The historical geography of Anatolia in the period sourced by the Boǧazköy texts (Middle-Late Bronze Age) has proved an on-going problem since they first became available, and nowhere was this more acutely felt than in southern and western Anatolia, generally acknowledged as the site of the Arzawa lands, also probably the Lukka lands. A major advance has been registered since the mid-1980s, with the publication and interpretation of the Hieroglyphic inscription of Tudhaliya IV from Yalburt, and the Cuneiform treaty on the Bronze Tablet of the same king. These two documents have established that the later territory of Rough Cilicia constituted the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Tarhuntassa with its western border at Perge in Pamphylia, and that the Lukka lands did indeed occupy all of (or more than) classical Lycia in the south-west. These recognitions, by establishing the geography of the south and south-west, correspondingly reduced the areas of uncertainty in the west.

In 1997 I was fortunately able to establish the reading of the Hieroglyphic inscription attached to the long-known Karabel relief, which lies inland from Izmir in a pass across the Tmolos range between Ephesos and Sardis. This can be shown to give the name of Tarkasnawa, King of Mira, and those of his father and grandfather, also kings of Mira but with names of uncertain reading. This is the same king known from his silver seal (referred to as ‘Tarkondemos' from an early and incorrect identification), and impressions of other seals of his have more recently been found at Boǧazköy. Clearly he was an important historical figure.

The Mycenaean culture of the east Aegean islands should not be considered in relation to that of the Greek Mainland, as has generally been done up until now, but rather in terms of the East Aegean — West Anatolian Interface (fig 1), an area which forms an entity between the Mycenaean islands of the central Aegean and the Anatolian hinterland with Troy at its northern extremity and Rhodes at its southern one.

The mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean have a long history of human occupation and exploitation of the natural environment (Grenon, Batisse 1989; McNeil 1992). Whilst the reconstruction of vegetation and human-induced landscape change is primarily based upon pollen analysis and other palaeoecological methods, the history of human occupation relies heavily upon archaeology, including field survey information and excavation reports. Both palaeoecology and archaeology are supplemented by historical accounts, especially for later periods, and when these data sources are combined they have the potential to provide a much fuller picture of settlement and landscape change than the reliance on a single source (Wagstaff 1985). There are, however, problems and limitations associated with each of the different data sources.

The aim of this paper is to discuss different possibilities for the function of the shaft found behind certain Phrygian cult façades. The purpose of the shaft is unknown, but various theories exist.

In the highlands of Phrygia, between Afyon and Eskişehir, around Türkmen Dağ, which is covered by volcanic tuff, the Phrygians created their sanctuaries and other monuments from the rock itself. These monuments have been the subject of study by several scholars. Haspels (1971, 3–19) gives a thorough account of earlier travellers and scholars. The rock-cut shrines and sanctuaries to be found in this area can be divided into two basic categories. The first category comprises monuments which consist of a façade, varying in size, generally depicting the front of a house and usually with a niche as its focal point. Sometimes there is no façade, just a niche. In the niche we can assume that the cult statue of the Phrygian Mother goddess Kybele was placed, as in a few cases the cult image of Kybele was cut straight from the rock and is still in situ.

In Autumn 1997 a small team led by the Director of Fethiye Museum İbrahim Malkoç and Professor Martin F. Smith began excavations in the Upper Agora of Oinoanda. This area, long known as the ‘Esplanade’, following Cousin (1892: 56–58), is shown below to have been the Hellenistic and early Imperial agora of the city. A sondage was opened on the west side of the Upper Agora, and in so doing soil was removed around the lower half of a circular base which had appeared to be in situ (figs 1,2, and fig 3 where the base has the inventory number YÇ 1200). A previously unsuspected inscription was discovered upside down and located towards the present bottom of the base, from which it is apparent that the base had been re-used upside down, perhaps already in Antiquity.

