘foreigners’, who are identified as Lycians. It is argued that the land belonged to Rhodes' mainland possessions bordering on Lycia, and some of the individuals named in the inscription may be identified with members of a prominent second century AD Rhodian family. Possible locations for the land at Daidala or on the island of Meis/Castellorizo are discussed.

Lidar Höyük was situated on the east bank of the Euphrates river, about 50km northwest of the provincial capital Şanlıurfa and within sight of the mound of Samsat on the opposite bank. Since 1988 these sites have been flooded by the waters of the Atatürk Dam Basin. Excavations at Lidar Höyük took place in the years from 1979 to 1987. They were conducted by the Institute für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Vorderasiatische Archäologie of the University of Heidelberg under the direction of Hauptmann. The occupation levels reached from the Islamic down to the Chalcolithic Period. Iron Age structures were found mainly in a large trench called Q, R, S 44-45, where an unbroken stratigraphy from the 13th to the sixth century BC could be excavated.

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.

Winifred Lamb was one of the founding members of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and a pioneering excavator in Anatolia (Caton-Thompson 1964: 51). Lamb had acquired her excavating skills as a member of the British School at Athens, where she was admitted in 1920 after reading Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge and subsequent war service in Room 40 of the Admiralty (The Times [London] 18 September 1963; Woodward 1963; Barnett 1962–3; Annual Report of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara 15 [1963] 2–3; Caton-Thompson 1964; Hood 1998: 70–5; Gill in preparation a, c; see also Ridgway 1996). During the early 1920s she excavated with members of the British School at Mycenae (Lamb 1919–21; Lamb, Wace 1921–3a-e), Sparta (Lamb 1926–7a-b; see also Hood 1998: 59–131) and in Macedonia (Heurtley 1939; Lamb 1940; see also Hood 1998: 144–49). Her interest in prehistory was also reflected in her creation of a prehistoric gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum in the University of Cambridge, where she had been appointed Honorary Keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities in 1920 (Gill 1999a).

Prior to the emergence of the fully officialised temples of the Hittite state, formal religious space in Anatolia is recognisable in a handful of small shrines or sanctuaries. Presumably at the service of local communities, but neither monumental nor formulaic, such shrines attest to a modest if eclectic range of religious activities in the early second millennium. Also to be included in this range are rituals which took place within the domestic sphere, pointing to private family-based concerns, rather than a communal agenda, guiding ritual activity. Such spaces are conspicuous in the Lower Town settlement of the well-known site of Kültepe-Kaneš, where a small number of private houses were furnished with a cultic installation in the form of a stone stele. Associated with a range of other symbolically charged elements (such as ritual vessels, foundation or votive deposits), these stelae are a stark testimony to the practice of delineating permanent, formalised ritual space within quotidian domestic space. This article offers a detailed examination of stone stelae at Kültepe-Kaneš in order to identify meaningful frameworks of contextual analysis, cross-cultural comparanda and correlation of the archaeological data with visual and textual accounts of cult activity in a society in which local Anatolian and northern Mesopotamian elements intermixed over several generations from the beginning of the 20th to that of the 17th century BC.

The landscape immediately surrounding the site of Çatalhöyük preserves topographic and ceramic evidence dating from prehistoric times to the present day. This article presents the results of a programme of investigation of the landscape conducted through analysis of remote-sensing, map and field-survey data, with particular emphasis on the first and second millennia AD. The concept of taphonomy, usually defined in archaeology as the process of change after deposition, is applied to the transformation of the settled landscape from its Neolithic origins to its present status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Taphonomy serves as a linking concept as we explore how past landscapes are mobilised and translated into the ever-changing present.

In the mid first century BC, a dynast named Tarcondimotus asserted his authority over parts of Smooth Cilicia. Tarcondimotus' successful accommodation of the differing expectations of Roman magistrates, local Greeks and Cilicians was connected to his patronage of the Greek polis of Hierapolis-Castabala. Through such patronage, he collaborated with municipal elites to interweave Greek and local traditions into the city's culture and cult in ways that produced innovative expressions of civic Hellenism. Likewise, while Hierapolis-Castabala was under Tarcondimotus' protection, its cult to the goddess Perasia, a local manifestation of the ancient Hittite deity Kubaba, embodied these unique cultural expressions. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Perasia retained her traditional name and her cult enjoyed distinctively local rites in which her priestesses walked upon fiery coals. Such unique qualities prevented Greeks and Romans during the centuries following Tarcondimotus' rule from associating her with any single goddess worshipped in Greece or Italy. In sum, by patronising Hierapolis-Castabala, Tarcondimotus presented himself as the defender of Greek civic life and the Hierapolitai were able to persist in their unique expressions of Greek civic performance and cult in the turbulent transitional period between Seleucid and Roman rule.

