Palaeolithic assemblages in the Near East do not yield any clay artifacts. During the Mesolithic period clay objects begin to appear as rarities but with the beginning of the Neolithic one witnesses a proliferation of uses of clay for architecture, house furnishings, firing devices, containers, and a variety of objects. Suddenly the villages seem to consist entirely of clay. I have been puzzled by the seemingly long indifference of man towards a material as easy to work with and as accessible as clay, followed by a sudden floruit. I have tried to find out more about the beginnings of the use of clay and have studied Near Eastern clay collections looking for answers to three questions: (1) When did clay begin to be used? (2) What is the evolutionary pattern of the first uses of clay? (3) What gave clay its sudden importance? I first tackled these problems in the Zagros and in Syria. The present paper is a review of the first evidences of the use of clay in Anatolia.

Scholars have recently investigated the efficacy of applying globalisation models to ancient cultures such as the fourth-millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk system. Embedded within globalisation models is the ‘complex connectivity‘ that brings disparate regions together into a singular world. In the fourth millennium BC, the site of Çadır Höyük on the north-central Anatolian plateau experienced dramatic changes in its material culture and architectural assemblages, which in turn reflect new socio-economic, sociopolitical and ritual patterns at this rural agro-pastoral settlement. This study examines the complex connectivities of the ancient Uruk system, encompassing settlements in more consistent contact with the Uruk system such as Arslantepe in southeastern Anatolia, and how these may have fostered exchange networks that reached far beyond the Uruk ‘global world‘ and onto the Anatolian plateau.

It is now more than 140 years since archaeologists began dealing with the engraved Tridacna shells, whose distribution extended from Vulci in the west to Susa in the east, and from Memphis in the south to Gordion and Vulci in the north. Their number is growing constantly and is now approaching 100. This increase is the result not only of the publication of new finds or old museum material, which until now escaped the scholar's eyes, but also of the reclassification of four items, in the past said to be imitations made of various stones, as authentic Tridacna shells.

In this article I want to show that this is true not only with the complete Tridacna shells, but also of a sub-group of Tridacna shells cut into the shape of discs. I will try to prove that the items in this sub-group are indeed Tridacna shells by describing them and discussing their motives and distribution. I will not deal with questions such as the centre of manufacture, distributors, style etc. important as they are. These aspects will be discussed by me in detail in a separate publication which will treat the Tridacna shell group as a whole.

The unbaked clay tablets found by Mr. Seton Lloyd and Bay Nuri Gökçe at Sultantepe were transported to the Archaeological Museum at Ankara in June, 1951. By a happy coincidence I arrived in Ankara shortly afterwards and was able to spend a period of about five weeks in examining the collection. At the beginning of my stay in Ankara the tablets were drying out well, and it was possible to brush off the accumulations of earth from many of them without damage. Others, however, resisted this superficial treatment and will have to be baked before an epigraphist can begin to work on them.

The questions which were uppermost in our minds at Ankara were the ancient name of the site, the date of the finds, and the general nature of the hoard of tablets found in a large pile in sounding F, since this in its turn would throw light on the nature of the building that contained them. It was obvious to me at first sight that these tablets closely resembled in script and appearance those from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh and that the majority of them contained religious or lexicographical texts. But since they were unbaked, it did not seem very probable that they had formed part of a royal library. My first attention was therefore directed towards the colophons, or scribal notes to be found at the end of many of the texts, since these were likely to contain the most direct clue to the nature and purpose of the collection and might also mention the date and place of writing.

The work presented here is the result of visits to the site of Comana Cappadociae, at Şar, in the kaza of Mağara, in the vilayet of Adana, on a number of occasions in the years 1963–65. In 1963 I was assisted with a grant by the University of Durham; in 1964 I was Scholar, and in 1965 Librarian, of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. In the course of these visits I have been able to copy a number of previously unrecorded inscriptions and also to check, and sometimes correct, the reading of a number of others that have survived since the major activity of copyists at the site in the 1880's and 1900's. It seemed useful, while publishing these new and corrected inscriptions, to collect together from their various places of publication and republication what I hope are all the known inscriptions of the “Holy City” of Cappadocia. I list here the publications which contain inscriptions from Şar, preceded by the abbreviations used to refer to them in this article.