An ancient limestone block was brought to our attention in the garden of Mehmet Atçı, the then bekçi of Oinoanda, at his house in the village of İncealiler, below the ancient site, during the site-survey of Oinoanda and its territory led by Professor Stephen Mitchell in 1994. It had been rescued from the nearby small antique site at Kemerarası, which lies at the foot of the Oinoanda hill (Urluca), immediately on the north bank of the upper Xanthos river, at the point where routes ancient and modern from the lower Xanthos valley debouch from the pass of Karabel into the Seki plain. Kemerarası is known to tourists for its Ottoman bridge which still spans the Xanthos (fig 1), and which is now superseded by a modern highway bridge, and to ancient historians chiefly as the findspot of the Demostheneia festival inscription published by Wörrle (1988). The old theory that the site at Kemerarası was a separate city of ‘Termessus Minor” has been scotched by Coulton (1982), who showed that Termessus Minor was the name of Oinoanda itself, viewed as a colony of Termessus Major.

Oinoanda's most famous and, many would say, most precious possession is the massive Greek inscription, which, probably in the first half of the second century AD, was set up by a citizen named Diogenes, who must have been both wealthy and influential. ‘Having reached the sunset of life’, he used the wall of a stoa to advertise the moral benefits of Epicurean philosophy not only to his fellow-citizens, but also to foreign visitors, and not only to his contemporaries, but also to future generations. In fulfilment of his philanthropic mission he expounded Epicurus' teachings on physics, epistemology, and ethics in writings which may have occupied 260m2 of wall-space and contained 25,000 words. The work, as well as being remarkable as an epigraphic colossus, is a valuable source of information about one of the most important philosophies in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Eighty-eight fragments of Diogenes' inscription were found by French and Austrian epigraphists between 1884 and 1895. I took up the search in 1968–73, discovering 38 new fragments and rediscovering most of the 19th-century finds. My work led on to the topographical and epigraphical survey, sponsored by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA) and directed by the late Alan S Hall in 1974–75–76–77–81–83 — a survey which not only revealed more of Diogenes' work, but also yielded other epigraphical finds and, thanks above all to the work of James J. Coulton, significantly increased our knowledge of Oinoanda's history and buildings.

It is difficult to distinguish the eastern series of cut decorated glasses from the western ones. The origin of the western series of some forms with this kind of decoration is attributed to north Italy, while that of the eastern ones is attributed to north Syria by Hayes (1975: 36). However, it is difficult to find parallels in north Syria (Lightfoot 1990: 8), and examples have been found in Cyprus, in the southern coasts of Anatolia, in the Aegean region, in Cyrenaica, in the northern coasts of the Black Sea and in south Russia (Harden 1958: 49, no 13; Vessberg 1965: 44/19; Oliver 1983: 255, no 51; Hayes 1975: 56 no 132; Price 1985: 72, 96, no 8; Dusenbery 1967: 45–46, nos 36, 37, 39, 41; Sorokina 1965: 234–35, fig 71.20; Zapheiropoulou 1984: 308–09; Brock, Young 1949: pls 28.2, 30.4; Davidson 1952: 101, fig 8 no 367, 369). Therefore, it is accepted that the origins of some series of cut decorated glasses are in western Anatolian workshops (Lightfoot 1990: 9).

In these notes are presented various trouvailles encountered by the writer in the course of other researches. Although disconnected and inconclusive, they may be of some use to students of Sinop and to those interested in the general subject of the collection of antiquities in the Levant. In general, well-known sources have not been discussed, except in so far as they afford comparison with the less familiar accounts dealt with here. A final note refers to the Jewish population of Sinop in the early Ottoman period in relation to travellers' accounts.

In antiquity, the status of Sinop as a port was well known. Arrian is almost alone in describing the town not as a harbour but only in relation to its being a Milesian colony and the founder of Trabzon (Baschmakoff 1948: 80–81, 94–95). Similarly, in the later middle ages and early modern times, references to Sinop were almost always in relation to its port. For some, the interest was urgent: it was a welcome refuge for Bishop Ignatios of Smolensk when in 1389 his vessel, coasting the Crimea, was driven to the southern Pontic shore. Adverse winds detained him there for two days (Majeska 1984: 86–89). He was more fortunate than Ibn Battuta, some 40 years earlier, whom bad weather had delayed there for 40 days (Ibn Battuta, translated by H. A. R. Gibb 1957: 141).

The study of İznik ceramics of different periods revealed that temperatures of about 800–900°C were produced during firing. Glass fragments added to the body for strengthening resulted in the formation of fibrous minerals as clusters in the pores and protruding in the glaze together with Ca and P rich minerals in the raw materials used. The pore size distribution of the pores indicates a uniform temperature rise and fall during the production of the microstructure.