Search results for ""british institute of archaeology at ankara""

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. Çatalhöyük Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout and social organization. Excavation, recording and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, ‘levels’, and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

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This volume, the third in the series of reports on the excavations carried out at the Canhasan I mound in south-central Anatolia in the years 1961-1968, follows the publication of the stratification and structures (Canhasan Sites 1) and of the pottery (Canhasan Sites 2). Here, the primary aim is to present a descriptive account and catalogue of the registered small-finds. The small-finds have been grouped, described and then illustrated according to material, e.g., clay, stone, bone. The separation into discrete groups and the description of individual objects have both been deliberately simplified, the intention being to provide (where possible chronologically) an orderly arrangement from which those interested are able to scan and note the range of materials and, if they wish, to take up relevant aspects or indeed to inspect the objects for further study and research. The location of the site at Canhasan is set unequivocally between East and West, close to, if not on, a major land route from the Near East to the Aegean and to Europe. Inevitably, in this geographical context, some materials, such as obsidian and copper, will catch the eye. These have a utilitarian purpose and introduce the factor of distance between source and Canhasan. One object, however, - an ivory bracelet - not only emphasises, by its presence at Canhasan, the distant source of the material but points directly to the nature and dynamics of trade/transfer/exchange in the 6th millennium. The bracelet documents the role of personal display and human vanity as an incentive for material acquisition.

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000-2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series. The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Çatalhöyük and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

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This volume contains the final publication of the archaeobotanical remains recovered from four sites at the village of Aşvan in eastern Turkey, which were excavated between 1968 and 1973 as part of the archaeological rescue project in the Keban Dam region. An extensive programme of archaeobotanical research involved detailed study of the modern flora, the observation and recording of pre-mechanised agricultural practices and large-scale recovery of ancient botanical samples by water sieving. The report traces the evolution of cultivation in the region from the Chalcolithic to the Medieval period, charting the dominance of emmer and hulled barley in the Chalcolithic period, the emergence of free-threshing wheats in the Early Bronze Age and the introduction of irrigated summer crops, especially millet, by the Hellenistic period. Detailed attention is also given to the assemblage of weed seeds as proxy evidence for environmental conditions and climate change from around 4000 BC to the present day.

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This book presents the structures and stratigraphy of the important Iron Age sequence at Tille Höyuek, a mound at a crossing of the Euphrates in eastern Turkey. The site, which was excavated between 1979 and 1990 by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, revealed ten major structural levels of the Iron Age, spanning the period from the 11th century to the 6th-4th centuries BC, as well as earlier and later remains, and the wide exposure of architecture provides a sequence of intelligible and impressive building plans. After the initial discussion of the background and methodology of their excavation, the successive levels are carefully described and fully illustrated. The earliest Iron Age occupation, simple buildings among the ruins of the Late Bronze Age, was followed by a major settlement of the Middle Iron Age, when the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Kummuh was at its height. Most impressive architecturally are a large palatial building centred on a courtyard paved with a pebble mosaic, which was probably built after the Assyrian annexation of Kummuh in 708 BC and continued in use through the seventh, and the excellently preserved Level X with many distinctively Persian architectural features (built in the latter half of the 6th or the early 5th century and probably lasting for a substantial time). The structures and stratigraphy are also important as the context for the first rigorously established ceramic sequence in this part of Turkey, which will be presented, together with the other materials and artefacts, in the companion to this volume (already complete in draft). Lying on the fringes of the Mesopotamian world, and with contacts with North Syria, North Mesopotamia, and the Levant rather than with Anatolia or the Mediterranean, Tille casts vivid new light on the cultural and political history of the region in the Iron Age.

