The meagre evidence, based on reports in sources and the material gleaned in the course of surveys by several researchers, of the fortress of Akhiza (northeast Turkey), which was renovated in the reign of King Vakhtang Gorgasali (446–522), and on the Episcopal See set up there, may be supplemented by archival material preserved at the Sh. Amiranashvili Museum of Art, as well as by recourse to the artefacts deposited at the S. Janashia Museum of Georgia, both in Tbilisi. In particular, a letter of A. Florenski, a collaborator with the Caucasian Museum in Tbilisi, written early in the 20th century to D. Gordeev (1889–1964) makes it clear that, at that time, a mosaic image of the Virgin Orans existed in the chancel of the ruined cathedral. According to Florenski, the mosaic was destroyed by a resident of Ardanuch, Usta-Gevork, at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the material collected by Florenski from Akhiza (including a finger-ring with a cameo bearing the image of the Archangel Michael and distinguished for its high artistic features) found its way to St Petersburg, while two antefixes with representations of leaved crosses and deer, as well as up to three dozen mosaic tesserae are kept in the S. Janashia Museum of Georgia. At the time of the creation of the mosaic, it is worth noting that, after the Arab conquests (in the 730s), Akhiza, with its cathedral, must have ceased to exist as an Episcopal See. In this connection, the antefixes supply additional dating evidence, the artistic peculiarities of the images adorning them clearly pointing to the fifth to sixth century.

In 1967, a fifth season of excavation was completed at Alahan. Work, which began on 5th July and continued until 29th August, was carried out by a labour force of twenty-five workmen, of whom Ahmet Kaya, Aslan Şahin and Süleyman Uysal have not missed a season since the first exploratory sounding made on the site of the Basilica in 1955. Apart from the Director and Mrs. Gough, the members of the staff were Messrs. G. Bakker, P. Pratt and R. Wylie, architects; Mrs. Bakker and Miss M. McGregor, inventory and conservation; Messrs. A. Ray and L. Thomas, site supervisors; Misses H. Cash and M. MacDonald, and Mr. P. Percival-Price, field-assistants. Bayan Nihal Dönmez represented the Ministry of Education, and to her the expedition is grateful for practical help on many occasions. Our thanks are also due to the Institute's Council of Management, to the Russell Trust and to a private subscriber in Ankara for the funds which made the season a success.

Apart from the archaeological results, the year 1967 provided two further reasons for special gratification. As a recognition of Alahan's status as a major site in exceptionally beautiful surroundings (Pl. LVI), a good road has now been built up the mountain slope under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism.

Northeastern Anatolia during the Iron Age has long been neglected archaeologically, yet historical sources attest to its importance, located on the frontiers of the Urartian and Persian empires and witness to numerous incursions by diverse groups such as the Medes, Cimmerians and Scythians. The archaeological potential of the area was first revealed by surface surveys carried out in the 1940s and 1950s. However, with the University of Melbourne's excavations and surface survey of sites in the Bayburt and Erzurum provinces, there is now a significant body of material emerging for study.

Historical and archaeological foci have traditionally been with the centres of empires, the core or optimal areas, while it is in the periphery, or marginal areas that the dynamics of social change are most evident. These foci largely stem from the inherent difficulties involved in gleaning information on peripheral areas.

In a recent article Dr Nadav Na'aman suggested that two rulers called Yarimlim and two called Ammitakumma succeeded each other in alternation during the period of the Level VII archive at Alalakh. This reconstruction of the chronology fails, as do all previous reconstructions, to take into account the seal impressions on the tablet envelopes. These seal impressions have now been published and the chronology which they enabled me to reconstruct is substantially that established by Rowton and Kupper. A close study of Dr Na'aman's article has not led me to alter my views and I should like to make the following points.

Dr Na'aman questions the generally accepted chronology for Alalakh on the grounds that YḪammurapi I (grandfather),AYarimlim (father) and AAmmitakumma (son) “reigned over a period of at least 125 years” and that “six kings reigned in Yamḫad concurrently with two Kings at Alalakh”. He accepts a date “circa the twenties of the 18th century B.C. (or slightly earlier)” for the beginning of the archive and therefore, presumably, for the beginning of the reign of AYarimlim.

