The Archaeology of Anatolia

For archaeologists with interests in the eastern Mediterranean and the ancient Near East, publication of the first in what is promised to be a new series of volumes dedicated to making available the results of recent fieldwork is a promising event. In the introductory chapter we are told that volumes will appear in alternate years. The current editors, Sharon Steadman and Gregory McMahon, aim to hand over their role after two or three volumes. A list of chapters is given at the end of this review. Rather than comment on individual chapters, this review will first summarize and evaluate the contents, and then address the issue of how useful such a series might be as a way of rapid dissemination.The geographic scope is Anatolia, which here is synonymous with the modern Turkish Republic, including chapters related to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean coast of Rough Cilicia, Turkish Thrace, and the Tigris River valley in the southeast, as well as the Anatolian Plateau. In this first volume only the high eastern massif is unrepresented. This is a vast area over which it is surely impossible to provide equal coverage. Nevertheless the volume contains chapters that will be of interest to scholars working in Eurasia, eastern Europe, the Levant, and Greater Mesopotamia. Chronological span is from the later Neolithic to the medieval. Chapters two through ten report on excavations, eleven to fifteen on surveys. Thus the net is spread very wide, although five of the nine chapters on excavations are concerned with the Plateau. The choice of sites and surveys included reflects research based in the English-speaking world. While authors hail from a variety of institutions in Turkey, Europe, and the USA, all the projects reported on are foreign expeditions granted permits by the Turkish authorities. Of the excavations Barcın Höyük (Chapter 2) is Dutch, Uşaklı Höyük (Chapter 8) Italian, while one survey, the Burdur Plain, is Belgian, the rest being out of North America. Turkish, Austrian, German, Japanese, and other international research is absent. Some sites, such as the Phrygian capital of Gordion, are major sites subject to long-term investigation and management, others, for instance Çamlıbel Tarlası (Chapter 4), are small, in this case only about 50 x 50 metres with occupation restricted to Late Chalcolithic levels. This may be contrasted with reports on larger multi-period settlement mounds, or höyüks (Çadır, Kınık, Uşaklı). The importance of individual sites does not, however, have much bearing on the value of individual chapters for reasons discussed later in this review. Surveys are likewise diverse. Three of the surveys, the Lower Göksu, the Sinope region, and Yalburt Yalası, are broad in geographic and territorial coverage, while the survey of the Burdur plain (Chapter 13) focuses only on the Middle Chalcolithic period while the final survey chapter concerns the modest Late Roman and Byzantine city of Euchaïta. In addition to this geographic distribution, the range of site types, scopes of surveys, chronological spans, and different levels of importance alluded to above, there are equally large variations in the approaches to this volume taken by the authors of individual chapters. Reasons for this, over and above those already mentioned, include the progress or completeness of research as well as decisions about what to include and what to exclude in interim reports of this kind.The book title, The Archaeology of Anatolia, may be thought somewhat misleading, for what we have are, at best, snapshots of selected projects. The subtitle, Recent Discoveries (2011–2014) Volume I, also lacks accuracy. Ulf-Dietrich Schoop's excavations of Late Chalcolithic Çamblıbel Tarlası, important not least because no arsenic is present in copper slags whereas excavated objects are all of arsenical bronze, took place between 2007 and 2009, with the result that Chapter 4 provides a useful overview of completed fieldwork. Rescue excavations at Ziyaret Tepe in the Tigris valley were completed in 2013, with a final study season the following year. Timothy Matney, in Chapter 7, has provided a succinct overview of results, annual accounts of which have been published in Anatolica. With regard to surveys, the Burdur Plain Middle Chalcolithic fieldwork ended in 2012, followed by study seasons in 2013 and 2014, making Chapter 13 something approaching a final statement. The following chapter, on the Sinop regional survey, has also been completed, with excavations in the city now underway (http://srapexcavation.wixsite.com/kale). The final chapter, on the Late Roman and Byzantine city of Euchaïta is likewise an overview of a finished project on which the authors are preparing a monograph (Haldon et al. forthcoming). Other projects are ongoing. In most cases authors have kept to the brief, the latest Late Neolithic and later discoveries in the Polish 2012–2014 TPC excavations at Çatal Höyük East, the 2014 season at Barcın Höyük, 2013–2014 at Çadır Höyük, and so on. A somewhat broader view is taken of the long-term and multi-faceted work at Gordion, Chapter 9, while the entire ten years of research at Antiochia ad Cragum are reviewed in Chapter 10.With regard to production, very many of the illustrations are over-reduced to the point where maps and plans are often unreadable even with a magnifying glass. Likewise photographs, such as 9.1 on p. 181 to give but one example. Images of pottery sherds given in chapter 8 have been reduced to the extent that they are of little utility to the reader, presumably in order to keep the chapter within a set number of pages; an example of formatting and production concerns overriding the archaeological needs of publication. This over-reduction is not helped by choice of an A5 format