William Moir Calder's extraordinary volume of work is witnessed through his many publications. However, a vast resource has remained substantially untapped, namely the archives of his photographs, squeezes, maps, letters and notebooks held at the University of Aberdeen. Using the little-addressed site of ancient Colossae as the focus, Calder's notes provide interesting insights into the way he operated as a surface archaeologist in Asia Minor and yield some previously unpublished materials important for building our knowledge of ancient Colossae. In the course of investigating Calder's legacy, some new discoveries related to Colossae are also noted.

A Neolithic structure was rebuilt three times at Çukuriçi Höyük, on the central Anatolian Aegean coast, despite its unfavourable location on unsettled fill. We draw upon this seemingly incongruous case to make inference about the siting of buildings in Neolithic times. Through detailed cross-comparison with other sequences of vertically superimposed buildings in Anatolia and the Aegean region, we retrace the contours of a Neolithic practice aimed at maintaining occupation in one place. Over time, building continuity transformed into a strategy by some households to claim authority over a place and appropriate it for their own benefit. With regard to the location of Neolithic buildings, we conclude that choices about location dominated over practical considerations. Once a commitment to place was made, there was no turning back, even when this meant living in an unstable house that needed to be rebuilt repeatedly.

Until recently, few excavations had been undertaken in the upper Tigris region. Çayönü was the only site from the Pottery Neolithic period that had been thoroughly investigated. Since 1998, excavations have taken place at a number of sites within the area due to be flooded by the construction of the Ilısu dam. One of these sites, Hakemi Use, is the only settlement from the Hassuna and Samarran periods that has been excavated in this region. A large group of Syro-Cilician sherds, showing close relations to both regions in the sixth millennium BC, was found.

The medieval fortress and church of Taşkun Kale were partially excavated in 1970 and 1971. No excavations took place in 1972, as the Aşvan Project's endeavours were concentrated elsewhere.

Earlier reports in this journal (AS XXI (1971), 6–8, and XXII (1972), 14–15) concentrated on the architectural finds. This article consists of a more detailed account of the site and the remains, followed by some thoughts on Taşkun Kale's historical significance. It is an interim report in traditional style. A full and systematic use of the data gathered by Wagstaff, Payne, Hillman, etc., must await the completion of their studies.

The Site (Figs. 1 and 2)

Taşkun Kale lies about 4 km. SSE of the village of Aşvan on the edge of a rolling plain (“undulating upland basin” – Wagstaff p. 210). Eastwards it over looks a small valley at a point where the valley sides fall steeply to rushy flats, through which a perennial stream, the Kuru Çay, flows north towards the Murat.

The terrain is uneven. North and south of the site tributary wadis break the valley sides. The highest point is the kale proper, a flat topped höyük formed of occupational débris, below which there may well be a natural eminence which attracted the first settlers.

Previous preliminary reports in this journal have dealt with the results of excavations at Beycesultan conducted by our Institute in 1954 and 1955. Excavations in 1956 were on a slightly reduced scale, occupying the period of six weeks from the beginning of June until mid-July. During that time most of our energies were concentrated on a major sounding, whose purpose was to investigate the Early Bronze Age occupations of the site. By the end of the season's work, this sounding had not yet been completed. A level had been reached corresponding to one of the early sub-divisions of the Second Settlement at Troy; but at this point it was estimated that some 9 metres of occupational debris remained to be excavated, before the original virgin soil was likely to appear. Under these circumstances it has been considered that any report on our stratigraphical results would for the present be premature and should await the completion of the sounding during the course of the coming season. The notes which follow are concerned with a single isolated discovery, made in the fifteenth occupation level—the deepest to which we have yet penetrated—shortly before the temporary suspension of our work in July, 1956.