Description
Book SynopsisOccupying a pivotal location on the western coast of Turkey, the Madra River Delta has always been a meeting place for the cultures of Anatolia and the Aegean, but active geomorphological processes in the area have hampered fieldwork, making it a significant challenge to reconstruct the history of the landscape and its exploitation by humans. Modern political geography has been another obstacle, encouraging the study of the area in isolation from the neighbouring islands of the northeastern Aegean, although from prehistory until the twentieth century they all belonged to one cultural area. The Madra River Delta Project called on distinguished international teams using innovative interdisciplinary approaches to meet these challenges, and the results presented here shed important new light on environmental changes in this part of the Anatolian coastal region, on their long-term impact on the inhabitants of the Delta, and on the cultural ties between the Delta and the island of Lesbos from the prehistoric to the Roman period. Two closing chapters focus on the area's medieval ceramics and its history in later Ottoman times. This volume places the story of the communities of this important coastal region in their environmental and cultural context.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Regional studies and landscape archaeology in the Madra River Delta (Kyriacos Lambrianides and Nigel Spencer); Part 1: 'GUohistoire' or the 'Longue DurUe' The physical geography of the Madra River Delta (Ilhan Kayan and Serdar Vardar); Geomorphological formation and development of the delta plain of the Madra River (Ilhan Kayan); Alluvial geomorphology and paleogeography of the Yeldegirmeni mound and its environs (Ilhan Kayan); Geophysical surveys at Yeldegirmeni mound, Altinova (Mahmut G Drahor, G Gkt rkler and E Seng l); Climatic conditions in Altinova and the Madra River Delta (Ecmel Erlat); Land-use patterns in the Altinova area (Semra Sutgibi); Part 2: 'Social time' in the Madra River Delta and the northeast Aegean: the Early Bronze Age to the Early Roman period The emergence of complexity in the Madra River Delta: the example of the EBA site of Thermi on Lesbos (Kyriacos Lambrianides); The ceramics of the northeast Aegean region from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age (Nicholas Bayne and Nigel Spencer); The Archaic and Classical fine wares of the northeast Aegean and northwest Anatolia (Gerald P Schaus); The ceramics of the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods in the northeast Aegean: a brief survey of the evidence from Mytilene, Lesbos (Hector & Caroline Williams); Part 3: 'L'histoire UvUnementielle' A study of Byzantine and Ottoman ceramic fragments found by surface survey north and west of Yelde?irmeni mound, 1997 (Sevin
