Tarsus and Kinet Höyük

At 6.15 am on Saturday June 29th, we hopped into our two trusty minivans, armed with water, food, and the naïve hope that today might not be as hot as yesterday, and headed toward the city of Tarsus. Located approximately 40 km southwest of Adana on the Mediterranean coast, Tarsus is most famous for hosting Marc Antony and Cleopatra’s first encounter, as well as for being the hometown of St. Paul. Perhaps less known are the strategically significant Cilician gates that lie north of the city and boast the passage of many famous historical figures including Cyrus the Younger, Alexander the Great, and Pompey. Yet, as Ben was sure to remind us during his presentation, the history of Tarsus is much older than popular memories may suggest.

Excavations by Hetty Goldman in 1935 revealed a history of several thousand years, harkening back to the Neolithic period (ca. 10,000 BCE). The continuity of habitation in this area is no surprise. Tarsus, whose very name reaches back to the Hittite period (ie. Tarsa), was located in an extremely favorable location. In Jeff’s words, the settlement was “situated on a river in a fertile plain along the Mediterranean Sea, and controlled a strategically vital entrance to the Cilician plain, itself an important crossroads of the Orient and the Occident.” Hittites, Romans, Byzantines, Armenians, and Ottomans are but a few of many cultures that took control of the city at various times in history. The picture below, illustrating a Roman road and adjoining structures excavated in the very center of town, is a powerful reminder of the wealth of archaeology that lies sealed under the bustling streets of modern Tarsus.

After an enjoyable picnic in a local park, we made our way to our second destination. The site of Kinet Höyük is especially important within the context of our survey since it is the only excavated settlement in our target region. As such, this site provides us with a basic regional sequence of material culture with which to contextualize our finds, both chronologically and culturally. Marie-Henriette Gates of Bilkent University, Ankara, the director of the excavation and a member of our survey team, was kind enough to give us a detailed tour of this incredible site, whose remains span the third millennium BCE through to the medieval period. Although the name Kinet Höyük may not evoke much at first, some readers may recognize the name of Issos, the famous site where Alexander the Great opposed the Persian King Darius in battle for the second and penultimate time. Research indicates that Kinet Hoyuk was once known as ancient Issos. The picture below illustrates part of the remains of the fourth century BCE Persian settlement that Alexander and his troops would have looked upon after their victory over King Darius.

You may notice that the excavation trench also contains a number of round features. These are Medieval pits dating to the 13th-14th centuries. More specifically, they are robbing trenches, dug into earlier settlement levels with the intent of stealing stone building materials for reuse. The following picture features the remains of a much earlier settlement level dating to the Hittite New Kingdom (ca.1500-1200 BCE).

The picture above shows the remains of a very peculiar find. Excavators came upon this hollow tunnel that appears to have run under the settlement foundations and to have been too small and narrow for a person to crawl into. The nearby discovery of what appears to be a clay pipeline may point to its function as a sewer system.

This last picture is a good example of archaeological stratigraphy. The vertical dirt wall illustrates various layers of occupation. Particularly interesting is the thick layer above the stone remains towards which Dr. Gates is pointing. This level shows the remains of the Iron Age “occupation”. The quotation marks are relevant here because the excavators are still unsure as to the character of the site at this period. No structural remains have been found and artifacts suggest random trash disposal rather than regular habitation. Dr. Gates also informed that whereas previous occupants consumed great quantities of fish, no such faunal remains were found in Iron Age strata. This change in the cultural and physical aspect is especially interesting in view of the events that marked the end of the Bronze Age (ca.1200 BCE) throughout the Mediterranean. At this time, the ancient Mediterranean world suffered a crisis which caused the disintegration of many state-level societies, including the Hittites, and the weakening of great powers such as Egypt. The exact causes of this crisis are still the subject of active research, but scholars generally agree that it occurred as a result of a gradual process of decline involving disruptions in trading mechanisms, destructions (human and natural), and widespread abandonments.

The Kinet Höyük team is performing its last season of fieldwork after 15 years of excavation. In the coming years, material from the site will be further studied and interpreted, a process which we hope will yield more answers to so many interesting questions.

