This paper aims at providing a status quaestionis of the British Institute at Ankara's structure, remit and working-practices today, as well as offering an overview of the development it has gone through during its lifetime. The range of subjects and disciplines covered, as well as the diversity of projects supported today, clearly shows that the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) has grown and developed considerably in the 60 years of its existence. Archaeological research is no longer concentrated mainly or exclusively on prehistoric or Byzantine sites, as in the early years of the Institute, even if these periods remain important areas of focus. Besides the excavations, the survey projects sponsored by the BIAA have built up a long and strong tradition, particularly of multi-period, regional landscape surveys. With these points of focus, the BIAA differs from other foreign institutes in Turkey.

This paper investigates why we lack convincing evidence for human activities in north-central Anatolia for the period between 10,000 and 6,000 BC cal. This paucity of data can be contrasted with substantial evidence for Neolithic communities in south-central Anatolia from about 8,500 BC cal, and of earlier hunter-gatherer communities in that region. This difference in our data is especially problematic because in terms of ecology both regions appear to be broadly similar. In this paper this enigmatic paucity of evidence for the Early Holocene occupation of north-central Anatolia will be scrutinised. In particular, this entails a discussion of the existing discourse on the paucity of evidence and an evaluation of the three types of argument that have been put forward to explain it: first, that the region was not occupied because of unfavourable ecological conditions; second, that the practices of Early Holocene groups in north-central Anatolia have left an insubstantial archaeological record; and, third, that the paucity of evidence is best explained by a combination of the factors of site preservation, site visibility and research intensity. Finally, a research strategy will be proposed for the future investigation of the Early Holocene occupation of north-central Anatolia.

The last decade of excavations at Çadır Höyük, in the north-central region of the Anatolian plateau, has revealed a well-established Late Chalcolithic community with continuous occupation into the Early Bronze I period (mid fourth to early third millennium BC). While the Late Chalcolithic town was prosperous, with well-made houses and objects, and even monumental construction, the stability of the settlement had slipped by the Early Bronze I phase. We summarise here the results from ten seasons of work at the site and profile how the findings contribute to our understanding of Çadır's role in a larger regional context. We also offer possible explanations for the changing nature of the Çadır occupation during the periods detailed here.

Recent work in the Göksu river valley has brought questions of long-distance communication routes to the forefront of discussion. The valley has been long regarded as a potential conduit from the Anatolian plateau to the Mediterranean, yet no formal testing as to whether it was geographically suited to this use has taken place. The discovery of the site of Çömlek Tepesi in the upper Göksu valley and work at Kilse Tepe south of Mut has given further weight to the idea that the valley served as a communication route at points in time, and has encouraged testing the notion that a route through the valley would be attractive based on geography. Computerised modelling using least-cost pathway analysis (LCPA) was used to test whether the Göksu valley could serve as a communication route, and if so, the approximate location of that route based upon geographical constraints. In this paper, the methods of LCPA are reviewed and an example of its use is presented. Advocated as an exploratory rather than explanatory technique, the application of LCPA in the Göksu valley has strengthened current assumptions about regional and extra-regional interaction and raised new questions that refined the project's research design.

It is proposed that the name of the three Bronze Age characters called Sarpēdon(t)- in Greek tradition is a direct rendering of an Anatolian compound noun, approximately *sar-pēdan-, ‘(one having) top position’. Anatolian cognates of both sar-, ‘up, on’, and *pēdan-, ‘place’, are attested with appropriate figurative meanings. At face value this etymology provides a suitably aristocratic name, but two of the Sarpedons are known mainly as leaders of expeditions connected with Lycia, and being an expedition leader does not conflict with the very limited details reported of the third Sarpedon. The coincidence of name and role suggests that the Anatolian original might have really been a military rank or job description. The explicit connection with ‘Lycia’ in two instances, i.e., with some part of the Luwian-speaking Lukka Lands, makes some variety of Luwian a strong candidate as the source language. Attestation of the name in Iron Age Lycian is slight and inconclusive, but its native form appears to have persisted there into Roman times.

In the first century BC, the Tarkondimotidai, an indigenous dynasty ruling over Mount Amanos and the Pyramos basin, were officially recognised as kings by the Roman triumvir Mark Antony. The dynasty weathered the transformation from the Roman Republic to Principate and continued to rule until AD 17. Since the days of Barclay Head, it has been accepted that only two members of the dynasty issued coinage and that the royal mint was located at the kingdom's supposed capital Hieropolis-Kastabala. This paper attempts to fix the identity of the Tarkondimotid monarch who issued a series of regal bronzes in the name of ‘King Philopator’. In the process, it is shown that the location of the royal mint should be moved to the city of Anazarbos, away from Hieropolis which may never have been incorporated directly within the kingdom.

Between 959 and 965, Byzantine forces, directed and most often led by Nikephoros Phokas, launched a series of successful campaigns of conquest, particularly in the east. Although little studied, these conquests are significant. The subject of this article, the conquest of the Cilician plain in 965, represents the culmination of a century of Byzantine pressure on the Arab border states, of which Tarsos was the last. Simultaneously, the elimination of the Hamdanid emirate of Aleppo as a threat to the Empire helped to lay the groundwork for further successes in Syria after 965. It is the contention of this article that these objectives were intertwined and that Nikephoros Phokas followed a concerted and structured strategy through this period, aimed primarily at the conquest of Cilicia. Other objectives, though dramatic, should thus be seen as subordinate to this underlying objective.

This article analyses the position of the Hittites in the theoretical development of Turkish nationalism in the 20th century. The piece provides an outline of the full content of the Hittite claim in a Turkish nationalist context, particularly its promulgation as part of the so-called ‘Turkish History Thesis’. Following this, I will give full weight to the historical circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Hittite trope in Turkish writing. Basing myself on the work of Mete Tunçay, I will give proper prominence to the publication of the propaganda tract Pontus Meselesi (1922). It is my contention that the Turkish intellectual of Azerî descent, Ağaoğlu Ahmed Bey, was the sole author of the text Pontus Meselesi. The remainder of the article consists of a close reading of this geo-text. I will demonstrate that Ağaoğlu's discovery of the Hittites as worthy forebears for the Anatolian Muslims, whom he refers to as ‘Turks’ in his text, was the outcome of an ideologically motivated reading of 19th century European accounts of ancient Near Eastern history. The article shows that the propagation of the Kemalist concept of Turkish nationalism in Anatolia dates back to 1922, a year prior to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.

Between the late 1940s and the 1970s, John Manuel Cook was heavily involved in the archaeology of Anatolia. In 1976 he retired from the University of Bristol and the following year donated a collection of ceramics and other small finds procured during the course of his academic career. These form the core of the Bristol University Near Eastern and Mediterranean Collections (BUNEM). Despite Cook's extensive published record, the majority of these archaeological finds, which formed one of his primary archaeological datasets, never received any form of publication. This article reunites for the first time the Anatolian material donated by Cook to the University of Bristol in 1977 with his published record. In so doing, a glimpse can be gained into the methodologies employed in Anatolian field survey prior to the 1980s, and it will be suggested that collections such as this, despite their many associated difficulties, are a potentially useful source of archaeological data. Furthermore, this will allow some insight into how Cook reached the conclusions he did and consequently why his role in Anatolian archaeology should rightly be acknowledged.