Borders in Archaeology: Anatolia and the South Caucasus Ca. 3500-500 Bce (Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement Series, 58) 9789042943735, 9789042943742, 9042943734

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY
BORDERS AND ARCHAEOLOGY
ON BORDERS AS AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL/HISTORICAL PROBLEM
BORDERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL BORDERS IN ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS
ARE “BORDERS” A USEFUL CONCEPT IN PREAND PROTO-HISTORIC TIMES? A LONG HISTORY OF INTERACTION BETWEEN UPPER EUPHRATES SOCIETIES A
THE “BORDER, FRONTIER AND BOUNDARY” CONCEPT WITHIN THE KURA-ARAXES CULTURAL PHENOMENON
A MULTISCALAR AND MULTIVARIATE APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES IN EARLY BRONZE AGE WESTERN ANATOLIA
BORDERS AND POLITICAL MACHINES. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS IN THE 2ND MILLENNIUM BCE
COMPARING BORDERS: WRITTEN AND MATERIAL CULTURE APPROACHES TO DEFINITIONS OF POLITICAL FRONTIERS IN ANATOLIA 2000-1650 BCE
SOCIAL BOUNDS AND SEASONAL ROUNDS: TERRITORIAL IMPLICATIONS OF HIGHLAND INTERACTION AND OBLIGATION IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE SOUTH
BORDERS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE HITTITE EMPIRE
BORDERS IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AT THE TURN OF THE 2ND – 1ST MILLENNIA BCE
CULTURAL BORDERS IN THE CENTRAL CAUCASUS: THE MIDDLE KURA RIVER VALLEY IN THE LATE BRONZE AND EARLY IRON AGE
CULTURAL BORDERS AT THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN EDGES OF THE CENTRAL ANATOLIAN PLATEAU IN THE SECOND AND PRE-CLASSICAL FIRST MILLEN
TOWARDS SUPRA-REGIONAL POLITICAL ENTITIES: ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS DURING THE 1ST MILLENNIUM BCE
TROY AND PHRYGIA DURING THE IRON AGE
BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES
IN THE NICK: SPACE AND TIME IN THE BORDERLANDS OF OĞLANQALA

Citation preview

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN STUDIES SUPPLEMENT 58

BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY Anatolia and the South Caucasus ca. 3500–500 BCE Edited by

Lorenzo D’ALFONSO and Karen S. RUBINSON

PEETERS 󰀂󰀀󰀂󰀁

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN STUDIES SUPPLEMENT 58

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN STUDIES SUPPLEMENT 58

BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY Anatolia and the South Caucasus ca. 3500–500 BCE Edited by

Lorenzo D’ALFONSO and Karen S. RUBINSON

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT. 2021

Series Editors: Claudia Sagona and Andrew Jamieson A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-429-4373-5 eISBN 978-90-429-4374-2 D/2021/0602/131 Cover illustration: Caucasus Mountains Georgia (photo by Giorgi Khaburzania) © Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission from the publisher PRINTED IN BELGIUM BY

Peeters N.V., Warotstraat 50, B-3020 Herent

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY Borders and Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lorenzo D’ALFONSO (ISAW, New York University/University of Pavia) and Karen RUBINSON (ISAW, New York University)

3

On Borders as an Archaeological/Historical Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roderick CAMPBELL (ISAW, New York University)

37

PART II: BORDERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL BORDERS IN ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS Are “Borders” a Useful Concept in Pre- and Proto-Historic Times? A Long History of Interaction between Upper Euphrates Societies and Northern Anatolian Communities in the Fourth Millennium BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marcella FRANGIPANE (La Sapienza University, Rome)

51

The “Border, Frontier and Boundary” Concept within the Kura-Araxes Cultural Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mehmet IŞIKLI (Atatürk University, Erzurum)

73

A Multiscalar and Multivariate Approach to the Analysis of Social and Cultural Boundaries in Early Bronze Age Western Anatolia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michele MASSA (University of Chicago)

93

PART III: BORDERS AND POLITICAL MACHINES. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS IN THE 2ND MILLENNIUM BCE Comparing Borders: Written and Material Culture Approaches to Definitions of Political Frontiers in Anatolia 2000-1650 BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gojko BARJAMOVIC (Harvard University)

125

Social Bounds and Seasonal Rounds: Territorial Implications of Highland Interaction and Obligation in the Late Bronze Age South Caucasus . . . . . . . . . . Ian LINDSAY (Purdue University)

141

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CONTENTS

Borders in the Archaeology of the Hittite Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lorenzo D’ALFONSO (ISAW, New York University/University of Pavia)

169

PART IV: BORDERS IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AT THE TURN OF THE 2ND – 1ST MILLENNIA BCE Cultural Borders in the Central Caucasus: The Middle Kura River Valley in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jessie BIRKETT-REES (Monash University, Melbourne) Cultural Borders at the Northern and Eastern Edges of the Central Anatolian Plateau in the Second and Pre-Classical First Millennia BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ayşe Tuba ÖKSE (University of Uşak), Rainer CZICHON (Free University, Berlin), and Mehmet Ali YILMAZ (University of Uşak)

213

233

PART V: TOWARDS SUPRA-REGIONAL POLITICAL ENTITIES: ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS DURING THE 1ST MILLENNIUM BCE Troy and Phrygia during the Iron Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Brian ROSE (University of Pennsylvania)

285

Bianili’s Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul ZIMANSKY (SUNY Stony Brook)

321

In the Nick: Space and Time in the Borderlands of Oğlanqala . . . . . . . . . . Hilary GOPNIK (Monash University, Melbourne)

339

PREFACE

This volume is devoted to the search for borders in archaeology, and takes as a case study the archaeology of Anatolia and the South Caucasus. Our interest in the topic of borders in archaeology has deep roots in our previous research, but a strong impetus to explore the topic again and with new perspective came through two seminars at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in Spring 2013 and Spring 2014. These seminars were Beyond Apogee and Collapse. Empires and Other Polities in the Ancient World (BCE), and Landscapes and Territoriality in Western and Eastern Asia BCE, both co-taught by Lorenzo d’Alfonso, and Rod Campbell. It is a privilege of the graduate seminars offered at ISAW that besides PhD students a number of researchers actively participate in the classes, and Karen Rubinson was in both cases a core contributor to the lively discussion that week by week the seminars produced. Many of the ideas on borders and territoriality found in the first two chapters of this volume were developed during the two seminars. We also want to acknowledge the contribution of other seminar participants including Daniel Fleming, Anna Lanaro, Richard Payne, Ian Rutherford, and Li Zhang. During those seminars, it became clear to the two editors that concepts about and treatment of borders in the archaeology of the two regions of respective core interest, namely Anatolia and the South Caucasus, differed significantly. The readings and discussion we undertook also made clear that the idea of a diachronic development of the concept of borders had scarcely been investigated. Furthermore, the presence of textual sources in preclassical Anatolia versus their absence in the South Caucasus until at least the early first millennium BCE, if not later, generated a hiatus between the study of the two neighbouring regions that goes far beyond the archaeological evidence and is strongly perceivable in the study of borders in archaeology. Starting from these premises the two editors decided to organise an international workshop entitled Borders in the Archaeology of Pre-Classical Anatolia and the South Caucasus, which took place at Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU, on April 11, 2014 (https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/archive/2013/borders-in-the-archaeology-of-pre-classical-anatolia-and-the-south-caucasus-ba-ia). Thanks to support from The American Turkish Society and from ISAW, we could invite ten scholars who addressed these and further questions at the workshop. The chapters of d’Alfonso and Rubinson, Frangipane, Işıklı, Barjamovic, Lindsay, d’Alfonso, Rose, Zimansky, and Gopnik are therefore revised forms of the original papers, and Campbell, who was the workshop discussant, amplifies his perspectives in his contribution. Rubinson’s paper, Boundaries in Time and Space: The MiddleLate Bronze Transition in the South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, has been published elsewhere, as a contribution to a volume honouring a now-deceased friend and colleague.1 1

 Karen S. Rubinson, “An inquiry into the Middle Bronze/Late Bronze transition in the South Caucasus: What does ceramic evidence say?,” in Context and Connection. Studies on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of Antonio Sagona, eds. A. Batmaz, G. Bedianashvili, A. Michalewicz and A. Robinson (Peeters Publishers: Leuven, 2018), 487–497.

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PREFACE

While the volume thus originates in the workshop, we felt the core question of the confrontation between presence or absence of textual sources for coeval case studies as well as the aim of investigating diachronically the ancient conception of borders and their material realisations made it clear that some additions were useful. The chapters by Massa on Early Bronze Age western Anatolia, by Ökse, Czichon and Yılmaz on the northern portion of the Plateau during the second and first millennia BCE, and by Birkett-Rees on the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age transition in the Middle Kura valley, add new and diverse theoretical approaches and cases studies to the volume. Moreover, a general introduction to the topic of borders and liminality in archaeology seemed very appropriate, because in some contexts, particularly those characterised by the presence of textual sources, this was hardly approached. In chapter one we collected some general theoretical thoughts on borders and some specific questions typical of the geographic context dealt with in the book. Similarly, Rod Campbell approached the theoretical topic of the two levels of complexity of the search for borders in archaeology, what he defines “the one concerning the imagined ideal totality of a past that was, the other, the fragmentary evidence of a past that is no longer.” That tension between a holistic approach and the limits given by the sources at disposal had a great influence on the whole volume. At the same time, we conceived the volume as an attempt to set in dialogue the more empirical, mainly Eurasian approach to archaeology and the topic of borders, with the more theoretically driven one that characterises Anglo-American and prehistoric scholarship. In addition, without the ambition to produce paradigms, the dialogue of the archaeologies of contexts with textual sources and those focusing on context without texts is one of the main aims of the volume. Too often archaeology without texts refers for comparative purposes to only contexts without texts and the same holds true for archaeological studies concerning contexts with written records or traditions. The volume sets in dialogue coeval or sequential contexts of the same macro-region independently from the presence of written records and written tradition, and suggests that the indigenous categories defining the perception and representation of borders depend much more from long-durée socio-political transformation than from the use or absence of writing. Moreover, it emphasises that the impact of writing in this macro-region before the first millennium was limited, sporadic and might have had only a minimal influence in everyday life and imagination of space in the past. Many people have helped us during the four years from when the book project started to its publication. We want to thank first the authors for their valuable works and their patience along the way. We also thank Kate Justement and Nancy Highcock for their help with the editing process, as well as Abby Robinson of the Ancient Near Eastern studies editorial team. And the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript made many valuable comments that have contributed to a more cogent volume.

PART I:

BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

BORDERS AND ARCHAEOLOGY Lorenzo D’ALFONSO and Karen S. RUBINSON

Non esiste, io sospetto, frontiera, almeno non nel senso che noi siamo abituati a pensare. Non ci sono muraglie di separazione, né valli divisorie, né montagne che chiudano il passo. Probabilmente varcherò il limite senza accorgermene neppure, e continuerò ad andare avanti, ignaro A frontier, I suspect, does not exist, at least not in the sense we are used to think of. There are no great demarcation walls, nor frontier-valleys, or mountains to close the passage. I will probably cross the border without even realising it, and I’ll keep going straight on, unaware D. Buzzati, I sette messaggeri

During the last 40 years, archaeology has moved from the study of the ruins and the artefacts of the archaeological site, a place regulated and protected in almost every contemporary state as its own property and space, into exploring the landscape. Landscape archaeology originated as one of the positivistic and neo-evolutionary trends of the 1960s and 1970s, taking advantage of the application of computational methods. Deterministic views of the relationships between human communities and their environments were gradually dismissed by a developing consciousness of the importance of the perceptions of landscape by humans, and of the reciprocal interaction between human groups and nature throughout time.1 Today landscape archaeology can count on the growing impact of technologies for remote sensing and digital analysis of images and maps. Moreover, after the end of the Cold War the political situation made available to archaeologists many satellite and other remote images from both sides.2 These new technologies and wealth of images offer new quantitative and qualitative venues for the study of ancient landscapes that can be successfully integrated with a post-processual attention to local and social contexts. Sites are studied as part of a developing landscape in continual, reciprocal interaction,3 and this explains the flourishing of scholarship on landscape and geography in antiquity. This research context is the premise for the present book, which focuses on the study of borders in the archaeology of Anatolia and the South Caucasus. The renewed attention to the understanding of borders in archaeology does not originate exclusively from landscape archaeology itself. Archaeologists are thinkers immersed in the events of their own time. The big questions concerning human society our part of the world has been recently asking are the roles of technology, environmental change and migrations. Looking at the archaeological literature of the last ten years in the western countries, one will easily see how these topics are by far the most productive. 1

 Smith 2003; Wilkinson 2003; Trigger 2006, p. 473; Rosen 2007, pp. 1–14; Thomas 2012.  Ur 2013; Hammer and Ur 2019. 3  Bintliff 2000. 2

L. D’ALFONSO

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– K. S.

RUBINSON

During the last five years, attention to borders has risen in western countries. Even in a global view of the world, most global institutions are now addressing local needs. For example, the IMF has suggested that political economy must be more respectful of local demands, with specific reference to some EU states under economic stress.4 Similarly, the renewed border-building of Brexit, and the political fall-out from population migration and economic effects of globalisation in both Europe and the United States have driven discussion of the nature and roles of borders within the definitions of modern states. This produces a more general consideration of the advantages in terms of wealth, of economic growth produced by free efficient markets, against the existence and growth of economic and behavioural borders within our society and between different communities in the global world of the current millennium.5 This makes the study of borders in antiquity particularly connected to our present world, and this volume provides archaeological insights for a far ranging time and space analysis of this phenomenon.

1.1. DEFINING BORDERS In this volume the term border is used in a general sense: “a line or a strip around or along the edge of something”,6 where “something” has a geographic association. Such a broad definition of “border is neutral – it has no special or restricted meaning”7 and has therefore multiple realisations. It can represent a continuous limit defining a place opposed to an exterior; or it may represent the last point on a line, like the remote, rarefied place that the middle-aged prince of Buzzati’s The Seven Messengers (1942) imagines, but will never reach, along the southern route he is treading, looking for the borders of his father’s kingdom. Borders can be segments where the spatial division between two groups is made visible, while at the sides of these segments the division disappears. Or a border can be an edge, the liminal passage connecting two opposite spaces, as the foris in Hodder’s Domestication of Europe.8 They can take the physical form of a line, as along a river, or a bi-dimensional area of a strip of land, or even a tridimensional volume of a monument, or a mountain. Borders can divide political entities, although political borders, today as in the past, often exist within the same polity (see d’Alfonso, this volume). But, besides the political dimension, there are other types of identities within societies that generate borders, and make them visible also in the archaeological record: kin, gender, age, status, to name a few. The scientific literature in English differentiates among three concepts representing limits found in human geography: border, boundary, and frontier. There is a lack of agreement, however, about the meaning of each of these terms.9 A recent work by B. Feuer attempts

4

 IEO 2016.  See Piketty 2013; Judis 2016. 6  Cambridge Online Dictionary, s.v. “border,” accessed 10/18/2017, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/english. 7  Anthony 2007, p 102. 8  Hodder 1990, esp. pp. 129–130. 9  For example, Rothman 2004, pp. 121–124; Parker 2006, pp. 78–79; Anthony 2007, pp. 102–116. 5

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to provide a synthesis.10 Border – or borderland – represents the physical space around a core area where the main features defining the core are fading while distinctive features are generated, deriving from the interaction with the external space. Boundary represents a line dividing two discrete entities, and also etymologically reinforces a sense of belonging together, of boundedness of a given entity in the space. Frontier is instead the outer liminal space whose features and ongoing processes are perceived as different and alternative by a group residing in a bounded political entity. The study of borders and frontiers therefore becomes a study of the process of identity and (re)definition in peripheral areas, often seen from or compared to a core area. The limit of the well-developed, field-specific connotations embedded in the use of the term border vis-à-vis terms such as boundary and frontier is that the three terms with their specific meanings developed in the study of modern history, and owe a big debt to coreperiphery political studies. There are two sets of reasons why a general, neutral use of a single term – border – can better suit our investigation. First, borders can exist and be active within a core area, and not only around its outer limits. Our basic aim is to investigate the meaning of spatial limits emerging from the discrete distribution of archaeological evidence throughout space and time. In some contexts, we might face multi-centered political organisations, such as city-states and canton polities; in others we may have different institutions coexisting in overlapping – but not matching – territories, so that a definition based on a central, core perspective is not representative of the effective situation. One of the results of our ongoing research is that borders may become more visible within a group than at its margins: this is for instance the case with the Hittite empire (see d’Alfonso, this volume). Moreover, the neutral use of the term border is a suggested retraction from over-interpretative definitions that derive from non-indigenous, non-historical, or case-specific categories that often produce results incongruent to the reality they are trying to explain. In some of the contexts studied in this book, the presence of textual sources enables us to get a direct glimpse into the indigenous conceptualisation and terminology for the definition of limits in geographic space. In these cases, texts do not differentiate between border, boundary, and frontier (see both d’Alfonso and Barjamovic, this volume), but a single term covers the different meanings the three terms have in the anthropological literature. To conclude, a general use of the term border and a case-by-case specific interpretation and translation seem the best option to translate indigenous categories of space definition.

1.2. FROM “CULTURE” ARCHAEOLOGY?

TO “ZONE”: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEARCH FOR BORDERS IN

Looking into the western archaeological literature of the last forty years or so, one finds little attention to the topic of borders, despite the blossoming of landscape archaeology and the centrality of borders in our own historical phase. One sees some reluctance in adopting 10

 Feuer 2016, pp. 11–23.

L. D’ALFONSO

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– K. S.

RUBINSON

border, frontier, and boundary as fruitful concepts for interpreting discrete distributions of artefacts and natural remains deriving from anthropic activities. This reluctance is strongly linked with the early research on borders in archaeology, and therefore a short overview on how archaeologists have dealt with the interpretation of borders is a necessary premise to our investigations. The earliest efforts of defining borders in archaeology appeared in the late 19th century, when archaeology had definitely stepped away from antiquarian practice and had moved its first steps into a more scientifically grounded research field.11 The definition of typological classes of artefacts divided by material and defined by morphological analysis was a necessary premise to reconstruct their geographic and chronological distributions.12 The distribution of a coherent set of different classes of artefacts from archaeological excavations of a given area was indicated by the term “culture”. The geographic limits of this distribution would correspond to the borders of an “archaeological culture”.13 The concept of archaeological culture that became prominent from the early 20th century until after the end of World War II was much indebted to developments in French and British ethnography and cultural anthropology.14 The need to govern new lands acquired through the expansive phase of imperialistic colonialism of these two great powers was not the origin, but soon became the motor for a political interest in studying the human groups residing in these lands before colonisation.15 Even the most genuine and disinterested ethnographers were guided by a classificatory mindset that tended to single out tribes and ethnic groups characterised by specific customs, symbols, and often idioms. Most ethnographers would work for a colonial administration, and the latter made use of this wellcodified definition of the discrete ethnic groups dwelling in its territory for governmental purposes, thus reinforcing – and often generating – ethnic borders (see below). Together with colonialism, the rise of the nation state and of the nationalistic movements in mid and late 19th century Europe also connected with the development of the concept of archaeological cultures, particularly in Germany and eastern Europe, and in Russia.16 The distress caused by the negative and destabilising effects of industrialisation and the consequent pessimistic attitude towards the idea of progress is considered the general motivation for the diffusion of nationalistic sentiments. The idea of the nation was an attempt to find a response to this distress by emphasising the ties of working populations and the middle class with a land and a language.17 In the same period language was analysed by linguists as a diachronic stratigraphy of roots and grammatical forms bearing sense together with values. The blood-ties present from generations in a land were expressed by the idea of patria (fatherland; ger. Heimat). This Romantic conception of the relation between space 11

 See Trigger 2006, chap. 6.  The same classificatory process was taking place in the South Caucasus at the same time, where Frederich Bayern was the first to look at regional groupings of archaeological materials, although his efforts were focused on developing chronology (Smith et al. 2009, p. 12; Lindsay and Smith 2006, p. 168). 13  Clarke 1968, esp. fig. 49. 14  Fabietti 2011, pp. 7–23. 15  Fabietti 1997. 16  See Smith et al. 2009, pp. 11–12 for Russia and the South Caucasus. 17  See for example Geary 2002; Trigger 2006, pp. 211–313. 12

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and human groups was ahistorical. As a matter of fact, it requires that the relation between a group and a place is natural, or given, and not exposed to significant variations. It is in this context that geographers and ethnographers such as F. Ratzel and then F. Boas started to define “cultures as ways of life of specific ethnic groups”; “the prolonged diffusion of traits created culture areas or blocks of similar cultures located adjacent to each other”.18 In both Fabietti’s and Trigger’s interpretations, it is this early phase of anthropological research that generated and crystallised the idea of ethnic borders, even more than the positivistic use of drawing borderlines on geographic maps, typical of the definition of the modern state during the Enlightenment (see Campbell this volume, with references therein). This static conception of the relations within human groups, and between human groups, customs, language and territory was then applied to the past. Distributions of discrete sets of artefacts were interpreted as ethnic borders, and their variation through time as diffusion of cultural traits (often implying technological/intellectual superiority/primacy of the core area) or migration – pacific or aggressive – of the people who embodied that culture. In the era of the growth of the nation state, a judgement of merit was assigned to the analysis of archaeological cultures: the ahistorical, uninterrupted relation between a language, a human group and a territory was considered an optimum. In a deeply unstable Germany after the loss of World War I, with a weak new democracy and a growing feeling of insecurity and racism, G. Kossinna produced a strong and reassuring narrative, projecting the existence of German tribes attested in Roman sources of as early as the first century BCE back into the different assemblages of the Neolithic period.19 His intense nationalism brought him to theorise the superiority of the Indo-Europeans, and, among them, the excellence of those who never moved from their original land and were less exposed to mixture with non-Indo-European peoples and their cultural traits.20 Compared to Kossinna, V. Gordon Childe offered a more balanced example of an archaeology of cultures, in which diffusionism was more relevant than migration. In his late work Childe criticised and rejected the association of archaeological cultures with ethnic or linguistic groups he had adopted in his early works (Childe 1926), now seen by himself as shameful. The use of tracking borders of isolated human groups through distribution of sets of artefacts defining their territory, with its background of nationalism and racism, is still today a problematic legacy when using the term border in archaeology. Post-World-War-II archaeologists elaborated different responses to the problematic aspects of the concept of archaeological culture in different parts of the world. In general, in the Anglo-American academy, wishing to move away from a vision deeply rooted in a hundred years of nationalism and wars, the question of territorial borders and ethnic identity was literally removed from the agenda.21

18

 Trigger 2006, pp. 218, 219; see also Zimmerman 2001.  Kossinna 1911, 1926–27. 20  Trigger 2006, p. 238. 21  Hodder 1991, p. x. 19

L. D’ALFONSO

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– K. S.

RUBINSON

Anglo-American archaeologists defined culture-historical archaeology as a stage of research that was associated closely with ethnicity, land, and artefacts. We remark once again how this definition is unsatisfactory, for that stage was ahistorical and isolationist: culture archaeology would be a much better definition. In the US, archaeology as a discipline became part of anthropology (evolutionistic and functional, in opposition to the post-Boasian and European cultural anthropology). American “New Archaeology” (processual archaeology) set as its objective the identification of regularities in cultural behaviours in the past. Borders were thus considered as part of a pattern of territorial control typical of an advanced stage of social systems in an evolutionistic scale.22 The particularism that was at the basis of the study of archaeological cultures was disregarded, and so was the question of interrelations between different communities that is crucial in producing ethnic and political borders.23 History, and, more in general, written records from the past, were also disregarded, because they were perceived as the results of particularistic and geographically limited questions, unsuited to achieve the level of generalisation processual archaeology should reach.24 In this way archaeology passed from an ahistorical stage to an anti-historical one, with direct consequences on the study of borders. Since borders are cultural constructs activated for specific reasons in given time-and-space contexts,25 lack of interest in historical contexts directly reflected in the lack of research on the topic of borders. This also meant a limited interest for regions and periods which did yield texts, including the Mediterranean pre-Classical and Classical periods, much of the Ancient Near East, and East Asia (see Campbell herein for East Asia). The contribution of processual archaeology was noticeable particularly for introducing new methods, such as quantitative computational study, the hypothetico-deductive method and the search for holistic interpretations of archaeological contexts. On the specific investigation of borders on a (micro)regional scale, the adoption of the Thiessen polygons method to define borders of political and economic control was very influential.26 The most relevant contributions on borders of large and expanding polities in this phase were those of archaeologists inspired by Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system theory.27 Wallerstein’s theory was referring to dynamics of core-periphery in modern states and empires, and emphasised the flow of resources from the exploited peripheries towards the core. The lack of particularism of the theory, its interest in quantitative aspects and at the same time its predisposition to deal with rather complex social forms made it particularly appealing for archaeologists of the new wave. Impoverished peripheries would present clear evidence of political borders between retractive and conservative autochthones and new colonists bringing with themselves customs and markers of the core.28 Wallerstein’s model is particularly important for the study of borders in ancient Western Asia, because thanks to G. Algaze’s book on the expansion of Uruk IV into

22

 For example, White 1949.  Trigger 2006, pp. 392–418. 24  Binford 1968. 25  Barth 1969. 26  See Yamada 2017. For archaeology, see for example Renfrew and Cherry 1986. 27  Wallerstein 1974. 28  Lightfoot and Martinez 1995, pp. 475–476 with literature therein. 23

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northern Mesopotamia,29 it has produced the most influential theoretical model on early political entities, territoriality, peripheries and border zones in the proto-history of this macro-region. Asymmetry in the accumulation of wealth and surplus generated peripheries dependent on the core that were economically impoverished by means of exploitation. Algaze’s study gave birth to a rich scientific debate.30 The debate, however, developed mainly on the agency of peripheries in cultural interaction with Uruk rather than on the archaeological visibility of the border. By the early 1980s, archaeologists in Great Britain and in the US challenged the positivistic, evolutionary, and ecology-based interpretative schemes of the processual archaeology. Following in the footsteps of deconstructivism and post-modernism, post-processual archaeologists diverted from the search of true, quantifiable and universal explanatory patterns of human society in the past, and turned back to focus on archaeological interpretation of the human mindset and culture. The realisation that most research on ancient cultures presupposed the existence of cultural borders instead of searching for them resulted in a strong criticism of cultures as closed systems.31 Deconstructivism and relativism were fundamental for redefining the perception of the western societies towards non-western ones. For North Africa and the Middle East, E. Said denounced the colonial and paternalistic attitude of western scholars and literates in imposing a foreign portrait of the orient as a complex of societies naturally disinclined to change and progress.32 Anthropologist J. L. Amselle denounced the “insular sin” perpetuated by colonialists in Africa of generating individual and opposing ethnic groups with territorial borders as a result of a foreign, colonial mindset, and not of an emic indigenous perspective.33 Post-colonial studies had a significant impact on archaeology in general, and on the conceptualisation of borders in particular. If a culture is an open system, borders are the areas of major exchange, and only in rare and specific circumstances areas where discrete distribution of artefacts charged with identity would be visible.34 The identity of the single individual, the identity of sub-groups within a society, and their possibility to select from time to time between different identities became central issues in the interpretative process of borderlands. Moreover, an epistemological effort in redefining the relation between the archaeologist and the archaeological remains challenged the existence of general human patterns to adopt in the understanding of the archaeological record, and advocated for a wide contextual consideration of all possible data at a local scale.35 The interest in cultural phenomena restored borders in the research agenda of archaeologists as places of cultural interactions. New studies were highly influenced by two seminal sets of works. In anthropology the aforementioned study of ethnic borders by F. Barth showed that borders are activated by a deliberate choice of groups or even individuals in given circumstances,36 29

 Algaze 1993.  For example, Stein 1999; Algaze 2001; Frangipane 2001, 2009; Stein 2012. 31  Green and Perlman 1985. 32  Said 1978. 33  Amselle 1990. 34  Lightfoot and Martinez 1995. 35  Trigger 2006, pp. 444–478. 36  Barth 1969. 30

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following push and pull factors that are not exclusively but mainly connected to access to power and resources. Dictated by subjective choices, borders are often permeable (individuals can decide to move from one part to the other at their convenience), movable, and above all specific to a situational context. In archaeology, the set of ethnoarchaeological studies in western Africa produced by I. Hodder and his students showed that an object-based unidirectional interpretation of any human context is highly reductive, and actors often use artefacts charged with traditional symbolic meanings for different, sometimes opposite uses than the original one.37 This research became particularly relevant in the study of the identities underlying the distribution of classes of artefacts over space, and therefore borders in archaeology. By the 1980s, however, most contributions dealing with borders resulted in a deconstructive analysis which concluded that it was impossible to reconstruct the existence of borders in the ancient world in the absence of textual material.38 At the same time, the problems arising from an uncritical reading of ancient sources for the interpretation of archaeological remains became more and more evident.39 Even though exceptions can be mentioned,40 the general view in the last decades of the 20th century was that special patterns of distribution of objects can reflect borders, but the kind of identity of a given border – physical, genderdependent, age-dependent, kin-dependent, ethnic, political – remained beyond reach, given the multiplicity of meanings an object bears. In contrast to the trajectory in the US, with the “New Archaeology” approach, in continental Europe and the Soviet Union – and notably in Anatolia and the South Caucasus – archaeology remained attached to the other disciplines of the study of the past, such as history, art history, philology, literature, sometimes linguistics. For some, the idea of homogeneity of customs and beliefs remained in the meaning of the label archaeological culture, which was still used in reference to the distribution of a homogeneous assemblage over a given geographic area, although it was strongly detached from issues of ethnicity and race in Europe, unlike in the South Caucasus.41 Archaeologists reorganised typologies and chronologies, and through fieldwork produced a wealth of new and better organised data,42 but renounced, with few exceptions, the development of general theories.43 As a result of these developments, today archaeologists still struggle to openly approach borders in archaeology, and neutral terms in common use such as discrete distribution, archaeological facies, zone, or ceramic horizon conceal the tendency of archaeologists to not commit to subjective interpretations of borders in the archaeological record. 37

 Hodder 1982, 1985.  For example Jones 1997; Wells 1998. 39  For example Hall 2000; Rose, this volume. 40  Focusing on the relevance of outliers in the archaeological record, see Emberling 1997; and see Smith and Rubinson 2003; Rubinson and Smith 2003. 41  For the latter see A. Smith 2005; Lindsay and Smith 2006; Khatchadourian 2008; Smith et al. 2009, pp. 10–20. 42  For example Peroni 1998. 43  There are a few contexts representing political borders, for which collaborations between archaeologists and historians produced elegant models based on a holistic reconstruction. Very productive were the contexts of the limes Germanicum and limes Britannicum in Roman archaeology. While these two case studies became paradigmatic and even attracted processual archaeologists, they had little resonance in the broader theoretical discourse of either New Archaeology or post-processual thought, particularly beyond the ocean. 38

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The declared aim of this book is to bring together archaeologists to single out and interpret borders in the timeframe of the Late Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, reconstructing them through the analysis of the archaeological record. Instead of putting together archaeologists who work in different areas of the world, the book concentrates on one macro-region: Anatolia and the South Caucasus. The choice is first of all methodological. If, as we have seen above, borders are cultural constructs whose understanding is connected with given contexts in time and space, this book aims to explore how the variation of ancient conceptions of and archaeological visibility of borders are found and interpreted by archaeologists in a given macro-area. The authors analyse different microcontexts throughout ca. 3500 years, from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Iron Age. The need for a micro-historical analysis in the study of borders (and of historical work for an archaeology of place) has been suggested by many archaeologists.44 Normally, however, the single micro-historical context has rarely been inserted into a broader analysis of earlier and later emergence of borders in one macro-region and neighbouring areas. Here we follow in the footsteps of A. Smith and K. Rubinson, who addressed the issue indirectly for the South Caucasus,45 and of Rubinson and A. Sagona more explicitly for some periods.46 The book, therefore, aims at offering an overview of how the visibility of borders in archaeology changes through time in one single macro-region, and which interpretative frames and methodologies archaeologists adopt in the same macro-region to explain these differences.

