The unanimity of opinion on the purposes and methods of the military expedition led by Cn. Manlius Vulso into Asia Minor in 189 B.C. arouses suspicion. Investigation shows a process of repetition of phrase and attitude traceable to the ancient sources, without any serious consideration of actual events. Thus Livy quotes a hostile description of Manlius as “a mercenary consul” who had conducted “a private piratical expedition” (38.45.8). Scullard, in more than one account, allows that he had “reduced to submission the Galatians… but he marred this necessary piece of police work by his cruelty and avarice”, and in it he “acquired a staggering amount of booty and money by systematic extortion and warfare”. This wholesale swallowing of the Livian account without any critical investigation is repeated by Errington, who has it that Manlius led “a major plundering expedition… primarily directed against the Gauls (Galatians), who had supported Antiochos, though he also passed through northern Caria, Lycia and Pisidia”.

This report focuses on selected aspects of the Kerkenes Dağ Survey all of which are peripheral to the main survey of the Iron Age mountain top city.

The Kerkenes Dağ Survey is sponsored by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA). The survey was made possible by funds from the Leverhulme Trust (1993), the National Geographic Society (1994), the British Academy and the BIAA (1993–94). In 1993 Dr. S. Hill kindly arranged for us to borrow the Warwick University total station for a large part of the season; the British Ambassador, Mr. John Goulden, greatly added to the comfort of the expedition by arranging for the provision of furniture and, most importantly, the balloon team from the Kapadokya Lodge gave us a remarkable evening flight over the mountain top city. In 1994 Yibitaş-Lafarge very generously improved the facilities by constructing bedrooms, wash rooms and a compound wall. Special thanks are due to the Vali of Yozgat, Bay Ertuğrul Ersoy, the Kaymakam of Sorgun, Bay Necmi Kurt and the Director of the Yozgat Museum, Bay Musa Özcan for providing both help and encouragement, and to the Muhtar of Şahmuratlı Köy, Osman Muratdağı for making us welcome. Our representative for both seasons was Bay Kazım Mertek from Konya Museum; that so much was accomplished is in great part due to his energy and participation.

A major Hittite city-mound in the vicinity of the Kerkenes Dağ having been identified by Dr. Summers (see previous article), the question naturally arises whether their ancient Hittite names can be determined. Unfortunately this central area of the Hittite kingdom was completely distorted in The Geography of the Hittite Empire (1959) by the misplacing of Pala-Tumanna and Nerik and the places, such as Mt. Ḫaḫarwa, associated with them. Allusions to “the sea” locate these places firmly, with Zalpa, at the opposite end of the zone occupied by the Kaška folk, in the far north by the mouth of the Kızıl Irmak, and the maps in that book must be disregarded.

Kuşaklı Höyük stands in the basin of the Kanak Su which rises just above the site of Alişar. This stream is a tributary of the Delice Su which flows north-westward into the Kızıl Irmak and which Forlanini has suggested might be the Hittite “Red River”, said to have “mingled its waters with the Maraššantiya”, but the Kanak Su and its tributaries have not yet been certainly identified in the Hittite texts.

The following inscription was found at Oenoanda, an antique city in north Lycia, by the late Alan S. Hall in 1974. The text (inv. no. YÇ 1014) is inscribed on the short face of a large grey limestone statue base, found lying on its left side at the northern margin of the Upper Agora (the “Esplanade”), directly before the outer edge of the portico of the north stoa (cf. Figs. 1 and 2). Its position suggests that it has fallen forward, with other bases beside it to the west, from its original situation on the pavement of the Upper Agora, immediately fronting the podium of the stoa. There was no evidence that it had been re-used, as originally thought by Hall. Its dimensions are h. 0·73 m.; w. 0·74 m. (slightly broken to the left); th. 1·50+ m. (buried behind). Since it is unmoulded and there are no foot-holes in the top, it is probable that top and bottom sections have become detached. The large base beside it to the west, measuring h. 1·25 m.; w. 2·10 m.; th. 0·60+ m., has two sets of foot-holes and a moulded top; a connection between this and our base is perhaps not unlikely—possibly they formed part of a family monument. On architectural grounds it has been argued that the north stoa was built in either the first century B.C. or the first century A.D. Since it is reasonable to suppose that the base, which we date to the 90s B.C. for reasons that will become clear shortly, was erected after its construction, the stoa should probably be dated no later than second century B.C.

The Roman–Lycian notable and ex-procurator of Sicily, C. Julius Demosthenes of Oenoanda, who flourished under the Flavian Emperors, under Trajan and under Hadrian, is now well-known, following the publication of the richly-detailed Demostheneia Festival inscription by M. Wörrle. New investigation in 1994 into the archaeological context of Demosthenes' statue base (YÇ 1024), found on the site of Oenoanda in 1895 and published by Heberdey and Kalinka, has revealed that it was not re-used as stated by Hall and Milner, but shaped specifically for its original construction as the western anta of a semicircular exedra. In this article we trace the location, design and decoration of the exedra and discuss the inscriptions which adorned it.

