The interesting bronze “belt” or decorated strip in Urartian style which was discovered at Gushchi near Lake Urmia in 1905, and which has twice been illustrated in Anatolian Studies, is generally known only from the photograph of one small fragment which was first published in an obscure Armenian journal in 1912 and has since been successively reproduced by B. A. Kuftin in 1944, G. M. A. Hanfmann in 1956, and R. D. Barnett in 1963. At least four other fragments, however, of the same object are known to exist. One is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and three have recently been received in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (Plate I, a). These still do not make up the whole object, but they enable its original dimensions to be calculated with some assurance and the character of its ornament to be described exactly.

During the Excavations at Pisidian Antioch conducted for the University of Michigan in 1924 by Professor D. M. Robinson with the help of Sir W. M. Ramsay, a number of inscriptions seem to have been discovered and transferred to the garden of the ortokul in the neighbouring town of Yalvaç. Some remained unpublished, perhaps even unrecorded, and were copied by the present writer during her stay in Yalvaç, in the summer of 1955. Amongst these stones (although it may well have been brought to the school garden on some other occasion) is a block which, broken though it is, still bears substantial portions of two separate inscriptions. One yields fresh information about the constitution of the colony established by Augustus at Antioch in 25 B.C., while the other, a dedication to Gratian and his fellow Augusti, shows Latin in use at Antioch at a very late date in its history and reveals the name of a hitherto unknown governor of Pisidia. The present dimensions of the stone are 0·585 m. by 0·785 m. by 0·585 m. See Plate III.

The Architecture of the Seljuk Turks, as well as proving to be their most lasting contribution to history, is also a contribution to the great architecture of world, both from the point of view of technical accomplishment and in its marvellously imaginative use of decoration. Thanks to the pioneering work of Halil Edhem and Max Van Berchem in Part III of their Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum (Cairo, 1910–17) [CIA.] and of their many successors our knowledge of the extant, and destroyed, monuments has been increased to the extent that a series of secondary studies, on relations between various groups of monuments in default of more precise details of the relationships between craftsmen and their patrons or employers, or, more ambitiously, general attempts to explain the high place which architecture so obviously held in the Seljuks' estimation, becomes necessary. Moreover, although the individuality of their contribution is comparatively well-known by this time, even in Western Europe, it is still obscure how the manifold influences which the Seljuks in their progress westwards through Persia and the Caucasus underwent were transmuted in Turkey into a style of such originality, strength and charm.

The work this year at Can Hasan took place, as usual, in the autumn. Excavation began on 6th September and finished on 10th October. A further week was spent on the detailed work of planning, photography and pottery study. We employed this year, as in previous years, Veli Karaaslan as foreman, Rifat Çelimli, Mustafa Duman, and Bekir Kalaycı as ustas; from Menteş, we employed three men and from Canasun village five men. During the season, parts of the excavated area, which had not been completely covered, were filled in with earth from this year's excavation. At the end of the season only those areas where further work is planned remained open. The fence, of posts and wire, was repaired. The watchman now lives in the dig-house on the edge of the mound.

For this year there was a staff of twelve: Messrs. N. H. S. Kindersley, D. C. Biernoff, R. W. Dutton, S. Payne, and J. E. Reade, field assistants; Mr. I. J. Walls, architect; Mrs. D. C. Biernoff and the Misses M. A. White, T. Martin, V. Pemberton-Piggott, P. M. Pratt, and R. J. Worth, house assistants. In addition, Mr. Kindersley worked on photography and planning, Mr. Dutton assisted the architect, Mr. Biernoff took charge of the bone material and Mr. Payne of the obsidian. Mrs. Biernoff, Miss White, Miss Martin and Miss Pratt were conservators. Bay Hayrettin Solmaz of the Konya Museum represented the Turkish Government.

The mountain Avla Dağ lies c. 245 km. SE. of Ankara, c. 8 km. SSE. of Ürgüp on the east side of the Damsa Çay valley, in the vilayet of Nevşehir.

Obsidian implements were first found on this site by Dr. Giorgio Pasquare of the Maden Tetkik ve Arama Enstitüsü, Ankara, during the course of a geological survey of the Ürgüp area in 1963–4. A considerable quantity of obsidian implements and flakes was collected at the time, and subsequent visits to the area by the authors have resulted in further additions to this collection.

The geological section of this paper was written by Dr. G. Pasquare, and the archaeological section by I. A. Todd.

The 1962 Cambridge Expedition to South-East Turkey spent five weeks in Cilicia studying the castles of Tumlu, Gökvelioğlu, and Yılan. No member of the expedition had any previous experience of this work and this report is therefore confined to facts: descriptions, measurements, plans and photographs. It is hoped that this material may help others, more experienced than ourselves, to make wider generalisations and perhaps to write the architectural history of the buildings.

The castles probably date from the period of the Armenian occupation of Cilicia (1080–1375) during which time numerous castles were constructed and existing Byzantine foundations were strengthened. The castles were frequently built upon precipitous mountain sites and conformed with the sinuosities of the rock, thus making the best of the natural strength of the site. The kingdom of Lesser Armenia was centred chiefly on the Cilician plain and surrounding mountains (Fig. 1).

To the west of Çatal Hüyük and directly across the old river bed lies the second mound, occupied after the desertion of the neolithic site, perhaps from c. 5600 B.C. Roughly circular in size, with a diameter of c. 400 m., it still rises to a height of 7·5 m. above the surrounding fields. A modern road and two of the canals which now take the place of the old river, cut into its sides, but like its sister site, it is not under cultivation.