1.3. A CASE

STUDY FOR BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY:

ANATOLIA AND

THE

SOUTH CAUCASUS

The macro-region formed by Anatolia and the South Caucasus represents a particularly fitting context for the study of borders. From a geological point of view Anatolia is a tectonic plate squeezed between the Eurasian, African, and Arabian plates. The South Caucasus is also a tectonic zone, with the Greater Caucasus formed of the initial collision of the Eurasian and Arabian plates and the Lesser Caucasus primarily of volcanic origin. The Pontic mountain system, the Taurus, and the northern Zagros mountain systems are also the result of the collision of these plates, with the African and the Arabian moving towards the north, the Eurasian towards the south.47 This macro-region characterised by high mountain chains and plateaus constitutes a natural border between two vast plains, one to the north (Eurasia) and one to the south (Mesopotamia) (Fig. 1). The natural distinctiveness of this macro-region is still evident in its faunal and floral population. This population is one of the richest of the world in number of species, counting species that are exclusive to it, and others that have entered it and adapted to the local landscapes.48 44

 For example Lightfoot and Martinez 1995; Emberling 1997; more generally, Thomas 2012.  Smith and Rubinson 2003. 46  Rubinson and Sagona 2008. 47  Bozkurt 2001; Sagona and Zimansky 2009, pp. 2–3; Rubinson and Smith 2003, p. 4; Smith et al. 2009, pp. 6–7. 48  Zohary 1973; Atalay 1992; Lindsay and Smith 2006, p. 166. 45

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Fig. 1. Tectonic plates and faults determining the geology of Anatolia and the South Caucasus (from Dilek and Sadvol 2009).

Moving from these natural particularities, several archaeological and historical studies refer to Anatolia and the South Caucasus as borderlands. This is why the study of borders for a macro-region identified as a borderland provides a unique case study. The understanding of Anatolia and the South Caucasus as borderlands results, in fact, in two opposite, polarised connotations: either a place of cultural contact between different societies and their experiences; or as isolated fringe and periphery. For Anatolia, the former connotation is expressed in the concept of bridge-land (Brückenland), a land that connects, pieces together, allows communication and exchange between Asia and Europe.49 And the South Caucasus can be seen an isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas connecting those two bodies of water, but also providing a north-south land route.50 As Rapp notes, speaking of historic times, “Caucasia thus emerges as one of Eurasia’s most vibrant crossroads where Inner Asia, the Near and Middle East, and the Mesopotamian, Black Sea, and Mediterranean worlds intersected and encountered one another. In fact, Caucasia’s experience brilliantly shows the artificiality of drawing sharp lines around these regions and cultures in the first place.”51 An alternative realisation of this view is as a cradle of civilisations sustained by new peoples moving into the land and bringing novel cultural traits that regularly contributed to the development of new and original experiences with a positive impact on both the regional and super-regional contexts. The narrative of C. Renfrew on the role of the macro-region in 49

 Blum et al. 2002.  Chernykh 1992, fig. 17; Rubinson and Smith 2003, p. 5; Wilkinson 2014, figs. 2.17, 3.1–3.3; Zimmermann 2007, pp. 66–69; Fabian 2018, p. 29. 51  Rapp 2006, pp. 21–22. 50

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13

the process of Neolithisation of Europe,52 as well as the one of the “golden triangle”,53 or the development of early Christianity in the macro-region and its impact towards the Roman empire and equally into north and central Asia54 are only two examples of this interpretative line underscoring connectivity and agency towards neighbouring areas. The opposite representation of this macro-region, characterised by isolation and low receptivity, was often encountered in exogenous narratives already in ancient times. Anatolia and the South Caucasus were perceived as the peripheral and liminal regions by Athens and the classical Greek poleis, even though some poleis were blossoming on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.55 Geographers explain the area as the border between Europe and Asia,56 a definition that began with Strabo.57 The macro-region was perceived and represented by Mesopotamians as a periphery to explore and conquer, particularly for the collection of unusual and rare resources.58 Often the particular physical features of the macro-region are mentioned in support of a more isolationist interpretation of the area: high mountains and the seas contributed to defend/isolate the macro-region from human developments and historical processes taking place in the neighbouring regions. While in last decades the connective potential of the sea has been intensively debated, and has become widely accepted, this is not the case for mountains. The Taurus and the Caucasus would be natural borders soon perceived and adopted as cultural borders by human groups. People living in the highlands would be defended by mountain chains, and at the same time, these would hinder local peoples from developing strong cultural contacts and would cause rather conservative behaviours. As an example, the substantial continuity in ceramic production concerning the main shapes and surface treatments throughout the Bronze Age in central Anatolia would originate from a high degree of conservative attitude by the people of the Plateau, little inclined to innovation in their life style.59 A social conservatism is also seen in the South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, where the Early Bronze Kura-Araxes “culture,” although expanding territorially over time, preserves a lifeway and basic ceramic technology for several hundred years.60 That natural borders and mountain chains isolated this macro-region is a strongly held position that we want to challenge in this book. The Caucasus, despite its powerful mountain peaks, is considered a main corridor for via terra migration from the Eurasian steppe into Anatolia and Europe, and the same is true for Thrace and the Dardanelles in the opposite direction.61 High mountain chains did not hinder, and rather seem to have favoured the creation of long-distance trade routes. Trade routes from the Aegean to Cilicia and the Levant, or from the northern and western Plateau to northern Mesopotamia,62 blossomed 52

 Renfrew 1987; Bellwood and Renfrew 2002.  Aurenche and Kozlowski 1999; Düring 2011, p. 48. 54  For example Rapp 2006, pp. 31–36. 55  For example Braund 1994, pp. 8–39; Smith et al. 2009, pp. 2–3. 56  Volodicheva 2002, p. 350. 57  A. Smith 2005, p. 231. 58  Liverani 2017, pp. 41–78, with literature therein. 59  This is discussed and challenged by Schoop 2009. 60  Smith 2015, pp. 103–105; Smith et al. 2009, p. 38. 61  For example Mallory and Adams 1997, pp. 12–16. 62  Efe 2007; Barjamovic 2011; Massa and Palmisano 2018. 53

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and produced new cultural and technological developments within this macro-region, deriving from the interconnection of this macro-region with other, sometimes also remote ones. The widespread distribution of the Kura-Araxes culture, while representing interconnections not likely related to trade, ranged from the Levant to the South Caucasus and northern Iran.63 In the Middle Bronze period also the South Caucasus became increasingly part of long distance trade networks.64 Even though textual sources provided only spotty information on Anatolia and the South Caucasus and mainly for Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal areas, there is a growth of data indicative of the stability of these communication routes, and their relevance both cultural and economic. The understanding of mountain areas as liminal and defensive space for the sedentary population is a minority view, and often a partial construct. There is no doubt that the Taurus mountains constitute a natural and also cultural watershed between northern Mesopotamia and the Anatolian and South-Caucasian highlands. Nonetheless there were periods of major interaction and affinity between the regions divided by the powerful mountain chain. While there is not a general study of the relations between the north and the south of the Taurus on the longue durée, it seems that between 3500 and 500 BCE closer ties emerged in times of crisis and demise of great political systems. The collapse of great powers or colonial systems directly produced short–distance, regionally intense interaction while not resulting in a reduction of the long-distance roads (Frangipane and Işıklı this volume).65 Why were these interactions not limited by physical obstacles such as mountains? Little investigated, and more exposed to erosion, occupation in mountain areas is known to a much smaller degree than occupation in valleys in Anatolia,66 while more has been done in the South Caucasus.67 Today the general view is that by the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, these areas with their undeniably particular physical features were nevertheless an integral part of socio-economic dynamics taking place in this macro-region, and also with those defining the interconnection with other regions.68 Our current, in fact very modern conception of mountain areas as reserves of wild life on the planet, secluded by the human geography, need not be applied to ancient times. The use of highlands for pastures makes mountains much less devoid of human life and liminal than we think.69 The recent reassessment on the modalities of pastoralism in ancient western Asia suggest that dimorphism and mobile pastoralism, long predicated on the basis of ethnographic parallels with the modern era, were not present in prehistory. Even during the Bronze Age, when clear evidence for mobile pastoralism appears, a seasonal, vertical pastoralism for mountain areas still is the most adequate interpretation of the textual, faunal and botanical data for describing the agro-pastoral economy.70 This implies that, in our macro-region, mountain areas 63

 See Işıklı this volume and Sagona 2018, chap. 5.  Smith 2015, chap. 4; Rubinson 2013; Kohl 2007, pp. 113–121; Abramishvili 2018. 65  Other examples are the late EBA–MBA interactions between the norther Zagros and the whole of northern Mesopotamia, as well as the EIA in south central Anatolia and northern Syria. 66  Hammer 2014. 67  Rova and Gilibert 2018; Badalyan et al. 2004; Bobokhyan et al. 2018. 68  Marro 2004; Palumbi and Chataigner 2014; Işıklı, this volume. 69  Wilkinson 2014. 70  Makarewicz 2013; Potts 2014; Arbuckle and Hammer 2018; Nugent 2020; Swerida and Nugent 2019; Chazin et al. 2019. 64

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15

were inhabited by the members of the same large families or other kin groups residing in villages and cities downhill. In many respects, mountains were not peripheral to inhabited centers. Mountains were a very relevant part of the religious space in Anatolia and the South Caucasus.71 Spectacular evidence of the centrality of highlands use from the late Chalcolithic onwards has been recently provided by the dragon-fish stones located on east Anatolia and South Caucasus high mountains above 2750 m asl.; archaeologists suggest that they signalled places of cultic gathering uphill in the warm season.72 Cultic gathering in the highlands is well-known in second-millennium Hittite Anatolia,73 and this tradition survived the end of the empire.74 The stepped altars also, rightly or not associated with the Phrygians, are one more tangible evidence of cultic activity in the highland.75 By the fourth millennium onwards, with the development of metallurgy, mountain areas allowed local groups to start one of the most powerful and lucrative activities of their economy. Already before metallurgy, exploitation of mountain areas was taking place with the obsidian industry. It has been suggested with meaningful ethnographic comparanda, that also metallurgy, at least in the first steps of the productive chain such as extraction and smelting, was produced by seasonal mobile groups living in camps in the mountains for some months in the summer.76 The studies of the movements of these communities living in the mountains and their interaction with the urban and sedentary communities are still in their infancy in this macro-region,77 but it is clear, and will be discussed in several chapters of the book, that borders often run across mountain areas. In some cases, it could be shown that against least cost path analysis, routes across highlands might be favoured over steppe plains, possibly because of the presence of water springs.78 This discussion leads to a central concept, namely that connectivity is not limited to communication networks of routes connecting urban ganglia. Territories around cities and roads were populated by groups moving likely over small regions but regularly: these territories need to be radically integrated into our reconstruction of the ancient landscape. Territoriality may therefore be seen not only as political control over square kilometres of land by administrative and military power, but as repetitive experiences of different places by local and movable communities.79

1.4. ARCHAEOLOGY

IN TIMES OF WRITING: A FOCUS ON PROTO-HISTORY

As we have seen in section 1.2, many of the theoretical efforts to frame and innovate archaeology developed in prehistoric contexts. The prehistories of Europe and pre-Columbian archaeology in the Americas have played a crucial role in this theoretical debate. This 71

 Haas 1982, 1994, pp. 461–464; Bobokhyan et al. 2018.  Bobokhyan et al. 2018; Gilibert 2018. 73  For example Ökse 2011. 74  d’Alfonso 2017. 75  Summers 2018. 76  Yener 2000; cf. Parzinger and Boroffka 2003. 77  But see Nugent 2017; Swerida and Nugent 2019; Chazin et al. 2019; Nugent 2020. 78  Matessi et al. 2018. 79  VanValkenburgh and Osborne 2013. 72

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is also true for the prehistory of western Asia: alongside the Southern Levant, research on Anatolian prehistory and Neolithisation of the South Caucasus has grown exponentially in the last forty years.80 Borders – taken as a general term (see 1.1) – are of course a central topic in prehistory too. The understanding of the Early Neolithic as a dispersed phenomenon was a response to an earlier view suggesting the presence of a core area located in the Southern Levant, and of peripheral developments radiating from it, whether connected with migration or diffusionistic models.81 This core-periphery dynamic was initially connected with a territorial definition of areas that were considered to offer an ecological optimum for the passage to sedentary life and agriculture: the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent as opposed to the lowland plains.82 The passage from hunting and gathering to agriculture also directly brings into discussion the generation of new borders between wild space and the domesticated one. Those who connected the rise of agriculture with the pressure of demographic growth of the sedentary Natufian communities and with the stress caused by climate change imagined the definition of the new, artificial, cultivated space in strong opposition with the natural one. But the discourse on borders in the Neolithic goes well beyond the discussion of where and when the passage to agriculture occurred, and how the ecology of the Neolithic landscape was redefined. Besides the relevance of the economic impact of the Neolithic, the construction of buildings producing bordered units for inclusive versus exclusive human activities also entails questioning the existence of borders and their interpretations in relation to the social organisation and the cultural/psychological background generating them. From Flannery’s positivistic study of the origin of the village, to the definition of sacred space for community rituals,83 or even mortuary space – be it intra-muros as at Aşıklı and Çatal Höyük,84 or in a specific building as for the Skull Building at Cayonu85 – borders in archaeology have been evoked and defined in most of the research in this period of Anatolian prehistory. If archaeologists of prehistoric contexts have thus contributed significantly to the study of borders, the contributions in this volume start when a political dimension in the relationship between communities and, in some cases, a stronger definition of socio-economic differences within each community, become more visible and radical. Urbanisation and formation of political entities, from city-states to great powers, adds a level of complexity to the study of borders that is simply not there in prehistoric times (see Frangipane, this volume). This implies the definition of new types of borders by ancient societies and the creation of new categories of spatial definition, both of which need to be taken into account by archaeologists. For example, some oppositions like those between the community of the living and the community of the dead, or the elite and the commoners, are activated only

80

 Sagona and Zimansky 2009; M. Özdoǧan 1995, 2002, 2018; Düring 2011; Cucchi et al. 2013; Smith et al. 2009, pp. 21–23; Sagona 2018, pp. 84–131. 81  See Düring 2011, pp. 48–49 with literature therein. 82  Braidwood 1960; Sagona and Zimansky 2009, p. 39. 83  Sagona and Zimansky 2009, pp. 57–61; Dietrich et al. 2012. 84  Düring 2011, pp. 67–68, 107–111, with literature therein. 85  A. Özdoǧan 1999.

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by the Late Chalcolithic, and become very visible in the Early Bronze Age.86 The interpretation of discrete distributions of diagnostic materials, or special contexts, requires archaeologists to consider a growing set of identities and oppositions that move from a personal/ familial or even clan-based level, to ethnic, class, and political ones. The authors in this volume, thus, investigate borders visible in the archaeological record of the macro-region of Anatolia and the South Caucasus over a time span starting from the emergence of political entities in the Late Chalcolithic period (Frangipane). The investigated period then covers the models of sedentary communities often in conflict with one another, settled in densely populated areas (Massa) or coexisting with mobile communities in motion during the Early Bronze Age (Işıklı). From the creation of trade borders visible in the Middle Bronze Age (Barjamovic), it then approaches the formation and demise of the first great power, the Hittite empire, in Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age (d’Alfonso; Ökse et al.), paired by a new form of territorial control in the South Caucasus (BirkettRees; Lindsay). Eventually new regional kingdoms formed in the early first millennium BCE (Rose; Zimansky), and with their end the macro-regional dynamics also come to an end, while the new global political dynamics of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic expansions are realised (Gopnik). One more reason to concentrate our investigations on a time span that starts with the Late Chalcolithic is that before that time Anatolia and the South Caucasus seem to be deeply disconnected. In fact, while Neolithic communities are found at different spots in northwestern, western, central, south and southeastern Anatolia, no archaeological evidence of Neolithic communities is known from the Pontic region and eastern Anatolia before the late Chalcolithic.87 It seems that these regions operated as a buffer areas, or a borderland, between the realisation of Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic of the South Caucasian region and Anatolia. It is instead with the reception of the Uruk phase, and eventually with the Kura-Araxes phenomenon that the two regions become strongly interconnected (Frangipane and Işıklı, this volume).88 This is not to say that the developments starting with the Late Chalcolithic are unitary in the whole macro-region: the opposite is in fact true, even at a regional, and sometimes micro-regional level, as our investigations on the borders in the archaeological record will show and discuss. However, from the fourth millennium onwards the communities dwelling in the macro-region are to at least some degree interconnected and, apart from crisis periods, more or less directly aware of each other. This time span also corresponds to the introduction and spread of writing in western Asia. Traditionally regions in which writing has not been attested have been set aside from the study of regions where writing is spread. The most relevant example in this sense is the definition of Ancient Near East as the area and the period of time that is covered by cuneiform writing; neighbouring areas where writing was not used have been considered peripheral, and backwards, still at a prehistoric stage.89 While this still evolutionistic view 86

 Bachhuber 2015; Massa, this volume; Smith 2015, p. 110.  Sagona and Zimansky 2009, pp. 43–44. 88  See also Gülçur and Marro 2012; Smith 2012b, pp. 674–675; Lyonnet and Guliyev 2012; Lyonnet 2017, p. 147; Bakhshaliyev and Marro 2009. 89  For example Liverani 1988, pp. 13–17; A. Smith 2005, p. 231. 87

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has evident limitations, its application to different regions is also very uneven. The case of our macro-region is very telling in this respect. Anatolian developments of the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age are often included in handbooks of Ancient Near Eastern history mainly because cuneiform writing appears here immediately afterwards, in the Middle and then Late Bronze Age. By contrast, the South Caucasus, which only marginally participated in the cuneiform spread and in a later period (end of the ninth century BCE), is from time to time mentioned but not fully integrated in such regional compendia.90 The spread of a writing system and the associated administrative, schooling, and literary components have a clear significance that certainly contributed to the generation of identities and possibly, in contrastive situations, of borders. The fact, however, that cuneiform writing is mostly an elite phenomenon, and in some cases, as prominently the Hittite one, likely limited to the sole circle of the royal family, should provide a strong claim for integrating and not separating the study of regions where writing is attested from the study of the others. As d’Alfonso claims in this book, it is likely that the Hittite empire never fully adopted writing for administration, and in most contexts administration succeeded without texts, but with a hierarchical use of multiple sealings in a way that might be similar to the one already developed in Anatolia during the late Chalcolithic period. In the South Caucasus, Mittanni seals occur in multiple examples in the Late Bronze Age. Their use is suggested as perhaps defining the authority of an individual91 in contrast to seal usage in neighbouring regions, and they are not found together with cuneiform writing, which exists only on the rare imported object.92 The creation of academic boundaries that divided Ancient Near Eastern archaeology (the archaeology of areas with writing) from contemporary regions where cuneiform is not widespread has little scientific reason. By contrast, the suspicion and distance taken by some archaeologists from textual sources is equally scientifically unsupported, as if the lack of use of writing would equal the unawareness of cultural traits and social organisation of neighbouring cultures for whom writing evidence has survived. The period that covers the three millennia, from the mid-fourth to the mid-first millennium BCE is for our macro-region a period in which human communities were directly or indirectly aware of the developments of writing and the developments connected with it, but that in most cases did not make any direct use of it. The quintessential example of it is embodied in the record emerging from the site of Kultepe Kaneš, where writing was imported and used by foreign merchants living in the town for almost two centuries for private, diplomatic, legal and judicial topics, while the whole of the local population, including the elites and the royal palace never felt the need to use that medium for any of the same uses.93 Archaeologists working on historic times are wary of using text-based historical reconstructions in part because of academic barriers. This is particularly problematic in Western Asian proto-history.94 At the same time the existence of a strongly-constructed academic tradition and specialised literature on most ancient writing systems and languages has 90

 For example Smith 2012b.  Smith 2015, p. 177. 92  Khanzadian et al. 1992. 93  For example Larsen 2015, with literature therein. 94  Postgate 1990; Liverani 1999. 91

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19

discouraged archaeologists from dealing with texts. In times of neo-positivism, texts, which can be open to multiple interpretations, when found in archaeological contexts created what might be seen as an ambiguity in the otherwise “objective” fieldwork data. One of the merits of post-processual archaeology has been to let this presumption of truth of the archaeological record fall: interpretations of archaeological contexts are as subjective and open to multiple choices as textual interpretation is. In fact, three out of the four chapters in this book dealing directly with the relation between texts and the archaeological record suggest a critical re-examination of the geo-political information offered by texts (Barjamovic, Rose, Zimansky). Textual analysis has its own specificity that needs to be observed – most of the misuse of texts in archaeology derives from their use at face value. It has been also noted that often texts refer to a different time frame than other archaeological materials. For example Brather, tracing the relation between texts and other artefacts in the framework offered by Braudel, suggested that the archaeological record helps reconstructing cyclical and long-term history, while texts relate to deed-history.95 Lucas, in fact, starts from the same premises to connect archaeological contexts with events, so to interpret the chain of events represented in a stratigraphy as the backbone for the reconstruction of structures and processes.96 Whatever the case, this book integrates the interpretation of borders from geographic areas both covered by texts and not as a continuum, in the hope to break disciplinary boundaries to the advantage of a less isolationist scholarly approach. The hope is to contribute concretely in developing the holistic approach many archaeologists today see as the real objective of our work. The importance of studying borders in a macro-region through three millennia is that it has the potential to consider not only the construction of borders, their visibility, and the identities connected with them, but also the processes of border demise versus maintenance, or re-semantisation, and superposition with new and different ones. In this way the study of borders intersects diachrony, and eventually the vast topic of social memory (see Gopnick, this volume). Although the potential of this approach is only partially exploited in this book because each author has mainly focused on borders emerging at a given time in a portion of our macro-region, both Frangipane and Massa write on the passage between a time without borders to a time characterised by the generation of borders. d’Alfonso provides a new understanding of the different peripheral diffusion and reception of administrative practices generally considered as Hittite from this diachronic approach, as does Gopnik in looking at a site that is finally stopped in time.

1.5. TERRITORIALITY

AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE IN

ANATOLIA AND

THE

SOUTH CAUCASUS

Even though the book is not limited to the analysis of political borders, the choice of concentrating our analysis on the period between the mid-fourth and the mid-first millennia BCE implies an interest in studying borders in a time when political entities are present and more or less directly influence all other forms of individual and social identities that 95

 Brather 2004, pp. 323–344.  Lucas 2005, 2008.

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determine borders in space. Dealing with political borders then implies a reflection on what political borders define. As we have seen, the earliest definitions of political borders in archaeology were projections of categories defining the nation state and its territoriality.97 More generally, the conceptualisation of the modern state underlies the design of and the dynamics between archaic states.98 In the evolutionary view of western civilisation labelled by the formula ex oriente lux, the polities of the Fertile Crescent and, partly, its peripheries, were considered the formative place of the city, the state, the laws, writing, and some other technological innovations. These innovations would not only develop into the right path of civilisation, but were part of the foundational premises to that development occurring in Greece and Rome.99 Following this perspective, “archaic states” of ancient Western Asia have a bound territory defined by political borders, ethnic – if not national – identities, and a set of technologies and knowledge. All maps with well-defined borders of the polities of ancient Western Asia derive from this conception of polities, which is a widespread type of representation still in use today. The existence of territoriality and political and ethnic borders was not, in fact, invented ex novo by modern researchers, but was part of the indigenous narrative of social and political memories produced already in antiquity. An example very relevant to western Anatolia and to the formation of a dualistic dynamic of the East and the West is the ethnic discourse in Greece, originating in the conflict between the mainland Greece poleis – Athens in particular – and the Achaemenid Empire. Despite being ancient, and in some cases contemporary to the events they describe, these narratives are often fictive constructs. When ancient narratives, particularly in historiography, are placed under scrutiny by comparing them with the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, the definition of “the others”, that is the ethnic identities in the East, with their territories, movements and borders, and even the definition of their own Greek components, is often very distant from reality. For our macro-region, two well-known cases concern the Cimmerians,100 and the Medes,101 but the case of the Greek colonisation of western Anatolia is no less striking.102 The conception of ancient polities as units with a given territory defined by well-established political borders has been strongly revised in the late 20th and early 21st century. The emergence of globalisation (see 1.2 above) has promoted an understanding of societies as interconnected networks, thus putting the reality of these discrete political units under serious question. This trend has been seen also in the study of the ancient world. The social and political dynamics taking places in states and other polities are better read and represented by singling out a number of nodes (towns, villages, principal institutional centers) joined by connectors (roads, canals and other waterways, paths), where control and interaction take place, as opposed to the loose control of and activity in the “empty” space 97

 Geary 2002; Smith 1986; and in general part 1.2 above.  M. Smith 2005; Yoffee 2005; Campbell, this volume. 99  Liverani 1988, pp. 5–9. 100  Lanfranchi 1990. 101  Lanfranchi et al. 2003. 102  Hall 1997; Hall 2000; Rose, this volume. 98

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outside of and between them. Not only is the territoriality of ancient polities thus questioned both as an emic concept and as a fact, given the limited capacity of direct control, their borders, when and if existing, were not geographically continuous and defined as they are in modern states.103 Network models are very useful in that they set the focus on the skeletal, essential but at the same time sophisticated structures underlying social interactions and power dynamics. However, they have often left aside the relevance of the physical territory in early polities, and thus the interaction and engagement of local communities with the landscape in which they live as part of their participation in a political entity. Back in the 1970s Vita-Finzi and Higgs published a seminal work on the relevance of the catchment area directly linked with each site, or node, in network terms.104 Their interest was limited to the study of the economic exploitation of the territory, which made their results limited to that aspect and consequently too deterministic. Adding a more nuanced view of the relation between social groups and landscape (see below), the idea that a city is directly linked with a territory may however be recovered. A community dwelling in a network node is defined by a direct experience of a given territory. Often the central authorities do not physically control that territory, but nonetheless the legal, religious, and customary norms regulating the relation between the node and its territory are part of the order represented by the central authority and ultimately often by the gods. If one accepts that nodes of social networks bear a link to their territories through the experience of their communities, existing territorial borders may well be linked with that experience, and should not imply political or, even worse, military control of the borders. Moving from a deterministic, ecological understanding of territory, Dyson-Hudson and Smith suggested a model of defensibility of borders directly connected to the resource distribution in space;105 societies dwelling in territories with more resources would develop a stronger territorial control and more strongly defended borders. The fact that political borders are often invisible in the archaeological record may imply that in many cases they were not defined at all; in other cases they might have been defined, but not controlled and defended. In parallel to Barth’s interpretation of the ethnic borders, Sack has shown that territorial control is an option that can be activated or not depending on the circumstances.106 Thus, the fact that we now are more critical and careful about the definition of borders on maps representing ancient polities should not imply that borders did not exist and were not defined. However, it is also now clear that they were hardly defended, for technological, logistical and even sustainability limits. Today, the contradictions of our globalised world and the failure of traditional international law to interpret contemporaneity and solve crises have strongly pushed scholars to abandon system theory and to get back to study borders. The agency of local and peripheral groups and polities in the large (but not global) scenario qualifies as the main interest of

103

 M. Smith 2005, 2007; Wilkinson 2003.  Vita-Finzi and Higgs 1970. 105  Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978. 106  Sack 1986; see also VanValkenburg and Osborne 2013, pp. 8–9. 104

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researchers today. Messiness, disorder, improvisation are all concepts taken into serious account when formulating models of interpretation of ancient and modern polities.107 The significance of territoriality in social dynamics of the ancient world has been reaffirmed in a recent volume edited by VanValkenburgh and Osborne. “Rather than seeing territories as either entirely material or entirely conceptual, we regard territoriality, the dynamic configuration of boundaries within the landscape, as a product of the engagement of political institutions, physical environments, and human subjectivities … Territorial behaviors and built environments ‘feed back’ on the individuals and entities that create them, shaping social identity and political institutions in the process.”108 In this book authors present various interpretations of how borders are visible and realised, and what they delimit and define. Many more interpretations are to be found in the literature. For ancient Western Asia and our macro-region two have produced particularly influential, holistic models for the definition and perception of borders and territories. The first was theorised by Liverani in 1990 (also Liverani 2001) and applied to the Late Bronze Age (Age of Diplomacy). The model implies two levels of definitions of borders: one dependent on prestige, understood as an idealistic and ahistorical strategy of legitimation by a central authority over its subjects; the other on interest, understood as a strategy of the interaction between peer great powers and of great powers with minor political entities in practical historical matters. Liverani devotes one specific section of his work to the reconstruction of the indigenous perceptions of territory and borders.109 On the one hand he reconstructs the different local prestige discourses of universal control, in which the borders coincide with the limits of the geographic representation of the civilised world. On the other, he contrasts them with a polycentric perception of the political landscape of Western Asia. Here, beyond the episode of the conflict, borders are movable and so are territories, and they are divided between parties as a form of respect and acceptance of the other’s political weight, in ways that recall the division in shares of inheritance within family laws.110 Liverani’s study of indigenous perception of borders is unique inasmuch as it shows the coexistence of different but synchronic and competing conceptions at play that can be understood or at least imagined by reconstructing the specific context in which a given conception is found or applied. While the model was developed starting from the study of the tablets of the cuneiform archives from Late Bronze Age Western Asia, the same approach can be usefully transferred to the study of the archaeological contexts. The level that Liverani defines as “interest” more directly corresponds to the concrete capability of each palace to administer, control, exploit and mobilise its territory, and favour trade of primary and secondary goods with other polities. Archaeologically, public infrastructures or standardised pottery production functional for specific economic goals can very well fit in a discourse of borders of the interest of a polity. The case of the diffusion of Middle Assyrian pottery and settlement along the Khabur and Balikh Rivers defining the western border of the

107

 Burnbank and Cooper 2010; Ferguson and Mansbach 2008.  VanValkenburgh and Osborne 2013, p. 2. 109  Liverani 2001, pp. 17–76. 110  Liverani 2001, pp. 46–51. 108

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Middle Assyrian kings very well corresponds to this model.111 So does the diffusion of basins, dams, silos, fortifications and a standardised pottery assemblage in central Anatolia during the Hittite empire.112 Conversely, the spread of monuments and their communicative strategies (seals are dealt by Liverani himself113), or the accumulation and exhibition of exotica, or the disproportion not only in mortuary rituals and construction but also in private space for living and operating, qualitative selection of food and beverage and quantitative differences in consumption (also when shared in inclusive feastings), is archaeologically visible and can be useful in the construction of the borders of prestige within a polity. The study of the place of origin, and circulation of luxury goods can be a good example for this case.114 The limit of this model is that it offers a good view on the central authorities and their perceptions and realisations of political borders, but it pays less attention to the agency of provinces and peripheral regions to promote political action and to generate borders. Moreover the motivations of the two levels, in particular the one labelled “interest,” are ultimately materialistic, and this in some cases limits our full understanding of cultural, non-rational phenomena. Nevertheless, Liverani’s idea of two coexisting conceptions of political borders promoted by the Late Bronze Age great powers, as well as the recognition of discontinuity and effective lack of control of territory and borders by the central authorities remain very productive. The second influential model of interpretation of ancient territoriality has been produced by A. T. Smith in The Political Landscape (2003). Smith puts the accent on the fact that the definition of a polity depends on its interaction with a landscape. It is not only important to consider the geographic features of a territory and the human impact modifying it, but also to consider the way a polity represents and imagines its territory and how this process determines its political identity.115 As an alternative to the two tiers of interpretation offered by Liverani, place, space and imagined landscape, derived from Lefevre,116 represent for Smith three well-intertwined aspects of the same territory of a polity. While The Political Landscape adopts a cross-cultural comparative method, and gives primacy to space over historical context, it is in The Political Machine (2015) that Smith’s approach to political landscape is employed for the analysis of the long durée historical transformations of a given region: the south Caucasus during the fourth–second millennia BCE. The analysis concentrates here on production and distributions of artefacts in assemblages. The archaeology of sovereignty suggested by Smith assigns to the objects and their production, distribution and visibility in one assemblage the agency of defining, promoting, and transforming sovereignty.117 The change of the assemblages in the same region on the long durée offers a model for the study of political borders in diachrony instead of in space (and see Gopnik, this volume).

