Research into the emergence of animal husbandry west of the Taurus mountains has been primarily confined to central Anatolia, the Lake District and the Marmara region in Anatolia, leaving a c. 85,000km area in western Anatolia largely unexplored. This vast region is crucial to understand the developmental trajectories of early farming practices in Anatolia and to explain the expansion of Neolithic agro-pastoralist lifeways into southeast Europe. The hand-collected faunal assemblage from Ulucak Höyük near Izmir provides a first opportunity to examine the beginnings and the evolution of Neolithic animal husbandry practices in this region across an uninterrupted cultural sequence dating between c. 7040–5660 cal. BC. Taxonomic, osteometric and demographic analyses suggest that all four initial food animals (sheep, goat, cattle and pig) appeared simultaneously at the beginning of the seventh millennium BC. The relative proportions of the domestic food animals indicate that beef was as significant a resource as sheep and goat meat. Fusion data for cattle and combined tootheruption and wear data for sheep and goat suggest that milk exploitation may have begun towards the end of the seventh millennium BC and intensified during the first quarter of the sixth. Evidence for post-adult caprines and cattle is thought to represent a strategy employed to maximise herd size and buffer risk. No clear evidence for cattle traction was found. Fallow deer seems to have become an increasingly important resource throughout the period. Small amounts of fish remains and substantial amounts of marine molluscs demonstrate that coastal environments were also exploited. These results indicate that central-west Anatolia played an essential role in the expansion of animal husbandry technologies into southeast Europe.

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.

This article focuses on several overlooked assemblages of the Bronze Age artefacts from Troy brought to light by H. Schliemann and W. Dörpfeld. It briefly presents the complicated history and partition of duplicate artefacts from the Berlin collection and their donation to many European institutions after Schliemann's death. The article discusses five such collections in modern-day Poland. Schmidt's 1902 Berlin catalogue gives an overview of what types of object were sent to which institution, but gives no clear indication of the quantities involved. The present article tries to rectify that, and to present the information systematically institution by institution, with later documentation where available.

Despite its regional hegemony over eastern Kilikia and a prominent role in three Roman civil wars, the house of Tarkondimotos has maintained little more than a shadowy existence on the fringe of historical accounts of the first centuries BC to AD. This paper collates the biographical and relational data of all known or conjectured members of the Tarkondimotid dynasty and its court, and places them within a historical context.

Late Roman D Ware (or ‘Cypriot Red Slip Ware’) is one of the most widespread fine wares of the late antique Mediterranean. Its hypothetical origin in Cyprus is challenged by the discovery since 2008 of kilns in Turkey whose products include the whole of this ware's standard repertoire. This paper provides the first detailed account of the discovery of a network of seven production centres located near Gebiz, 32km northeast of Antalya and close to the Kestros river (Aksu çayı) and its tributary the Küçükaksu river, from where these products together with agricultural goods would have been traded inland and downstream to Perge and beyond. Results of the field survey during which these kilns were discovered are presented, together with a discussion of their far-reaching implications. The results establish southern Anatolia, and specifically the margins of the Pamphylian plain, as the only certainly identified production area of this ware. By challenging the origin traditionally accepted for ‘Cypriot Red Slip Ware’, which is distributed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, the discovery of these kilns raises questions also about other less archaeologically distinct Anatolian goods which also are likely to have been involved in this exchange network at both local and international scales.

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 essay seeks to rehistoricise the birth of liberalism in Turkey with the aim of bringing an alternative interpretation to its historiography and throwing some light upon its characteristics, past and present. In contrast to recent comments on liberalism in the Turkish context, it argues that there is an intellectual background of the liberal tradition in Turkey, and that understanding the characteristics of this background requires (1) the mapping out and examination of the key concepts used by liberal writers in the context of the general political lexicon of their times and (2) an intellectual excavation tracing the mostly western European origins of the ideas of Turkish liberals. This leads to the conclusion that early republicans in Turkey embraced a version of liberalism that has not been identified in previous attempts to historicise liberal Turkish thought.

This paper describes the discovery of a sherd of mid 19th century British pottery during excavations at the site of Nokalakevi, in Samegrelo, western Georgia in 2002. The transfer-printed design on the sherd, though only partially surviving, was clearly identified as representing Horse Guards Parade, London. Standard archaeological practice might have seen the sherd, a modern artefact retrieved from the topsoil, discarded, as having no archaeological significance. However its true significance was to lie in its instigation of a period of research, discussion and reflection on the recent history of Anglo-Georgian relations. Unbeknown to the British archaeologists, from 1918 to 1920 British troops were garrisoned across the southern Caucasus in an attempt to support the Whites against Red and Nationalist armies. It is a peacekeeping action that is remembered negatively in modern Georgia and almost forgotten in Britain. This paper provides an historical outline of those events and urges a reconsideration of the value of archaeological finds, to recognise that their real significance might transcend capital and perhaps sometimes even archaeology. In cases such as this, the decision not to discard an apparently insignificant artefact can provide access to forgotten pasts, and force us to think critically about our own recent history.