Starting from Kilise Tepe in the Göksu valley north of Silifke two phenomena in pre-Classical Anatolian ceramics are examined. One is the appearance at the end of the Bronze Age, or beginning of the Iron Age, of hand-made, often crude, wares decorated with red painted patterns. This is also attested in different forms at Boğazköy, and as far east as Tille on the Euphrates. In both cases it has been suggested that it may reflect the re-assertion of earlier traditions, and other instances of re-emergent ceramic styles are found at the end of the Bronze Age, both elsewhere in Anatolia and in Thessaly. The other phenomenon is the occurrence of ceramic repertoires which seem to coincide precisely with the frontiers of a polity. In Anatolia this is best recognised in the case of the later Hittite Empire. The salient characteristics of ‘Hittite’ shapes are standardised, from Boğazköy at the centre to Gordion in the west and Korucu Tepe in the east. This is often tacitly associated with Hittite political control, but how and why some kind of standardisation prevails has not often been addressed explicitly. Yet this is a recurring phenomenon, and in first millennium Anatolia similar standardised wares have been associated with both the Phrygian and the Urartian kingdoms. This paper suggests that we should associate it directly with the administrative practices of the regimes in question.

During the summer of 1999 members of the Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP) conducted archaeological excavations and surveys at two sites in the upper Tigris river region of southeastern Turkey. This article presents the results of that research. At the site of Boztepe excavations yielded four Halaf period burials, all of which contained grave goods, and an Iron Age house dated by C14 to the Assyrian Imperial period. Intensive surveys at Talavaş Tepe and Boztepe have refined the chronology and size of both sites. Although the exposures of the Halaf period are very small, these data add important insights into Halaf mortuary practices, while evidence from both Boztepe and Talavaş Tepe supplements our understanding of the upper Tigris river region during the Iron Age.

This paper presents the initial results of an epigraphic survey of a Roman imperial estate, carried out in 2014 in northern Choria Considiana, today encompassing the area of Mihalıççık in Eskişehir, located between the Sakarya (Sangarios) river to the north and the Porsuk (Tembris) river to the south. The paper focuses on ten funerary inscriptions found in situ in the Çalçak Roman necropolis, 4km distant from Dinek village in Mihalıççık. All these inscriptions, found on the northern edge of the Choria Considiana, contain information relating to the social and economic status of the inhabitants of the estate, and also offer evidence about stone quarries and stonemasonry in the region. The paper begins with a presentation of the historical geography of the region, and then evaluates the new inscriptions against the existing evidence about the Choria Considiana with reference to the social and economic infrastructure of the area; important questions about the social, economic and cultural life of the region are posed. The article concludes with a catalogue of the inscriptions.

Sites of ceramic production have been discovered throughout the area that was once the Roman Empire; as a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that this industry was, in the Roman and late antique worlds, organised in numerous ways. In consideration of the organisational diversity in ceramic production attested during the period, this article presents some of the findings from the excavations of a late antique complex of ceramic workshops at the site of Sagalassos in order to consider archaeological evidence in terms of, not only the organisation of the manufacturing process, but also structures of workshop decision-making. Several lines of archaeological evidence are outlined, and argue for a model of independent work units integrated into a larger organisational structure of decision-making, and possibly even ownership, across the complex. In addition, the motivation to invest in a multi-workshop complex during the late antique period at Sagalassos is contextualised within the wider history of local and regional economic development.

Among the many tombs still to be seen in the necropolis surrounding the site of Oinoanda, in northern Lycia, the mausoleum built by Licinnia Flavilla for her parents and ancestors enjoys a special distinction, which it owes both to its size and to the vast genealogical inscription, comprising twelve generations of the ancestors and connexions of Licinnia Flavilla and her younger kinsman Flavianus Diogenes, which once covered its eastern façade. The aim of this paper is to present new epigraphic evidence which indicates a second major genealogical inscription on the west end of the mausoleum, and to consider the relation of the inscriptions to the underlying building, to each other, and to the aims of Licinnia Flavilla and her kinsman Diogenes.

The mausoleum of the Licinnii lies in rubble (Pl. XV (a)) amid a group of smaller tombs at the southern end of the site, in square Lr of the B.I.A.A.'s site-plan (AnSt XLV (1995) 74, Fig. 1) about 40 m. below an isolated stretch of the Hellenistic southern wall overlooking the saddle at the southern end of the ridge on which stand the main buildings of the city. There is an easy ascent to this point from both the western and eastern sides of the ridge, and thence to the city; the mausoleum will have been conspicuous to visitors and travellers. Since antiquity all the tombs in this area have been plundered or overthrown, especially close to the wall. Three types of tomb are visible: rock-cut tombs, some with lion covers; large, free-standing sarcophagi of various designs; and sarcophagi on high, stepped platforms. An example of this last type (Pl. XV (b)) stands close by the east end of the mausoleum, a few metres to the north.