111

 For example Fales 2011.  Schachner 2009, 2011; see also d’Alfonso, this volume. 113  Liverani 2001, pp. 34–37. 114  Feldman 2006. 115  Smith 2003. 116  Lefevre 1974. 117  Smith 2015, pp. 27–58, 67–73. 112

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1.6. ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT: BORDERS IN ARCHAEOLOGY IDENTITIES IN ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

AND NATIONAL

The borders of the modern states that comprise the area reviewed by this book were drawn over the last two centuries as the result of armed conflicts (Fig. 2). The Treaty of Turkmenchay, which ended the Russo-Persian war of 1826–28, placed some areas of the South Caucasus and modern Turkey that had been part of the Persian Empire under the control of the Russian Empire instead. The Aras (Araxes) River was set as the boundary between the two polities, ceding the eastern part of the South Caucasus that had not already been transferred by the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan to Russia. During this period, the Ottoman Empire occupied the area to the west of the Persian Empire and the south of the Russian Empire. World War I brought an end to the Ottoman Empire. Much of the territory of the empire was stripped by the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and the borders of the modern Turkish state were drawn by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. These treaties, which laid out the boundaries we still see on modern maps, belie the complicated movements of populations within and outside of the area due to the changing sovereignties, military confrontations and conflicts among ethnic groups.118 And the borders of the South Caucasus states are still being redrawn and contested: Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a state of war over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh and Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia have declared independence of Georgia, which has not recognised that status. The history of the region before the 19th century is very complex, with many changes of borders and centres of sovereignty and it will not be rehearsed here. Suffice it to say that much of the region of Anatolia and the South Caucasus were parts of various states and empires, with many of these polities encompassing areas that are now divided by the modern borders.119 One example can illustrate the regional instability over the long durée: the political control of Yerevan alternated 14 times between the Ottoman and Persian empires in the period between the early sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries.120 This vacillation of political control, although not with such frequency, was also true at times in pre-history and early historic periods, as some of the papers in this volume illustrate (Işıklı, Zimansky, Gopnik). The modern borders can make research challenging, given the number of languages, publication outlets, archaeological authorities and repositories that house and communicate the data. Even the names of archaeological cultures and time periods have been changed and contested, depending on the nationalities of the researchers.121 Modern borders are relevant to the understanding of the ancient borders as much as to modern national identities. The practice of linking the present occupants of a landscape with those in the past, creating an identity that upholds the modern right to the borders real 118  This complex modern history can be reviewed from various perspectives reflecting the major 19th century players, including Suny 1993, 1994, 1996, pts. I and II. 119  See Gopnik herein for a small part of this earlier history. For a quick overview, see Burney and Lang 1972, pp. 165–225. For the pre-Russian South Caucasus see Rapp 2006, 2009, 2017. 120  Smith 2012a, p. 60. 121  Rubinson and Sagona 2008; Rubinson 2005.

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Fig. 2. Map showing (Eastern) Turkey and the internationally recognised political borders in the Caucasus. Created by Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. 2002. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

and aspired to for a people, can, as Kohl and Fawcett note, “help build a justifiable pride in a specific cultural tradition” but can be misused.122 There is a “near universality of a relationship between nationalist politics and the practice of archaeology”123 and thus archaeology plays a role in nation-building. The case of the Turkish Republic has been studied in depth in recent years. The country was extracted from the Ottoman Empire, founded in 1299 and at its maximum extent by 1453. The modern country became a political unit almost a century ago (1923) and had been rooted within a Turkic entity. The nation-building role was quite explicit in the early years of Turkey. In fact, Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, stressed the territoriality of the country as a homeland with a deep past for the citizens of Turkey124 and nation-building was an important influence on the practice of archaeology in Turkey.125 In recent years, there has been a change in the emphasis in Turkish archaeology, with a new interest in the Islamic past of the country, which had been downplayed/ignored by Atatürk, as well as a revival of the pan-Turkism that had been current under the Ottomans.126 Regional identities are now also part of the mix.127 122

 Kohl and Fawcett 1995, p. 5.  Kohl and Fawcett 1995, p. 4. 124  M. Özdoğan 1998, p. 116. 125  Erciyas 2005, p. 179. 126  Erciyas 2014; for the pan-Turkism, M. Özdoğan 1998, p. 116 and Erciyas 2014, fn. 3. 127  Mitchell 2014. 123

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The situation was quite different in the South Caucasus. Parts of the area were under the political control of Persia and the Ottomans before the whole of the area became part of the Russian Empire by 1828. Except for a brief period of independence at the time of the Russian Revolution (Armenia 1918–1922; Azerbaijan 1918–1920; Georgia 1918–1921), when these countries had different borders than they do today, they were part of Russia for about ninety years, and then for about seventy years, part of the Soviet Union. Thus, when we look at the modern history of national identities and the role of archaeology, it is necessary to consider the history of the nationality policies of Soviet Union as well. In the South Caucasus, archaeology played an important role in the definition of borders and “ownership” of territory, in part because of the policies and politics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet system had a hierarchy of geographical entities, and the heads of these entities were entitled to political privileges. The system had built-in potential for conflict among ethnic (generally based on language) groups. Republics of the USSR were named for the majority group, in the South Caucasus case the Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians. Under those were groups that were considered ethnic minorities: the Autonomous Republic of the Abkhazians and the Autonomous Regions of Nagono-Karabakh (Armenians) and that of the South Ossetians.128 The legacy of this Soviet administrative structure is still being played out. The focus of Soviet archaeologists and historians on the deep past, with a stress on ethnogenesis, was stimulated in the mid-1930s by the European political situation: the emphasis on the history of the Slavs and other peoples of the USSR was a pushback against “German predatory politics towards the Slavs.”129 This new emphasis, together with the nature of the political organisation, led to emphases and manipulations of the archaeological past by many archaeologists,130 which underlie to this day some of the regional conflicts.131 It is our hope that the papers in this volume, with their investigations of past borders that often cross modern ones and are not hard lines on a map, will contribute to the understanding of the macro-region as a space which has pasts shared across the micro-regions that made up the ancient world, in the South Caucasus and Anatolia.132

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 Shnirelman 2001, pp. 383–392.  Shnirelman 1995, p. 130. For a study of the background and history of this and subsequent developments see Shnirelman 1995, 2001, pp. 383–392 and Chernykh 1995. 130  Kohl and Tsetskhladze 1995. 131  Shnirelman 2001. 132  This chapter is the result of the joint and collaborative work of the two authors. For the sake of the Italian research evaluation process: LDA is responsible for parts 1.1–2 and 1.4–5, KSR for parts 1.3 and 1.6. 129

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ON BORDERS AS AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL/HISTORICAL PROBLEM Roderick CAMPBELL ABSTRACT This paper outlines a set of concerns relating to the topic of ancient borders and provides a model for overcoming them in the form of a case study from ancient China. The purpose of this example is both an exercise in defamiliarisation and to set the discourse on ancient borders into a larger comparative context. The concerns raised in the paper stem from the way that borders, as a self-evident feature of nation states, can give rise to anachronism. This paper argues that ancient spatio-temporal political practices are myriad and, at the same time, must kept analytically separate from ancient spatial imaginaries in both ancient China and past Anatolian/South Caucasus landscapes.

In the modern conception, state sovereignty is fully, flatly, and evenly operative over each square centimeter of a legally demarcated territory. But in the older imagining, where states were defined by centers, borders were porous and indistinct, and sovereignties faded imperceptibly into one another.1 Considered in isolation, such spaces are mere abstractions. As concrete abstractions, however, they attain ‘real’ existence by virtue of networks and pathways, by virtue of bunches or clusters of relationships.2

My goal here, in this chapter in a volume on borders in the ancient South Caucasus and Anatolia, is to provoke. My provocation is two-fold. On the one hand, I wish to critically engage the utility of borders as an archaeological or historical problem for the Bronze Age. On the other, I will illustrate my argument with the case of Shang China, contemporary with many of the polities discussed in this volume, but located on the other side of Eurasia. My reason for the first provocation is to outline the great conceptual and empirical challenges to investigating ancient borders, while the second is to show how some of the issues I will raise play out in a distant, historically unconnected place. The utility of this move is to potentially shine a contrasting light on the regional focus of this volume and in doing so highlight the general, comparative thread picked up by many of the other authors. There are two fundamental problems typically conflated when archaeologists and ancient historians attempt to tackle the issue of borders in antiquity. The first is the historical (in the broad sense) question – what were the practices, realities and imaginaries of political, administrative, and, or, military boundary making in a particular time and place? The second, but entirely different, problem is, on what phenomena do our sources actually shed light, and how are these things related to the complex topic of political spatio-temporal boundaries? My argument is that these two questions – the one concerning the imagined 1 2

 Anderson 1991, p. 19.  Lefebvre 1991, p. 86.

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ideal totality of a past that was, the other, the fragmentary evidence of a past that is no longer – cannot easily be reconciled. The problem is not merely the difficulty common to all historical practice, but rather the gap between a potentially misleading and anachronistic term and the sources for its putative reconstruction. According to the Oxford online dictionary, the primary meaning of “border” is, “A line separating two countries, administrative divisions, or other areas.” Researching the question of ancient borders then, is, in the sense of a past-that-was, imagining an ancient reality where lines separate “countries”; and in the sense of a past-that-is-no-longer, seeking and interpreting evidence as reflecting the presence, absence or nature of such imaginary lines. This search for ancient boundaries becomes especially problematic if borders are considered to be straight-forward reflections of a certain form of political practice. Following Weber’s influential definition of the state as being characterised by control over a territory (and projecting his post-Westphalian definition back across millennia), the all-too-common danger is in assuming that the problem of the presence/absence of ancient borders is merely a question of whether or not the polity in question is a state. In this formulation, the spatial imaginations of nation-state dwellers project lines onto maps of ancient polities and then go looking for them in texts, potsherds and monuments.3 As many authors have argued, the contemporary idea of borders derives from the history of Modern European nation-states, new understandings of exclusive property rights, and the idea of a common citizenship and collective, national ownership over a bounded and delimited territory (but imagined as permanent or even timeless). This national “imagined community” was, in turn, produced through mass education, mass media, universal citizenship and the inculcation of national symbols such as flags, anthems, and maps with neatly drawn borders.4 Thus, the spatio-temporal imagination of the nation-state – the “state idea” – is produced through a specific set of practices and is related to, but not the same as, the networks of power that sustain the operations of the state apparatus or “state network”.5 Borders, then, are an epiphenomenon of both state networks (the infrastructure of boundary marking and policing) and of state ideas (lines on maps and in the heads of citizens) – produced though a complex recursive interplay of resources, practices and discursive formations. Thus, if borders are imaginary lines, there is, nonetheless, a whole complex of socio-political machinery behind their production. The historical nature of this machinery – the variable forms of polity, resources and sovereign imagination – logically gives rise to a myriad of ways of relating to time and space: to more or less bounded, and more or less dynamic political landscapes.6 Thus, in the realm of discourse, one might ask, is the polity imagined as an enduring, but clearly demarcated national patrimony as in modern nation-states; a collection of lands linked to the cosmic centre by a system of roads and sacred sites as in the case of the Inka;7 or a series of concentric rings of lesser or greater extent varying with the moral virtue of 3

 M. Smith 2005.  Anderson 1991; Hobsbawm 1990. 5  Abrams 1991. 6  A. Smith 2003; Campbell 2009. 7  D’Altroy 2002. 4

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the ruler as Early Chinese polities were imaged to be? Or, shifting focus to polity networks, does the polity, as in the case of modern nation-states, claim exclusive rights to all resources within its delimited territory, or, as in Medieval European kingdoms, were there overlapping jurisdictions and rotating use of resources by different groups within and between a diversity of stakeholders? Which resources were critical to the political economy of the polity (and therefore most likely to be sites of control)? In land-rich agricultural economies the most crucial resource is perhaps labour, while in an overpopulated, or land-scarce scenario, good land might be the key resource. In a mercantile empire, the most critical resources could be access to trade routes, markets and production centres, while in a pastoral political economy power might be largely based on herds and people. There are many possible ways in which power-producing resources can be concentrated, mobilised and monopolised in more or less enduring ways, but each has different ramifications for spatiotemporal practice. Each too, is implicated in the production of different topographies of time, space and power – which may, or may not, include imaginary lines. If borders are discursive, and/or material epiphenomena of complex systems of political practice and representation, and our sense of their “given-ness” is the view from within the absolute cartographies of nation-states and their mutually exclusive division of space and time, it seems pertinent to question whether or not borders are a legitimate topic of inquiry for ancient polities at all. For if we live within the mental horizons of a world composed of nation-states, either raised within, or excluded from, some version of the secular religion of nationalism, why should we chase its chimera across gulfs of space and time? Perhaps counter-intuitively, I would argue it is because the topic of borders so glaringly displays the perils of anachronism that it useful. The very modernity of the current borderconcept sets the historical problem of the shape of ancient political imagination and its related practices into high relief. Thus, if we are able to see the borders of nation-states as connected to a whole system of material, practical and discursive practices, then we are all the better equipped to look for analogies in the past. Not the ancient analogies of modern borders per se, but the analogues of the complexes that produce political landscapes which may or may not include clear sovereign demarcations, and/or their infrastructure. This, however, returns us to the problem identified in the opening paragraph: the conflation of the past-that-was, and the past-that-is-no-longer. For if we can no longer be naïve about the complexity of the phenomena that lie behind the topic of borders in antiquity, we must also confront the fact that we, as historians and archaeologists, have no direct access to that complex whole, only fragments of differing spatio-temporal scale – pottery sherds, ruined buildings and scraps of inscription – to reconstruct putative lines in the minds of the dead. From these fragments, we must reconstruct the contours of lost political bodies – sketch their networks of spatio-temporal practice, re-imagine their political mythologies, and extrapolate their vanished cartographies of time and space. This, to be sure, is no easy task, but if we do not make the mistake of assuming we can directly study the ephemeral epiphenomenon of borders as some kind of transcendent reality waiting to be discovered, but instead reconstruct those elements of the total complex of spatio-temporal practices that our scattered and partial lines of evidence can elucidate, then the topic of borders in antiquity can be more than an expedition in search of imaginary beasts.

R. CAMPBELL

40 THE SHANG CASE:

To illustrate my point, let us turn to the example of the Shang, China’s first historic dynasty (c. 1600–1050 BCE)8 as instantiated by the Anyang polity (c. 1250–1050 BCE) – known to us through contemporaneous inscriptions and nearly a century of archaeological work. From the perspective of most of Shang scholarship, the idea of borders in anything like the modern sense is nonsensical. David Keightley’s statement,9 with some caveats concerning his evolutionary terminology and Weberian assumptions, can be taken as representative, It is unlikely that the full Shang state, except at its center can be associated with a defined and bounded territory. … The polity seems to have been conceived in terms of personal power (who was in control) and kinship association (what relationship he had to the center). … The state itself was conceived of, not as Shang territory, but as a series of pro-Shang jurisdictions, each with its particular relationship to the center (italics in original).

While, as argued in other places,10 Keightley’s emphasis on the ad-hoc nature of Shang rule is partially an artefact of the divinatory inscriptions he relies on, the idea that the Shang polity is better thought of as a network of places linked by communication routes than a solid, homogeneous, territorially delimited, entity is the consensus view of the field. In fact, the contemporaneous or near contemporaneous indigenous representation of the political realm was a series of concentric zones – growing increasingly elaborate with later textual re-imaginings, but at least bipartite in the earliest representations. The Da Yu Ding, a bronze cast 50–80 years after the fall of the Shang dynasty, bears an inscription that makes the following claim, 我 (聞) 殷述(墜)令(命)隹殷邊 (侯)田（甸）硂（于）殷正百辟率肆于酉（酒）古喪 （師）。 I have heard that Yin’s (Shang) letting fall the Mandate was because the hou and dian-lords of Yin’s peripheries, and the myriad governing officials of Yin all indulged in wine and thus lost their armies. (Da Yu Ding 大盂鼎)

While this is a Zhou perspective on the Shang polity, a statistical study of Shang political economy based on the oracle-bone inscriptions has likewise suggested a division between routine networks of economy and authority, and indirect, ad-hoc ones.11 Indeed, in the wider Shang spatial imagination, a division between domesticated, pacified space, and the dangerous places of the wild, barbaric and uncanny were reproduced through techniques of pacification (wu 武)– war, sacrifice, and the royal hunt – on the one hand, and ordering (wen 文) – gifting, feasting and ritual – on the other. Thus, the Shang kings

8  The Shang dynasty is the second of the three dynasties of traditional Chinese historiography, coming after the possibly mythical Xia and before the fully historic Zhou dynasty. Only the Anyang phase has contemporaneous written sources. 9  Keightley 1983, p. 26. 10  Campbell 2018, 2009, 2007. 11  Campbell 2018, 2009, 2007.

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recorded in the oracle-bones, were, starting in the Anyang period, given posthumous titles of wen or wu (or both) depending on their accomplishments in the eyes of their descendants. Sacrificial rituals were performed either to exorcise baleful ancestral influence after the fact, or to generate an auspicious relationship with the ancestors before misfortune occurred. Offerings were generally domestic animals, and/or pacified humans (slaves captured in war). The ancestralised land was likewise considered to be animate and dangerous. Considered high ancestors, the powers of the rivers, the mountains, the earth, winds and the four directions all required ritual mediation, while the beasts of the marsh, forest and field were subject to massive, coordinated elite hunts that can be likened to military expeditions.12 Human enemies were likewise either brought within the circuit of gifting and marriage, or subject to punitive expeditions. The duality of these practices of maintaining/establishing order mirrored the bifurcation of the world into the domesticated and the wild, the pacified and the dangerous, even if the boundaries between these zones were fluid: enemies could invade, wild beasts attack, and the will of the spirits was never certain. Moreover, if the oracle-bone inscriptions allow the reconstruction of a political ontology both bifurcated and fluid, they also permit a partial reconstruction of networks of politicaleconomic practice of greater spatio-temporal complexity. There is still much that is unclear: to what extent even the so-called royal demesne was directly controlled by the king (and exactly what the mechanisms were), the extent and nature of Shang officialdom (if they were, in fact, separate from the hou and dian-lords as the Da Yu Ding inscription suggests), and whether or not Shang political networks underwent dramatic change over the course of the Anyang period.13 Nevertheless, the discovery made by Lin Yun (1982) that the Shang kings recognised two distinct categories of “pro-Shang jurisdiction” has stood the test of time. Within the first category the kings “commanded” (令) or “called for” (乎) subordinates (including hou-lords) to do their bidding, while political actors in the second category were “met > allied with” (比) (generally bo-rulers, but sometimes hou-lords as well) for war and hunting. In practical terms, then, there were at least four zones of decreasing Shang sovereignty: royal lands, the lands of subordinate lords/officials, the lands of allies and the lands of enemies. Complicating this picture is that despite the fact that later schematics would represent an ideal spatialised version of concentric rings of ancient sovereignty, in practice the lands of subordinate and king, enemy and ally were spatially intermixed and temporally fluid. Moreover, from what little systematic regional survey has been done, it appears that Shang sites hugged the river-ways of the Central Plains, suggesting that even what may have been imagined as a series of concentric rings was, in practice, more likely a network of river-valley settlements, their hinterlands, and their land and river routes, fluid in political valence, but generally increasing in independence with distance from the Great Settlement Shang.

12

 Lewis 1990, Fiskejo 2001, Keightley 2000.  Keightley 1983, Jiang 2012.

13

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This sense of archipelagos of territoriality can be seen in the following inscription, On Guisi day cracked, Ke tested: “the (coming) week will have no misfortune”. The King, reading the cracks, said: “there is harm, there will be trouble”. Upon reaching the fifth day, Ding You day, indeed, there was trouble from the West. Guo of Zhi made an announcement saying: “The Tufang mounted an attack on my eastern districts, (destroying) two settlements. The Gongfang also invaded the fields of my western districts …”. Heji 6057.

In this inscription, a divination about the weekly fortune, the king reads the omen as harmful and his prognostication is verified five days later when Guo of Zhi, a Shang ally comes from the west to announce enemy attacks on his lands. Not only does Guo of Zhi refer to “my” districts, but the word bi 鄙, translated here as “districts” clearly refers to some sort of territorial unit that contains “settlements” and “fields” and can be thought of in directional terms. While Keightley translates this term as “borders”,14 Han dynasty glosses of the word indicate it was an administrative unit of some kind – a county in one interpretation, a collection of villages in another.15 Given that the only terminological distinction made in the oracle-bones between settlements (yi) is the designation “great/large”, and there appears to be only one “great settlement” in the oracle-bone inscriptions (“the Great Settlement Shang”), the two destroyed settlements could have been anything from minor villages to major centres. Likewise, it is clear from this and other inscriptions that the polities of Shang allies, enemies and subordiFig. 1. Heji 6057 nates were not “city-states” in any sense of the word (contra Yates 1997), but rather shared with the Shang a directional division of space – a central settlement (or settlement cluster) and then subordinate divisions of uncertain size that could be referred to in terms of cardinal directions, each with its own settlements. Thus, while at the abstract level of polities, Zhi can be seen as a node in the Shang hegemony’s indirect network of power, seen in terms of people and settlements, Zhi is actually an independent cluster of nodes – a minor network of settlements, hinterlands and their connecting routes. Another term that is sometimes translated as “borders” in the secondary literature is the term fang 方 (as in the Tufang and Gongfang in the example above). In political contexts, it is usually appended to a polity or group name to indicate an enemy. More basically fang means “direction”, either in an abstract sense or in the sense of the powers of the four directions. Keightley, attempting to link the sense of fang as enemy and as a spatio-cosmological concept, considers the political use to denote “men of the borders” – beyond the Shang lands (in a relational moral-political sense if not necessarily a geographical one).16 Given 14

 Keightley 2000.  Chen 1988. 16  Keightley 1999, 2000. 15

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the political-relational nature of fang, “borders”, with its connotation of geographical exteriority, is clearly not felicitous. There is, moreover, an example of the Shang itself being termed fang (i.e., Shangfang), examples of non-negative interactions with polities termed fang, and the fact that political statuses were mutable in any case. A less freighted understanding of the term would be something like “side”, recognising the opposing nature of the polity so named – similarly to the way fang is used in modern Chinese political discourse (for example, Meifang = the American side). Thus, when the previously subordinate lordship and favoured hunting area of Shang kings, Yu 盂, rebelled toward the end of the Anyang period and was then termed Yufang, it would make more sense to translate it as the “Yu-side” indicating its conceptual opposition to the Shang rather than “Yu men-ofthe-borders, implying that this once integral part of the Shang hegemony had somehow suddenly become borderland. If terms sometimes translated as “borders” in the secondary literature shouldn’t be, and contemporaneous inscriptions suggest networks of direct and indirect control, what does archaeology tell us about Shang political time-space? For one thing, work at Anyang and across north China has revealed that the network of sites suggested by the oracle-bone inscriptions had but one massive central node – “the Great Settlement Shang”. At 30 km2 Anyang was the largest site in East Asia to that point and perhaps the world. It was also 100 times larger than the next largest known Shang site in a historical landscape that had been dominated by regional and supra-regional mega-centres for over a millennium.17 Looked at from the perspective of the concentration or monopolisation of resources, the Great Settlement Shang was a massive centre of population, industry and ritual power. A first millennium BCE sacrificial hymn of later Shang descendants extols the Great Settlement as “the pivot of the four quarters” (Shijing, Yinwu) – a cosmological centre of worldordering importance. If the logic of the nation-state is to impose at least the illusion of contemporary, uniform and collective ownership over every inch of the state’s delimited territory, in the ancient Chinese case, at least at Anyang, the polity seems to be imaged as extending out from a world-centre – like the gravitational field around a massive object – pulling in people, resources, and industry, and concentrating coercive, productive and ritual capital. Few systematic regional surveys have been done in the Central Plains and fewer published, and, indeed, given the density of contemporary human occupation and degree of landscape modification, most of the Shang archaeological record is likely lost or buried (sometimes under 10 m of flood deposits). Nevertheless, from the distribution of sites that have been discovered it is clear that the Central Plains and surrounding regions, from the northern mountains, deserts and steppe, to the Yangtze river valley in the south, were home to a myriad of potting traditions (conflated, in Chinese archaeology, with ethnic groups) (see Fig. 2 below). These included the metropolitan Central Plains tradition centred at Anyang, and its many regional variants, but these were surrounded and intermixed with a large number of non-metropolitan local traditions. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to find maps where Anyang ceramic tradition distribution and the Shang kingdom’s borders are 17

 Campbell 2014.