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The Balboura Survey, conducted between 1985 and 1994, investigated the settlement history of a small district in the ancient region of Kabalia in the mountains of southwestern Turkey. Although the survey's focus was on the Hellenistic-Early Byzantine city of Balboura and its western territory, the fieldwork revealed significant prehistoric occupation, and the project included research into Ottoman and recent settlement. Vol. 1: Balboura and the history of highland settlement This first volume of the final publication analyses settlement in the survey area from the Chalcolithic to the 20th century, placing it in the context of the adjoining districts. Major themes include: - the relation of the local prehistoric sites to the long-lived cultures to the north and east, and to the sparse evidence for settlement along the coast to the south; - Balboura's foundation by immigrant Pisidians around 200BC, and the new pattern of small agricultural settlements which came with it, exploiting land up to 1700m; - the city's attachment to the Roman province of Lycia, its adoption of the civic culture of Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia, and the interplay of alternative ethnicities - Kabalian, Pisidian, Lycian and Roman; - subsistence, climate, and the stability of Balboura's rural settlement pattern through nearly 1000 years. - the balance between pastoral and settled occupation from the prehistoric period through to the present day. Vol. 2. The Balboura Survey: detailed studies and catalogues This second volume of the final publication contains detailed discussions of the prehistoric pottery and of the Hellenistic and later pottery, which provide a chronological framework for the interpretation of the survey, and a major study of Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions examined during the project, many of them unpublished. Later chapters discuss an early Balbouran soldier who died at Sidon, the fortifications and water supply of the city, funerary monuments, and churches and other early Christian remains. The final chapter discusses problems and methodological issues raised by the survey, which combined extensive and intensive fieldwork. Five detailed catalogues present the Hellenistic and later pottery, the evidence of ancient activity across the city site, the rural sites and their pottery, known inscriptions from the territory of Balboura, and Balbouran funerary monuments.

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The Burdur Archaeological Museum holds material from a mountainous area of southwest Turkey where Pisidians in antiquity mingled with Phrygians, Lycians and other ancient peoples, coming to terms first with Greek and then with Roman culture. This volume presents its rich holdings of ancient inscriptions, ranging from Hellenistic royal letters and Roman imperial regulations to the votive offerings and gravestones of rural people. Larger cities such as Sagalassos and Kibyra are close to or just beyond the boundaries of Burdur province. The Museum collection is particularly strong in votive reliefs related to local rural cults; the most prolific is that of a club-bearing rider variously named as Herakles or Kakasbos, to which an extensive and penetrating excursus is devoted. As well as inscribed texts relief iconography is presented and discussed - indeed several items never carried an inscription. The physical form of votives and gravestones is also fully described, with more than 360 plates illustrating the range of monuments produced by local masons. Of the 350 monuments collected here, over 150 have not previously been published, and many of the rest have never been illustrated, so that the volume presents a substantial body of new evidence relating to the history, religion and culture of the area. All texts are translated into English and Turkish.

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Seemingly contradictory ideas of privacy and community dominate Ottoman cities. While houses are internally divided to guard female modesty behind a frontage studded with peep-holes, streets in cities like Amasya are often bridged by first-floor passageways between different houses. This book contains 17 papers by architects and archaeologists looking at how the Ottoman house was structured, how it has varied over time and space, and how surviving examples are faring in a world of breeze-block construction. Although the examples discussed are all Near Eastern, and mostly from Turkey, the revelations this book contains about structuring principles will make it a valuable companion to understanding architectural relics from all over the Ottoman Empire.

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Building on similarities and exploring differences in the way scholars undertake their research, this volume presents crossdisciplinary communication on the study of borders, frontiers and boundaries through time, with a focus on Turkey. Standing at the dividing/connecting line between Europe and Asia, Turkey emerges as a place carrying a rich history of multiple layers of borders that have been drawn, shifted or unmade from the remote past until today: from Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to the period of early states in the Bronze Age, from the poleis of classical antiquity to the period of the empires defined by the Roman expansion and Byzantine rule, from the imprints of the Ottoman state’s expanded frontiers to contemporary Turkey’s national borders. Amidst proliferating interdisciplinary collaborations for the study of borders between social anthropology, geography, political science and history, this book aims to contribute to a nascent but growing direction in border studies by including archaeology as a collocutor and using Turkey as a case study.

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which the Çatalhöyük settlement and environment were dwelled in. A first section explores how houses, open areas and middens in the settlement were enmeshed in the daily lives of the inhabitants, integrating a wide range of different types of data at different scales. A second section examines subsistence practices of the site’s inhabitants and builds up a picture of how the overall landscape was exploited and lived within. A third section examines the evidence from the skeletons of those buried within the houses at Çatalhöyük in order to examine health, diet, lifestyle and activity within the settlement and across the landscape. This final section also reports on the burial practices and associations in order to build hypotheses about the social organization of those inhabiting the settlement. A complex picture emerges of a relatively decentralized society, large in size but small-scale in terms of organization, dwelling within a mosaic patchwork of environments. Through time, however, substantial changes occur in the ways in which humans and landscapes interact.