The only substantial collection of decorated chalcolithic pottery discovered in Central Anatolia by Ian Todd during his survey in the years 1964–6 is described here. Background to the survey is given by Todd (1980: 9–12) who recognized the importance of these sherds (Todd 1967: 12; 1980: 56, 151 n. 37). They are of sufficient interest to merit presentation here, in advance of the full publication of Todd's survey pottery which is being prepared by the author. I must express my thanks to Ian Todd for generously passing on his notes and encouraging me to work on the material, to Helen Boyd for the drawings, Tuǧrul Çakar for the photographs and David French for his invaluable advice.

In the summers of 1994–1998 a rescue excavation took place at Kilise Tepe, an archaeological site occupied from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine period, located in the Göksu valley in Cilicia in southern Turkey. This article analyses the shell finds from environmental and archaeological perspectives. Three categories of molluscs are identified: terrestrial, freshwater and marine. The first two are the remnants of local fauna that lived on or near the site; the marine shells came from the Mediterranean shore adjacent to the Göksu delta and the delta itself. There are indications that freshwater mussels served as tools. Marine shells were worn as ornaments.

Field surveys carried out within the upper Kızılırmak region have shown that the natural route-ways passing through the area have connected central Anatolia to eastern Anatolia throughout the ages. The route from north-central Anatolia reaches the Kızılırmak river by passing through the plains of Çekerek, Yıldızeli and Yıldız. The Kızılırmak river can be crossed on horseback where the road ends. A second route connects south-central Anatolia to Sivas by passing through the plains of Gemerek and Şarkışla, and leads to eastern Anatolia by passing through the Kızılırmak valley after Sivas. A third route reaches Altınyayla by passing through the Kızılırmak valley, the Şarkışla plain and reaches the plain of Malatya by travelling through a pass of the Kulmaç mountains running along the Balıklıtohma valley. A fourth route connects Sivas with Malatya via Taşlıdere, Ulaş, Kangal and Alacahan. Fieldwork has shown that these routes have been almost continuously used since the middle of the third millennium BC.

No attempt has been made yet to collect the widely scattered information on the history and topography of Ḥarrān for the period from the Arab conquest in A.D. 639 until the destruction of the city by the Mongols in A.D. 1260. Such a compilation would form a useful sequel to the monograph of Adam Mez, which covers the period up to the Arab conquest and to Chwolsohn's work on the Sabians which, despite its venerable age, remains the standard work on the subject.

Several monographs on Ḥarrān were written during the Middle Ages but no Mss of them have so far been discovered. A good deal of material can be collected from historical and geographical texts. Of these none is more detailed or more worthy of attention than that of Ibn Shaddād. The account of this writer, available so far only in Ms, is contained in a chapter of his Survey of Syria and the Jazīra.

In diesem Aufsatz wird die Figur des Gottes Tarhuntaš auf dem zwei figurigen Felsrelief von İvriz untersucht, und vor allem wird versucht das Attribut des Gottes zu deuten.

Dem Felsrelief des “Quellheiligtums’ von İvriz (Abb 1) wurden seit seiner Entdeckung im 17. Jh. bereits zahlreiche, verschiedenartige Untersuchungen gewidmet. Die Attribute des dort dargestellten Gottes Tarhuntaš, die wichtige Hinweise zur Bestimmung der Funktion ihres Trägers liefern könnten, blieben davon jedoch lange Zeit unberührt. Ihre Erforschung wurde sehr spät durch R D Barnett eingeleitet, der ihnen erstmalig Beachtung schenkte: Sein Interesse galt vorrangig dem spiralförmig gerillten Gegenstand, der unter dem linken Ellbogen des Gottes zum Vorschein kommt (Abb 2). Barnett zufolge gehörte er zum ‘Knauf eines Schwertes, der in Form eines Adler- oder Vogelkopfes gestaltet ist’. Als erste Untersuchung zu diesem Thema überhaupt war diese Arbeit Barnetts auch für spätere Forschungen von grundlegender Bedeutung.

This second article on ancient roads around Zeugma deals mainly with navigation along the river itself and north-south routes on both banks of the Euphrates. Like its predecessor (Comfort et al 2000), this one is based on extensive survey work in the years 1996 to 1999 during the excavations carried out at Zeugma by a Franco-Turkish mission. It discusses sites located in the region surrounding the ancient city on both east and west banks of the river Euphrates and seeks to identify the principal roads of the region used in antiquity. Maps to complement those prepared for the preceding article are included.