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Fig. 2. Map of Anyang period (ca. 1250–1050 BCE) ceramic tradition distribution (Campbell 2014, fig. 5.1).

conflated, (or more subtly, the Shang “core area”18). As noted in other places, with little to no understanding of ceramic production and distribution chains Chinese archaeology is ill-positioned to interpret ceramics economically or culturally, never mind ethnically or politically.19 Indeed, if one were to plot a map of metropolitan ceramic distribution and impose the reconstructed locations of different lordships and polities in the oracle-bone inscriptions, along with a score indicating their affiliation with the Shang, it becomes clear that ceramic distribution and political affiliation do not neatly coincide (Fig. 3). In this map, based on a study of the affiliation of political actors in the oracle-bone inscriptions and their historical geographic reconstruction,20 we can see that some major Shang enemies (those with low negative scores) are within the distribution of “Shang material culture”, while some staunch, but independent allies (like Zhi) are not. While it is true 18

 Liu and Chen 2012, p. 351.  Campbell 2014. 20  Campbell 2007, 2018. 19

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Fig. 3. Shang political affiliation map (Campbell 2018, fig. 4.1).

that every archaeological or inscriptional source available for the spatial reconstruction of the Shang polity is problematic for one reason or another, collectively the picture that emerges is one of entangled and interspersed networks of ceramic and other material cultural tradition, as well as non-isomorphic networks of political subservience, alliance and enmity in a landscape dominated by one gigantic centre of ritual, production and consumption. While there is much more work to be done on the material, practical and discursive networks of the Shang polity, and indeed much more that could be said about the archaeological and inscriptional evidence, for our purposes here (in a volume on ancient Anatolia and the South Caucasus), it is enough to sketch out the contours of its political imaginary, spatio-temporal practices and their bases. The ancient Chinese polity of Shang at the end of the second millennium BCE neither practised nor imagined political space in terms of lines demarcating bounded territorial units. Instead, it was conceived of as a world-ordering centre, with zones of subordination, alliance and alterity. Its political ontology was founded on a bifurcation of the world into domesticated and wild spaces – the former maintained through the ceaseless work of the Shang ancestral-ritual complex: of war and sacrifice. From the perspective of the polity network, rather than homogeneous territory, the Shang concentrated people and resources in the centre, while maintaining links to nodes along river and land routes, places of variable and inconstant subordination, each with their own networks of sites and resources.

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If considered from the material, practical and discursive formations that create polity networks and polity ideas, ideas that might include lines demarking territory, and networks that might include infrastructure for their maintenance, foregrounding and avoiding the pernicious baggage of the nation-state political unconscious, then the study of borders in antiquity might indeed be a fruitful topic of inquiry. The ways in which political and economic jurisdiction were imagined and their boundaries marked through Chinese history, for instance, is a potentially rich one. Although well beyond the scope of the current essay, given that the check points, fortresses and long walls of later Chinese empires functioned to regulate the flows of people and things both within and at the edges of their jurisdiction, the infrastructure of sovereign control seems better explained by network logics than simple boundary lines. The relationship between the specific forms of control, institutions and resources of political economy on the one hand, and political spatial practices and conceptions on the other, is an important question for archaeology and ancient history. It is hoped that this problematisation of a simplistic perspective on borders in antiquity will lead to a richer discussion of ancient sovereignties and their spatial practices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ABRAMS, P. 1988

“Notes on the difficulty of studying the state,” Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1): 58–89.

ANDERSON, B. 1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. CAMPBELL, R. 2007 Blood, Flesh and Bones: Kinship and Violence in the Economy of the Late Shang. PhD Diss. Harvard University. 2009 “Toward a networks and boundaries approach to early complex polities: The Late Shang case,” Current Anthropology 50(6): 821–848. 2014 Archaeology of Bronze Age China: From Erlitou to Anyang. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. 2018 Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CHEN MENGJIA 1988 Yinxu buci zonglan. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. D’ALTROY, T. 2002 The Incas. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. FISKESJÖ, M. 2001 “Rising from blood-stained fields: Royal hunting and state formation in Shang China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 73: 48–191. HOBSBAWM, E. J. 1990 Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. JIANG YUDE (RODERICK CAMPBELL) 2012 “Guo zhi da shi: Shangdai wanqi zhong de lizhi gailiang” (The Great Affairs of the State: The Mid-Late Shang Ritual Reforms), in Yinxu kexuefajue 80 nian xueshu jinianhui, edited by Tang Jigen, pp. 267–276. Beijing: Science Press.

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KEIGHTLEY, D. 1983 “The Late Shang state: When, where, and what?”, in The Origins of Chinese Civilization, edited by D. Keightley. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999 “The Shang: China’s first historical dynasty,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, edited by M. Loewe and E. Shaughnessy, pp. 232–291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000 The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China. Berkeley: IEAD & CCS. LEFEBVRE, H. 1991 The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. LEWIS, M. E. 1990 Sanctioned Violence in Early China. Albany: SUNY press. LIN, Y. 1982 “Jiaguwenzhong de Shangdai fangguo lianmeng,” Guwenzi yanjiu 6: 69–74. SMITH, A. 2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. Berkeley: University of California Press. SMITH, M. 2005 “Networks, territories and the cartography of ancient states,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(4): 832–849. YATES, R. 1997 “The city-state in ancient China,” in The Archaeology of City-States: Cross Cultural Approaches, edited by D. Nichols and T. Charlton, pp. 71–90. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

PART II:

BORDERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL BORDERS IN ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

ARE “BORDERS” A USEFUL CONCEPT IN PRE- AND PROTO-HISTORIC TIMES? A LONG HISTORY OF INTERACTION BETWEEN UPPER EUPHRATES SOCIETIES AND NORTHERN ANATOLIAN COMMUNITIES IN THE FOURTH MILLENNIUM BCE Marcella FRANGIPANE ABSTRACT This chapter questions the use of the concept of borders in prehistoric societies, with specific reference to southwest Asia. In Neolithic contexts cultural horizons may have in no way reflected real political domains with precise borders, as any form of political organisation would not have been based on territoriality, but rather on a sense of belonging to the same social, ethnic and/or cultural group. The archaeological record shows a high degree of interaction over large territories, likely reflecting the ease of movements of people and things, which blur the boundaries of local group identities through a recurrent and pervasive process of hybridisation. The fourth millennium transformation into hierarchical and centralised societies, whose rulers exercised economic control over staple resources and labour, represented the context in which the first definition of political boundaries and ‘territories’ from which to extract resources may have taken place. Yet, cultural processes of elite emulation and increased long-range interregional contacts would partly hide the ongoing formative process of territorial definition. The site of Arslantepe, set at the northern frontier of the Mesopotamian world, offered crucial hints for analysing these processes.

DOES

THE CONCEPT OF “BORDERS” APPLY TO PREHISTORIC SOCIETIES?

The concept of “borders” when applied to pre- and proto-historic societies has proven to be critically complex as it involves the problem of defining “cultural” and “political” entities before the establishment of real “territorial states” and on the basis of pure archaeological data. First of all, an archaeologically defined material assemblage does not always refer to a single homogeneous set of related features founded on the same deep-rooted traditions, evolving together in the course of time, composing an organic uniform “culture”. It may also reflect overlapping networks of related but different cultural identities that had come into contact and had been in some way and for various reasons linked together in a particular time, closely interacting and mutually changing in the course of the relationship.1 But how can we recognise and distinguish between the overlapping cultural features of different interacting groups, particularly in cases in which they mingled with each other and tended towards integration and assimilation, giving rise to substantial hybridisation phenomena? And how can we identify the forms of contact, and where and how they occurred, and their

1

 Carter and Philip 2010.

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effects on the construction of new identities and on defining new geo-cultural areas, perhaps changing across time? Investigating all these questions is a crucial prelude to addressing the main question dealt with in this book, that is to say, the problem of borders and consequently of recognising clearly delimited “cultural territories”. To what extent were pre- or proto-state communities sharing the same culture closely linked to territories with clearly established and fixed “borders”? In other words, was there at any time, and under all circumstances, a correspondence between a “cultural area” (that is, the territory occupied and/or frequented by culturally homogeneous communities) and some clearly defined and delimited “political” land? While the debate around these issues has highlighted the complexity of linking cultural and political identities, which may vary in different circumstances and historical contexts, it is clearly even more complex and difficult to define the boundaries of any such entities when the societies involved are not structured as mature “territorial states”. And even when they are, the availability of written sources often fails to resolve the issue, giving rise to problems of interpretation and of reconciling what we can infer from the texts with the material culture evidence. What I would like to emphasise in this paper is not only the problem of detecting the boundaries of ancient societies, but the more important fact that the very concept of “boundary” and “border” could not, in my view, have always been present in any type of society, but arose at a given time in connection with a hierarchical and centralised political and economic structuring of the communities concerned. The idea of “borders” would probably have been very vague or non-existent in pre-state societies, at least in the sense we would use it today. I am not suggesting that the early sedentary rural communities in the Neolithic, for example, had no perception of being related to a particular territory, and this is even true for hunter-gatherer and mobile pastoralist groups. The agricultural practices in particular may have strengthened this sense of belonging by closely linking the Neolithic communities to the land where they established their villages and produced their food. It is sufficient to consider the long time they had to wait from planting to harvesting, which may have made it necessary to guarantee some kind of continuous occupation of the land where these activities were performed, creating a strong sense of possession and the right to use it. I do not, therefore, wish to question the obvious connection between communities (and related cultural entities) and “their” territory.2 What I mean is that according to the archaeological evidence from these early periods, at least as far as the Mesopotamian and Eastern Anatolian worlds are concerned, the limits of the cultural territories, and hence their “borders”, appear to have been poorly defined and flexible, being very easily crossed and changeable in time. What I would like to stress here is the fact that there was probably no need for those societies to fix these borders precisely, while these needs may have arisen in connection to the

2

 “Territory” is even one of the conceptual categories used to define ethnicity by a number of scholars (Renfrew 1996, p. 130).

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emergence of systemic economic relationships between centres and their hinterland in increasingly centralised societies. The data on Neolithic societies – and not only in the Near East – in my opinion support this idea: the widespread dissemination of Neolithic ways of life from the Levant and mountainous areas of Eastern Anatolia and the Zagros mountains, where plant and animal domestication processes had begun,3 to the vast territories of Mesopotamia in the seventh and sixth millennia BCE4 went hand-in-hand with the construction of cultural identities, expressed in specific formal and functional repertoires, sophisticated pottery styles (particularly in painted ceramics), technologies, house layouts, settlement arrangements, daily habits, social and economic practices and behaviours. Each of these cultural entities certainly typified a specific, and generally fairly large geographic area. However, the borders of these areas cannot be easily detected not only because of the shortage of sufficient archaeological evidence, but also because of their intrinsic transience and the lack of definition evidenced from the way they continuously intersected. This can be seen from the wide-ranging and multidirectional circulation of certain cultural features typical of one or another region. In particular, painted ceramics characteristic of specific regions and with a powerful identity value5 have been found huge distances away from their regions of origin circulating in cross-directions,6 mainly in the form of bowls and serving vessels. This leads us to believe that they did not circulate as containers of exchanged foodstuffs, while at the same time, they do not seem – at least in the majority of cases – to be themselves the object of exchange.7 We are therefore led to assume that these objects circulated with their users, probably on the occasion of various kinds of social practices intended to establish and consolidate solidarity, alliances and peaceful relations between different groups on a vast scale, but also as the result of the real mingling of populations (by splitting communities, inter-marriages, etc.) with the consequent spreading and circulation of their craft traditions, symbols, and aesthetic models. I believe that the social identities of these groups, in the absence of any consolidated and territorially-based political structures, would have been determined by their membership of tribal or kinship groups rather than by their sense of belonging to the territory they occupied.8 Archaeological evidence has never revealed so many and varied movements, the circulation of things and models and interactions over such huge distances as occurred in the Neolithic.9 It was with the formation of the first hierarchical societies in the fourth millennium BCE that we find a radical transformation in this wide-ranging and multidirectional circulation of persons and cultural features: there was certainly no decline in the interactions between 3

 Balossi Restelli 2006; Cauvin 1994; Özdoğan et al. 2011–2014.  Akkermans 1993; Nieuwenhuyse et al. 2013. 5  Nieuwenhuyse 2007. 6  Hassuna and Samarra pottery have been found, for instance, over very large regions from Central Mesopotamia up to the Upper Tigris valley in Eastern Anatolia, where also Dark Faced Burnished Ware, typical of Cilicia and ‘Amuq plain, is found (Tekin 2011). And there are many other examples of objects expressing well-defined regional styles found far away from their place of origin and prevalent use. 7  Akkermans 1993, pp. 280–287. 8  Frangipane 2013. 9  Frangipane 2007a. 4

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the Mesopotamian and Eastern Anatolian communities in terms of their extent or intensity. If anything, it was the contrary. But these interactions changed their form, becoming better regulated: in a few cases, they were physical movements of populations from south to north, settling and permanently living in the new areas as alien groups (the so-called Late Uruk “colonies”), probably followed by the further shifting of small groups going to settle sideby-side with local populations and closely interacting with them.10 In many other cases, the contacts took other forms, being in all cases different in nature and with different aims from the Neolithic patterns: exchange relations (most of them probably involving “colonies” and local centres), possible political relations between centres, and other forms of well-regulated and organised contacts aiming at specific objectives. All these relationships appear to have been accompanied, on the one hand, by the emulation of the southern societies, whose elites were probably perceived by northern groups as stronger and deeprooted, and on the other hand, by widespread hybridisation and homogenisation processes, thus giving rise to a “new” culture inspired by the southern models and variously adopted and “interpreted” in the entire region of the so-called “Greater Mesopotamia”11 Yet no political borders are visible, and I think that there were probably no borders in the true sense of the term as frontiers between precisely defined political territories. But the wide, continuous, multidirectional and capillary movements of things and people seem to have substantially declined, becoming more restricted to specific cases and aims, and losing their systemic regularity, suggesting that some changes were taking place in this respect. In the Neolithic, the interactions between different groups seem to have been aimed at cancelling or reducing the differences, thus cutting down potential conflicts and enabling a more effective spreading of population possibly under demographic pressure, while perhaps at the same time creating better conditions for the integrated exploitation of the varied and rather “difficult” environment on a vast geographic scale. In the Uruk period, particularly in the Middle and Late Uruk phases (3600–3100 BCE), the form of interaction and the sharing of common features and behaviours between “southern” and “northern” communities seem to have been more the result of similar developments towards the same type of centralised society, which had taken root in the earlier expansion of the Ubaid cultural, socio-political and economic model over a very vast area. The sharing of similar economic and social structures may have indeed facilitated the new fourth-millennium relations, which must by now have been based on similar economic and political needs, while at the same time strengthening the northern local elites, which may have viewed their southern counterparts as the expression of a successful model of social interactions. As a period of radical changes in social, economic and political relations, the fourth millennium BCE also overturned the way in which societies operated, giving rise to a process in which territorially-based political and economic entities were probably beginning to become established, although not fully accomplished. I suggest that this may be seen as a “transition” period in terms of the relations between societies and their territory. The 10

 Algaze 1993; Frangipane 2009; Schwartz 2001; Stein 1999a.  Butterlin 2003; Frangipane 2001, 2009; Stein 1999b.

11

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55

formation of central political structures that drew their strength from an economic system based on the centralisation of primary resources (land, livestock, labour) certainly must have made it necessary to define with growing clarity the extension of the territories from which these resources had to be extracted. The centralisation/redistribution circuits of staple products that underpinned these proto-state systems made it necessary to guarantee ever-increasing and regular revenues which were both accumulated in the hands of the chiefs and redistributed as food to the growing numbers of people providing work and services to the central institutions. This growth required that the chiefs constantly realign the system of extraction, making increasingly necessary to define the territory subjected to the extraction by the new elites vis-à-vis the claims of the other, neighbouring elites. This system set in motion a process of establishing political and economic territorial entities under their control. According to the evidence available from the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, these entities may have initially been limited in size and perhaps have competed with each other for the control of their surrounding territories. It is therefore possible that an incipient definition of boundaries began as early as the Late Uruk period, although the formation of a supra-regional system of relations over a very vast area may have hidden the possible emergence of politically defined territorial units to some extent, at least in terms of their archaeological visibility.

ARSLANTEPE AND

ITS RELATIONS WITH THE SURROUNDING REGIONS IN

THE FOURTH MILLENNIUM

BCE: WERE

THERE “BOUNDARIES”?

Arslantepe in the fourth millennium BCE: its attraction capacity and the expansion of external relations in the Upper Euphrates region In the course of the fourth millennium BCE, Arslantepe and its region were probably one of the new political cores emerging from the increasingly defined spheres of economic action and control by the progressively more powerful elites of the Uruk period.12 Although we cannot trace any clear border of its territory, the strong economic centralisation attested on the site in Period VIA (Late Chalcolithic 5, 3400–3200 BCE) points to an obvious, though only assumed, definition of its territorial sphere of interaction with the population of the surrounding area. At the same time, there is evidence of a remarkable expansion of the site’s external relations in many directions, towards both the Mesopotamian world and the northern mountainous regions of Anatolia (Fig. 1). The whole Anatolian Upper Euphrates valley, and the centre of Arslantepe in particular, lying on the borderline between different worlds and civilisations in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, at the time of the formation of a Mesopotamian-type centralised system governed by powerful elites, exerted an attraction on different components belonging to different and distant worlds, and interacted with them in a way that, I believe, ranged beyond mere “trading” relations. 12

 Frangipane 2010a.

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Fig. 1. Map of the Near East with the Arslantepe location and the main cultural areas dealt with in the text.

In addition to the well-known interactions with the Uruk world, which appear to have been very intensive while not affecting the basic autonomy of the site,13 Arslantepe also showed clear evidence of significant connections with the Late Chalcolithic cultures of North-Central Anatolia. We do not exactly know the nature of these relations, but they are suggested by the presence in the fourth-millennium palace complex of a new class of handmade Red-Black Burnished Ware closely related to the Central Anatolian productions.14 This class of pottery, totally alien to both the local and the Mesopotamian Late Chalcolithic traditions, had appeared for the first time in very small quantities at the end of Period VII (Late Chalcolithic 4) and significantly increased in period VI A, in both periods consisting of selected forms related to serving and probably ceremonial activities. It unequivocally shows, in its manufacturing techniques, shapes, and general taste, very close links with the contemporary production of Central Anatolia.15 The repertoire of shapes – among which are the so-called fruitstands, typical products of Central Anatolia – the manufacturing and firing technique, and the aesthetic taste for two-colour chromatism, as well as the specific 13

 Frangipane 2002, 2012a.  Frangipane and Palmieri 1983; Palmieri 1973. 15  Çalışkan Akgül 2013; Orthmann 1963; Steadman et al. 2008. 14

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use of colour patterns for internal and external surfaces,16 evidently reproduce Alişar and Alaca models, though with some distinctive traits. These vessels, in contrast with the main pottery production of the period, were all hand-made, evidencing, together with their specific firing technology, that they were probably made by different potters, though clay analyses indicate a regional origin of raw material.17 The repertoire, moreover, as we have already mentioned, shows a quite rigid selection of forms and functional categories, almost all related to their use for drinking, eating, and probably cult or ceremonial practices (Fig. 2a-c). The fruitstands, in particular, have often been found, together with wheelmade examples inspired by them, in the temples and “cult” places in the Arslantepe fourthmillennium buildings,18 as were the only Red-Black pithos, found in Temple B close to the altar (Fig. 2d), and the very few examples of large Red-Black jars, usually showing relief decorations.19 Other possible evidence of external interference or the inclusion of external components in the centralised system of Period VI A at Arslantepe is in the radical change undergone by animal rearing practices in this period, which show an extraordinary increase in sheep and goats, reaching 82 per cent of the total domestic fauna with a pronounced majority of sheep over goats.20 This change was probably also related to some central intervention encouraging specialisation in these species,21 which besides being easy to manage in large quantities, produced important secondary products such as dairy and wool. And it may also have been the result of the new intensive relations established with transhumant groups moving between the Upper Euphrates valley and the neighbouring mountains of centralnorthern and north-eastern Anatolia.22 The appearance of the Red-Black Burnished Ware (RBBW) as a part, although smaller, of the Arslantepe VI A repertoire, with its special functional characterisation, together with the substantial change in the animal breeding pattern, may have been related to the possible inclusion of new groups, perhaps of non-sedentary pastoralist communities moving in the surrounding regions and in some way linked to the north-central Anatolian world,23 in the centralised economic system governed by the palace elites. These groups may have travelled along the mountain routes linking the areas south of the Black Sea coast to the Euphrates valley.24 And the remarkable role of this cultural component in the Upper Euphrates region as a whole is further confirmed by the presence of the same kind of RBBW with even closer affinities to Central Anatolian productions in the Late Chalcolithic levels at Tepecik.25

16

 Palumbi 2008.  P. Fragnoli 2018. 18  Frangipane 1997. 19  D’Anna 2010, 2012. 20  Bartosiewicz 2010; Bökönyi 1983. 21  Palumbi 2010. 22  Frangipane 2010b. 23  Ökse 2007. 24  Frangipane 2014, 2017; Palumbi 2010. 25  Çalışkan Akgül 2013; Esin 1982. 17

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Fig. 2. Red-Black Burnished Ware with Central Anatolian connections found in the palace complex of the fourth millennium BCE at Arslantepe (Period VIA).

The data suggest that these “alien” groups were deeply involved in the life of the Arslantepe palace more than simply being trading partners. They seem to have produced their pottery in the region, as suggested by clay analyses,26 and participated in the cult and redistributive practices in the public complex, as indicated by the selective use of their pottery in the palace buildings, and probably brought their dairy products there, both satisfying a demand from the Arslantepe elites and gaining a privileged “market” for distributing these products. The interest in establishing wide-ranging relations with this northern Anatolian people may have been also fostered by the need for metals, which these mobile groups, moving in regions very rich in metal ores, may have actually helped to procure and distribute.27

26

 Fragnoli 2018.  Frangipane 2017.

27

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The beautiful arsenical copper weapons found in one of the palace buildings,28 and the use of sophisticated metallurgical techniques which also produced silver, gold, and copper alloys of various types, indicate a remarkable development of metallurgy at Arslantepe in this period (Fig. 3).29 This hypothesis is supported by the spread of similar arsenical copper technology, metal composition and types of metal objects in the entire mountainous belt surrounding the southern Black Sea coast and reaching the South Caucasus.30 Indeed, the chemical and lead isotope analyses carried out on the Arslantepe metal objects point to both northern and northeastern regions as the source of the raw materials.31 This kind of copper composition has been found in other sites in the Turkish Euphrates region, but it has not been documented, as far as I know, south of Hacinebi,32 thus supporting the idea that the procurement of metals at Arslantepe was mainly intended for the internal use of the local elites and, perhaps, for a regional distribution, rather than being mainly aimed at mediating their exchange in a systematic long-distance trade network for supplying Southern Mesopotamia. The relationship with the mobile northern Anatolian components therefore appears to have been structurally functional to the development of the centralised economic system of Arslantepe and to some extent represents an extension of the sphere of influence of this centre beyond its region. These relations were certainly led by Arslantepe in the VIA period, as, I think, relations with the southern communities of Mesopotamian origin were probably too, even though, in the latter case, the question of the leadership of the relations is more open and a subject of debate. But were there any real borders of Arslantepe’s dominion? Was there any geographical/ political definition of the “Arslantepe lands”? As I have previously suggested, the formation of some kind of “territories” directly dominated and closely controlled by the Late Chalcolithic 5 centres may have been in progress at the end of the fourth millennium, but these incipient political territories were probably small, whereas their sphere of interaction was very broad and variable. It is possible that the incipient formation of boundaries and borders defining the areas of the Late Chalcolithic 5 centres’ dominion, combined with the trend to expand their sphere of influence, was a cause of internal contradiction as well as the source of conflicts and stress in these final Late Chalcolithic period political systems. And the vague definition of the land actually “belonging” to the political and economic “centres” was certainly a much more remarkable problem in the absence of any real urbanisation, as was the case of Arslantepe: the foundation of “cities” with a large number of inhabitants to be fed may have indeed created a stronger and structural link between these centres and their hinterlands, stimulating the formation of organically related territories. Arslantepe, conversely, was an emblematic case of the development of a proto-state system without urbanisation. It was a powerful administrative, political, economic, and perhaps religious centre, probably the 28

 Frangipane and Palmieri 1983.  Hauptmann and Palmieri 2000; Palmieri et al. 1999. 30  Courcier 2007; Kushnareva 1997; Meliksetyan and Pernicka 2010; Özbal et al. 2002; Yalçın 2008. 31  Hauptmann et al. 2002. 32  Özbal et al. 1999; Schmidt-Stecker et al. 1992. 29

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Fig. 3. Sophisticated metal objects from period VIA at Arslantepe.

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main centre in the Upper Euphrates region at the end of the fourth millennium BCE, but its small size indicates that it was unable to attract people to permanently live on the site. The population around it, while being heavily involved in the centralised economic system of the Arslantepe institutions and probably severely controlled by them in the management of some of their activities and productions, therefore basically remained rural and the village communities of the plain may have maintained their basic autonomy in the management of their domestic economy and way of life. In this context, the pastoralist groups moving in the regions north of the Malatya plain and interacting with the palace appear to have become one of the components of the centralised system, though in the absence of any specific territorial control or submission to the Arslantepe centre. That is to say, that there is no indication of any actual direct political or cultural dominance exercised by the Arslantepe institutions on the territories settled and frequented by these groups, but the Arslantepe elites appear to have interacted with these groups from a dominant position. Then, when the central institutions started to undergo their deep crisis at the very end of the fourth millennium BCE, the presence of these mobile groups in the Malatya area perhaps became a factor of greater instability and imbalance in the region, contributing to weakening further the central power system. Changing relations at Arslantepe and in the Upper Euphrates valley at the very end of the fourth millennium BCE Around 3200 BCE, after the total collapse of the Late Chalcolithic centralised system, the pastoralist groups moving in the area might have become a competing and conflicting component, whose relations with the Malatya population appear to have changed from being cooperative to becoming critical. Between 3200 and 3100 BCE (Period VIB1), movable groups seasonally settled at Arslantepe in scattered wattle-and-daub huts flanked by wide open spaces delimited by fences (long rows of posts), probably intended to stable their livestock (Fig. 4).33 But were these groups the same as the fourth millennium ones frequenting the palace or do they indicate the arrival of new communities? According to their material culture they appear to have been differently oriented towards the east/northeast, showing clear similarities with the so-called Kura-Araxes cultures. Their pottery, which on the whole marked a total break with the earlier Uruk-influenced Late Chalcolithic wares, consisted practically of one main class of hand-made Red-Black-Burnished Ware (RBBW), more rarely buff-brownish in colour, with a very limited repertoire relating to cooking, eating and storage functions. The RBBW appears to have been made with the same technique and using the same two-colour patterns and taste as the earlier central-Anatolian-related wares, but the shapes significantly changed, being now closely related to the typical Kura-Araxes repertoire (Fig. 4).34

33

 Frangipane 2012b, 2014; Vignola et al. 2018.  Palumbi 2008.

34

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Fig. 4. Plan of Period VIB1 settlement at Arslantepe and examples of Red-Black Burnished Ware with Kura-Araxes connections found in this settlement.

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We cannot exclude that these groups were new arrivals in the region connected with the Kura-Araxes “expansion” to the southwest, though the data at our disposal do not allow us to form a clear opinion in this respect: we are not able, for instance, to compare their huts with the dwellings of the fourth-millennium mobile pastoralist communities, who had never lived on the site. But, even if this was the case, these new groups, albeit being now part of the Kura-Araxes cultural sphere, as Palumbi has already argued (2008b) must have come from nearby areas rather than having arrived from the far-away regions of NorthEastern Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia. They used the wattle and daub technique, which was widespread in the Kura-Araxes regions, but their dwellings had peculiar forms and building techniques – such as fairly irregular outlines and the use of deep ditches to insert the poles of the walls – and also preserved some traditional local features, such as the round fireplace with a central depression, documented at Arslantepe from the Late Chalcolithic 3–4 (Period VII) and in the Upper and Middle Euphrates valley and nearby regions (for example, in the ‘Amuq plain) during the whole Early Bronze I–II periods. The two-colour patterns and the technique used for obtaining them in their Red-Black pottery, moreover, exactly reproduced the earlier Late Chalcolithic choices inspired by the Central Anatolian productions.35 According to all these evidences, Palumbi has rightly suggested that these groups were probably mobile groups from the surrounding mountains, possibly the same groups that in the fourth millennium were oriented towards the north-central Anatolian routes, which, at the beginning of the third millennium, came into more intensive contact with the expanding Kura-Araxes communities, becoming part of their composite cultural mosaic.36 They may well have been the “heirs” of the previous pastoralist groups interacting with the central authorities of the palace period, but the situation had now completely changed: the political and economic centre of Arslantepe no longer existed and, in the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Arslantepe centralised system, these mobile groups probably changed the main directions of their movements and contacts under the pressure of the Kura-Araxes communities, which, in this period, were expanding towards the Euphrates. They then probably became part of the Kura-Araxes cultural sphere as one of its variegated components. At the very beginning of the third millennium BCE, these groups took over the Arslantepe site. The last three excavation campaigns have shown that what had seemed from earlier excavations to have been an ephemeral, temporary and weakly-structured settlement in period VIB1 was in fact a much more important occupation, which, though probably seasonal, continued to be perceived as the main place in the area and became a landmark for the mobile groups living in the region. Towards the summit of the höyük, we discovered unexpected outstanding structures.37 A large hut, which had been rebuilt three times with changes in the floor plan, was probably a chief dwelling, built in the centre of an area separated from the rest of the settlement by a solid palisade with two rows of posts and post-buttresses, plastered with mud and renewed several times. 35

 Palumbi 2008, 2012.  Palumbi 2012, pp. 261, 275–276. 37  Frangipane 2014; Palumbi et al. 2017. 36

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Adjacent to this was an imposing building (Building 36) with substantial mud-brick architecture in total contrast to the rest of the wattle-and-daub structures. It appears to have been a special building for community functions (Fig. 5). It consisted of two main rooms arranged along a longitudinal axis: a large elongated “reception” hall with two entrances, a big central fireplace, and a small storage space on one side; and a storage room full of materials found in situ. Both the architecture of this building and the materials contained in it suggest that this structure must have been the seat of public or communal practices, such as guest reception, feasting or meeting. The great majority of the materials were vessels in the Kura-Araxes style, among which were two jars with incised and relief decoration, respectively constituting unique items not found in the wattle-and daub-dwellings. A few examples of wheel-made light pottery in the post-Uruk tradition were also found only in this upper area (if one excludes very few scattered not in situ sherds), together with the only two examples of seals found in period VIB1.38 This suggests the meeting here of the two traditions (Mesopotamian and Kura-Araxes), perhaps on the occasion of some social practices during which different groups with different cultural roots had probably met under the leadership of the pastoralist chiefs. The period VIB1 mobile and probably transhumant community seems to have maintained the memory and function of Arslantepe as a power centre and used the site as their political and symbolic reference point. Building 36 was perhaps the meeting place where these new chiefs performed their social practices, also involving the local rural population linked to the previous Urukrelated traditions. In the storeroom there were two beautiful copper spearheads, which, except for their smaller size, exactly reproduce the same type and technological features as the spearheads found both in the fourth millennium palace and in the so-called Arslantepe “Royal Tomb” of the early third millennium (Fig. 5).39 The persistence of the metallurgical technology, skill and tradition in the transition from the early state society of Period VIA1 to the new non-centralised and culturally different communities of Period VIB1 is a further indication of the continuity and deep rooting of the relationships that the Arslantepe society established with northern Anatolian and Transcaucasian groups, which probably brought the metal and certainly spread their metallurgical traditions to the Upper Euphrates valley. Though the main orientation of these relations has changed from northwest to northeast in the two periods respectively, the new connections with the Kura-Araxes world seem to have had their antecedents in the intense and structurally important relationships already established by the Upper Euphrates central elites with mobile mountainous populations. Following the collapse of the centralised system, the first centuries of the third millennium were characterised by the interruption of the previous intense relationships with the Mesopotamian communities, while at the same time opening up to wider and perhaps multi-directional relations with the pastoralist cultures of the north/north-eastern Anatolian

38

 Frangipane 2012b, fig. 8b; 2014, fig. 9b.  Frangipane 2014, fig. 10. The Arslantepe “Royal Tomb”, according to the closely comparable findings brought to light in Building 36, can now be dated either to the same period as this building or slightly later. 39

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Fig. 5. Building 36 and some of the special items found in it. a-c: Metal objects; d-e: Vessels with relief and incised decoration; f: small beakers; g-h: wheel made vessels in the post-Uruk tradition.