The seventh season of excavations took place between July 7 and August 20, although actual digging only lasted for four weeks because of the Project's limited resources this year. Part of the season was devoted to continuing the regional survey that was started on behalf of the Ministry of Culture in 1993. The Project is extremely grateful to the Kaymakan of Emirdağ, the Mayor and Municipality of Emirdağ, the local Jandarma Komutanlığı, and to the many muhtars and villagers who facilitated the survey work with their help, knowledge and advice. A bonus from this work was that 23 stones inventoried in the neighbouring villages at the end of last season were gathered up by the staff of Afyon Museum (with the help of the Emirdağ Kaymakamı) and deposited at the Amorium Dig House for safe-keeping. This year's survey took us up into the northern foothills of the Emirdağ mountains, where we visited 30 villages and sites, recording an impressive number of individual monuments and inscriptions. The survey thus enabled us to see something of the hinterland to Amorium, which appears to have been extensively occupied in the Byzantine period.

The Göksu valley (Fig. 1), which furnishes one of the two main routes from Turkey's southern shore through the Taurus to the Konya plain and the rest of the central plateau, must be deemed one of the country's national treasures. The clear turquoise ribbon of the river threads its way south-eastwards from high in the mountains west of Ermenek to reach the Mediterranean at Silifke, or rather at the mouth of the delta it has created to the south of the classical and modern town. The valley itself, however, is by no means uniform, nor is the road which follows it. Coming from the interior, the traveller leaves the Konya plain not far south of Karaman, and after a gentle climb to the pass at Sertavul, begins to descend thickly pine-grown slopes high on the eastern shoulders of the valley, with the Göksu itself glimpsed occasionally flowing far below. Dropping steeply down, leaving the monastery of Alahan high above one to the left, one passes into a very different landscape around the regional centre of Mut, Roman Claudiopolis (earlier Ninica, see Mitchell 1979). Here the Göksu is joined from the west by the Ermenek Su, and the narrow valleys of their upper courses give way to a wide, low-lying basin, where the stream has cut through one terrace after another, to yield a curiously desert landscape in which remaining patches of the geological terraces, harbouring olive groves and cereal crops in early summer, stand isolated from one another by high eroded scarps, whose steep bare yellow and white limestone slopes are studded only sparsely with pines and low evergreen bushes like prickly oak.

Collaborative Australian–Turkish archaeological investigations in north-eastern Anatolia, begun in 1988 in the Bayburt province (then an ilçe of Gümüşhane), continued for six weeks during June–July 1994 with excavations at Sos Höyük near Erzurum. The decision to extend the limits of the research project beyond the Bayburt plain, eastwards into the adjacent province, was based primarily on the need to address questions raised by our work in Bayburt, most notably the apparent gaps in its culture sequence. Further, we were acutely aware that in order to establish a sequence for north-east Anatolia we would need to reexamine by systematic excavations the human settlement of the Erzurum plain, long known from the early campaigns of H. Z. Koşay and his colleagues at Karaz, Güzelova and Pulur, and I. K. Kökten's pioneering surveys. Our interest in the site of Sos Höyük was roused by material excavated during a three week campaign in the summer of 1987 by a team from Atatürk University (Erzurum) and Erzurum museum. While some of the material clearly keyed into the Bayburt sequence, much of it did not. A visit to the site revealed a dense surface scatter of artefacts, especially obsidian, and substantial stratified deposits exposed by the diggings of the local villagers. The potentialities of the site were clear. With the material excavated at Büyüktepe and collected in the Bayburt province overlapping and complementing that at Sos, we would move closer toward an understanding of cultural developments in north-east Anatolia.

Work commenced in August 1994 on a new archaeological rescue project to survey, excavate and protect the remains of a Classical and Byzantine site at Çiftlik, near Sinop on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea (Pl. XXIX (a)). The work was a collaborative project including staff from the Sinop Museum and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and staff and students from the University of Warwick. The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara has adopted this as a new “in-house” project, run in collaboration with Mr. İsmail Tatlıcan, Director of the Sinop Museum.

The remains at Çiftlik lie at the mouth of a valley on the west side of the great bay in the Black Sea which runs south of the peninsula on the isthmus on which the city of Sinop stands. The remains of two buildings were studied in 1994. These buildings were originally constructed on silty soil consisting of winter wash material which was deposited at the valley bottom over a long period of time prior to the Classical occupation of the site. The project is very much concerned with rescue, since the coastline in this area is being seriously eroded by the sea. At least 1·5 metres of the church (the south building) has been eroded since 1990, and the low shelf in the water beside what survives has underwater remains from various Classical and Byzantine buildings.

Le monument de marbre blanc avec l'inscription a été découvert par Monsieur D. H. French, directeur du British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, dans le village de Buğduz (région d'Ankara) en octobre 1973. La photo de la pierre et la copie du texte ont été faites par lui (Pl. XXXIV).