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The mound known as Canhasan Hueyuek 1, in the Konya Plain of south-central Turkey, has revealed a series of settlements running through the Chalcolithic period (c5500-3000 BC). This first volume detailing work carried out between 1961 and 1967, lays out the fundamental stratigraphy of the site and the major structural developments of the Chalcolithic period. Future volumes will examine the phases of discontinuity at the site (unique in the south and western Anatolian record) in more detail, with discussion of ceramic and environmental evidence.

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The excavations at Canhasan Höyök I in the Konya plain of central Turkey revealed a series of settlements running through the Chalcolithic period (c.5500-3000 BC). The pottery from the site, much of it of types previously unknown or not found elsewhere in stratified contexts, is of fundamental importance for an understanding of this period in Anatolia. In this volume, Dr French, the excavator of Canhasan and for many years director of the British Institute at Ankara, carefully and concisely presents both the plain and decorated wares, with detailed descriptions of their characteristic fabrics, shapes and decoration. There is a full catalogue of the best-preserved and most important pieces (which were registered finds), but a major feature of the volume are the drawings of over 2500 less well-preserved pieces, which illustrate all the characteristic shapes and types of decoration. A special feature of the study is a careful grading of the material in terms of chronological reliability. The author privileges the whole, or nearly whole, pots found on floors in each layer, as the only types which were certainly made at the time. Related pottery may be accepted as contemporary, but with less certainty, while unrelated wares must be treated with circumspection, for they may be either recycled from an earlier layer or intrusive from a later one. This rigorous methodology means that the Chalcolithic pottery provides a completely reliable relative chronology through the Chalcolithic period, and the volume will remain a basic reference for Near Eastern archaeology.

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This volume discusses the main excavations at Neolithic Çatalhöyük East undertaken from 2009 to 2017. The site is well known because of its large size, elaborate symbolism and wall paintings, and long history of excavation. This volume covers the last period of excavation directed by Ian Hodder in the North and South Areas of the site. It also describes the work conducted in the GDN Area on the later phases of occupation.The main aim of these excavations was to understand the layout and social geography of the settlement (both houses and open areas) and to situate the elaborate art and symbolism within a secure architectural and depositional context. Excavation and conservation methods are described and the campaign of geophysical prospection is described. Considerable focus is placed on detailed dating using Bayesian modeling that alters significantly our understanding of the organization of the settlement. New light is thrown on the degree of contemporaneity of buildings and on the continuities and breaks in house occupation and in the site as a whole. A fuller understanding has also been reached of the variability of houses and burials and of how these variations relate to social differentiation. The descriptions of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of different types of data and of different voices within the excavation team mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations conducted by Mellaart revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as spectacular wall paintings and reliefs in the houses. This volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations undertaken at Çatalhöyük between 2009 and 2017, although many authors also discuss data generated through the whole 25-year period of excavation by the Çatalhöyük Research Project since 1993.This volume scrutinizes Çatalhöyük as the by-product of the activities of a community residing in central Turkey 9,000 years ago, but also as the outcome of the interactions of a community of researchers with wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. The volume commences with an overview of community engagement practices and of the ways different audiences have interacted with the site through the life of the project. It then considers the differences in approach of the Mellaart and recent excavations and reflects on different methodological perspectives that have been used at the site. It synthesizes the diverse array of environmental resources that would have been used in different times of the year. The ways in which the community at Çatalhöyük was held together, but also how community dynamics may have changed over time, are considered through the analysis of open areas, house architecture and contents, and the sequence of activities in houses. Modeling changes in practices over time shows that the effects of new introductions such as cooking pottery played out over many phases of occupation. The evidence for violence at the site is re-evaluated integrating the analysis of human remains and different forms of artifacts such as projectile points, clay balls and maceheads. The use of pigments on house surfaces, objects and human bodies and the social practices surrounding these practices are considered.The diversity of themes discussed in this volume captures the multifaceted nature of Çatalhöyük.

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This newest volume in the Çatalhöyük Research Project Series continues the interpretation of the material obtained during excavation of the site from 2009 to 2017 under the direction of Professor Ian Hodder. Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old tell site in central Turkey, is of international importance due to its large size at an early date, its dense population and its long occupation. Its well-preserved buildings and rich art in the Neolithic East Mound give a unique insight into early village life, and the site allows study of many of the main questions dealing with the formation of settled villages/towns and the early intensification of agriculture. This volume, in 16 chapters by project specialists, focuses on the material artefacts recovered from the site, including a range of clay objects (ceramics, clay balls, tokens, figurines) and others made of stone, shell and textile. The analysis of these items, within a framework of intersecting and transformative “flows” of matter that are entangled with human aims and strategies, illuminates issues of procurement and exchange, house and community (including shifting cooking practices and the early management of cattle), and the organisation of production. Collectively, they reveal how change was generated across 1,100 years of occupation by the ‘productive potential’ of things.