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mountainous environment. The Upper Euphrates region appears to have become a meeting-point for several of these groups40 and, in the absence of a strong political power, probably a gateway, opening up the path to their southwest expansion.41 The spread of a mobile pastoral way of life in the majority of the eastern and northeastern Anatolian regions radically transformed the political organisation of the societies,42 which now appeared much more fragmented and were probably managed by clan or tribal chiefs.43 The management of conflicts (as suggested by the diffusion of metal weapons and the appearance of town-walls) and luxury goods, particularly metals, richly deposited in the elite graves, seem to have been the basis of a new ideology of power. The political definition of territories and the concept of territorial borders may probably have been even weaker than before.

RADICAL CHANGES

IN THE

THE FOURTH MILLENNIUM

UPPER EUPHRATES’ SOCIETIES IN THE SECOND HALF OF BCE AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE DEFINITION OF BOUNDARIES.

A FEW CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Upper Euphrates valley is a particularly interesting region in which to investigate the problem of the early formation of political territories and the definition of boundaries, since it worked as a sort of varying frontier between different cultural worlds. This stretch of the valley was attracted into the sphere of influence of either this or that world, changing from one prevailing cultural format and organization to the other. The rich data obtained so far at Arslantepe offer precious information on the history of these changes in cultural and political environments and spheres of influence, and document the occurrence of one of the most radical and abrupt changes in the transition from the fourth to the very beginning of the third millennium BCE, when probably the nature and stability of cultural boundaries also underwent significant modifications. The development of a strong centralised political and economic system involving a large number of people, accompanied by the growth of a very sophisticated bureaucracy to administer and manage the intense movements of food and labour in the final centuries of the fourth millennium, as already proposed, suggests the needs to fix boundaries, albeit ill-defined, to the territory from which the Arslantepe elites could have legitimately extracted resources and labour. As we have already suggested, these incipient political/ economic territories were probably fairly small in this formative phase. But, at the same time, the increasingly powerful central institutions appear to have aimed at expanding their sphere of influence and interaction far beyond their basic “territory” by including new

40

  Suffice it to mention the differences in the material culture of the mobile groups settled in the Malatya and Elazığ plains, respectively. 41  Palumbi 2012. 42  The important role of the pastoralist components in the development of Eastern Anatolian and, more generally, Near Eastern Civilisations has been recently emphasised, and to some extent overemphasised, by A. Porter (2012). 43  Cooper 2006, pp. 278–284; 2007; Frangipane 2007b.

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external components in the system governed by them, with which they systemically interacted. These structural relations, involving groups from very wide regions, may have introduced a contradictory element, perhaps weakening the possible incipient border formation and making it more difficult to be unequivocally established, since these borders were probably continuously crossed. When the incipient state system collapsed, there is evidence at Arslantepe of the maintenance of the external relations this centre had previously established with the mountain people, but the main players leading these relations were now different and more varied. The borders that were in the making during the Late Chalcolithic Early State formation phase seem to have vanished or radically changed, as they now appear to be totally permeable. The two main regions along this northern stretch of the Euphrates valley – Malatya and Elazığ – became much more connected to each other in the Early Bronze I than in the Late Chalcolithic period, having also been affected by similar developments and external relations. These relations seem to have linked the two Upper Euphrates regions with different groups belonging to the Kura-Araxes “family”, changing their prevailing connections in the course of the early centuries of the third millennium. But they also developed similar cultural aspects that were well rooted in the earlier Late Uruk traditions and created a kind of common substratum in the entire Middle and Upper Euphrates valley. Besides being variably oriented in the course of time, the interregional relations appear not to have had any clear centres in their networks, and the prevailing dominant components were changing too. At Arslantepe, an alternation of dominance of the site by pastoralist transhumant groups (in periods VIB1 and VIB3) and sedentary rural populations (in period VIB2) occurred in the transition from the very end of the fourth to the first two centuries of the third millennium BCE. It was accompanied by corresponding changes in the prevailing external relations, linking the site to the Kura-Araxes cultural sphere in periods VIB1 and VIB3, and to the post-Uruk cultures of the Upper and Middle Euphrates area in period VIB2. The main “border” was no longer political, but was now mainly a geographical border, that of the Taurus range, physically dividing the Upper Euphrates and North/North-Eastern Anatolian regions from the Syro-Mesopotamian cultural provinces. Both the Late Chalcolithic powerful centres and the less centralised Early Bronze I communities appear not to have had clearly defined territorial borders and interacted widely with the neighbouring populations through mutually porous boundaries. But the concept of “boundary” and “border” itself may have changed significantly from the formative and incipient state societies of the fourth millennium to the stongly mobile and less politically and economically structured communities of the end of the fourth and the early third millennium BCE. We have to wait until the second half of the third millennium to see the formation of micro-polities in the Malatya-Elazığ region, which were certainly less powerful and externally projected than the earlier fourth millennium societies. But perhaps they were the embryonic cores of the process which was to bring about the new second-millennium well-structured political and territorial entities.

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FRANGIPANE, M. 1997 “A 4th millennium temple/palace complex at Arslantepe-Malatya. North-south relations and the formation of early state societies in the northern regions of Greater Mesopotamia,” Paléorient 23(1): 45–73. 2001 “Centralization processes in Greater Mesopotamia: Uruk “expansion” as the climax of systemic interactions among areas of the Greater Mesopotamian region,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors, edited by M. S. Rothman, pp. 307–347. Santa Fe: SAR Press. 2002 “‘Non-Uruk’ developments and Uruk-linked features on the Northern borders of Greater Mesopotamia,” in Artefacts of Complexity. Tracking the Uruk in the Near East, edited by S. Campbell and N. Postgate, pp. 123–148. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. 2007a “Different types of egalitarian societies and the development of inequality in early Mesopotamia,” World Archaeology 39(2): 151–176. 2007b “The establishment of a Middle/Upper Euphrates EB I culture from the fragmentation of the Uruk world. New data from Zeytinli Bahçe Höyük (Urfa, Turkey),” in Euphrates River Valley Settlement: The Carchemish Sector in the Third Millennium BC, edited by E. Peltenburg, pp. 122–141. Oxford: Oxbow. 2009 “Rise and collapse of the Late Uruk centres in Upper Mesopotamia and Eastern Anatolia,” Scienze dell’Antichità 15: 15–31. 2010a “The political economy of the early central institutions at Arslantepe. Concluding remarks,” in Economic Centralisation in Formative States. The Archaeological reconstruction of the economic system in 4th millennium Arslantepe (Studi di Preistoria Orientale 3), edited by M. Frangipane, pp. 289–307. Rome: Sapienza University of Rome. 2012a “Fourth millennium Arslantepe: the development of a centralised society without urbanisation,” Origini 34: 19–40. 2012b “The collapse of the 4th millennium centralised system at Arslantepe and the farreaching changes in 3rd millennium societies,” Origini 34: 237–260. 2013 “Societies Without Boundaries. Interpreting Late Neolithic Patterns of Wide Interaction and Sharing of Cultural Traits: The Case of the Halaf Communities,” in Interpreting the Late Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia, edited by O. Nieuwenhuyse, R. Bernbeck, P. M. M. G. Akkermans and J. Rogasch, pp. 89–99. Turnhout: Brepols. 2014 “After collapse: Continuity and disruption in the settlement by Kura-Araxes-linked pastoral groups at Arslantepe-Malatya (Turkey). New data,” Paléorient 40(2): 169– 184. 2017 “The role of metal procurement in the wide interregional connections of Arslantepe during the late 4th–early 3rd millennia BC,” in Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslıhan Yener, edited by C. Maner, A. Gilbert and M. Horrowitz, pp. 186–210. Leiden: Brill. FRANGIPANE, M. (ed.) 2010b Economic Centralisation in Formative States. The Archaeological Reconstruction of the Economic System in 4th Millennium Arslantepe (Studi di Preistoria Orientale 3). Rome: Sapienza University of Rome. FRANGIPANE, M. and PALMIERI, A. 1983 “A Protourban centre of the Late Uruk Period,” Origini 12(2): 287–454. FRAGNOLI, P. 2018 “Pottery production in pastoral communities: Archaeometric analysis on the LC3– EBA1 Handmade Burnished Ware from Arslantepe (in the Anatolian Upper Euphrates),” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 18: 318–332. HAUPTMANN, A. and PALMIERI, A. 2000 “Metal production in the Eastern Mediterranean during the 4th/3rd millennium: Case studies from Arslantepe,” in Anatolian Metal I (Der Anschnitt Beiheft 13), edited by Ü. Yalçın, pp. 75–82. Bochum: Deutsches Bergbau-Museum.

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HAUPTMANN, A., SCHMITT-STRECKER, S., BEGEMANN, F. and PALMIERI, A. M. 2002 “Chemical composition and lead isotope of metal objects from the ‘Royal’ Tomb and other related finds at Arslantepe,” Paléorient 28(2): 43–70. KUSHNAREVA, K. K. The Southern Caucasus in Prehistory: Stages of Cultural and Socioeconomic 1997 Development from the Eighth to the Second Millennium BC. Translated by H. N. Michael. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum. MELIKSETYAN, C. and PERNICKA, E. 2010 “Geochemical characterisation of Armenian Early Bronze Age metal artefacts and their relation to copper ores,” in Von Majkop bis Trialeti: Gewinnung und Verbreitung von Metallen und Obsidian in Kaukasien im 4.–2. Jt. v. Chr.: Beiträge des Internationalen Symposiums in Berlin vom 1.–3. Juni 2006, edited by S. Hansen, A. Hauptmann, I. Motzenbäcker and E. Pernicka, pp. 41–58. Bonn: Rudolph Habelt. NIEUWENHUYSE, O. 2007 Plain and Painted Pottery. The Rise of Neolithic Ceramic Styles on the Syrian and Northern Mesopotamian Plains. Turnhout: Brepols. NIEUWENHUYSE, O., BERNBECK, R., AKKERMANS, P. M. M. G. and J. ROGASCH (eds) 2013 Interpreting the Late Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia. Turnhout: Brepols. ÖKSE, T. A. 2007 “Ancient mountain routes connecting Central Anatolia to the Upper Euphrates region,” Anatolian Studies 57: 35–45. ORTHMANN, W. 1963 Die Keramik der frühen Bronzezeit aus Inneranatolien (Istanbuler Forschungen 24). Berlin: Gebr. Mann. ÖZBAL, H., ADRIAENS, A. and EARL, B. 1999 “Hacinebi metal production and exchange,” Paléorient 25(1): 57–65. ÖZBAL, H., PEHLIVAN, N., EARL, B. and GEDIK, B. 2002 “Metallurgy at Ikiztepe,” in Anatolian Metal II (Der Anschnitt Beiheft 15), edited by Ü. Yalçın, pp. 39–48. Bochum: Deutsches Bergbau-Museum. ÖZDOĞAN, M., BAŞGELEN, N. and KUNIHOLM, P. (eds) 2011–2014 The Neolithic in Turkey, Volumes 1–6. Istanbul: Archaeology and Art Publications. PALMIERI, A. 1973 “Scavi nell’area sud-occidentale di Arslantepe,” Origini 7: 55–179. PALMIERI, A., FRANGIPANE, M., HAUPTMANN, A. and HESS, K. 1999 “Early metallurgy at Arslantepe during the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age IA-IB periods,” Der Anschnitt 9: 141–148. PALUMBI, G. 2008 The Red and Black. Social and Cultural Interaction between the Upper Euphrates and Southern Caucasus Communities in the fourth and third Millennium BC (Studi di Preistoria Orientale 2). Rome: Sapienza University of Rome. 2010 “Pastoral models and centralised animal husbandry: The case of Arslantepe,” in Economic Centralisation in Formative States. The Archaeological Reconstruction of the Economic System in 4th Millennium Arslantepe (Studi di Preistoria Orientale 3), edited by M. Frangipane, pp. 149–163. Rome: Sapienza University of Rome. 2012 “Bridging the frontiers: Pastoral groups in the Upper Euphrates region in the early third millennium BCE,” Origini 34: 261–278. PALUMBI, G., ALVARO, C., GRIFONI, C. and FRANGIPANE, M. 2017 “A communal building of the beginning of the Early Bronze Age at ArslantepeMalatya: Spatio-functional analysis and interpretation of the archaeological context,” Paléorient 43(1): 89–123.

ARE “BORDERS” A USEFUL CONCEPT IN PRE- AND PROTO-HISTORIC TIMES?

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Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

RENFREW, C. 1996 “Prehistory and identity of Europe,” in Cultural Identity and Archaeology: The Construction of European Community, edited by P. Graves-Brown, S. Jones and C. Gamble. London: Routledge. SCHMIDT-STRECKER, S., BEGEMANN, F. and PERNICKA, E. 1992 “Chemische Zusammensetzung und Bleiisotopenverhältnisse der Metallfunde von Hassek Höyük und aus dem Gruaberfeld Hassek-West,” in Hassek Höyük (Istanbuler Forschungen 38), edited by M. R. Behm-Blancke, pp. 108–123. Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth. SCHWARTZ, G. M. 2001 “Syria and the Uruk expansion,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors. Cross-cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation, edited by M. S. Rothman, pp. 233–264. Santa Fe: SAR Press. STEADMAN, S., ROSS, J. C., MCMAHON, G. and GORNY, R. L. 2008 “Excavations on the North-central plateau: The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age occupation at Çadır Hüyük,” Anatolian Studies 58: 47–86. STEIN, G. 1999a “Material culture and social identity: the evidence for a 4th millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk colony at Hacinebi,” Paléorient 25(1): 11–22. 1999b Rethinking World Systems: Diasporas, Colonies, and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. TEKIN, H. 2011 “Hakemi Use. A newly discovered Late Neolithic site in Southeastern Anatolia,” in The Neolithic in Turkey. Vol. 1. The Tigris Basin, edited by M. Özdoğan, N. Başgelen and P. I. Kuniholm, pp. 151–172. Istanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayınları. VIGNOLA, C., MARZAIOLI, F., BALOSSI RESTELLI, F., DI NOCERA, G. M., FRANGIPANE, M., MASI, A., PASSARIELLO, I., SADORI, L. and TERRASI, F. 2019 “Changes in the Near Eastern chronology between in the fifith and third millennium BC: New AMS 14C dates from Arslantepe (Turkey),” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 456: 276–282. YALÇIN, Ü. 2008 “Ancient Metallurgy in Anatolia,” in Ancient Mining in Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean: International Conference AMITEM 15–22 June 2008, Ankara, edited by Ü. Yalçin, H. Özbal and A. G. Paşamehmetoğlu, pp. 15–40. Ankara: Atılım University.

All the images belong to the archive of the Italian Archaeological Expedition in Eastern Anatolia (MAIAO), Sapienza University of Rome.

THE “BORDER, FRONTIER AND BOUNDARY” CONCEPT WITHIN THE KURA-ARAXES CULTURAL PHENOMENON Mehmet IŞIKLI ABSTRACT Discussing “borders” in archaeology is subject to critical complexities, and notably, in the case of the Kura-Araxes cultural phenomenon, it becomes more complicated because of the lack of written sources from the societies of prehistoric periods. When borders are dependent upon the provenance of archaeological material alone, such as pottery, burial traditions and settlement patterns, etc., the concept becomes abstract and problematic. Undoubtedly, the Kura-Araxes cultural phenomenon, which covered one of the most expansive regions in Near Eastern archaeology, provides a striking case study when debating this topic. This cultural phenomenon, which characterises the Early Bronze Age of the zone, has a serious and chronic problem in identification of its boundaries, especially as the discussion centres on nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoral groups. At this point, both cultural and natural borders should be kept in mind. Although the culture is seen as being determined by its position in the mountainous region between the Taurus and Caucasus mountain belts, our knowledge regarding cultural and natural borders is very scanty. If we consider today’s political borders, the expanse of the Kura-Araxes Culture covered ten modern countries. We can assume that the natural borders (high, rugged, snow-capped mountains and deep river valleys) are most significant for this culture. The other prominent feature of this culture is its “regionalism”, which is very normal when considering its vast expanse – and there are several sub-cultural regions across this huge territory. However, the borders of these sub-cultural regions create another serious problem within the Kura-Araxes Culture. Archaeologists and historians who work on the Kura-Araxes Culture are of one mind in recognising the problems which arise from its geographical and chronological immensity, and without doubt, one of the most significant among them is its boundaries. Perhaps were this border problem solved, other chronic problems of this cultural complex could be solved as well. The main aim of this study, however, is not to resolve the border problem of the KuraAraxes Culture, but just to present it in full and to indicate possible solutions.

INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Borders, boundaries and frontiers have always been very popular subjects for many subdisciplines of humanities and social sciences, archaeology among them. They are important social phenomena for them. Discussing these terms in archaeology has always been a very complex but attractive subject. To trace the boundaries of ancient communities, chiefdoms, city-states, kingdoms, states, empires or cultures is never easy. In the case of pre-state prehistoric societies with their lack of written sources, the size of this challenge is magnified, especially if you are discussing mobile groups like the Kura-Araxes, in which case the situation becomes even more complicated. In spite of this, borders, boundaries and frontiers have always been interesting for both archaeologists and anthropologists. Most archaeological investigation concerning frontiers and boundaries has been advanced by a colonialist

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perspective of core and periphery relationships.1 From this point of view, frontiers are perceived as barriers which can bound political, social and cultural interactions. As mentioned above, concerning this issue three words become prominent: border, frontier and boundary. These three words are essentially synonymous. They have several meanings and definitions. The lexical meanings of the words are: “the line separating two political or geographical areas, especially countries,” “the district on each side of this”, or “the last line to which anything can expand or spread” (The Oxford English Reference Dictionary). “Boundary” is a more specific term and encompasses border and frontier. It is used to indicate the bounds or limits of anything. On the other hand, Parker has defined “borders” as “linear dividing lines, fixed in a particular space, meant to mark the division between political and/or administrative units.” While a border is a linear static dividing line, he notes, a frontier is a dynamic fluid zone.2 In the formation of “frontiers” a variety of factors are effective. Accordingly, five major categories of “boundaries” have been identified: geographic, political, demographic, cultural and economic.3 According to geographers, there are three types of “border”: political (artificial), cultural, and natural.4 Among these, the political (artificial) border is less problematic and more understandable. It can be defined as a tangible line between separate political and administrative entities. Political borders are seen as territorial markers. They occur along with political and martial units, and are territorial with a relatively visible element. They are not necessarily intended to mark a division between cultural, ethnic or linguistic groups. Political borders very rarely define prehistoric cultural areas or regions. Because of this, archaeologists should mostly ignore political borders when looking from a broad perspective. When we look at the history of frontier studies, they have progressed within the scope of core-periphery relationships. In Turner’s approach, a frontier was an ambiguous line between civilization and wilderness.5 In studies of the 1970s and 80s, a frontier was usually an imperial boundary. Lamar and Thompson define a frontier as a zone of interpenetration between two distinct peoples.6 This zone could separate various types of political or cultural units. According to H. Elton, whose work is on Roman frontiers, a frontier is a zone where various types of boundaries intersect and overlap; that is, frontiers are composed of various types of boundaries.7 According to some western historians, a frontier is a meeting place of peoples, in which geographic and cultural borders are not clearly defined.8 For cultural and geographic or natural borders, the situation seems to be more complicated than for political borders. Both are interrelated when thoroughly examined from the perspective of geography and cultural relationships. As mentioned above, in the determination of frontiers, geographic circumstances are a substantial factor. Natural divisions 1

 Lightfoot and Martinez 1995, pp. 471–492; Liverani 1990; Parker 2006, pp. 77–100.  Parker 2006, p. 81. 3  Parker 2006, p. 80. 4  For more detailed discussion of borders in geography, see Özey 2013, pp. 47–56. 5  For more details about Turner’s thesis, see Rodseth and Parker 2005, pp. 5–8. 6  Lamar and Thompson 1981. 7  Elton 1996. 8  Rodseth and Parker 2005, pp. 5–8. 2

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and physical features such as rivers and mountain ranges are significant. In the beginning of the 1900s, early geographers such as Curzon envisioned the limits of ancient polities as being determined by constraining geographic features of this kind.9 Physical features such as impassable mountain ranges and peaks, very deep valleys, cliffs, and deep flowing rivers might have acted to restrain any kind of activity (Fig. 2). According to Whittaker, major rivers like the Rhine, Danube, Euphrates and Tigris were borders for the Roman Empire.10 Parker has revealed a similar phenomenon in the Upper Tigris Valley, noting that during the Neo-Assyrian period, the Tigris River was an effective natural barrier for Assyria and its opponents.11 A modern example is the Araxes River, which gives form to much of the Turkey-Armenia-Iran political borders (Fig. 3). In a recent study, Robinson has emphasised that physical barriers such as rivers and mountains played an active role during the early Islamic conquests.12 In other words, when defining the borders of a cultural area, the determining factor is natural or geographical borders and divisions, and we should focus on these in the current context. Before beginning these discussions, however, we will discuss the essential features of the Kura-Araxes, as well as its cultural geography.

THE KURA-ARAXES CULTURE

AND ITS

GEOGRAPHY

In terms of its geographic extent, the Kura-Araxes Culture encompassed a huge area. The principal topographic features of this geography are long and high mountain ranges, with elevations of 3000 to 5000 m, high plateaus, highlands, low and elevated plains and also depression areas and deep river valleys which lie among the ranges (Fig. 4).13 Prominent in this cultural geography are the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, the Taurus Mountains, the Zagros Mountains and the Elbrouz Mountains, which are the dominant mountain ranges of the Near East. Many other peaks of all sizes connect with these main ranges, creating the principal surface features of this geographical zone. The flat and low plains, river valleys and basins which lie among the mountains and form various kinds of ecological niches are the perfect areas for human settlement. In Kura-Araxian cultural geography,14 the Kura and Araxes river valleys, Armenian plateau, Eastern Anatolian plateau, Upper Euphrates valley, Urmia and Van Lake basins and valleys of the Levant are the foremost and most densely settled areas (Fig. 1).15

9

 Curzon 1907.  Whittaker 1994. 11  Parker 2006, pp. 80–82. 12  Robinson 2014, pp. 317–340. 13  For more information about Caucasian geography, see Allen 1942, Khatchadourian 2008, pp. 247–278, and Smith 2005, pp. 229–279. For more information about Eastern Anatolian geography, see Erinç 1953. 14  Smith describes the geography of the Kura-Araxes as “an expansive Early Bronze Age ecumene” in “the South Caucasus and the Armenian Highland” (Smith 2015, p. 102). 15  Batiuk and Rothman 2007, pp. 7–17; Işıklı 2011, pp. 256–275; Palumbi 2008, pp. 309–329; Sagona 1984, pp. 15–31; 2011, pp. 691–697. 10

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Fig. 1. Map showing the distribution area of Kura-Araxes cultural material.

Undoubtedly, in Kura-Araxes geography, rivers and their tributaries are also as important as mountains. The principal river systems which watered Kura-Araxes lands are the Kura, Araxes and Euphrates Rivers. All three rivers originate in Eastern Anatolia; thus, this area is the most important, and the largest, reservoir basin of the Near East. The Kura and Araxes Rivers, located in the homeland of the Kura-Araxes Culture, created what might be called the Mesopotamia of the Caucasian world. These rivers and their tributaries played significant roles in regional expansion, interregional relationships, settlement patterns and the subsistence strategies of this cultural complex. For the purposes of our topic here, the importance of the rivers is their role in determining the natural borders of the cultural area of the Kura-Araxes (Fig. 5). The simplest definition of Kura-Araxes Culture is that it characterises the Early Bronze Age of the northern mountain zone of the Taurus Range. This cultural complex has distinctive ceramics, architectural traditions, settlement patterns and socio-economic structures.16 The Kura-Araxes pottery is handmade and produced within the home. The form repertoire consists of small and middle-sized pots, mostly jugs and jars. Storage jars are less common. 16

 For more information about Kura-Araxes Culture, see Burney and Lang 1971; Işıklı 2011; Kushnareva 1997; Kushnareva and Chubinishvili 1970; Kohl 2007; Marro 2011; Palumbi 2008; Palumbi and Chataignier 2014a; Sagona 1984.

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Fig. 2. Deep flowing rivers can act as natural obstacles. Shown are two examples from the KuraAraxian landscape: (a) a branch of Araxes River in Hınıs province of Erzurum region which flows in a deep canyon; (b) Arpaçay River, another branch of the Araxes River (all photographs by the author).

Fig. 3. A good example of physical features as borders: (a) A satellite image of the Turkey-ArmeniaIran borderland; (b and c) the Arpaçay River. a branch of the Araxes River that forms the present-day Turkish-Armenian political border.

Fig. 4. Dominant features of the Kura-Araxian landscape: (a) a high plateau from Ağrı Province; (b) a depression area from Erzurum region; (c) a highland from Kars region.

Kura-Araxes ceramics have a distinctive red and black colour scheme, and are highly burnished, with elaborated relief and incised decorations. As for architectural traditions, the Kura-Araxian dwellings are free standing or clustered, rectangular (with rounded corners or not and with one or two rooms) or circular. These buildings, with stone foundations or not, have mudbrick or wattle-and-daub walls. The houses generally have single rooms and are flat-roofed (Fig. 6).

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Fig. 5. The two rivers after which the cultural phenomenon is named: (a) the Kura River and (b) the Araxes River – (a) is a view of the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi Rivers from the Jvari Monastery of Mtskheta, Georgia.

The places selected for settlements could vary by geography, ecological conditions and subsistence strategies. The Kura-Araxes sites are located in different environments at different altitudes. The preference was usually for lower-lying fertile plains, broad uplands, river valleys, slopes of hills and high mountain valleys (Fig. 7). When we analyse Kura-Araxian settlements, they are mostly middle- or small-sized sites that can be described as small villages. They are in general about 150 m in diameter or less than 5 ha in size.17 For instance, the sites located on mountainsides or highland plateaus are mostly small villages and have relatively thin cultural deposits, such as the examples in some parts of Southern and Northern Caucasus. Larger sites, located in flatlands farther south in Armenia, Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan, Northwestern Iran and Eastern Anatolia, are often multi-period tells.18 Observing some of the movable objects in the archaeological remains of the culture, such as portable hearths and andirons, and some details of architectural remains and settlement patterns, of possible seasonal occupations (temporary settlements), for example, at Büyüktepe in Bayburt province and Gelinciktepe in Malatya Plain, we estimated that the folks of this cultural complex were mobile groups.19 But taking into account permanent architecture in other Kura-Araxian sites, notably those on flatlands, we cannot say that they were completely nomads. This is a much-discussed subject related to socio-economic and socio-political organisation of Kura-Araxes Culture.20 There is no consensus among scholars on this topic. Ongoing questions include mobility status: were they nomads, semi-nomads or sedentary communities? What kinds of socio-political and economic organisation did they have? Were they tribes or chiefdoms? The answers to these questions should be sought in all kinds of evidence from well-excavated Kura-Araxian sites. Regrettably, systematically excavated sites with evaluations of the archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence are few. The 17

 Kohl 2009, p. 250; Sagona and Zimansky 2009, pp. 175, 187. There are a few large sites which are greater than 5 ha, such as Arich in Armenia, Bet Yerah in Israel and Ravaz in Iran. 18  Kohl 2009, pp. 247–248. 19  Palumbi 2010, pp. 149–163; 2012, pp. 261–268. 20  For more information about this issue, see Alizadeh et al. 2015, pp. 37–54.

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Fig. 6. The Kura-Araxes assemblage from Eastern Anatolia: (a) the building defined as temple in Pulur/Sakyol in Elazığ; (b) a standard Kura-Araxes house; (c) architectural remains of Kura-Araxes Culture from Norşuntepe; (d) tray with decorated panel from Güzelova in Erzurum; (e) vessel with elaborate decorations from Güzelova in Erzurum; (f) vessels with highly burnished surfaces and movable hearth from Sos Höyük in Erzurum; (g) a hearth with human faces from Cinis Höyük in Erzurum; (h) vessel and hearth from Sos Höyük; (i) cultic hearth with human faces from Pulur-Sakyol in Elazığ.