In 2019, excavation in the Yalnızlar neighbourhood of Sinop, Turkey, revealed a small number of architectural remains, two stone-paved floors and two lavishly decorated pebble-mosaic floors. Both the architectural remains and the pebble-mosaic floors are rare finds in Sinop, even more so given that the floors were found largely intact within their architectural settings. These elements appear to have constituted a portion of a once-grand house of the mid-fourth century BC. This article focuses on the pebble-mosaic floors, which will be analysed in two parts. The first introduces the floors and considers their construction techniques and decorative programmes. Analogies form an essential part of the analysis in order to contextualise both pavements within the corpus of Greek pebble-mosaic floors. A holistic evaluation of the architectural remains and the mosaics follows, in order to consider the setting and use of the floors. In the second part of the article, the sociocultural context of the mosaics is addressed. The analysis considers the meaning and symbolism of their decorations, as well as the place they once occupied within the lives of their owners. Ultimately, the position of the examples from Sinope within the wider sphere of mid-fourth-century BC Greek pebble-mosaic floors will be considered, along with the significance of such lavishly decorated floors in Sinope at this time.

During 1993 the excavations at Sagalassos continued for their fourth season from 3 July until 19 August. From 21 until 28 August a survey was carried out in the district immediately south and south-east of the excavation site. The work was directed by Professor Marc Waelkens (Dept. of Archaeology, Catholic University of Leuven). A total of 45 Turkish workmen and 62 scientists or students from various countries (Belgium, Turkey, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Austria and Greece) were involved in the project. The team included 25 archaeologists, 8 illustrators, 8 architect-restorers (supervised by T. Patricio and directed by Prof. K. Van Balen and Prof. F. Hueber), 4 cartographers (directed by Prof. F. Depuydt), 2 geomorphologists (Prof. E. Paulissen and K. Vandaele), 2 archaeozoologists from the Museum of Central Africa at Tervuren (Belgium), 6 conservators (directed by G. Hibler-Vandenbulcke), 1 photographer (P. Stuyven), 2 computer specialists and 4 people taking care of everyday logistics. The Turkish Antiquities Department was represented by Mrs. Nurhan Ülgen for the first and by Mrs. Aliye Yamancı for the second half of the season, whom we both thank for their much appreciated help and collaboration.

The following random lot of inscriptions was noted during three brief trips into the territory around Olba-Diocaesareia, in the spring of 1966, while we were guests at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. These trips were part of a year of archaeological wandering made possible by the grant of the Olivia James Travelling Fellowship, administered by the Archaeological Institute of America.

1. Seleuceia-Korykos: This inscription was discovered by the able and energetic curator of antiquities at Silifke, Mr. Mehmet Belen, to whose great kindness we owe our knowledge of it. It is cut on a rock face above some faint traces of an ancient road from Korasion to Korykos, which runs parallel to the modern coast road at this point. About 19 km. east of Silifke, the modern road turns north away from the shore, and runs inland along the west side of a seasonal watercourse called Kuru Dere, “dry river bed”. Just north of the gravel bank at the mouth of Kuru Dere, at a point where the rock wall cuts back from the west side of the road to form a very small tributary stream bed, there are faint traces of rock cut steps some 5 metres above the road. Above these, on the south side of the tributary stream bed, a roughly dressed rectangular panel, 0·80 × 0·45 m., has been cut into the rock.

The site of Horum Höyük is located on the Euphrates, near the modern town of Nizip. It was excavated in advance of the flooding caused by the Birecek dam. The prehistoric ceramic assemblage contains stylistic elements that relate to the Halaf, northern Ubaid and earliest Late Chalcolithic periods. Studies of the Late Chalcolithic in the region of the Syro-Turkish border have tended to take a Mesopotamia-centric focus, as characterised by the so-called Uruk Expansion. Recently, however, research has begun to examine Syro-Anatolia as a discrete entity. The precise chronology for the Late Chalcolithic period remains an issue of discussion. The main source of chronological evidence in the region is the pottery from the Amuq sequence, which exhibits a hiatus in the crucial Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic phases (E–F). Most of the prehistoric assemblage at Horum Höyük falls within this period and therefore has the potential to contribute to the debate. Three issues will therefore be addressed, namely, the chronological relationship between ceramic ware types, Horum Höyük's regional stylistic relations and the pottery assemblage's overall chronological position.

