This article presents a newly discovered cuneiform text from the site of Üçtepe in Diyarbakır province in southeastern Turkey. The text bears a previously unknown inscription of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I. While incomplete, it never-theless gives the most extensive lists of the conquests of Shalmaneser I yet known, including a number of previously unattested toponyms. This is in itself an important contribution to the historical documentation of the Middle Assyrian period. Furthermore, the fact that the text was written to record Shalmaneser’s rebuilding of the city wall of Sinamu allows us to propose that Üçtepe is to be identified with the site of ancient Šinamu, known to have been an important centre from the late third millennium BC and subsequently a regional capital in the provincial system of the Middle Assyrian empire. This is a significant advance on our previous understanding of the historical geography of the region. These issues are discussed in the context of the Middle Assyrian occupation of the Upper Tigris and the results of the archaeological exploration of recent decades.

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.

In classical archaeology the spatial aspects of deathscapes and associated funerary phenomena are often taken at face value. Beginning from a relational understanding of space, this article examines the necropoleis of middle Hellenistic to late Roman Sagalassos (second century BC to fifth century AD) within the wider context of the city. To facilitate this methodologically, four spatial aspects are investigated for the Hellenistic, Roman Imperial and late Roman periods: the relations between the spaces of the living and dead, landscaping practices, visibility and accessibility. These four aspects offer insight into the funerary and non-funerary relations from which the necropoleis emerged, developed, expanded and eventually disappeared. A whole range of funerary phenomena are included, ranging from cinerary urns, rectangular and vase-shaped ostothekai, aediculae, naiskoi, arcosolia and sarcophagi to larger sepulchral structures like temple tombs. In addition to being compared with urban developments, the observed patterns are further evaluated within the larger framework of Asia Minor. Ultimately, the enunciated archaeological patterns facilitate multicausal answers to where the Sagalassians placed their dead, if and how this changed and became more varied, and why these developments occurred in particular (re)configurations of time-space.