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Fig. 7. Kura-Araxes sites can be located in river valleys, in this case, on a bluff in the valley (a – Muş region, Bulanık province), or on hill slopes (b – Kars province, Yazılıkaya).

general opinion regarding socio-political status is that they might have been organised as tribes, that is, as kin-related social-political units. Supporting this view is the clear and strong relationship between mobility, pastoralism and tribe in several examples of a distinct, socio-political organisation.21 There are many arguments about Kura-Araxian communities’ subsistence strategy.22 Taking into account the geographical and ecological conditions of this cultural geography, animal husbandry was the basic subsistence strategy for these societies, but there might have been diversity in practice depending on local conditions. The Kura-Araxes groups herded mostly sheep and goats and fewer cattle.23 In addition, they were engaged in farming. Although there is no extensive consensus on this topic, the general opinion is that they were sedentary farmers who bred animals such as cattle, goat and sheep.24 In spite of this, they were different from Mesopotamian centralised agricultural societies. This model of KuraAraxian communities might be described as “agro-pastoralist”. Palumbi and Chataigner defined them as “small village-based communities practicing a mixed agro-pastoral economy” (Fig. 8).25 This cultural complex with its distinctive cultural and socio-economic dynamics is associated with several unsolved problems because of its geographical and chronological immensity.26 These problems vary from its identification and its origin to its periodisation and its 21

 According to Porter, the tribe has no true territorial definition but is, nevertheless, a “bounded autonomous political unit” (2012, p. 46). 22  See Wilkinson (2015) for information about the Structural Economies of the Kura-Araxes Culture. 23  Piro 2009. 24  The archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence of very few sites have been analysed. These results supported this model. Smith (2015, p. 120) also described Kura-Araxes societies as agropastoral. For more information, see Işıklı 2012, pp. 103–112; Longford et al. 2009; Piro 2009; Palumbi 2010, pp. 149–165; 2012, pp. 261–278. 25  Palumbi and Chataignier 2014b, p. 253. 26  Işıklı 2011, pp. 41–63.

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Fig. 8. Animal husbandry was essential subsistence strategy of Kura-Araxian folks: (a) flock of sheep in the Erzincan Plain with the site of Altıntepe in the background) and (b) water buffalo and cattle herds at the Karasu River in Erzurum.

boundaries. Furthermore, distinct regional variants make these problems more difficult. Since this paper focuses on the problem of Kura-Araxes borders, I will look at the issue of the identification of this culture only as it pertains to border definition. One of the main problems of the Kura-Araxes Culture is its identification. In fact, most of our unsolved problems have arisen from this indetermination. It has been variously described as “cultural phenomenon”, “cultural complex”, “cultural unity”, “cultural structure”, “cultural community”, “cultural-historical community”, “koine” and even “ceramic tradition” by scholars who work on it.27 These contradictory terms and definitions arise from its immense spread and multi-component nature. Actually, all of them are describing the culture in a particular way, and none of them is entirely wrong; it is just that they fall short of identifying it properly. In my opinion, the best definition among these is “cultural unity”, but the risk at this point is regarding “unity”. This should never be understood as a single “unity” or “polity”; you can never mention uniformity for a culture which has such geographical and chronological immensity. This cultural complex exhibits different regional features; it was quite heterogeneous. Despite the fact that we can speak of a standardisation of materials, variations in cultural materials can be seen depending on regions. In fact, it is the regionalism and regional variations that are one of the most distinctive features of the culture. In a recent collection of papers by scholars working on Kura-Araxes Culture, Palumbi and Chataignier said that “many contributors have also observed that this apparently homogeneous cultural ‘skin’ concealed a richness of local and regional diversities.”28 At this point of our discussion, the boundary problem of the culture becomes more multi-layered and expanded with the inclusion of sub-cultural regions and their borders.

27

 Palumbi and Chataignier 2014a, p. 8.  Palumbi and Chataignier 2014b, p. 253.

28

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The Kura-Araxes Culture never experienced centralised political and martial characteristics.29 Generally, the Kura-Araxes sites have no specific layout or fortification walls. There are only a few fortified Kura-Araxes sites (towns?). The discussions related to this matter focus on whether Kura-Araxes communities were peaceable or not.30 The scarcity of fortification systems and a lack of weapons among the material culture at settlements bear out that they were peaceable groups.31 Also according to the general view, these groups lived in egalitarian societies. Most of the Kura-Araxes sites and their materials provide very little evidence of internal social differentiation.32 In these circumstances, it would be expected that the boundaries of Kura-Araxes are cultural and natural rather than political. Thus C. Burney, who is one of the first researchers to introduce this culture to the western world, identified the Kura-Araxes populations as “peaceful shepherds”.33 Indeed, in archaeological excavations in Kura-Araxian geography, no evidence regarding destruction caused by Kura-Araxian groups has been found up to the present day. Most Kura-Araxes settlements and their materials exhibit little evidence of militarism and defence. Accordingly, A. Smith shares a similar opinion and describes them as egalitarian societies who remained free of complex labour coordination, warfare and violence.34

THE FRONTIERS OF KURA-ARAXIAN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY In this section we try to identify the borders of expansion of Kura-Araxes communities based on their cultural materials. The distribution of their material culture across their cultural geography and its landscape will play a key role. As mentioned above, the KuraAraxian societies usually consisted of farmers and mobile pastoral groups. These groups, whose main subsistence strategy was animal husbandry, must have moved across expansive areas to find fresh and plentiful pastures for their herds.35 In this case, these questions come into prominence: what was the border for them and what was the meaning of border for these mobile groups? The mountains, valleys, plateaus, highlands and plains squeezed between mountain ranges are essential features which gave form to the landscape of KuraAraxes cultural geography. Then, most likely the natural or geographic borders for these groups were physical features such as the impassable mountain ranges and peaks, very deep valleys, cliffs, and deep flowing rivers. In fact, when considering the harsh and rugged 29  If we ignore ‘the royal tomb’, which is a unique find in Arslantepe, martial components in Kura-Araxian sites are rare. 30  For more see Smith 2015, p. 106. 31  Only a few Kura-Araxian settlements, such as Garni, Shengavit and Mokhra-Blur in Armenia, Sos Höyük in Eastern Anatolia, and Köhne-Shahr in Iran have fortification systems (Alizadeh et al. 2015, pp. 50–54; Kushnareva 1997; Sagona 1984; Smith 2015, p. 106). Only the wall in Sos Höyük has been discussed in detail (Sagona and Sagona 2000). 32  Alizadeh et al. 2015, pp. 37–54. 33  Burney 1996, pp. 1–15. 34  Smith 2015, p. 106 n. 4. 35  According to Antonio Sagona, the expansion of the Kura-Araxes Culture could have been related to the seeking of pastures by Kura-Araxian folk (Sagona 1984, pp. 15–18).

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Kura-Araxian terrain, these natural obstacles, such as the Caucasus and Taurus Ranges, could have constituted a real impediment (Figs 2 and 4). Apart from these natural elements, some regions which were active and dynamic by way of cultural, socio-economic and political interactions might have constituted a kind of impediment for these “peaceful pastoralists”. This theory is borne out by the fact that, while it was physically possible, these people did not enter some regions. Examples include the Rioni Basin in western Transcaucasia, some plains and valleys in Iran close to Mesopotamia, the Cilician Plain in the Adana region, and the southern part of the Taurus Range, namely Upper Mesopotamia. Even though some pastoral groups interacted with these active regions in the beginning, they preferred not to settle there. They seem to have knowingly avoided large settled areas. Why were they wary of this? It is not easy to understand, although these pastoral groups did cross into some of these regions following the collapse of local social-political systems, and settled in easily.36 In other words, they could have been aware of, and managed to exploit, the gaps which originated with social-economic and political transformations and alterations. As shown, all these details have resulted in the subject of borders and boundaries becoming more complex. Now, in the light of available evidence and the details mentioned, let us draw the boundary lines for the expanding geography of Kura-Araxes. Unfortunately, there has been no comprehensive study on this topic up to the present.37 Generally it has been discussed only in passing in other publications related to the KuraAraxes Culture. When considering the available work and evidence, there are two prominent natural barriers/boundaries for the Kura-Araxes Culture: the Caucasus Ranges in the northern sector, and the Taurus Ranges in the southern sector. The culture is seen as spreading across a wide mountainous region situated between these two ranges. Although these two mountain belts have been seen as natural borders, they were never impassable for these mobile pastoralist groups.38 Recent research has shown that this cultural phenomenon went beyond the Great Caucasus Range and it existed in southeastern Dagestan and on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The materials which have been found in the Caspian coastal plain were interpreted as a regional variant – namely the Dagestan variant – of the Kura-Araxes Culture. Moreover, during recent surveys and excavations, traces of this culture have been found in deep upland valleys located in the Great Caucasus chain.39 But we never see a significant settlement intensity for Kura-Araxes Culture beyond this mountain range and it has emerged as the main boundary for the Kura-Araxes Culture in the northern sector, based on present evidence (Fig. 1).

36  For example, in the Malatya region, the relationships of Kura-Araxian pastoral groups and Arslantepe began in the Late Chalcolithic period. But these groups only settled the region in the Early Bronze Age (Frangipane 2000, pp. 439–472; Palumbi 2008, pp. 53–100, and see Frangipane, this volume). 37  The first and major study about this topic was by Sagona. In his 1984 publication he presented the distribution of Kura-Araxian settlements considering archaeological evidence up to that date (Sagona 1984, pp. 22–31). 38  For more information about pastoralism and mobility see Porter 2012. 39  For more information about the Kura-Araxes Cultural Process in the northeastern Caucasus, see Kohl 2009, pp. 241–265, fig. 5.

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Within the Southern Caucasus, this cultural complex did not penetrate in the region of the Rioni Basin, located in Western Georgia, which is semitropical, low and fertile. It is well-known that this region has been settled intensively since the Palaeolithic period, and maybe it acted as a kind of natural-cultural boundary for the mobile pastoralists. In fact, we should examine the cultural, political and socio-economic structure of this region, namely the Rioni Basin, contemporaneously with the Kura-Araxes period, but it has not yet been studied. Maybe adaptation to this coastal region was a problem for these pastoral groups, who had been used to hilly regions. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that some sites belonging to this cultural phenomenon have been found in the coastal regions of the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.40 Thus, although we can be certain that Kura-Araxes materials have not been found in western Georgia, we cannot yet specifically say why (Fig. 1).41 The western part of the northern boundary is the Northeastern Anatolia region. The Erzurum-Kars Plateau is the primary settled area of this region and traces of the culture have been found widely there. Surveys carried out by Antonio and Claudia Sagona have shown that remains of the culture on this plateau reached the Bayburt Plain in the north and the Kelkit Valley in the inner eastern Black Sea region.42 In other words, the KuraAraxes culture extended to the southern slopes of the Black Sea Mountains but did not go beyond them and did not penetrate into the coastal zone of the eastern part of the Black Sea region. According to modern geographers, this area – that is, the Black Sea Mountain chain – is the natural border between the Eastern Anatolia and Black Sea regions. East of this zone, namely in the Artvin and Ardahan regions, located on the political borders of modern Georgia and Turkey, we have very little knowledge about expansion of the culture because of the lack of systematic investigations. Both regions, however, have a great potential for settlements of Kura-Araxes (Fig. 1).43 A very similar picture applies to the southern sector, where the main natural and cultural boundary of the Kura-Araxes Culture was the Taurus Range. According to modern geographers this range is also the border between Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia in modern Turkey. At the same time, this massive natural barrier separates the highland world (mobile pastoralist zone) from the lowland world (Mesopotamian urban culture zone). The Euphrates River valley, which transcends this natural border, was a place where these two worlds came face to face. Based on individual findings, there is no evidence that the culture went beyond this great natural barrier, where we find the greater Mesopotamian world. Beyond the Taurus Range small numbers of Kura-Araxian sherds have been found in some sites of northeastern Syria such as Tell-Brak and Tell-Mozan.44 Within dam projects 40  Kohl 2007, pp. 57–124; Kohl and Trifonov 2014, pp. 1580–1582; Miroschedji 2000, pp. 255–278; Philip and Millard 2000, pp. 279–296. 41  According to Kushnareva (1997, p. 44), the border of the western part of Transcaucasia passes through the Samtredi and Kutaisi regions. 42  Sagona and Sagona 2004. 43  Unfortunately, these regions have not been investigated systematically. We have very little information, which comes from short-term projects (Köroğlu 1996, pp. 369–381; Laneri et al. 2003, pp. 111–119; Topaloğlu 2014). 44  Kelly-Bucellati 1990, pp. 117–131.

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in Southeastern Anatolia, a series of rescue excavations have been performed in last two decades. Similarly, very few Kura-Araxian sherds and related materials have been reported from these projects.45 This active region might have been unsettling to the pastoral groups and a kind of cultural-natural border for them, like in the Rioni region and Iran (Fig. 1). Further east of the Taurus Range, however, this culture passed over the mountain chain via the Euphrates River valley and continued to go down southwards. In this river valley the borders of the expansion of Kura-Araxes were determined by courtesy of survey projects in the area of the dams. According to these surveys, traces of Kura-Araxes Culture have been found as far as the Lower Euphrates River Valley, namely the Atatürk Dam site. But these samples, pottery fragments belonging to the Kura-Araxes, are very scanty and localised.46 In contrast, the development process of the culture in the Upper Euphrates valley is very interesting and unique. Owing to systematic excavations such as Arslantepe and other rescue excavations within the scope of the Keban and Karakaya Dam Projects – unfortunately most of which were not long-term projects – the Upper Euphrates valley is a prime area, which has given us the most knowledge about the development process of this cultural phenomenon in Eastern Anatolia (Fig. 1). Beyond this area, the question of how the culture proceeds to the south is still problematic. There are some gaps between the Amuq Plain and northern Israel in the expansion of the Kura-Araxes Culture in the Levant region.47 Therefore, according to some scholars, the expansion of Kura-Araxes Culture might have occurred by sea, since the culture even reached Cyprus.48 As we know, the development process of the culture in the Levant region was distinctive and called the “Khirbet-Kerak Culture”. The main problem is the nature of the connections between Eastern Anatolia and the Levant, which because of limited evidence we cannot track down. In some way the culture travelled from the Euphrates Valley to the Amuq Plain and then went down along the Levantine coastal region. We have strong evidence for the existence of the culture in the Amuq Plain, but although it is very close, the culture did not enter the Cilicia Plain, namely Çukurova. In the Levant region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, the southernmost border of the Kura-Araxes (or Khirbet-Kerak Culture) reached the shores of the Sea of Galilee. This point was the furthermost expansion of the Kura-Araxes phenomenon and beyond it was the great Egyptian world (Fig. 1).49 Coming back to the southern border within Anatolia, the Taurus Range, which towards the east combines with the Zagros Mountains, is the most rugged terrain in Near Eastern geography at this merging point, known as the “Hakkâri region” in modern Turkish geography. This mountainous region is the one area in Eastern Anatolia in which no traces of

45

 A few sherds and a horseshoe-shaped hearth have been found in Müslümantepe in the Upper Tigris Valley (personal communication with Prof. Tuba Ökse and archaeologist Şeref Yumruk from the Diyarbakır Museum). 46  Özdoğan 1977, pp. 21–56. 47  For discussions see Philip and Millard 2000, pp. 287–292, fig. 1. 48  Frankel 2000, pp. 167–187; Kohl 2009, pp. 252–255. 49  Greenberg 2007, pp. 257–268; Kohl 2009, pp. 241–265; Miroschedji 2000, pp. 255–278; Philip and Millard 2000, pp. 279–296; Sagona 1984, pp. 15–31.

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Kura-Araxes Culture have been found.50 As we know, this type of geography – mountainous with plenty of pasture – was familiar to Kura-Araxian societies, but it is difficult to identify any natural border for them in this region. The situation may be explained by lack of investigation. For many years, because of the rough terrain and adverse security conditions, no systematic investigations have been performed there. Thus, it is one of the subcultural regions in Eastern Anatolia about which we have the least knowledge. Iran is one of the substantial regions for Kura-Araxes settlement, and in this setting the Urmia Basin, namely Northwestern Iran, was the main expansion area of the culture.51 While it reached the coastal region of the Caspian Sea in the north and northeastern part of that area, it also went south down along the Zagros Range. The Zagros is the main natural border between Iran and Mesopotamia, and like the Taurus Range, the culture did not penetrate into the plains and valleys close to the Mesopotamian plains – in fact, it never went beyond the Zagros. However, it expanded towards inner Iran, and we know about the borders for the Kura-Araxes Culture there mainly from surveys in the 1970s.52 Some projects over the past years, however, are encouraging for the future, and according to these surveys and excavations, the culture spread into Central Western Iran (Fig. 1). The border of the Kura-Araxes Culture in the northern part of Iran passed over the Elburz Mountains and arrived in the coastal region of the Caspian Sea. It has been reported that Kura-Araxian pottery was found in the Qazvin, Gilan and Mazandaran regions during recent surveys.53 The southernmost region in Iran where evidence of the Kura-Araxes Culture has been found is Kangavar Valley, although in this area we cannot identify any natural or cultural borders for Kura-Araxes pastoral groups. This complex situation is probably due to a lack of systematic investigations in that region. Recent surveys also show that the Kura-Araxian culture reached into the Luristan region, namely the Central Zagros.54 To sum up, in the light of available evidence we can say that the Kura-Araxes cultural communities expanded as far south as northwestern Iran, to the central Zagros, at least as far as Kangavar Valley near Kermanshah, onto the Qazvin and Tehran Plains in the northern areas of the central plateau, and along the Caspian shore in Northern Iran (Fig. 1).55 The last border we will discuss is the western border of the culture inside Anatolia. According to available evidence the westernmost area in which traces of the culture have been found is the Sivas region, namely the Yıldızeli Plateau, which is located in the western region of Sivas.56 This border continues with a line through Sivas-Malatya and Maraş, according to surveys in the 1970s.57 Although we cannot identify clearly any natural or cultural borders, we should keep in mind that this zone is also a transition area between 50

 This hilly region is less known because of a lack of systematic expeditions (Belli 2001, pp. 346–352; Özdoğan 2001, pp. 271–273; Sevin 2004). 51  Summers 2013, pp. 161–170. 52  Sagona presented the extent of Kura-Araxian sites in Iran based on surveys in the 1970s. For more information, see Sagona 1984, pp. 27–28. 53  Beygi 2006; Mousavi et al. 2006; Nashli and Ajoorlo 2004. 54  Mohammadifar et al. 2009; Sajadı and Samani 1999. 55  Alizadeh et al. 2015, p. 38, fig. 1. 56  Ökse 1993, pp. 133–135. 57  Yakar and Salzmann 1979, pp. 50–51.

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Eastern Anatolia and Central Anatolia. At the same time, according to modern geographers, the natural border between Eastern Anatolia and Central Anatolia is the watershed between the Euphrates and Kızılırmak Rivers.58 This line, which divides Eastern Anatolia and Central Anatolia geographically and culturally, might be a natural and cultural westernmost border for Kura-Araxian pastoralist groups. Although we cannot identify any natural border in this sector, for the moment no Kura-Araxian materials have been documented beyond this line (Fig. 1).

CONCLUSION As mentioned above, analysing boundaries in the social sciences, especially in archaeology, is one of the most knotty subjects. To trace the frontiers of ancient socio-political and cultural units such as cultures, chiefdoms, city-states, states, and empires depending on archaeological material is quite troublesome. If ancient groups are without written sources and contain mobile groups such as in our case study, the situation becomes a hornets’ nest. Studies which have continued since the 1900s have shown that geographic, political, demographic, cultural, and economic circumstances are determinative in the formation of borders. Considering the landscape and dynamics of the Kura-Araxes Culture, in establishing the borders of its expansion based on distribution of its cultural materials, geographic and demographic factors come to the forefront. In this context, physical features such as rivers (the Araxes, Kura, Euphrates and Tigris) and mountains (the Taurus Ranges, the Caucasus mountain chain, the Zagros and Elbrouz mountains) and densely populated areas such as the Rioni Basin, Northern Mesopotamia and Western Iran, including regions that were formerly part of the Uruk expansion, have emerged as barriers which restricted the further expansion of the mobile groups who represented Kura-Araxes Culture. As has been discussed above, one of the several chronic problems of integrating chronology with the expansion process of the Kura-Araxes Culture is defining the boundaries of its expansion. The main problems regarding this issue are: what is the meaning of border, and what was the border for these mobile groups living in the hilly zone? These details are important for a theoretical framework of the subject. As for archaeological evidence, unfortunately our knowledge about the borders of this broad culture is mainly dependent on a range of surveys, some of which are old and unsystematic. In addition, there are many unknown zones in the expansion area. There is an imbalance in distribution of studied areas in the Kura-Araxes Cultural expansion region.59 Undoubtedly, to solve these seemingly insurmountable problems, including defining borders in a more precise way than I have done here, we need more systematic surveys and excavations at a regional level and more scientific organisations to help and increase the sharing of information.

58

 Erinç 1953, pp. 21–24.  Işıklı 2015, pp. 241–249.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Karen Rubinson and Lorenzo d’Alfonso for organising this workshop, which was held at ISAW at New York University, and for inviting us to the USA. I am also profoundly grateful to Antonio Sagona and Giulio Palumbi for reading my text and sharing their opinions and comments with me. Lastly, I would also like to thank (MA) Jan Bailey, (MA) Oğuz Aras and Buket Beşikçi for their valuable assistance while preparing this article. BIBLIOGRAPHY ALIZADEH K., EGHBAL, H. and SAMEI, S. 2015 “Approaches to social complexity in Kura-Araxes culture: A view from Köhne Shahar (Ravaz) in Chaldran, Iranian Azerbaijan,” Paleorient 41(1): 37–54. ALLEN, W. E. D. 1942 “The Caucasian borderland,” The Geographical Journal 99(5/6): 225–237. BATIUK, S. and ROTHMAN, M. S 2007 “Early Transcaucasian cultures and their neighbors: Unraveling migration, trade, and assimilation,” Expedition 49(1): 7–17. BELLI, O. 2001 “Research on the ‘Giants Houses’ in the South of Van Lake,” in Istanbul University’s Contributions to Archaeology in Turkey (1932-2000), edited by O. Belli, pp. 346–351. Istanbul: Istanbul University Rectorate Research Fund. BEYGI, A. S. 2006 Report of Site Boundary Determination for the Ancient Site of Mymanat Abad in Robat Karim. Unpublished report in the Archive of Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts, and Tourism Office of Tehran province. Tehran (in Persian). BURNEY, C. A. 1996 “The highland sheep are sweeter,” in Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Near East (Abr-Nahrain Supplement Series 5), edited by G. Bunnens, pp. 1–15. Leuven: Peeters. BURNEY, C. A. and LANG, D. M. 1971 The Peoples of the Hills: Ancient Ararat and Caucasus. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger. CURZON, G. N. 1907 Frontiers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, ELTON, H. 1996 Frontiers of the Roman Empire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ERINÇ, S. 1953 Doğu Anadolu Coğrafyası. Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları. FRANGIPANE, M. 2000 “The Late Chalcolithic/EB I sequence at Arslantepe. Chronological and cultural remarks from a frontier site,” in Chronologies des pays du Caucase et de l’Euphrate aux IVe-IIIe millénaires, edited by C. Marro and H. Hauptmann, pp. 439–472. Paris: Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes d’Istanbul. FRANKEL, D. 2000 “Migration and ethnicity in prehistoric Cyprus: Technology as habitus,” European Journal of Archaeology 3(2): 167–187. GREENBERG, R. 2007 “Transcaucasian colors: Khirbet Kerak Ware at Khirbet Kerak (Tel Bet Yerah),” in Les cultures du Caucase (VIe-IIIe millénaires avant notre ère): leurs relations avec le Proche-Orient, edited by B. Lyonnet, pp. 257–268. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

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A MULTISCALAR AND MULTIVARIATE APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES IN EARLY BRONZE AGE WESTERN ANATOLIA Michele MASSA ABSTRACT This chapter employs the western Anatolian Early Bronze Age (c. 3200–1950 BCE) as a case study to analyse the existence, development and persistence of social and cultural boundaries at different spatial scales, from the intra-settlement to the supra-regional contexts. The results suggest an active process of identity building that involves individuals, communities and emerging territorial entities, a process paralleled by the formalisation of social and cultural differences. Prominent arenas for signalling diversity and boundedness include funerary ceremonies, defensive architecture, and fortifications systems around major valleys.

INTRODUCTION In this chapter I explore the concept of social and cultural boundaries, as they can be understood from archaeological evidence, in the context of western Anatolia (western Turkey, Fig. 1) during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3200–1950 BCE). The local Early Bronze Age is a period characterised by a gradual increase in social stratification and craft specialisation, and by the intensification of social conflict within and between communities.1 It is also a phase in which innovations in transport technology, large-scale exploitation of metal resources and desire for exotica created the conditions for western/central Anatolian communities to come into direct contact with the Mesopotamian world.2 The Early Bronze Age is thus a particularly well-suited arena for the investigation of social and cultural boundaries since, as I will attempt to show in the course of the chapter, it is a phase that sees the formalisation of fault lines within the local groups: between different genders, between elites and commoners, between one community and the other. In particular, I will argue that the increase in social complexity brought about the sharpening of personal and group boundaries, and that the process of identity-building may have been to some extent engineered by central authorities. In order to highlight such boundaries, I will investigate different contexts at increasing spatial scales, from the intra-site level to the whole of western Anatolia, addressing a variety of archaeological evidence, including burial customs, defensive architecture, settlement patterns and distribution of products and behaviours. The main aim is to explore how the increasing social complexity of the local communities may have

1

 Bachhuber 2015; Fidan et al. 2015; Massa 2014a, 2014b; Zimmermann 2009.  Efe 2007; Jablonka 2014; Lehner and Yener 2014; Massa 2016; Massa and Palmisano 2018; Rahmstorf 2006, 2011; Şahoğlu 2005; Tonussi 2007. 2

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Fig. 1. Map of western Anatolia, with major geographical features, sites and regions mentioned in the text. Site numbers: 1) Troy, 2) Poliochni, 3) Aktopraklık, 4) Ilıpınar, 5) Menteşe Höyük, 6) Demircihöyük, 7) Küllüoba, 8) Ballıca, 9) Limantepe, 10) Bakla Tepe, 11) Beycesultan, 12) Hacılar Büyük Höyük, 13) Hacılar, 14) Kuruçay, 15) Harmanören, 16) Höyücek, 17) Bademağacı, 18) Karataş, 19) Hacımusalar, A) Extent of the Çivril plain survey project; B) Extent of the Elmalı/Gölova plain survey projects (see text for references).

been connected with an apparent increase in the ways to advertise and formalise personal and collective identities, and the rise of interpersonal violence as an acceptable medium of conflict-resolution.

INVESTIGATING ANALYTICAL BIASES Before presenting the case studies, I would like to stress how the analytical recognition of social and cultural boundaries is very much biased by numerous limitations inherent to archaeology as a discipline. For instance, in the context of pre-literate societies (as those of Early Bronze Age western Anatolia) we can only investigate the material remains produced by an individual or community, leaving out of the analysis a large proportion of behaviours, ideas and concepts that are fundamental components of one’s identity and yet leave little or no trace in the archaeological record. These include language, sexual orientation, gender (as opposed to biological sex), religious/spiritual beliefs, culinary traditions, ethnic affiliation, clothing fashion, oral histories, work occupation, and status among others. More to it, what we can retrieve in terms of material culture is only a small portion of what existed at the

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time when these were living communities: the survival in the record is strongly biased towards a limited range of materials (baked clay, stone, and to a lesser extent metal and bone). And even these materials enter the archaeological deposits mostly as discarded, fragmented items, unless captured by rare “object traps” such as hoards, graves, and destruction levels in settlements. Thus, their function and their significance for the people that created and consumed them are often de-contextualised and difficult to grasp. As it will become clear below, the extreme patchiness of the archaeological investigation, in terms of both quality and intensity of research, also takes its toll on what can be said about boundaries in Early Bronze Age western Anatolia. While some well-planned, well-documented and well-published projects provide fine-grained insights into the possible social contexts for the analysis, the low quality of most research surrounding them makes any meaningful comparison rather difficult. This problem can be appreciated in its full extent when looking at the regional scale: very large portions of the study area, including most of the highlands and the Marmara Sea coast, are completely unexplored, as are also the southern part of the central plateau and the Pontic Mountains. Since social and cultural boundaries can only emerge, analytically, from comparing different data sets from different contexts in different areas, the low density of good quality projects clearly stands in the way of a more detailed understanding. This nonetheless, I suggest that awareness of these biases makes it possible to adapt analytical strategies to better tackle the issue at hand; for example, by reshaping research questions, by identifying suitable analytical contexts, and by combining different classes of material culture together to create a cumulative body of evidence. The following case studies represent an attempt in this direction.