The history of Roman and Italian businessmen in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia, during the first century B.C. is a familiar one. There is ample evidence of many kinds for their emigration and activities after the formation of the province of Asia, interrupted by the hegemony of Mithridates, but resumed on a larger scale after he had been driven back from Asia into Pontus. This evidence can be placed into two broad categories. First, there are allusions in the contemporary literature, inscriptions and historical accounts of the period which provide direct information about individuals and families active in the province. Then there is the evidence of inscriptions of the Imperial period, especially the second and third centuries AD., which reveal both established settlements of resident Romans in the cities and an extraordinary number of families with Roman and Italian names, which could clearly trace their origins back to the Republican period of emigration and settlement. Opportunities to study particular families or groups of emigrants at both periods are unfortunately rare, since usually one or the other category of evidence is lacking. Although the record is far from complete, and it is necessary to rely more on conjecture than one would wish, the object of this study is to investigate one such emigrant family, the Sestullii, whose presence in Asia is attested both in Republican literary sources and in Imperial inscriptions. It is clearly impossible to write a continuous history of the gens, or even to reconstruct its stemma in outline, especially since there is a notably large gap in our knowledge between ca 50 B.C. and A.D. 150, a two hundred year span from which only a single relevant inscription survives, but the family name is so rare that it can reasonably be assumed that all its bearers are related to one another in some way. It must be stressed that this assumption underlies the whole reconstruction offered here.

The number of known Hittite rock-reliefs in Anatolia is limited: Karabel, Manisa, Yazılıkaya, Gavurkalesi, Fıraktin, İmamkulu, Taşcı, İvriz, Gezbeli, Sirkeli, and Hemite. Except the Late Hittite relief of Ivriz, the monuments, mostly scattered on the fringe of the highland, have to be ascribed to the Imperial Age (1450–1200 B.C.). Their geographic distribution allows some conclusions as to the extent of the Hittite sphere of influence. The question of the monuments' function is but one of the numerous problems still to be solved.

Apart from the reliefs of Yazılıkaya, Gavurkalesi and Fıraktin, which are all part of a sanctuary, the majority of the monuments at first sight seem to have been put up to demonstrate political power and may be interpreted as representations of the kings (Imamkulu, Taşcı, Gezbeli, Sirkeli and Hemite) or of local dynasts (Karabel and Manisa). This applies especially to the reliefs of Gezbeli and Hemite, which in their overall conception are so designed that the political element seems to dominate over the religious. Upon closer examination, however, we must admit that this explanation applies only perhaps to some of the Imperial Age monuments; those monuments in which the kings are shown in an attitude of prayer or as gods appear to have been erected with religious motives in mind. A further indication of religious function is the fact that the monuments are often associated with water in the form of a spring or a river.

At least as early as the day, nearly eighty years ago, when Hans Rott gained access to “Doghalikilise” through an entrance reduced to a narrow cleft by heaps of rubble and alluvial soil, the monument has been recognized as the largest and most important in Göreme. Many of the wall-paintings of both the Old and the New Church at Tokalı were published by Jerphanion who correctly appreciated the relative chronology of these successive phases. This pioneering and still fundamental survey was supplemented by the excellent photographs of Jeannine Le Brun in Restle's corpus of 1967. In the same year, Cormack suggested on stylistic and iconographic grounds a probable date of ca. 913–920 for the decoration of the Old Church, a period little less than half a century before its relatively gigantic successor was cut transversely across its eastern end. Now, within a year or two, Tokalı Kilise will receive the ultimate accolade of monographic treatment by Ann Wharton Epstein in a book which treats the church as a cultural whole and finally recognizes the frescoes in the New Church as the supreme achievement of Byzantine wall-painting to survive from the tenth century.

1. The tablet published here for the first time belongs to the Musée d'art et d'histoire of Geneva. In 1960, as my employment at that museum was drawing to a close, I copied the tablet for publication but circumstances beyond my control (to borrow that well-worn but convenient cliché) delayed its publication long enough to enable me to offer it here as a modest tribute to my old friend and former colleague, “R.D.B.”, an archaeologist who has always appreciated the services epigraphy could render to archaeology.