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Tille Höyük 3.2 is one of the few Iron Age sites to have been excavated on the River Euphrates between Malatya and Carchemish on the Turco-Syrian border, at a crossing point on the west bank of the Euphrates, an area now almost entirely inundated by a series of dam schemes. It is the only one with a near-complete Iron Age stratigraphic sequence to be published in detail to date. The site was dug between 1979 and 1990 by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara as part of the Turkish Lower Euphrates Rescue Project. The excavation revealed important architectural remains of the Early Iron Age, Neo-Hittite, Neo-Assyrian, and Achaemenid periods, spanning the eleventh to the fifth–fourth centuries BC. In this second (and final) volume of the report on the Iron Age levels, the pottery and objects are presented, together with chapters on seals and plant remains, along with a concluding discussion of the material covered in both Tille 3.1 and Tille 3.2. Lying on the margins of the Mesopotamian world, and with contacts with North Syria, North Mesopotamia, and the Levant, rather than with Anatolia or the Mediterranean, Tille provides vivid insights into the cultural history of the region during the Iron Age. Tille 3.2 covers the material culture of Iron Age Tille and aims to draw lessons from the experience of rescue excavation in the context of a major dam scheme in a previously unexplored area of North Mesopotamia (with important implications for the archaeology and chronology of the region), and discusses the significance of the site in its local and regional context.

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The papers in this book result from a conference held in Istanbul in 2004, and are the product of collaboration between the British Academy Black Sea Initiative (BABSI) and the City and Regional Planning Department of Istanbul Technical University. They cover a period from the first appearance of human settlers in the Black Sea region to the present day, and all emphasize the significance of the Black Sea itself as a source of unity, linking communities and histories in a wider regional context, extending westward along the Danube basin, northward into the Ukraine and south Russia, east into the Caucasus and southward over the Anatolian hinterland. A major introductory paper re-examines the evidence for the Black Sea flood hypothesis. A group of four papers evaluate new evidence for the economic and cultural relationships between Greeks and native populations in the Black Sea region from the seventh to the fourth centuries BC. The next group of studies is concerned with the interconnectedness of the Black Sea between medieval and modern times, highlighting Seljuk and Ottoman trade, and the roles of the ports of Odessa and Trabzon. Four papers deal with the economic and social development of the Turkish Black Sea region in recent times. The final section places Black Sea history in a long perspective both from a cultural and a political viewpoint.

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which humans became increasingly engaged in their material environment such that ‘things’ came to play an active force in their lives. A substantial and heavy involvement was with alluvial clays that surrounded the site. In the absence of large local stone, humans became increasingly involved in the extraction and manipulation of clay for a wide range of purposes – from bricks to ovens, pots and figurines. This heavy use of clays led to changes in the local environment that interacted with human activity, as indicated in the first section of the volume. In the second section, other examples of material technologies are considered all of which in various ways engage humans in specific dependencies and relationships. For example, large-scale studies of obsidian trade have drawn a complex picture of changing interactions between humans over time. The volume concludes with an integrated account of the uses of materials at Çatalhöyük based on the analysis of heavy residue samples from all contexts at the site.

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Occupying 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.

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Winifred Lamb was a pioneering archaeologist in the Aegean and Anatolia. She studied classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and subsequently served in naval intelligence alongside J. D. Beazley during the final stages of the First World War. As war drew to a close, Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, invited Lamb to be the honorary keeper of Greek antiquities. Over the next 40 years she created a prehistoric gallery, marking the university’s contribution to excavations in the Aegean, and developed the museum’s holdings of classical bronzes and Athenian figure-decorated pottery. Lamb formed a parallel career excavating in the Aegean. She was admitted as a student of the British School at Athens and served as assistant director on the Mycenae excavations under Alan Wace and Carl Blegen. After further work at Sparta and on prehistoric mounds in Macedonia, Lamb identified and excavated a major Bronze Age site at Thermi on Lesbos. She conducted a brief excavation on Chios before directing a major project at Kusura in Turkey. She was recruited for the Turkish language section of the BBC during the Second World War, and after the cessation of hostilities took an active part in the creation of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

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