BOTTOM-UP: PERSONAL BOUNDARIES IN A RURAL COMMUNITY The cemetery of Demircihüyük (ca. 2700–2550 BCE), located in the northwestern fringes of the central Anatolian plateau (Fig. 1),3 seems a good context to investigate the social boundaries between members of a small farming village (ca. 100–130 people). A published analysis on the social organisation of the necropolis4 provides the basis to explore how the funerary rituals surrounding the interment may have been employed by the living as an arena to re-enact and re-affirm the personal identities of the deceased, their affiliation to particular social groups and their position within the community. Statistical analysis allowed correlating variables pertaining to the deceased with specific funerary practices including body position and orientation, container type, number and quality of goods, and presence of particular combinations of grave goods.5 The results show that age-at-death may have been the single most important factor regulating the burial rituals (Table 1). On average, adults (20+ years) and in particular older adults (40+ years) had larger and more energyexpensive graves, more grave goods, and more silver or gold items, while infants were in 3

 Korfmann 1983; Seeher 2000.  Massa 2014b. 5  See Massa 2014b for a detailed assessment. 4

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Age

Trait

10–11 yrs

40+ yrs

yes

yes

yes

yes

Jar

Jar or pit

Jar, pit or cist

All types, preference for cists -

Specific objects

no grave goods Feeder bottles, figurines, small jewellery Number of no grave goods normally few normally few grave goods or no objects or no objects Silver/gold objects

20+ yrs

no grave goods normally few or no objects

normally few or no objects

-

larger amounts largest of objects amounts of objects largest amounts larger amounts of objects of objects

Reference Wittwer-Backofen 2000, p. 262 Massa 2014b, p. 82, fig. 10 Massa 2014b, p. 83, tab. 3 Massa 2014b, p. 83–85, fig. 12 Massa 2014b, p. 83

Table 1. Association between different variables identified in the funerary assemblage of Demircihöyük-Sarıket and age at death of the deceased (data from Massa 2014b).

general at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of care and effort dedicated to their burial. Further, changes in how individuals were treated during the burial seem to have followed specific age thresholds at 1, 2–3, 10–11 and 18–20 years: although speculative, these may have marked important stages in the life of Demircihüyük’s inhabitants (for example, name giving, end of weaning, puberty, and adulthood).6 Gender also seems to have played an important role: while all interments were placed in hocker (foetal) position, male individuals were laid on the right side and females on the left side.7 Females were also less likely to have larger and more energy-expensive graves, and had on average lower numbers of grave goods and silver/gold objects (Table 2). Moreover, weapons were almost exclusively associated with adult males,8 and weapon injuries on the skeletons were only found on male individuals,9 suggesting that active warfare may have been a gender-specific activity. It is interesting that, for 12 per cent of all adult males, weapons were the main, and often only, archaeologically visible attribute associated with their burial. This hints that participation in battle may have been an important activity in the habitus of these individuals, to the extent that it was deemed worthy of representation in their funerary ceremony. Additionally, the occurrence of tools (for example, needles, awls, spindle whorls) in the graves suggests that work may have also had a significant role in constructing the personal identity of Demircihüyük’s villagers. Lastly, eight graves (out of ca. 500), among the largest 6

 See Angel 1976, p. 387.  Wittwer-Backofen 2000, p. 245. 8  In this regard, individuals G.494 and G.434, biologically identified as female, were however laid on the right side and accompanied by a battle axe and a stone mace respectively; that is, elements generally associated with male burials (Massa 2014b, p. 83). A similar instance is also found at Bakla Tepe, where G.296, a biological female, is also laid on the right side and accompanied by a copper-based axe, a copper-based razor and other goods (Şahoğlu 2016, p. 176). Although difficult to prove, these individuals might have been identified by their community with a gender different from their biological sex, at least in death. 9  Wittwer-Backofen 2000, pp. 268–269. 7

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Biological sex determination

Trait Burial position Grave type

Gender-specific objects Grave goods Precious metals

Male Right hocker

Female

97 Reference

Left Hocker

Wittwer-Backofen 2000, p. 245 Higher proportions of Higher proportions of jars Wittwer-Backofen 2000, stone cists and stone lined and simple pits p. 245, tab. 4 pits Weaponry, razors, Massa 2014b, p. 83, whetstones tab. 3 Higher amounts of goods Lower amounts of goods Massa 2014b, p. 84, fig. 12 Higher amounts of silver/ Lower amounts of silver/ Massa 2014b, p. 83 gold gold

Table 2. Association between different variables identified in the funerary assemblage of Demircihöyük-Sarıket and biological sex of the deceased (data from Massa 2014b).

and best built of the whole cemetery, were associated with twin cattle burials and – in some cases – elaborate knobbed maces (Fig. 2). These elements set this group apart from the other burials and characterise elite interments elsewhere in northern Anatolia, suggesting that the eight graves may have belonged to Demircihüyük’s leaders.10 Most of the funerary evidence in Early Bronze Age western Anatolia comes from relatively small sites and we therefore have at present no counterparts here to the lavish, extravagant burials of Alacahöyük and Horoztepe on the central plateau. There are nonetheless known elite graves at Karataş, Harmanören, Ballıca and Bakla Tepe that also stand out from normal interments in terms of peculiar associated items, anomalous grave containers and/or particular treatments of the body.11 In all likelihood, many elements surrounding the burial event escaped recognition in the archaeological record (for example, objects in perishable materials, rituals performed outside the grave or the cemetery), and thus the funerary practices at Demircihüyük were probably much more articulated than it is presently possible to reconstruct. This notwithstanding, the results suggest a significant level of standardisation and formalisation in these practices both at the intra-site and regional levels. This pattern is closely matched by the extramural cemetery of İkiztepe on the Black Sea coast (ca. 3500–3000 cal BCE ),12 but is not recognisable in Neolithic and earlier Chalcolithic intramural burial records. The funerary ceremonies at Demircihüyük and İkiztepe seem to highlight a process of increased differentiation, and thus intensification of social boundaries, even in relatively small communities, where both personal and group identities are now more explicitly advertised in death. Also, it does not seem accidental that both sites are, with the available data, among the earliest extramural cemeteries in their respective regions, a change from earlier practices of burial under the house floors and/or in other archaeologically invisible ways.13 This hints at an increased 10

 Massa 2014b, pp. 85–86.  Massa and Şahoğlu, in press. 12  Doğan 2006; Welton 2010. 13  Massa and Şahoğlu, in press. 11

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Fig. 2. a) Demircihöyük-Sarıket’s cattle burial RB 5 associated with grave 335 (Seeher 2000, fig. 10); b) knobbed sceptre-mace from grave 132 (Seeher 2000, fig. 25).

emphasis on the funerary ceremony itself, whose admission was no longer limited to a few individuals (family members, friends), but potentially accessible to the whole community. A possible explanation for this lies in the increased social stratification of the Anatolian communities and the consequent emphasis on signalling difference and group affiliation. This phenomenon further occurs in a phase when social tension becomes more palpable, at least in the archaeological record, not only at the individual or intra-community level but also between communities.

BOUNDED COMMUNITIES Evidence for warfare in western Anatolia appears already in the sixth–fifth millennia BCE, in the form of extensive fire conflagrations, enclosure walls and war-related injuries at sites like Aktopraklık, Menteşe Höyük, Ilıpınar, Hacılar, Kuruçay and Bademağacı.14 A range 14

 Clare et al. 2008; Erdal and Erdal 2012.

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of various proxies however suggest that the late fourth and early third millennia BCE witnessed a significant surge of interpersonal violence in the broader region.15 In western Anatolia, these include frequent fire conflagrations involving the whole settlement, often with unretrieved victims found in the rubble,16 and the generalised practice of deposing weapons in graves, particularly those of adult males.17 Moreover, whenever detailed osteological analysis is available, substantial proportions of the population (up to 10 per cent or more) are affected by weapon injuries, particularly but not exclusively male adults.18 The occurrence of non-functional and/or richly ornamented weapons in elite contexts further hints at the desire of (male) leaders to portray themselves as warlords, embodying a “warrior ideology” typical of Bronze Age elites in the Balkans, Caucasus and Near East.19 Within this context it is thus not surprising that, when excavated in sufficient extent, most Early Bronze Age settlements reveal the presence of substantial perimetral walls. Some of these are relatively simple and were conceived essentially as a reinforcement of the back walls of the houses arranged in a circular plan (Fig. 3). Others are however much more complex and incorporate a series of other devices such as a second external curtain wall, glacis, ditches, fortified gates, bastions and possibly towers as well, all elements that clearly indicate a defensive purpose. Defence is however only one of several overlapping and coexisting functions that such enclosure walls could have exerted.20 On a practical level, they would have been effective as terracing features against slope erosion, as a protection against seasonal floods, and as containment of livestock and children within the settlement. On an ideological level, at least some of them would have been awe-inspiring monuments that brought prestige to the community and the leaders that built them. On a symbolic level, enclosure walls may have represented a boundary between the natural and the inhabited spaces and, even more so, a powerful symbol separating the community living within from those living without. In this sense, it is also extremely interesting that several medium-tolarge sites (that is, Poliochni [ca. 8 ha], Troy [ca. 10 ha] and Limantepe [ca. 15–20 ha]) have an enclosure wall isolating the upper part of the mound (“citadel”) from the rest of the settlement (“lower town”) (Fig. 4). In all cases it seems that, as the inhabited area considerably expanded during the later Early Bronze Age, the earlier fortifications were left in place and the enclosed area was re-purposed to accommodate the public buildings and the better-off residential structures.21 At Limantepe and Troy there is clear evidence that the lower town was also protected by an external circuit wall (Fig. 4).22 While the citadel walls certainly represented an additional measure of defence from external attacks, they were probably also conceived as another ideological and physical boundary between the rulers and the ruled.

15

 See Ivanova 2007 for Thrace and the Aegean; Peltenburg 2013 for Upper Mesopotamia.  Massa 2014a. 17  Massa 2014b, p. 87; Schoop 2011, p. 30. 18  Erdal and Erdal 2012; Massa and Şahoğlu, in press. 19  See Hansen 2013; Schoop 2011, p. 30. 20  See also Düring 2011. 21  See Lawrence and Wilkinson 2015, pp. 337–339 for similar arrangements in contemporary Syrian centres. 22  Jablonka 2001; Kouka 2013, p. 571. 16

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Fig. 3. Settlement plan of Hacılar Büyük Höyük İTÇ I/1, ca. 3000–2900 cal BC (after Umurtak and Duru 2014, fig. 4).

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Fig. 4. Artist’s reconstruction of the settlement and fortifications of Troy, level II (ca. 2500–2250 cal BC) (Blum and Riehl 2015, fig. 9).

FORTIFIED LANDSCAPES Given the abundance of intra-settlement defensive architecture, a legitimate question would be whether there is any evidence for regional fortification systems in Early Bronze Age western Anatolia. In Turkey, survey projects with a pre-Classical focus are however normally not geared to answer this question since, with some recent exceptions, they are characterised by large study areas and low-intensity investigation methods, they mostly target highly visible mounds in the valley bottoms, are unaided by geo-morphological/ remote-sensing studies, and are only briefly published.23 There are however two survey contexts for which there are enough published data to make preliminary hypotheses on this regard. The ongoing survey in the Çivril plain24 is yielding very detailed results and can successfully employed to explore this issue (Figs 1, 5b). Here, a developed settlement hierarchy seems to have been already in place during the fourth millennium BCE, with several lowland centres reaching ca. 10–12 ha, a few around 5 ha, and the rest below 2 ha.25 During the EB II period (ca. 2800–2400 BCE) some centres like Beycesultan, Kepir Höyük and 23

 See Massa 2014a, pp. 108–109.  Abay 2011; Dedeoğlu 2014. 25  Abay 2011, p. 22. 24

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Fig. 5. a) Map of Early Bronze Age settlements in the Elmalı and Gölova plains (data from Foss 2006; Eslick 1992). Sites mentioned in the text: 1) Hacımusalar, 2) Çataltepe, 3) Sivritepe, 4) Buralia, 5) Özdemir Höyük, 6) Gilevgi. b) Map of settlements in the Çivril plain, ca. 2800–2400 BC (data from Abay 2011; Dedeoğlu 2014). Sites mentioned in the text: 7) Beycesultan, 8) Kepir Höyük, 9) İkiz Höyük I-II, 10) Belence Höyük, 11) Toprakkale Tepe, 12) Kocainüstü, 13) Asar Höyük, 14) Karaağaçlık, 15) Hüyük, 16) Yassıgeçit. NB: the twin sites on both banks of the Büyük Menderes river (nos. 13–14 and 15–16) likely indicate the location of two fords.

İkiz Höyük seem to have reached up to 15–20 ha and possibly more,26 though their offmound occupation remains poorly documented because they have been covered by later materials and colluvial deposits. For the first time in the area, during the EB II several small (ca. 1–2 ha) hilltop sites with evidence for prehistoric enclosure walls can be recognised in the periphery of the valley system, at the interface between highlands and plain, namely Belence Höyük, Toprakkale Tepe, Kocainüstü (Fig. 5b). In particular, Toprakkale Tepe and Kocainüstü yield only ceramics from this period and seem to have been abandoned around 2400–2300 BCE, thus providing a quite accurate dating for the associated fortifications. Equally interesting are two pairs of twin sites (Karaağaçlık-Asar Höyük and YassıgeçitHüyük) located a few hundred metres away from each other on opposite banks of the Büyük Menderes river, the largest watercourse in western Anatolia (Fig. 5b). Their location suggests the presence of a ford or bridge, where carts and pack animals could have easily crossed the otherwise impassable barrier of the river.27 The toponym “Yassıgeçit” (lit. “flat passage” in Turkish) further strengthens the hypothesis. While the sites on the western bank – Karaağaçlık and Yassıgeçit – are small (1–1.5 ha) and short-lived (only during the EB II), those on the eastern bank (Asar Höyük and Hüyük) are quite large (4 and 8 ha) and were continuously occupied from the Late Neolithic until at least the end of the Bronze Age.28 26

 Abay 2011, pp. 23–26.  See Peltenburg et al. 2012, p. 194 for similar examples on the Euphrates. 28  Abay 2011. 27

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The shape of the latter two (flat on top with steep slopes) suggest the presence of fortifications, which cannot however be dated with precision. A similar arrangement can be detected in the Elmalı and Gölova’s intra-montane valleys (Figs 1, 5a).29 Here, the results of several survey projects indicate a dense Early Bronze Age settled landscape dominated by two substantial centres some 15–20 ha in size (Hacımusalar Höyük and Özdemir Höyük) surrounded by much smaller sites.30 During the late Early Bronze Age (ca. 2500–1950 BCE), several small hilltop settlements (Buralia, Gilevgi and Sivritepe) appeared at the narrow entrances of the valley, otherwise surrounded by high mountains on all sides. While prehistoric fortifications were not observed on the surface, the defensive nature of the sites was stressed both by topography and the presence of Late Iron Age fortresses.31 In both case studies, one has to assume that the accidents of archaeological preservation and recovery have produced an incomplete picture of the human landscapes of the Elmalı/ Gölova valleys and the Çivril plain. This notwithstanding, the combined evidence strongly suggests that, already by the mid-late third millennium BCE, some forms of military control may have been exercised over major communication routes. This seems to have occurred mainly at the location of “landscape funnels” such as river crossing and valley entrances, that is, places where movement was constrained and channelled by topography and hydrography. The validity of this argument is corroborated by recent fieldwork in the Konya Plain (central Anatolia), where a similar arrangement of fortified sites can also be dated to the Early Bronze Age.32 The combined evidence therefore makes it plausible that these fortified sites may have represented early attempts at a coordinated territorial control by a central authority.33 Outside these fortified “funnels”, the demarcation of the physical boundaries of the hypothetic polities might have mostly relied on the exploitation of natural geography (mountainous terrain, large watercourses). Excavations in the two valley systems provide few clues about their political organisation, either to corroborate or disprove the hypothesis of the existence of territorial entities: Beycesultan’s Early Bronze Age levels were investigated only in a 15 × 15 m trench,34 while Hacımusalar’s results have so far only been presented at conferences.35 The extensively excavated and well-published Karataş36 is instead a site in the lower echelon of settlement hierarchy, and thus of little use in this context. The existence of territorial formations is however suggested by the co-occurrence of several elements. For instance, in both areas there is a clear multi-tiered settlement hierarchy, with some sites reaching 15–25 ha (ca. 4000–6000 inhabitants) or possibly more. These centres are likely to have been seats of economic and political power, given that contemporary (and smaller) sites such as Troy, 29

 Eslick 1992, pp. 57–65; 2009, pp. 214–215; Foss 2006; Warner 1994, pp. 188–189.  For Özdemir Höyük, see tayproject.org [last accessed 27/11/2015]. 31  Eslick 2009, p. 214; Foss 2006, p. 8. 32  Massa et al. 2020. 33  See Abay 2011, p. 25. 34  Lloyd and Mellaart 1962. 35  At the annual Turkish National Archaeology Symposium (Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı), years 2005–2017. 36  Eslick 2009; Warner 1994. 30

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Limantepe and Küllüoba all have clear evidence for monumental, public buildings.37 Furthermore, the frequent episodes of warfare in late Early Bronze Age Anatolia are likely the result of struggles for control over resources (for example, agricultural land, timber, metal, stone, salt, obsidian/flint) and access to major trade routes.38 In this light, the location of the abovementioned fortified settlements also would make sense in terms of defending a territory behind them. Additionally, Middle Bronze Age fortified sites in the Çivril plain again occur at the entrances of the valley and seem to mark and protect its access, closely mirroring the arrangement of the earlier EB II. This occurs at a time when Beycesultan is clearly the dominating site in the valley and is the likely seat of a city-state, given its 55 ha size (mound plus “lower town”) and the presence of a large palatial complex.39 While the existence of small polities in the mid-late Early Bronze Age Anatolia is thus plausible, more difficult is estimating their possible size. The Elmalı plain is roughly 500 sq. km (calculated following the major watersheds) and the Gölova plain is approximately 250 sq. km, while the Çivril plain is ca. 1300 sq. km. If we imagine a situation in which several sites shared control of the study areas, we would probably have three centres in the Çivril plain (Beycesultan, Kepir Höyük and İkiz Höyük,40 one in Elmalı (Hacımusalar) and one in Gölova (Özdemir Höyük). The size of these Early Bronze Age polities (between 250–500 sq. km) would roughly correspond to that of the Ionian poleis, autonomous political entities that existed in the İzmir region between ca. seventh–fourth centuries BCE, and for whose legal, economic and political boundaries much more detailed archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence exists.41 If we imagine instead that a single centre dominated the Elmalı/Gölova plains (that is, Hacımusalar) and the Çivril plain (Beycesultan), we would have substantially larger political structures (ca. 700–1300 sq. km), whose size closely matches that of territories around Minoan palaces on Crete (ca. 1000 sq. km).42 This latter estimate occurs also in a cross-cultural review of “early states” that included Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece, Classical Greece, Iron Age Etruria and Mayan Mexico: here, the earliest political formations in each region seem to have had control over an area ca. 1000-1500 sq. km.43 The existence of these “early states” would have arguably been dependent on the ability to effectively impose economic and military control over an area with a radius of ca. 1–2 days walk. In all the above-mentioned cases, it is clear that this control was exerted through a bureaucratic apparatus, advanced sealing practices (involving door-sealing in addition to container-sealing),44 writing, large-scale storage facilities and semi-professional armies. With the available data, there is hardly any evidence for such socio-political structures in Early Bronze Age western Anatolia,45 thus probably our Early Bronze Age polities were in the lower range suggested above.

37

 Blegen et al. 1950; Efe and Fidan 2008; Şahoğlu 2008.  Massa 2014a. 39  Abay 2011, pp. 27–28. 40  See Dedeoğlu 2014, pp. 28–29 for a similar hypothesis. 41  Hill 2017. 42  Bevan and Wilson 2013. 43  Renfrew 1975, pp. 12–21, figs. 12–15. 44  With the single exception of the Mesoamerican early states, where seals and sealings are unknown. 45  See also Çevik 2007; Massa and Tuna 2019; Schoop 2011, pp. 32–33. 38

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EARLY BRONZE AGE KINGDOMS? Some scholars have suggested the existence of much larger political entities in western Anatolia already during the early-mid third millennium BCE (dubbed “principalities” or “kingdoms”), whose extent would coincide with the spatial distribution of different pottery groups, intended as coherent assemblages of peculiar shapes, decorations, and surface treatments (Fig. 6).46 I would like to tackle the issue from a different perspective, for instance by suggesting that typologies and spatial distributions of specific types of ceramics cannot be conceived – alone – as reliable proxies for the extent of social, political, linguistic and/or ethnic groups.47 Furthermore, while several decades of research have produced a quite detailed understanding of distinctive ceramic-manufacturing traditions with a regional extent,48 the boundaries between the identified pottery groups are likely not as clear-cut as represented in published maps. Additionally, these groups are already quite well defined during the late fourth millennium BCE, and remain relatively stable until the Middle Bronze Age, that is, for some 1500 years.49 It is hardly conceivable that political entities

Fig. 6. Map of “EB II” (ca. 2800–2400 BC) sites in western Anatolia known from survey and excavation, with symbols representing their affiliation to individual pottery groups (data from Sarı 2011; 2013, fig. 4). The names correspond to individual pottery groups identified by Deniz Sarı. In black the approximate extents of the Elmalı/Gölova valleys and the Çivril plain are marked. 46

 Efe 2003, 2006; Sarı 2011, 2013.  See Clarke 1968; Hodder 1991; Jones 1997. 48  See French 1967, 1969; Lloyd and Mellaart 1962; Mellaart 1954, for earlier studies on the subject. 49  Efe 2003; Sarı 2011. 47

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would survive unscathed for such a long time, particularly because there is extensive textual evidence for the extreme fragility of competing central Anatolian Middle Bronze Age citystates that often lasted only a few generations.50 In this light, it is unlikely that earlier political formations would have had such a clear impact on material culture. Lastly, these EB II pottery groups span between 2000 and 8000 sq. km, that is probably larger than most central Anatolian Middle Bronze Age city-states.51 All this evidence strongly suggests that the spatial distribution of ceramic-manufacturing traditions in Early Bronze Age Anatolia does not reflect the extent of political entities. An alternative explanation is that these pottery groups may reflect instead the extent of different “communities of practice”, that is, networks of individuals who share ways of production and consumption and whose cultural identities are at least in part shaped by partaking in similar practices.52 With regard to ceramics, it can be argued that the selection of raw materials, the shape of the vessels, their decoration, and the firing process to create pots are only partially dictated by technical issues. How different technical gestures are combined together is mostly a matter of cultural choice, a choice that signals affiliation to a specific group characterised by members who also reproduce the same practices.53 When repeated in time, and transmitted down from one generation to another, these become an important component of the process of personal and collective identity building. Indeed, together with pottery manufacture it has been long recognised that day-to-day activities such as stone knapping, cuisine, and funerary practices play a very important role in creating and reinforcing group identities.54 Textile production provides another case study to investigate these “communities of practice” since, particularly in the form of garments, textiles may have played during the Early Bronze Age (as they still do today) an important role in the construction and advertisement of the personal identity of an individual, their social position within a community, and their affiliation to particular groups.55 While preserved textiles are exceedingly scarce from prehistoric Anatolia, and thus we cannot directly understand how textile technological knowledge may have circulated, the much better preservation of tools can provide useful hints on this issue. For this, the typological and distributional analysis of western Anatolian loom weights, between ca. 2800 and 2200 BCE, will be employed (Fig. 7).56 Although Early Bronze Age pieces are in most cases crudely shaped and with relatively low standardisation in forms, at least six different types can be readily identified. With the exclusion of one type (crescent shaped) that witnesses a gradual expansion of the area of use through time, the spatial distribution of the other types shows a clear regional patterning:

50

 Barjamovic et al. 2012, pp. 44–49; Palmisano 2018, p. 22–23.  See Palmisano 2018. 52  See Lave and Wenger 1991 for the concept. 53  Gosselain 2000. 54  Carter et al. 2013, p. 568; Gosselain 2000, p. 188; Hodder 1977; Knappett 2011, pp. 98–123. 55  Bachhuber 2015, p. 61; Richmond 2006, pp. 203–204; Wilkinson 2014, pp. 257–260. 56  See Massa 2016, pp. 201–209. 51

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Fig. 7. Map showing the occurrence and proportion of different types of loomweights across western and central Anatolia, ca. 2800–2200 BC. Site numbers: 1) Kanlıgeçit, 2) Troy, 3) Thermi, 4) Emporio, 5) Çeşme-Bağlararası, 6) Heraion, 7) Aphrodisias, 8) Karahisar Höyük, 9) Karataş, 10) Hacılar Büyük Höyük, 11) Kusura, 12) Karaoğlan Mevkii, 13) Keçiçayırı, 14) Seyitömer Höyük, 15) Bozüyük, 16) Hacılartepe, 17) Demircihöyük, 18) Küllüoba, 19) Eti Yokuşu, 20) Alacahöyük, 21) Alişar Höyük, 22) Maşat Höyük, 23) İkiztepe, 24) Kilisetepe. Data from Massa 2015, pp. 201–209.

a)

b) c) d) e)

Type I (drop shaped), despite being present at most sites, is predominant in central Anatolia (where it is often the only shape) and the Büyük Menderes-Gediz triangle (at Aphrodisias); Type II (pyramidal) is confined to western Anatolia; Type III (discoid) is essentially restricted to the eastern Aegean seaboard (at Thermi, Emporio, Çeşme-Bağlararası, Limantepe, and one piece from Aphrodisias); Type IV (bag shaped) is only present in the Circumpontic area (Kanlıgeçit, İkiztepe, and a few pieces from Demircihüyük and Küllüoba); Type V (trapezoid) is limited to northwestern Anatolia and the western fringes of the central Anatolian plateau.

Even though there are no detailed functional studies on Early Bronze Age western Anatolian pieces, experimental analysis on fourth–second millennia BCE loom weights from Arslantepe (Upper Euphrates) suggests that the creation of different textiles would have entailed the use of weights with different mass and different shapes, according to the thickness of the yarn,

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the density of threads per sq. cm and the weaving pattern.57 This suggests that different loom weight shapes may reflect functional differences, and potentially also the production of textiles of different quality.58 In this sense, noteworthy is the position of the northwestern corner of the central plateau as an interface zone, where loom weight shapes typical of western Anatolia (II, V), Black Sea (IV) and central Anatolia (I) co-exist at the same site (particularly at Demircihüyük, Küllüoba and Seyitömer Höyük). In lower proportions, this admixture is present at other sites where several types often co-exist even within the same level. They might represent the co-existence of different traditions of textile manufacture as well as the consumption of different types of clothing. Furthermore, given their low manufacturing quality and the ease of production, it can be argued that loom weights were in most cases made by individual weavers at the same place where they have been found. In all likelihood, the observed spatial patterning thus reflects the circulation of technical skill sets (for example, regarding production of weights for a specific loom set, and creation of different patterns and different weaves), rather than their actual exchange at the regional level.59 Funerary habits represent a third case study where the existence of such “communities of practice” (in this sense, ritual practices) may emerge from archaeological evidence. As already mentioned, throughout the Early Bronze Age there is a noticeable trend towards the formalisation of funerary behaviours both at the site level (with limited intra-site variability of practices) and at the regional scale (with large areas sharing common customs).60 The major breakwater seems represented by the presence or absence of formal cemeteries: across western and northern Anatolian extramural burial grounds are the normative practice for all individuals above ca. one year of age, while intramural interment of adults and children prevails in the central plateau (Fig. 8).61 Another major difference is represented by the form of grave containers (Fig. 8): in the western Anatolian highlands, jars and “family pithoi” (up to 2–2.5 m in height) are the exclusive form employed, while central Anatolian burials are instead characterised by the contemporary co-existence of different grave containers: jars, stone cists, simple pits and stone-lined pits. A number of sites on the Aegean coast reveal the use of rock-cut graves or cist-only cemeteries, a clear hint of strong interaction with western Aegean communities.62 Intriguingly, cemeteries composed exclusively of “family pithoi” and cemeteries with a combination of different burial containers do co-exist in the Büyük Menderes-Gediz triangle, witnessing the role of these valleys as major natural routes between western Anatolia and the central plateau. Furthermore, single interments are the most common practice across the whole central Anatolia, while multiple interments (normally 2–3 but up to 6–8 in a single grave) are typical of western Anatolian burials (Fig. 9). Additionally, together with the diffusion of “family pithoi”, the east/southeast orientation of the deceased’s head becomes the normative position across the whole western Anatolian highlands, while no regular orientation has so far been observed at burial grounds 57

 Frangipane et al. 2009.  See also Lassen 2013; Martensson et al. 2009 for other contexts. 59  See Cutler 2014 for the context of Middle Bronze Age Crete. 60  Massa and Şahoğlu, in press. 61  Massa 2014b, p. 88. 62  Massa and Şahoğlu 2011, p. 169. 58

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Fig. 8. Map of “EB II-III” (ca. 2800–1950 BC) funerary evidence in Anatolia and the Aegean, showing the range of grave container(s) present in each assemblage; diamonds indicate the co-presence of jars, pits and cists within the same cemetery and contemporary with each other (modified from Massa and Şahoğlu 2011, fig. 2). Inset shows the location of adult burials, either in a formal extramural graveyard, or under the houses’ floors (adapted from Massa and Şahoğlu in press, fig. 3).

in central Anatolia or along the eastern Aegean seaboard (Fig. 9).63 Even in absence of more detailed research, the regional funerary traditions traced for the Early Bronze Age seem to persist into the Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age, with cremation burials being the only main addition to the already existing set of practices.64

DISCUSSION The regional case studies suggest that, at this scale, sharply defined cultural boundaries cannot be recognised for the Anatolian Early Bronze Age. While some areas see the almost exclusive predominance of a single type of behaviour (for example, one type of loom, or one single funerary practice), there are areas where distinct behaviours co-exist at the same time, either within the same community, or in adjacent communities, in what can be called “interface zones”. When we compare the spatial distribution of different types of loom weights, pottery groups and funerary traits together, we realise that in most cases 63

 Massa and Şahoğlu, in press.  Akyurt 1998; Massa 2014b, p. 89; Seeher 2000, pp. 224–225.

64

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Fig. 9. Map of “EB II-III” (ca. 2800–1950 BC) funerary evidence in Anatolia, showing the prevalent orientation of the deceased’s head in each assemblage (modified from Massa and Şahoğlu in press, fig. 5). Inset shows the prevalent custom of employing the same burial container for one or more interments (adapted from Massa and Şahoğlu in press, fig. 8).

the resulting boundaries are not congruent and are only partially overlapping. This trend may partially be an analytical bias, since some categories of evidence concentrate in some areas, some in others. Additionally, the analysis of pottery (on ca. 750 sites) allows for the identification of a much larger number of different regional ceramic-manufacturing traditions than the analysis of funerary customs (ca. 70 sites), or loom weights (ca. 20 sites). However, this incongruence seems also a real pattern encountered in other archaeological contexts as well.65 There are however at least two frontiers that recur across multiple cultural traits and suggest a less permeable boundary: one is the fault line between the eastern Aegean coast and the western Anatolian highlands; the other is the edge between the highlands and the central plateau. These areas seem to have acted in the Early Bronze Age (as they arguably do today) as watersheds between largely separated “communities of practice”; beyond these watersheds, culture-specific elements are drastically reduced in numbers or not present at all. It does not seem accidental that these boundaries seem to broadly coincide with major barriers to movement represented by the hilly flanks of the western Anatolian highlands, 65

 See Elton 1996, pp. 3–9 with regard to the various overlapping of linguistic, political, economic and cultural boundaries in the Roman Empire.