To finish this blog post, here are a few more pictures featuring other sites we visited. Below is the interior of a recently renovated Armenian Church. The last picture shows the exterior part of the Adana Museum, with a beautıful Mosque in the background.

On Tuesday we begin our first day of survey work... we'll keep you updated!!!

Amanda*

Antakya, part I

Today we are on a field trip, and this marks the first time we have left our monastery for any significant period of time.

We headed down to the heart of Hatay province where we visited the sites of Alalakh and Tayinat. First we stopped by their dig houses as pictured below.

This is their lab.

This is a view of the Amuq plain from Tayinat. The mountains on the right are in Turkey, while those on the left are in Syria.

Alalakh from Tayinat.

Tayinat is just visible in the distance in this view across Alalakh.

This is an Iron Age structure found at Tayinat. Notice the outlines of unfired mud bricks especially apparent on the right side of the structure.

For those interested in the history of archaeology, this is Leonard Woolley's dig house at Alalakh.

We have more pictures from the city of Antakya itself. However, time runs short. I promise more pictures soon.

Ben

Sometimes getting there is less than half the fun

It was around our second hour (of three) of sitting in the plane on the runway at JFK airport when we realized our trip was going to take a lot longer than we had planned.

36 hours later, we arrived at our lodgings just outside İskenderun. In between, we missed our connection flight in London, then in turn missed our 7pm connection flight in İstanbul. In London, however, thanks to some quick thinking we arranged to take the first flight (7am) out of İstanbul. Events conspired against us (again) there, too, as Turkish Air managed to not actually book us on the 7am flight. So we waited until 11am and, after a layover of about 10 hours, we took the 1 hour and 15 minute flight to Adana. From there it was but a short taxi ride to our fantastic Catholic resort.

We, by the way, were the three proprietors of this blog and two undergraduate students from PSU, Brendon and Dan. Witness Amanda's photographic genius:

All is not bad, thankfully. Our lodgings are excellent (far better than is usual for archaeological expeditions), everyone here is very nice, the food is great, and the view is great. A few pictures:

Finally, a photo of some of our group:

That's it for now, I'm rushed for time. We will update in a few days.

Visas Received

A week or so ago, we all Fed Exed our passports to Sandra Scham, a fellow survey participant who lives in northwestern Washington, DC. She took them to the Turkish Embassy in DC in order to get our entry and transit visas.

Fortunately for Dr. Killebrew and unfortunately for those of us who would not mind seeing Cyprus, this bureaucratic hurdle was cleared easily. Sandra has mailed the passports back, and hopefully everyone will receive them before their flights leave.

Here's what a Turkish research visa looks like.

An Update on Our Progress

While we all anxiously await for Amanda's historic summary, the three of us thought you might like to hear about our travel preparations.

Over a month ago, we filled out the paperwork needed by the Turkish government to grant us research visas, which it did. However, because the Turkish government strictly regulates foreign access to their nation, we will need to send our passports to the Turkish embassy in Washington DC in the weeks just before we leave. If for some reason there is a hitch in this process, we will need travel to Nicosia on Cyprus to obtain the visas. Although this could potentially become a headache for Dr. Killebrew, no complaints will appear on this blog.

Amanda, Jeff and I purchased our tickets from STA on the Penn State campus, which turned out to be our cheapest option. We will be flying out of New York on British Airways with a layover in London. From London we will fly to Istanbul on Turkish Air.

While the travel agent was getting Jeff and Amanda's tickets, the flight from New York to London sold out. Although I may get lonely, I will be on the British Airways flight on the same route leaving twenty minutes earlier.

Once in Istanbul, we will catch our final flight to Adana. Our plane touches down in Adana at 9:20 local time, which is seven hours earlier than Eastern Standard Time. By then we will have been travelling for 19 hours and 50 minutes.

From Adana, Dr. Killebrew will arrange some form of transportation to Iskenderun which is about two hours away.

Look forward to more travelling information after we submit our passports to the embassy.

Ben

Aegean Archaeology in the News

While Amanda is preparing our next post, I thought I would share an article from the New York Times on the Philistines. Some scholars think the Old Testament bad guys may have originated in Cilicia, and at the least there is some evidence of a cultural connection between Late Bronze Age Cilicians and Philistine colonists. Exploring the nature and extent of this connection is one of the ultimate aims of Dr. Killebrew, our survey director. A little teaser:

In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.

Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B. C.

At the ruins of a Philistine seaport at Ashkelon in Israel, excavators examined 19 ceramic pieces and determined that their painted inscriptions represent a form of writing. Some of the pots and storage jars were inscribed elsewhere, probably in Cyprus and Crete, and taken to Ashkelon by early settlers. Of special importance, one of the jars was made from local clay, meaning Philistine scribes were presumably at work in their new home.

Turkey from the Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age

We have decided to kick off this blog with a brief overview of the Turkish archaeological record. As an anthropological archaeologist focusing primarily on prehistoric cultures, I have taken on the task of surveying the majority of Turkey’s prehistory from the Paleolithic up through the Early Bronze Age.

One of the benefits of starting the documentation of the project this early in the game is that visitors to this blog will witness, and also hopefully come to appreciate, all the steps in the archaeological process. These historical summaries represent the earliest attempts archaeologists make towards getting a handle on the relevant research that has already been conducted. As our familiarity with this literature grows, we will refine and add to the narrative presented in these first posts.

I have found Martha Sharp Joukowsky’s book Early Turkey: Anatolian Archaeology from Prehistory through the Lydian Period an adequate introduction to Turkish prehistory. Unless stated otherwise, this book is the source for the information contained in this post. The archaeologically recognized time periods (e.g. Paleolithic, Early Bronze Age, etc.) with a more detailed focus on Cilician sites when possible will provide the structure for this post. In addition I will provide a brief description of a few of the more well-known Turkish sites.

Within the broader discipline of anthropology, the period encompassing the earliest development of anatomically modern humans and our closest relatives is called the Paleolithic (Greek for “old stone”). This period extends from around 2,000,000 years ago to around 13,000 years ago. The Paleolithic is further subdivided into the Upper (2,000,000—120,000 Before Present), the Middle (300,000—30,000 BP), and the Lower (30,000—13,000BP). Despite such a long expanse of time (1.9 million years), archaeologists and hominid paleontologists know relatively little about this period, which in turn leaves plenty of room for contentious speculation.

In general, the recovery of stone tools provides the primary marker of this period. Archaeologists found the earliest evidence for human existence in Turkey at the site of Yarımburgaz near İstanbul, which dates to between 700,000 and 350,000 years ago. Yarımburgaz contained over 1200 stone tools and the butchered remains of several animals ranging from rabbits to wild bovids.

During the Middle Paleolithic, Turkey witnessed the arrival of Homo sapiens neanderthalis around 60,000 BP and Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) around 40,000 BP. The evolutionary relationship of these two species or subspecies currently constitutes a hot debate and could possibly change several times before we even arrive in Turkey.

Wrapping up the Paleolithic, the caves at Karain and Beldibi near Turkey’s southwest coast have produced some of Turkey’s earliest cave paintings and rock carvings of men and animals dating to the Upper Paleolithic.

The next period is called the Mesolithic (Greek for “middle stone”) or Epipaleolithic which lasts from around 12,000—8,000 BCE. Archaeologists know very little about the Turkish Mesolithic at this point. However it is apparent that stone tools became more and more specialized, a trend which began in the Lower Paleolithic.

During the Mesolithic, the glaciers of the latest ice age began to retreat. This led to a slow, yet steady, environmental change. Around the same time, the human population of Turkey began a transition from hunting and gathering toward a more settled, horticultural lifestyle, which wild variants of barley, emmer, einkorn, deer, cattle, pig, gazelle and goat supported.

Whatever the precise relationships between changing environmental conditions and human behavior, these developments set the stage for the Neolithic Revolution, which many archaeologists consider to be one of the most significant events in human history. The Neolithic (unsurprisingly Greek for “new stone”) lasted from 10,000—5500 BCE.

By around 9000 BCE, the area around the Taurus Mountains south to the Mediterranean had taken on its present climate, making the region much more hospitable to humans. Archaeologists divide the Neolithic period into the earlier Prepottery Neolithic (PPN) and the later Pottery Neolithic (PN), divisions which Mesopotamian and Levant archaeologists have similarly applied. However, the Turkish PPN differed from these other areas by possessing intense sedentism but with little to no reliance on domesticates.