Le monument a été sûrement déplacé de son lieu d'origine et un jour remployé dans la fontaine où l'a vu French et où il semble être resté jusqu'à présent.

L'inscription a été publiée par S. Mitchell qui a seulement défini la pierre portant l'épitaphe comme autel de marbre blanc cassé en deux morceaux a) et b) et en a donné les dimensions:

a) haut. 0,93 m; larg. 0,61 m;

b) haut. 1,47 m; larg. 0,62 m; épaiss. 0,33 m.

La hauteur de la pierre est donc considérable, de 2,20 m. Pour cette raison sa définition comme autel nous semble douteuse. L'éditeur n'a pas publié de photo qui aurait permis de se faire une opinion propre sur ce monument.

A large scale archaeological excavation was commenced in 1989, as part of the “Mamilla Project”, an urban re-development project carried out in the area to the west of Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, Israel (Fig. 2). During the course of the first (1989) season, several complexes of buildings dating from the Late Byzantine and Early Ummayad periods were discovered. These buildings were part of the extra-mural quarters of Jerusalem at the time, and for the most part, were industrial and mercantile in nature.

In area A2 of the excavations (Fig. 3), a row of shops was discovered. Of particular interest was the shop comprised of rooms L164 and L153, which contained several different types of installations, including what appeared to be washing basins and a bread-oven (Pl. XXXV (a)). In this shop a large collection of diverse finds was discovered, including a sizeable amount of local and imported pottery, coins, glass and additional small finds. This assemblage was securely dated to the mid-seventh century CE, i.e. the terminal Byzantine period and the incipient stages of the Ummayad dynasty.

Since the detailed study by Edith Porada of the cylinder seals and small objects from the celebrated treasure found in the temple of Mont at Tôd in Upper Egypt, questions concerning its origin and date still remain unanswered. Porada suggested that in addition to seals from Eastern Iran and possibly Afghanistan, a North Syrian origin for two of the cylinders seems a distinct possibility. Two other cylinder seals were carved in Mesopotamian style, one of them being datable to the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur. She also showed conclusively that there are no cylinders which can be dated later than 1800 B.C. (Middle Chronology) and that the latest cylinders belonged to the Isin-Larsa period. Her conclusions concerning the origin of the treasure and the importance of parallels for the amulets and other small objects with material from Mari and Ebla are entirely convincing. A recent study by Christine Lilyquist stresses the evidence for a date within the reign of Amenemhet II for the deposition of the treasure which was found in four metal boxes inscribed with the king's name. While in studies concerning the 153 silver vessels Cretan and Mycenaean prototypes have been cited, Anatolia has not received so much attention. Here it will be suggested that there is considerable recently published evidence from Anatolia and Syria which is relevant to the Tôd silver cups, and that a consideration of recently published textual material from Mari, Ebla, Rimah and Brak may also be useful.

This article is chiefly concerned with the chronology of the Byzantine fortifications of Amastris, which are the subject of current research by the authors, but, in order to set the settlement at Amasra and its fortifications into their context in the Black Sea area, the present study must commence with a brief account of some aspects of the monuments and history of the city in the Hellenistic and Classical periods.

The present Turkish town of Amasra on the south coast of the Black Sea (Fig. 1; Pl. XXXVII a) occupies the site of the ancient city of Amastris which has a long history extending as least as far back as the period of Milesian colonisation in the Black Sea zone from the seventh century B.C. Like the more famous city of Sinope to the east, the settlement at Amasra stood on the isthmus of a peninsula projecting into the Black Sea. At Amasra the isthmus leads to the upstanding promontory rock, Zindan Kalesi (Dungeon Castle) on which part of the Byzantine fortification stands, and which protects the east harbour. The whole site is further protected by the closely adjacent island of Boz Tepe which encloses the northern side of the west harbour. The site was doubtless chosen for settlement because of its good natural harbours which, as will be seen, have been of central importance throughout the history of Amasra.

The excavations and surface surveys carried out in Eastern Thrace as well as the Southern Marmara region over the past few years have made much headway in filling the substantial gaps still existing in the cultural sequence of the region. Although the field data are far from complete, the results of this research help us to reconstruct the prehistory of the region and to gain a better understanding of the relations between the Balkan and Anatolian prehistoric sequences.

The network of cultural exchange between Anatolia and Southeast Europe during the fifth and fourth millennia B.C. may be demonstrated by examining some major artifact types, such as pottery forms, terracotta figurines, bone spoons, etc. (cf. Thissen 1993a, 302–3, Özdoğan 1993, 179–81). In pottery the similarities between Anatolia and Southeast Europe are especially apparent in types of decoration, also to some extent in the repertoire of shapes (not all shapes are similar) and method of manufacture.

During our investigations in the province of Edirne, Eastern Thrace, were recovered mat white-painted sherds of Anatolian and Aegean type which help to fill the gaps in our knowledge between Anatolian and Balkan prehistoric sequences.