rather than the A4 for which many of the illustrations were originally prepared. The method of printing only compounds these problems since the backgrounds to maps, so crucial to chapters on surveys, are far too faint. Partly empty pages (e.g., 9, 29, 103, 155, 308) and general discrepancy in page length displays minimal effort in formatting that does no credit to either the editorial process or the publisher.What then, at US $110, is the target audience of this volume, and indeed of the ensuing series? Reporting on work up to 2014, published in 2015, and perhaps not appearing on library shelves before 2016, this is not exactly speedy as it inevitably lags behind one or two seasons of fieldwork. As the editors point out in their introductory chapter, there are annual reports of almost all research excavations published in the Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı to which they might have added both the survey and the archaeometry series, Arıştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı and Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı. Although most often in Turkish, all issues are available online.1 There are further regular outlets for interim reports, notably the French Anatolia Antiqua, and the less regular but now mostly in English Anatolian Archaeological Studies published by the Japanese Institute (also available online). Important reports of research by the German Archaeological Institute at Istanbul can be found in Archäologischer Anzeiger, short reports of work sponsored by the British Institute at Ankara in Heritage Turkey. Individual sites have their own publication projects, such as the monograph on the Uşaklı Höyük survey (Mazzoni and Pecchioli Daddi 2015), or the Gordion volumes (listed by Rose in Chapter 9), to which may now be added a more recent report with excellent illustrations that is in the public domain (Rose 2017). Most have their own websites, like Çatal Höyük where a report on the 2015 season in the TPC area can be found with full color illustration. In similar vein, Peri Johnson and Ömür Harmanşah have published more recent field reports (e.g., Harmanşah and Johnson 2016).All English-speaking archaeologists working in Turkey would welcome a new equivalent to the annual “Archaeology in Asia Minor/Anatolia” reports that appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology authored by the late Machteld Mellink from 1955 to 1993 (Greenwalt 2007). Following Professor Mellink's retirement, there were laudable attempts to continue these summaries, which were based on reports presented at the annual symposium in Turkey, but these necessarily lapsed, in large part because of an explosion in the amount of fieldwork, both Turkish and foreign, that began in the 1980s and continues to this day regardless of current challenges to both funding and security. While a large portion of this lacuna is now filled by project and institutional web sites, coherent annual overviews of the kind offered by Mellink seem no longer sustainable, and most certainly some distance beyond the remit of a single scholar. If the book under review was intended to go some way towards filling this niche, the best intentions of the editors notwithstanding, it falls some way short of what now is surely an impossible task. It is not easy to see how the present format of a hodgepodge of brief reports on excavations and surveys that appears on library shelves only some two or more years after the close of the field season on which they report, can be improved upon. It is yet harder to see substantial academic usefulness that justifies the price. To conclude, because some contributions will be of importance for some time to come, until superseded by further research or more substantial publications, there will be some demand for specialist libraries to subscribe to the series, but most will have no difficulty in making better purchases at a time when funding is increasingly under pressure.Chapters Introduction: The Archaeology of Anatolia: Recent Discoveries, Sharon R. Steadman and Gregory McMahonA New Perspective on the Central Anatolian Late Neolithic: The TPC Area Excavations at Çatalhöyük East, Arkadiusz MarciniakBarcın Höyük Excavations: The 2014 Season in Perspective, Rana Özbal and Fokke GerritsenÇamlıbel Tarlası: Late Chalcolithic Settlement and Economy in the Budaközü Valley (North-Central Anatolia), Ulf-Dietrich SchoopRecent Work (2013–2014) at Çadır Höyük on the North Central Anatolian Plateau, Sharon R. Steadman and Gregory McMahonKınık Höyük, Niğde: A New Archaeological Project in Southern Cappadocia, Nancy Highcock et al.The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition, 1997–2014: Overview and Recent Discoveries, Timothy MatneyResearch at Uşaklı Höyük (Central Anatolian Plateau), Stefania Mazzoni and Anacleto D'AgostinoRecent Fieldwork at Gordion, C. Brian RoseAntiochia ad Cragum in Western Rough Cilicia, Michael Hoff et al.Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey Project: The Results of the 2013 and 2014 Seasons, T. Emre Şerifoğlu, Naoíse Mac Sweeney, and Carlo ColantoniLandscape, Politics, and Water in the Hittite Borderlands: Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project 2010-2014, Peri Johnson and Ömür HarmanşahThe Burdur Plain Survey (SW Turkey): In Search of the Middle Chalcolithic (5500-4200 BCE), Ralf VandamSinop Regional Archaeological Project: Report on the 2010–2012 Field Seasons, Owen Doonan et al.Euchaïta, John Haldon, Hugh Elton, and James Newhard

Ancient history · Archaeology · Cartography · Geography · Massif · Mediterranean climate · Mesopotamia · Middle East · Plateau (mathematics · Scope (computer science · Turkish · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History

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