2. The text (copy on p. 74 below) reads in transliteration and translation:

(1) 3 ma-na na4 za-gìn

(2) mu urudualam lug[al]

a-ab-ba sig-ga a-a[b] -

ba igi-nim-da gú-[ ḡar-šè]

(3) mu sukal-mah-šè

(4) ki lú-diḡir-[ra]

du[b](!)-[sar-ta]

(5) a-a-ḡu10[šabra]

(6) šu-ba-an-[ti]

(7) iti á-ki-[ti]

(8) mu dšu- d E[N.Z]U

[1]ugal

Sardis constituted a major urban centre during the early Byzantine period, an era marked by the gradual transformation of the city into a Christian metropolis. From the fourth to the sixth century AD, Sardis maintained an important commercial, industrial and administrative role that sustained high-quality monumental construction. Yet, the major architectural types that emerged during this crucial period in the centre of the early Christian city are largely unknown to us. The unexcavated remains of the monument known as ‘Building D’ offer the best opportunity to shed light on this enigmatic aspect of the history of the city. Indeed, these remains display a late fourth century reused inscription as well as construction details typical of the early Byzantine period. They also lie in what must have been a central area of the city during this time. At first sight, this building seems hopelessly dilapidated and largely inaccessible. Still, the current paper demonstrates that a closer examination of the fabric of Building D reveals invaluable clues for its original form and function. This new exploration of the building includes the graphic recording, careful analysis and interpretation of the remains, thus providing the evidence required for the first substantiated reconstruction of a major part of the monument. The exploration reveals the articulation and structure of the primary load-bearing elements, as well as the form of the enormous vaulted canopy that covered one of the most imposing and towering spaces of early Byzantine Sardis. The article uses this reconstruction as a basis for the identification of those architectural features that help to interpret the function of the building, its role in the development of late antique Sardis as well as its position in the evolution of early Byzantine architecture in western Asia Minor.

This seal, one of the earliest with a linear alphabetic inscription, was found in 1959 at Kibbutz Revadim in the Shephelah (Fig. 3). Its find spot lies about three kilometres west of Tel Miqne (Khirbet el-Muqanna'), identified with Ekron of the Philistine Pentapolis. The seal is a scaraboid of hard limestone, most probably mizi hilu, measuring 16 × 13 × 7·5 mm, intended for a ring, as indicated by the two drilled holes that do not meet. The back and sides of the seal are plain. The base carries the owner's name and a scene engraved in a linear, schematic style (Fig. 1, Pl. XLII).

The seal was published in 1961 by R. Giveon, who assigned it to the wellknown class of late Iron Age (mainly 8th—7th century) personal seals from Palestine and neighbouring countries. In an article published a year later, F. M. Cross, on palaeographic grounds, dated the seal to the 12th century. His view won wide acceptance. In this paper, offered with gratitude and admiration to Richard D. Barnett, whose student I had the privilege to be, I wish to re-evaluate the Revadim Seal and its date.

This article uses spatial autocorrelation analysis in order to explore the social organisation of crop and herd management at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in south-central Turkey. Evidence for spatial clustering across the settlement is sought at different scales (house, neighbourhood, radial wedge, sector, sub-mound) in the different periods of occupation from Early to Late. The data used are sheep carbon and nitrogen isotopes, densities of weed species in archaeobotanical assemblages and the densities of weed species in sheep dung. The results are interpreted in relation to existing work both on crop and herd management and consumption at Çatalhöyük and on the social organisation of the settlement. Complex nested and cross-cutting social groupings shared many aspects of production and consumption activities across the site resulting in limited spatial clustering of values. The impacts of taphonomic factors on these results are considered. Especially by the Late period of occupation at Çatalhöyük, there is some evidence of distinct labour and consumption organisation linked to houses and house groupings.

The following article is an attempt to reconstruct the Roman road-system of Eastern Lycaonia from the Peutinger Table (the only ancient itinerary that refers to this region), from published and unpublished milestones and from impressions received on journeys there in 1956 and 1957. I am indebted especially to Sir William Calder for his help at all stages, including the use of his note-books, and also to Messrs. A. S. Hall and J. G. Macqueen, who travelled with me in 1957.

The area covered is in the main that between Laodiceia Combusta on the west and the foot of Hasan Dağ on the east. It is divided into two parts by the great sweep of Boz Dağ, a quarter circle of mountains rising some 500 m. above the surrounding country and separating the fertile and monotonously flat plain of Iconium from the undulating steppe to north and east (map, fig. 1). In Strabo's time the area outside Boz Dağ was a semi-arid waste grazed by vast flocks of sheep and even wild asses, and until the introduction of mechanised methods of farming in the last few years, sheep have always been the principal livelihood of the local population. Water is scarce and many of the wells are over 50 m. deep.