The Türkmen-Karahöyük Intensive Survey Project (TISP) has identified the archaeological site of Türkmen-Karahöyük on the Konya plain as a previously unknown Iron Age capital city in the western region of Tabal. Surface collections and newly discovered inscriptional evidence indicate that this city is the early first-millennium royal seat of ‘Great King Hartapu’, long known from the enigmatic monuments of nearby Kizildağ and Karadağ. In addition to demonstrating this Iron Age city's existence, supported principally by (1) the site's size at the time and (2) the discovery of a royal inscription authored by Hartapu himself, TISP has documented the site's existence from the Late Chalcolithic period until the late first millennium BCE, with a maximum size reached between the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods, suggesting that the city was at its greatest extent and the regional political centre from at least the late second to the mid-first millennium BCE.

In this article, the authors present a first edition of the recently found inscription TÜRKMEN-KARAHÖYÜK 1, propose an eighth-century dating and explore some of the consequences of this date for the group of inscriptions mentioning Hartapu, son of Mursili.

This paper synthesises the data and results of the Konya Regional Archaeological Survey Project (2016–2020) in order to address the earliest evidence for cities and states on the Konya and Karaman plains, central Turkey. A nested and integrative approach is developed that draws on a wide range of spatially extensive datasets to outline meaningful trends in settlement, water management and regional defensive systems during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The significance of the regional centre of Türkmen-Karahöyük for a reconstruction of early state polities between the 13th and eighth centuries BCE is addressed. In light of this regional analysis, it is tentatively suggested that, during the Late Bronze Age, Türkmen-Karahöyük was the location of the city of Tarḫuntašša, briefly the Hittite capital during the reign of Muwatalli II. More assuredly, based on the analysis of the newly discovered Middle Iron Age TÜRKMEN-KARAHÖYÜK 1 inscription, it is proposed that Türkmen-Karahöyük was the seat of a kingdom during the eighth century BCE that likely encompassed the Konya and Karaman plains.

Constructing and deconstructing public spaces in second-millennium BC Anatolia, the Near East and the Levant was not only a collaborative physical act but also involved deeply embodied ritual symbolism. This symbolism is materialised in the practice of conducting public foundation and termination rituals that unified individual memories in space and time, transforming the physical act into a collective memory: a process that contributed to the formation of political and cultural memory. The recent rescue excavations conducted by the Hatay Archaeological Museum at the hinterland site of Toprakhisar Höyük in Altinözü (in the foothills above the Amuq valley) add to the understanding of the practice of foundation and termination rituals during the Middle Bronze Age and how these moments may have contributed to the political and cultural memory of a rural community living away from the centre. The practice of foundation/termination rituals is archaeologically documented by caches of artefacts from votive contexts stratigraphically linked to the construction and termination of a Middle Bronze Age administrative structure.

Over the past two decades or so, excavations at Klazomenai have unearthed a wealth of information about the Early Iron Age, showing it to have been a thriving settlement at this time. Accordingly, it is intriguing that systematic surveys in the chora of Klazomenai have turned up very few sites that can be dated to this period. In this contribution, we discuss the implications of this discrepancy between the excavation data and the survey data in terms of the relationship between the settlement and its surrounding countryside. We argue that the lack of identified sites in the chora does not mean a lack of movement or that Klazomenai was an isolated spot in an otherwise desolate landscape. Furthermore, we discuss briefly how the developments that took place during the Early Iron Age ultimately led to the emergence of the polis at the beginning of the Archaic period. Our principal aim is to highlight the importance of the survey data, not only in terms of exploring the web of relations in which Klazomenai was tangled during the Early Iron Age, but also for highlighting in more detail the diversities that existed in ancient Ionia

This paper takes a holistic approach to the data for rural hinterlands in the Black Sea region in the fourth century BCE to reveal pan-Black Sea patterning, importantly including the southern coast and the territory of ancient Sinope. During a period of dynamic mobility and prosperity, the rural hinterlands of Greek settlements around the Black Sea expanded in ways that demonstrate significant regional commonalities in terms of increased settlement, intensified agricultural infrastructure, new connections via road and path networks and the inclusion of dependent territories beyond the traditional chora. Decisions to expand rural territory and intensify agricultural production were taken at the local level, but this patterning demonstrates that such developments were also a response to the dynamics of Black Sea economic and political networks. The associated increased density of occupation and connectivity in these rural hinterlands made them key facilitators of social networks, creating stronger ties between Greek settlements and other local communities, and ultimately enmeshing a more diverse group of people within Black Sea networks.

This paper discusses the visual language adopted in the cities of Asia Minor to represent the emperor Caracalla in the years 214–216, which he spent travelling between the Anatolian region, Egypt and the Near East. The focus of this study is the imagery designed to express his relation with the divine through the overlapping representations of the emperor as a devotee and peer of the gods, and as a divine being. The first part of the study compares Rome to Asia Minor to show divergences as well as possible links between provincial and metropolitan media, discussing local and imperial responses to the emperor governing from the Roman East. The second part focuses on the imagery introduced in Asia Minor to represent the worship of the living Roman emperor and his cult-image in particular, providing insights into the creation of extraordinary visual patterns that remained unique to the reign of Caracalla.

Examination of a number of satellite and aerial images of the Milesian peninsula has allowed the mapping of a large number of apparently ancient linear features across the landscape. These are here interpreted, for the most part, as relicts of agro-economic field systems of unknown date, but most plausibly established during the Archaic, Hellenistic or late antique periods and perhaps used for centuries after, before the economic decline of the region in the second millennium AD. While earlier survey work has noted the existence of terracing and rural divisions at certain points in the landscape, the new remote-sensing data have provided an unprecedented large-scale insight into the extent and variety of forms of division, as well as documenting the stripping of macquis overgrowth by modern farming practices, which has, on the one hand, exposed these ancient landscapes but also, on the other, poses a threat to their preservation. The extent of the linear features suggests a high degree of land use on the peninsula at certain points in the past. Further investigation of these important features has the potential to provide critical insights into the economic history of rural and urban Miletos over the last 2,000 to 5,000 years.