Located in eastern Turkey along a tributary to the Tigris River, the site of Çayönü Tepe (tepe is Turkish for “hill”), dating to around 9000 BCE, represents the first evidence of wattle and daub architecture in Turkey, and the earliest use of metal tools anywhere (at least by the time of the publication of Joukowsky’s book). In addition, archaeologists have recovered evidence for the initial stages of the domestication of flora and fauna.

The PN period witnessed the development of Çatal Höyük (höyük is the Turkish word for “Tel”) one of the most well-known sites in the field of archaeology. Located on the Konya Plain just to the northeast of the Cilician plain, Çatal Höyük is the largest Neolithic site found anywhere in the Middle East. Aside from its size and status as a proto-city, Çatal Höyük is also notable due to the evidence found there for the elaboration of ritual behavior.

On the Cilician plain, the sites of Tarsus and Mersin begin to provide us with information more specifically relevant to our upcoming survey. The earliest levels of Mersin (Yümük Tepe in Turkish) date to around 6000 BCE. It is a 12 acre mound which provides a record for the transition from foraging to cultivation and the earliest evidence that sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs had been domesticated and butchered. Ceramics found at Tarsus (Gözlü Kule in Turkish) link the site to Mersin, but a high water table prevents the detailed exploration of earlier levels. Artifacts found at Mersin and Tarsus demonstrate more interaction with Syria and Mesopotamia than to closer sites in Anatolia—a trait which will come to characterize Cilicia for the ensuing millenia.

The Chalcolithic period (Greek for “copper stone”) from 5500—3000 BCE followed the Neolithic. An increase in the use of metal characterizes this period, but stone tools still predominated. New forms of ceramics and new architectural features such as fortifications begin to appear. Settlement studies provide evidence for population growth and stylistic changes suggest migrations into Turkey from Thrace and Iran.

On the Cilician plain, Mersin and Tarsus continue to show links to Syria and the Mesopotamian Halaf, Ubaid, and Uruk cultures. At around 4500 BCE, Mersin’s ceramic styles change dramatically which may mark the arrival of a new population which also brought copper tools with them. After about 4400 BCE, the residents of Mersin began gearing their architecture more towards defense by constructing thick outer walls built with an accompanying glacis, which is a slope leading down from the outer fortifications. Inside the settlement, excavators exposed at least three major monuments. By the end of the Chalcolithic period, archaeological evidence indicates that a group from the Konya plain (where Çatal Höyük is located) migrated to Cilicia.

The Early Bronze Age (3000—1900 BCE) is the last period this post will cover. Unsurprisingly, this period is marked by the widespread replacement of stone tools with bronze, which is an alloy of tin and copper. However, several other technological innovations occurred during this period: the plow, the sailing ship, and both the horizontal and vertical wheel.

Around 2300 to 2200 BCE urbanization began to take hold in Turkey. This led to the emergence of the urban city-state with its reliance on agriculture, a specialized labor force. It has been hypothesized that Mesopotamian and Aegean demand for Anatolian mineral resources spurred the urbanization process. This demand would have led to the spread of trade networks and a growing interdependence between city-states.

Also around 2300 BCE, a wave of destruction spread across Turkey and the larger Middle East, but hit particularly hard on the Konya plain, in Cilicia and in the Anatolian southwest. The resulting period of rebuilding led to the development of a larger sociopolitical entity consisting of unified city-states in the southwest, but also the abandonment of other long-occupied sites.

During the Early Bronze Age Turkey’s most famous site, Troy, was established. At its founding around 2950 BCE, little to distinguished Troy from other Turkish sites aside from its commanding location on the Dardanelles. Presently, Troy is located several kilometers from the water, but coastal morphology studies have revealed that during the Early Bronze Age the coast was much closer.

Down on the Cilician plain, Tarsus and Mersin experienced the same wave of destruction described above. However, the developing city-states there maintained greater autonomy than those in the southwest. In addition, the region continued to show a greater affiliation to cultures in the east as opposed to the rest of Turkey.

This brings us to the conclusion of my portion of our “quick” survey of Turkish and Cilician history. Amanda will pick up next time beginning with the Middle Bronze Age.

Ben