This mound, the successor of the neolithic city, is strewn with painted pottery of the Early Chalcolithic period, some of which was published before. Its range of occupation would seem to be almost entirely of this period, but it is possible that Late Neolithic levels exist further down in the mound. Some surface sherds even suggest a possible occupation in what D. H. French has called “Middle Chalcolithic” at Can Hasan, some fifty miles to the south-east, but situated in the same plain of Konya.

During 1964, with the aid of funds again most generously granted by the Russell Trust, a profitable season was spent at Eski Gümüş. The work, which began on 18th July and closed on 31st August, was in charge of the Director, while Mrs. Gough undertook the administration. Amongst those who took part also were Mr. and Mrs. David Winfield, Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Mitford and Miss Jolanda Fletcher. Bay Muhittin Uysaldır, the representative of the Turkish Department of Antiquities, was once again an active and enthusiastic member of our team, while Bay İbrahim Öztürk, the Vali of Niğde, as usual saw to it that our working conditions were as comfortable as possible. Our object in 1964 was to continue and possibly to finish the cleaning and conservation of the paintings in the church, and in this aim we were largely successful. Only the late arrival of new cleaning agents more effective than those used before caused us to reassess the progress made and to decide on a further short season in 1965.

The problem dealt with in the following note, concisely worded in the title, has been occupying the attention of many scholars for quite some time, but seems now to have anchored at a haven, from which further research is already in progress. It may be considered a generally consented assumption, that the phenomenon of the Kh. Kerak Ware (which comprises all the occurrences of this distinctive ware, from Tabara el Akrad Levels IV–I, Amuq Phase H, Hama Niveau K5 in the north, to all the sites in Palestine, as far south as Jericho Tomb A, Tomb F4, etc.) is part of a much larger phenomenon, which stretches over a much wider area. It is evident that we cannot understand a single element, the Kh. Kerak Ware, unless we see it as belonging to a whole phenomenon. It is the great affinity, indeed almost homogeneity of the pottery, both shapes, surface treatment and decoration, which unifies the whole wide range of separated regions, from Transcaucasia (the Kura-Arax culture of B. Kuftin), Armenia and Azerbaidjan, through Eastern and Central Anatolia, to the whole length of the Levant, into one phenomenon.

Ancient textiles in archaeological excavations are preserved only under unusual circumstances, and it is for this reason that the discoveries at Çatal Hüyük in 1961, and repeated in following seasons, of woven and twined materials possess an excitement out of all proportion to their visual appearance. Until these were found, the earliest woven fabrics known were from the Fayûm in Egypt which are usually dated to the fifth millennium B.C. The finds in Level VI of Çatal Hüyük push the history of the textile arts back to the beginning of the sixth millennium.

For textiles to survive in a more or less natural state requires either extremely arid conditions as in Egypt or Peru, or permafrost as in the Norse burials in Greenland, and in the tombs of the Scythian and Hunnish princes in Siberia. The presence of certain chemicals may act as a preservative: tannin in the Bronze Age burials in Denmark or metallic salts impregnating the fibres of the silks found in the patina of Chinese bronzes of the early dynasties. At Çatal Hüyük, a simpler agent is responsible for the survival of the fragments that have been found. In the fire that apparently destroyed the buildings of Level VI in which they were found, they were subject to intense heat. Due to the scarcity of oxygen in the space in which they were confined under the low clay platforms, the fabrics were not consumed, but only thoroughly carbonized. This made them chemically inert, and no longer subject to the growth of the destructive moulds that under normal conditions lead to the total decay of most animal and vegetal matter.

The textiles examined were from building-level VI provisionally dated as c. 6000 B.C. They were black, stiff and brittle, apparently owing to carbonization, and comprised some found in 1962 and others found in 1963. No attempt will be made to describe the structure of the cloth except to say that no weave was evident in the 1962 specimens; one series of yarns lay parallel, with no other yarns woven through them. In places other parallel yarns were fused at an angle across (but not interwoven with) the first ones. It was as if either the warp or weft had decayed, but there were no waves in the remaining yarns to indicate where the decayed yarns had been. This was probably the material described by Helbaek as resembling fishnet without knots. The yarns were less than 0·5 mm. in width, yet despite this fineness most were clearly two-ply. The specimens found in 1963 comprised one that had apparently been like the above but had broken into many short, straight pieces of yarn. There were also two pieces of cloth clearly woven, in apparently plain weave, from even finer yarns that nevertheless appeared to be two-ply. One piece of cloth had a selvedge.

The valley of the river Göksu (the ancient Calycadnus) is not unique as a road through the Taurus mountains. At least one other route was used in antiquity; this was by the Cilician Gates (now the Gülek boğazı). The valley of the Göksu, however, provides the easiest means of access from the coast to the plateau and, conversely, the easiest descent from the plateau to the coast. At the upper end of the route lies the Konya Plain with the sites of Çatal, Can Hasan, Karahüyük-Konya and numerous mounds of the Hittite period; at the lower end, the Plain of Adana and the sites of Mersin and Tarsus.

The excavations at Çatal East and West, Can Hasan and Karahüyük-Konya promise to produce an almost complete pottery sequence for the Konya Plain. At certain points in this sequence influence from the south coast has been suggested. Traces of this contact, if it existed, between the two areas might possibily be found in the valley of the Göksu. With this possibility in mind, a re-examination of the Mut area was carried out and, at the same time, an attempt was made to verify the suggested relationship of the Göksu valley to the two “culture-areas”, the Konya Plain and the Plain of Adana, from the Neolithic period until the Iron Age.