In Comfort et al 2000, ancient crossing points of the river Euphrates in southern Turkey were discussed in the light of survey work conducted with the help of satellite photos in and around the reservoir created by the Birecik dam. This dam was completed in summer 2000. The lake created behind the Birecik dam stretches north about 100km as far as the Atatürk dam, for the most part constrained in a narrow gorge; a second lake now also reaches for about 20km south from Birecik to the Carchemish dam, itself approximately 6km north of the Syrian border. The survey was conducted over six visits between 1996 and 1999. Given the shortage of resources and the vast area covered (about 2,500km) it can only be considered a preliminary investigation and was indeed originally undertaken with a view only to proving the usefulness of satellite photographs as an aid to archaeological survey work.

The study lasted two months during the summer of 1972 (19th July–14th September) and was approached by means of three techniques:

1. participant observation;

2. observation;

3. interviews.

The first consists in the researcher entering the household, establishing contact with the family, and then studying the everyday life by direct observation and participation in the activities. This technique allows freer access to the household than would normally be possible utilizing other techniques, and thus facilitates the collection of detailed data. This technique was applied to one household (referred to as the “study household”) in the village. Although data were collected on many aspects of daily life, special emphasis was placed on obtaining information about those activities which it was felt would have some relevance to archaeological problems in general.

The second approach involves general observations of the village women at work, and in particular, observations of five other village households with which other members of the project co-operated.

The third approach involved questioning the “study household” and the other five on general topics, such as the length of time taken to perform certain activities.

August 1992 marked the sixth season of survey and excavation at the east Phrygian site of Amorium, located 170 km. south-west of Ankara. Excavation has so far sampled only a tiny part of what was in Roman and Byzantine times an extensive urban site, but results have consistently revealed that an exciting range of data can be drawn from this largely unexplored centre. Indeed, despite evident modern robbing for stone, the trenched areas have revealed that substantial zones may remain archaeologically intact.

The ancient site of Amorium comprised two distinct fortified zones: a compact upper town, and a larger lower town, part of which is now overlain by the modern village of Hisarköy. A particular aim of the excavations so far carried out at Amorium has been to define the relationship between these two urban areas in the overall occupational sequence, with special interest placed on elucidating the transitional phase from the Early to Middle Byzantine period—a period in Amorium's long history which is fairly well documented by both Byzantine and Arab sources.

The legacy of the Assyrian empire consisted chiefly in the administrative structure inherited by its successors, and hence Assyriologists have always been conscious of the interest of the “army” of officials who appear in the correspondence and administrative documents found in the palaces of Assyria. In reconstructing this system the views of the Assyrian scribes themselves are obviously worthy of our careful attention, and a long-known “practical” list of officials, etc. from Kouyunjik (K 4395, hereafter “the Kouyunjik list”) has been joined by two copies of a longer list from Sultan Tepe (STT 382 to 385, hereafter “the Sultan Tepe list”). Although parts of each are missing, and their arrangement is far from consistent, both lists give an invaluable idea of how the scribes viewed the different professions and appointments, and, within their own limits, they are obviously meant to give a fairly comprehensive account. Moreover, and this is of particular importance, they are lists of Assyrian terms, composed freshly from Assyrian sources and not dependent on the Babylonian lexical canon. Hence there is a reasonable expectation that they will give a picture of the situation at about the time in which we are interested, and we may even be allowed to hope that the lists may have been “up-dated” in the course of their existence to allow for changes. This hope does indeed seem to be fulfilled by the individual entries, which coincide very well with the repertoire of titles and their Schreibweise as these are known from 7th century documents. In this article devoted to a single title, šaknu, we shall have frequent occasion to refer to these practical lists, underlining their value to the “Neo-Assyriologist”.

Using a variety of quantitative approaches, interactions between prehistoric sites in the Göksu valley and south-central Anatolia are modelled within their wider multi-regional and diachronic socio-economic networks to assess the prominence and influence of communities in south-central Anatolia from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age (c. 4200–2000 BC). Since the 1950s, some have understood the valley as significant in terms of movement and communication through the Taurus mountain chain that divides the southern Anatolian plateau from the Mediterranean coast. This view is called in to question through the application of geospatial and computational methods, namely least cost pathway and social network analyses. Archaeologists use least cost pathway analysis to model movement in the past. Similarly, social network analysis is used to model contact and interaction in the past. The approach adopted in this paper seeks to combine the two methods to investigate social structure and the nature of interaction in late prehistoric south-central Anatolia. The results suggest that views of the Göksu valley as the primary or a prominent means of connecting the southern Anatolian plateau and the Mediterranean coast may need to be reassessed.