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Fig. 10. Distribution of Mycenaean/“Mycenaeanizing” elements in western Anatolia, ca. 1400–1200 BC. Site numbers: 1) Troy, 2) Beşiktepe, 3) Thermi, 4) Çerkez Sultaniye, 5) Çandarlı Höyük, 6) Buruncuk/ Larisa, 7) Panaztepe, 8) Bayraklı, 9) Limantepe, 10) Çeşme-Bağlararası, 11) Emporio, 12) Bakla Tepe & Colophon, 13) Bademgediği Tepe, 14) Sardis, 15) Gavurtepe, 16) Beycesultan, 17) Düver, 18) Ayasuluk/Ephesos, 19) Kuşadası, 20) Heraion, 21) Miletos, 22) Çine-Tepecik, 23) Akbük, 24) Iasos, 25) Mylas, 26) Müsgebi, 27) Pilavtepe, 28) Fethiye. Data from Kelder 2006; Tartaron 2013, fig. 7.31, with additions.

since reduced ability to move across them likely resulted in reduced interaction between groups and thus increased cultural differences. It is even more intriguing that these cultural fault lines to a large extent coincide with major ecotones, that is, interfaces between different ecological systems: apart from the already-described geomorphological situation, these ecotones can be appreciated by the varying (modern) rainfall regimes and the predominant vegetation cover (Fig. 11). Can there be a relation between cultural identities and environment? Different ecological niches certainly affected the socio-economic strategies of the communities living within them (therefore, to some extent, their socio-political structure), for example, by favouring or hampering reliance on agriculture, animal grazing, hunting or exploitation of natural resources in different environments. The ability to store agricultural surplus (with its possible socio-political consequences) would have been also in part dependent on land fertility, while the willingness to implement a tighter control over storage strategies might have been in part triggered by the wider environment’s susceptibility to drought. Climate would have affected both vernacular architecture (for example, in the size/number of windows, roof shape, number/location of hearths, building materials) and settlement layouts (for example, propensity to employ open spaces). Furthermore, interaction with and

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Fig. 11. a) Map of modern yearly rainfall regimes in Turkey, modelled on 70 meteorological stations with continuous records over a period of 55–65 years (data from Türkeş 1996, table II); b) Map of modern vegetation cover in Turkey, assuming no human impact (after Zeist and Bottema 1991, fig. 4).

exploitation of particular natural settings would have favoured the development of some skill sets rather than others, such as fishing, driving a sheep herd to the summer pasture, or quarrying metal ore from the mountainside. All of these elements (how we live, how we build our houses, what we make for a living, the character of the community we live in) do play an important role in the construction of personal and collective identities today, and there is no reason to think that it would have been different in the past. In this sense, communities sharing the same landscape would have probably felt culturally closer to each other than with communities living in different contexts, while perceiving a cultural distance with groups living in other ecological niches. These coast-highlands and highlands-plateau boundaries seem also to have been rather persistent in time and reproduced across different spheres even in the second millennium BCE, for example, in burial customs,66 pottery-manufacturing traditions67 and textilemanufacturing traditions (compare the distribution of type III weights with that of Middle Bronze Age discoid weights).68 It is interesting that the distribution of Mycenaean/ Mycenaeanising features (including tholos and chamber tombs, swords, figurines and pottery) also reproduces the eastern Aegean-western Anatolian highlands divide, almost a thousand years later than most case studies presented here (Fig. 10). 66

 See Akyurt 1998, maps 1–7.  Pavúk 2015; Sarı 2013. 68  Pavúk 2012, Pl. XXXIVb. 67

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All this notwithstanding, it is worth stressing that the existence of such frontiers clearly does not preclude interaction between different human groups. For the cultural traits discussed here, the highest degree of interaction occurs at the interface zones69 and along the large river valleys of the Büyük Menderes and Gediz rivers that cut through the highlands and act as major corridors connecting the Aegean coast with inland Anatolia. Furthermore, while culture-specific elements tend not to traverse major socio-cultural boundaries of the above-defined “communities of practice”, interregional exchange networks largely cross them, promoting the circulation of a conspicuous range of raw materials and commodities destined for elite consumption.70 At smaller scales, the results also seem to highlight an active process of identity building, starting around the mid-fourth millennium and more prominently so in the third millennium BCE. This is witnessed by an increase in signalling difference with regard to age/ gender classes, occupation, participation to warfare, status and very likely in other spheres that are less archaeologically visible (for example, dress, cuisine, language, religious beliefs). Social boundaries reflected in the funerary ceremony are all the more interesting in this context because they are reproduced not by the individuals themselves, but rather by the surviving members of their community. The depiction of the deceased’s social persona was probably shaped by what others thought of them and/or how others wanted the deceased to appear. Thus, the standardisation of funerary practices in Early Bronze Age western Anatolia is possibly the reflection of the formalisation of social norms regulating life in the local communities. With regard to elite behaviours, the intentional reproduction of social boundaries is particularly accentuated and is carried across various media and contexts. Good examples are the differentiation of burial practices from the rest of the population, the display of (metal) wealth, the monumental buildings for their residence and/or public affairs, and the walls between citadels and lower towns, part of what Christoph Bachhuber calls “prestigeelevating strategies”.71 A further key aspect of this developing elite ideology is the organisation of collective gatherings, evidence for which comes from several mid/late Early Bronze Age Anatolian sites. On the central plateau, musical instruments, elaborated metal standards, non-functional weapons and possibly ox-drawn carts found in rich burials hint at the performance of public processions.72 The elaborate jewellery sets found at Troy and Poliochni, and the nephrite and lazurite battle axes from the Trojan treasures73 represent the western counterparts of such paraphernalia. In western Anatolia, the available evidence also suggests an emphasis on collective feasting: one of the clearest examples is provided by large fireplaces (up to 8 m in diameter) found in Karataş level IVa. They are associated with thick ashy layers yielding large amounts of animal bones and spit supports, and are only a few metres away from two large clay 69

 See Lightfoot and Martinez 1995, “borderland” concept.  See in particular Jablonka 2014; Massa and Palmisano 2018; Rahmstorf 2006, 2011; Tonussi 2007; Wilkinson 2014; Zimmermann 2005. 71  Bachhuber 2009, p. 11. 72  Mansfeld 2001; Zimmermann 2008. 73  Bachhuber 2009; Bernabò Brea 1976, pp. 284–291. 70

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platforms. More importantly, they are just outside the main gate of the “Central Complex”, a fortified structure at the centre of the village, and at the interface between the residential buildings and the elite mansion.74 Furthermore, at Limantepe, Küllüoba, Kanlıgeçit and Troy large numbers of pits were found in connection with the public sectors of the settlement. In all cases, these pits were filled with animal bones, fine drinking and serving vessels intentionally smashed, and large numbers of intact objects ranging from pins to metal vessels, from hematite weights to figurines, from arrowheads to axes.75 At least in the case of Troy and Kanlıgeçit, the same pits were employed for several years, possibly decades; at Limantepe, some of these pits were sealed by placing a whole tortoise on top of them, while at Kanlıgeçit a horse head was found within. The contents of these pits strongly suggest the ritual deposition of banquet remains, with intact vessels intentionally smashed and disposed of and a series of ceremonial/prestige objects deliberately deposited. Their contexts further indicate their close association with the elite areas, and hint at a central role of the local leaders in the organisation and sponsorship of these events. Overall, it therefore seems probable that public processions and collective feasts may have represented a platform for the elites to garner prestige, creating yet another conceptual boundary between them and their subjects. More broadly, these events may concomitantly represent a conscious strategy to reinforce group affiliation of the participants.76 As a last point, the clear escalation of social tension and archaeologically visible episodes of warfare suggests that organised violence may have increasingly been considered a socially acceptable form of interaction between neighbouring groups. With the available evidence, the phenomenon seems to grow in parallel with the appearance of more complex forms of social organisation, starting around the mid-late fourth millennium BCE. The connection between war and social complexity is exemplified by the already-mentioned tendency of the Early Bronze Age Anatolian elites to identify themselves as leaders in battle through the display of elaborate panoplies and non-functional weapons in precious materials, in life as in death. While warfare may have been employed as an arena to earn personal prestige, it also promoted higher social cohesion within the group at the expenses of peaceful relations with the neighbours, in a process that likely polarised the shaping of collective identities.77 The exacerbation of conflict most likely had the result of creating and maintaining harder and less permeable boundaries between different communities, as exemplified by the widespread use of enclosure walls and the presence of regional fortification systems.

74

 Warner 1994, pp. 115–116, 122.  Bachhuber 2009; Kouka 2011, p. 48; Özdoğan and Parzinger 2012, pp. 35–37; Türkteki and Başkurt 2016. 76  See Wright 2004 in the context of Mycenaean feasting. 77  See Arkush 2009, pp. 194–196; Arkush 2014, p. 200 for the Latin American context; Hall 1997 for the context of the Persian wars. 75

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CONCLUSIONS This chapter has hopefully shown that, notwithstanding the numerous analytical limitations, a multiscalar investigation is potentially very rewarding to understand the process of formation and maintenance of boundaries in different social and cultural contexts. It has also suggested that there exist many archaeological proxies in this regard, of which pottery assemblages are just one possibility. More importantly, as we write, the events unfolding across the globe are a painful reminder that warfare, social tension and wall building aimed at defending a postulated cultural, religious or political “unity” are not episodes relegated to a distant past. Today as in the Bronze Age, armed conflict and ideology have been extremely powerful instruments to unite heterogeneous people under the same banner, and to engineer the radicalisation and polarisation of collective identities. In Anatolia, it seems clear that the local elite groups started to experiment with such tools already during the Early Bronze Age.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was carried out with a grant of the British Institute at Ankara that allowed me to access the Institute’s vast library and resources; for this I would like to extend my gratitude to its director Dr. Lutgarde Vandeput and assistant director Dr. Leonidas Karakatsanis. I would further wish to thank Leo for many intense and beneficial discussions on the topic of boundaries in archaeological and modern contexts. And finally, I am grateful to Deniz Sarı for sharing her GIS data for the pottery groups shown in Figure 6, and for extensive discussions on the matter.

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“Destructions, abandonments, social reorganisation and climatic change in west and central Anatolia at the end of the third millennium BC,” in Regional Studies in Archaeology Symposium Proceedings (Settlement Archaeology Symposium Series), edited by B. Erciyas and E. Sökmen, pp. 101–123. İstanbul: Ege Yayınları. 2014b “Early Bronze Age burial customs on the central Anatolian plateau: a view from Demircihüyük-Sarıket,” Anatolian Studies 64: 73–93. 2016 Networks before Empires: cultural transfers in Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age. Unpublished PhD diss. University College London. MASSA, M., BACHHUBER, C., ŞAHIN, F., ERPEHLIVAN, H., LAURICELLA, A. J. and OSBORNE, J. 2020 “A landscape-oriented approach to urbanisation and early state formation in the Konya and Karaman Plains, Turkey,” Anatolian Studies 70: 45–75. MASSA, M. and PALMISANO, A. 2018 “Change and continuity in the long-distance exchange networks between western/ central Anatolia, Northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, c.3200-1600 BC,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 49: 65–83. MASSA, M. and ŞAHOĞLU, V. 2011 “Early Bronze Age Burial Customs in Western Anatolia,” in ACROSS: The Cyclades and Western Anatolia during the 3rd Millennium BC, edited by V. Şahoğlu and P. Sotirakopoulou, pp. 164–171. Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi Ltd. in press “Funerary customs between the eastern Aegean seaboard and the western Anatolian highlands during the third millennium B.C.,” in ARCANE: Associated Regional Chronologies of the Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. 3rd Millennium Western Anatolia, edited by H. Erkanal and V. Şahoğlu. Turnhout: Brepols. MASSA, M. and Y. TUNA 2019 “A clay stopper from Boz Höyük (Afyon) in the context of the western and central Anatolian Early Bronze Age sealing practices,” Anatolian Studies 69: 59–75. MELLAART, J. 1954 “Preliminary Report on a Survey of Pre-Classical Remains in Southern Turkey,” Anatolian Studies 4: 175–240. ÖZDOĞAN, M. and PARZINGER, H. 2012 Die frühbronzezeitliche Siedlung von Kanlıgeçit bei Kırklareli: Ostthrakien während des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr. im Spannungsfeld von anatolischer und balkanischer Kulturentwicklung. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. PALMISANO, A. 2018 The Geography of Trade. Landscapes of competition and long-distance contacts in Mesopotamia and Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period. Oxford: Archaeopress. PAVÚK, P. “Of spools and discoid loom-weights: Aegean-type weaving at Troy revisited,” in 2012 Kosmos: Jewellery, Adornment and Textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age, edited by M. L. Nosch and R. Laffineur, pp. 121–130. Leuven: Peeters. 2015 “Between the Aegeans and the Hittites. Western Anatolia in the 2nd Millennium B.C.,” in Nostoi. Indigenous Culture, Migration and Integration in the Aegean Islands and Western Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, edited by N. Stampolidis, C. Maner and K. Kopanias, pp. 81–113. İstanbul: Koç University Press. PELTENBURG, E. “Conflict and Exclusivity in Early Bronze Age Societies of the Middle Euphrates 2013 Valley,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 72(2): 233–252. PELTENBURG, E., WILKINSON, T. J., RICCI, A., LAWRENCE, D., MCCARTHY, A., WILKINSON, E. B., NEWSON, P. and PERINI, S. 2012 “The Land of Carchemish (Syria) Project: The Sajur Triangle,” in Proceedings of the 7th ICAANE Conference held in London in 2010, edited by J. Curtis, A. Fletcher, C. Glatz, R. Matthews, M. Seymour, J. Simpson and H. Taylor, pp. 191–203. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

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RAHMSTORF, L. 2006 “Zur Ausbreitung vorderasiatischer Innovationen in die frühbronzezeitliche Ägäis,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 81(1): 49–96. 2011 “Maß für Maß: Indikatoren für Kulturkontakte im 3. Jahrtausend,” in Kykladen: Lebenswelten einer frühgriechischen Kultur, edited by K. Horst, pp. 144–153. Karlsruhe: Badisches Landesmuseum. RENFREW, C. 1975 “Trade as action at a distance: Questions of integration and communication,” in Ancient Civilization and Trade, edited by J. A. Sabloff and C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, pp. 3–59. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. RICHMOND, J. 2006 “Textile production in prehistoric Anatolia,” Ancient Near Eastern Studies 43: 203–238. ŞAHOĞLU, V. 2005 “The Anatolian trade network and the Izmir region during the Early Bronze Age,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 24(4): 339–360. 2008 “Liman Tepe and Bakla Tepe: New Evidence for the Relations between the Izmir Region, The Cyclades and the Greek Mainland during the Late Fourth and Third Millennia BC,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium The Aegean in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age, edited by H. Erkanal, H. Hauptmann, V. Sahoglu and R. Tuncel, pp. 483–501. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi. 2016 “Early Bronze Age cemeteries at Bakla Tepe: Changing patterns,” in Early Bronze Age Troy: Chronology, Cultural Development and Interregional Contacts: Proceedings of an International Conference held at the University of Tübingen May 8–10, 2009, edited by E. Pernicka, S. Ünlüsoy and S. Blum, pp. 167–182. Bonn: Rudolph Habelt. SARI, D. 2011 Évolution culturelle et politique de l’Anatolie de l’Ouest au Bronze Ancien et au Bronze Moyen. Unpublished PhD diss. Université de Strasbourg and Istanbul Üniversitesi. 2013 “The cultural development of western Anatolia in the third and second millennia BC and its relationship with migration theories,” in Luwian Identities: Culture, Language and Religion between Anatolia and the Aegean, edited by A. Mouton, I. Rutherford and I. Yakubovich, pp. 305–328. Leiden: Brill. SCHOOP, U.-D. 2011 “Some thoughts on social and economic development in western Anatolia during the fourth and third millennia BC,” in Archaeological Research in Western Central Anatolia, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of Archaeology in Küthaya, 8th–10th March 2010, edited by N. Bilgen, R. von den Hoff, S. Sandalcı and S. Silek, pp. 29–45. Kütahya: Dumlupınar University. SEEHER, J. (ed.) 2000 Die bronzezeitliche Nekropole von Demircihüyük-Sarıket, 1990-1991. Tübingen: Wasmuth. TONUSSI, M. 2007 Dall’Eufrate allo Scamandro: contatti e scambi nel terzo millennio a. C. (Ricerche). Padua: Il Poligrafo. TÜRKTEKI, M. and BAŞKURT, R. 2016 “Anadolu’da İlk Tunç Çağı sonunda geleneksel bir ritual uygulaması: Küllüoba kazı ışığında adak çukurları üzerine bir değerlendirme,” Anadolu 42: 1–28. WARNER, J. 1994 Elmalı-Karataş 2: The Early Bronze Age Village of Karataş (Archaeological Monographs). Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Bryn Mawr College. WELTON, M. L. 2010 Mobility and Social Organization on the Ancient Anatolian Black Sea Coast: An Archaeological, Spatial and Isotopic Investigation of the Cemetery at İkiztepe, Turkey. Unpublished PhD diss. University of Toronto.

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WILKINSON, T. J. 2014 Tying the threads of Eurasia: Trans-regional routes and material flows in Transcaucasia, eastern Anatolia and western central Asia, c. 3000-1500 BC. Leiden: Sidestone Press. WITTWER-BACKOFEN, U. 2000 “Demircihüyük Sarıket: Anthropologische Bevölkerungsrekonstruktion,” in Die bronzezeitliche Nekropole von Demircihüyük-Sarıket. 1990–1991, edited by J. Seeher, pp. 239–300. Tübingen: Wasmuth. WRIGHT, J. 2004 “A Survey of Evidence for Feasting in Mycenaean Society,” Hesperia 73: 133–178. ZIMMERMANN, T. 2005 “Perfumes and policies – A ‘Syrian Bottle’ from Kinet Höyük and Anatolian trade patterns in the advanced third millennium BC,” Anatolica 31: 161–169. 2008 “Symbols of salvation? – Function, semantics and social context of Early Bronze Age ritual equipment from Central Anatolia,” Anodos 5–6: 509–520. 2009 “Frühmetallzeitliche Eliten zwischen Ostägäis und Taurusgebirge im 3. Jahrtausend v. Chr. – Versuch einer kritischen Bestandsaufnahme,” in Aufstieg und Untergang: Zwischenbilanz des Forschungsschwerpunktes (Studien zu Genese und Struktur von Eliten in Vor- und Frühgeschichtlichen Gesellschaften), edited by M. Egg and M. Quast, pp. 1–30. Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum.

PART III:

BORDERS AND POLITICAL MACHINES. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS IN THE 2ND MILLENNIUM BCE

COMPARING BORDERS: WRITTEN AND MATERIAL CULTURE APPROACHES TO DEFINITIONS OF POLITICAL FRONTIERS IN ANATOLIA 2000-1650 BCE Gojko BARJAMOVIC ABSTRACT Archaeological and textual data on geographical borders expose different and complementary historical notions of landscape and territoriality. Sharply demarcated political and fiscal boundaries evidenced in ancient commercial records stand in contrast to the more permeable (and perhaps vague) notions of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and economic frontiers visible in the material record. A juxtaposition of the two datasets allows us to address the current scholarly emphasis on the alleged non-contiguous nature of early states. Views imposed by texts on the landscape in turn raise important questions about the visibility of political borders in the archaeological record. Being primarily ideological and arbitrary constructs linked to concepts of dominion, borders do not necessarily conform to topographical features or cultural assemblages. The nature and density of the textual and archaeological record in the case of Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1650 BCE) makes it particularly well suited to contrast the two datasets and discuss the extent to which political borders can be identified on the ground.

A crucial problem for the investigation of political frontiers in early states is the fact that the dimensions which one can plot onto the landscape based on studies of written and material evidence are different from one another and often do not overlap. Archaeological remains such as lithics, building styles, burials, butchering patterns, sculpture, weights, and pottery show patterns of spatial distribution. Borders mentioned in texts relate primarily to trade, taxation, diplomacy and warfare. Cultural geographers combine interviews with informants and material culture studies to address divisions of landscape. One cannot do the same with an incomplete ancient record. Detailed information on dress, language, ritual and many other social markers are missing from both datasets. Approaches therefore require us first to identify what signals can be picked up and then to decide on how to use them. In terms of texts, a corpus of c. 23,000 Old Assyrian commercial records found the site of Kültepe near Kayseri in Central Turkey constitutes the largest single group of texts pertaining to the organisation and management of overland travel and exchange in the ancient world. Written in a mundane and business-like style, they provide mostly unbiased, and occasionally detailed, information about borders, territory and spatially defined authority. A linked archaeological assemblage produced by more than 70 seasons of excavations at the site provides a good deal of information about the material culture of the period.1

1

 Özgüç 2003.

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In addition to Kültepe, some 50 other sites of roughly contemporary date have been subject to archaeological investigation across Central Anatolia. Their size varies from large and seemingly compact urban settlements to smaller fortified sites. However, apart from Kültepe, few places have produced extensive exposures of early Middle Bronze Age strata. The practice of digging only on the central acropolis dominates present knowledge of sites such as Acemhöyük, Kaman Kalehöyük, Kırşehir Yassıhöyük, Karahöyük Konya, Büklükale and Beycesultan. Some four-dozen archaeological surveys have likewise produced an extensive dataset relevant to the topic of borders. Since the pioneering work by Von der Osten and Mellaart,2 it has been clear that surface collection can be used to define more-or-less distinct groups of material remains (ceramics) in relation to chronology and space. The combination of pottery coming from stratified contexts and surface collection constitutes a main tool by which broad cultural groups are delineated. The archaeological assemblage presumably mirror the same political and social realities reflected in the written record from Kültepe. It shows that Anatolia in the first quarter of the second millennium BCE consisted of a large number of micro-polities of which we know at least 40 fairly well (Fig. 1). Most of these polities seem to have been organised as city-states: polities centred on a single urban community and its temple institution and government with an agricultural hinterland partially managed by “town-dwelling farmers”.3 However, texts also often refer to villages, and at least two-dozen agricultural settlements are known to have been located within the territory of Kaneš.4 Yet, there never seems to have been more than one urban settlement within each polity, and in almost every case, the state bore the name of its urban centre. The model map (Fig. 2) in essence sketches a landscape centred on a reconstructed historical geography of the main urban settlements mentioned in the Assyrian records. Their distribution suggests that several of the states had territories smaller than 1000 km2. The situation is reminiscent of contemporaneous Babylonia and Northern Syria, as well the later pattern of Greek and Phoenician states in the east Mediterranean. On the other hand, it is very different from the periods of territorial unification in Central Anatolia under Hittite, Persian or Roman rule. Some researchers have made the attempt to relate the boundaries of pottery styles directly to the frontiers of political or social entities mentioned in the texts (Fig. 3). By combining written and material evidence, archaeologist Turan Efe and his team in particular have established a precise ceramic typology for Western Anatolia and used it to identify a set of cultural groups that they link to political entities found in the written record.5 One obvious obstacle to this approach is the different nature of material culture and political borders.6 Another complication is one of chronology. Texts generally provide detailed information on short timespans but also show that political frontiers would move rapidly and sometimes 2

 Von der Osten 1927, 1929; Mellaart 1954, 1958.  Hansen 2006. 4  Barjamovic 2014; Dercksen 2008; Forlanini 1992; Shi 2015. 5  Sarı 2012, pp. 200–231. 6  See Mullin 2011; d’Alfonso, this volume. 3

Fig. 1. Map of the Old Assyrian commercial network in Anatolia, c. 1880 BCE (Barjamovic 2011).

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Fig. 2. Sketch map of the main Anatolian polities mentioned in the Old Assyrian texts with a model of their territories.

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Fig. 3. Map from Sarı (2012, p. 201) attempting to associate regional differences in material culture to political entities known from texts.

violently. Material culture must be presumed to reflect slower and perhaps deeper change over longer periods of time, and not political borders. Nevertheless, one would expect at least some measure of observable overlap between the two datasets. In order to get an analytical grip on the possible correlation between political and cultural boundaries, a closer look at the geographical vocabulary applied by the Assyrian traders might relate native terminology to the situation on the ground. Importantly, the merchant records reflect a foreign perspective on the landscape as opposed to local nomenclature. Nevertheless, a study of the records shows that the correlation between cultural and political boundaries does indeed seem to be largely arbitrary. A few of the broader patterns visible in the material record may correspond to notions of spatial classification found in the texts, but on a level different from the political one. A majority of the terms related to geographical space in the Assyrian merchant records occur with both a general and a specific meaning. In all cases, one element constitutes what Lakoff might call the ‘paragon’ example of a larger notional group.7 This is a well-attested form of metonymy, commonly referred to as ‘antonomasia’ in literary analysis. A standard example is Latin ‘urbs’ for any city, but Rome in particular. 7

 Lakoff 1987.

130 ASSYRIAN TERM ālum eqlum mātum mātum šaplītum mātum elītum mātum qerbītum māt ubburim libbi mātim naqribum nārum Hattum Purušhaddum ālāni battum / pāṭum

G. BARJAMOVIC

GENERAL MEANING any settlement of houses field, countryside land, territory lower land upper land inner land foreign land heartland – any river territory inside the bend of the Kızılırmak territory outside the bend of the KızIırmak villages territory (w. ina)

SPECIFIC MEANING Assur and its Assembly the Assyrian network of colonies the Kaneš state; Anatolia Southern Mesopotamia; ‘Babylonia’ – – – Central Anatolia, inside the Kızılırmak urban hinterland the Euphrates the state of Hattuš? the state of Purušhaddum – border (w. ana)

Table 1: Assyrian dictionary of space.

Like the Romans, the Assyrians referred to their own home – the city-state of Assur – and its leading political Assembly simply as ālum. The general meaning of this word was ‘settlement’. It did not distinguish what in English would correspond to ‘city’ or ‘town’ or ‘village’. Assur was in turn the archetypal example: ‘the settlement’ / ‘the City’.8 The city of Assur was distinguished from the surrounding world with the general term eqlum. The literal meaning of this word ‘field’ or ‘countryside’ was used to denote anything beyond the city walls. But the term was also applied in a specific sense to refer to the network of Assyrian trading settlements in Syria and Anatolia. For instance, one could say: “what is due in the countryside [i.e., the Assyrian settlements in Anatolia] can only be collected in the countryside, and what is due in the City, only in the City” (POAT 16:35–37).9 Another common term in the texts is mātum ‘land’. It could apply generally to any state or territory, that is, a city and its hinterland. It was also employed to denote the population or citizenry or army of a given state, and all three were considered extensions of one another on a notional level.10 Thus ‘lands’ in the Assyrian texts are said to ‘gather their harvest’, ‘assemble’, and ‘fall upon’ their enemies. But the term mātum was also used in a specific sense to refer to one particular region, namely that of Anatolia, or ‘the Land’,11 as opposed to ‘the City’ Assur. Much more commonly, the term mātum would refer to a specific state territory, such as the Land of Kaneš, Zalpa, Hahhum, Sawit, or Nawar.12 This is also the standard way in which the concept of ‘territory’ appears in the commercial treaties between the Anatolian 8

 Larsen 1976, pp. 117, 161–163.  Nomenclature and abbreviations referring to text editions follow the standard of Michel 2003. 10  See, for example, Fleming 2004, pp. 29–30. 11  Larsen 1976, p. 250. 12  Veenhof 2008. 9

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polities and the Assyrians. They refer to ‘your land’ and provide detailed stipulations about the rights of crossing, taxation, protection etc.13 The term ‘land’ with various qualifications was also used to denote territory in a more general sense. In this general category we find the ‘Lower Land’ (which to the Assyrians was Babylonia), as well as the not-yet-understood terms ‘Upper Land’ (mātum elītum), ‘Inner Land’ (mātum qerbītum) and ‘Foreign Land’ (māt ubburim). The phrase libbi mātim or ‘Heartland’ seems to have been employed as a general term for remote rural settlements and contrasted to denser settled urban hinterlands (naqribum); more specifically it denoted the region inside the bend of the Kızılırmak River of Central Anatolia – ‘the Heartland’.14 The two major rivers – the Kızılırmak and the Euphrates – formed key conceptual geographical boundaries for the Assyrians. The Middle Euphrates was not only the political border of a series of states, it also marked the commercial frontier of the Assyrian zone of trade. Their system of long-distance trade was organised into two separate zones of commercial monopoly, and to the Assyrians the area east of the river was for transit only.15 Additional references to the importance of the Euphrates as a conceptual boundary are found in slave contracts, which stipulate that a person bought in Anatolia could not be led across the river, and marriage agreements, which state that the husband could not take another wife west of the Euphrates.16 In addition, the three Assyrian trading settlements located on the river crossings were considered entrepôts, and taxes, fees and salaries for caravan personnel were typically calculated as far as the river. The crossings were the preferred locations for changing caravan teams, resupplying, and sending status reports to Assur and Kaneš. Finally, we know that the Middle Euphrates was a place for ritual sacrifices en route to and from Assur. In essence, the Middle Euphrates, and not the Taurus, marked the border of Anatolia to the Assyrians.17 The Kızılırmak River constituted a main line of conceptual and political partition within Anatolia itself by separating the two moieties that were seen to constitute the Central Plateau. The wetter and more densely settled eastern half within the river bend was known as ‘Hattum’ or ‘the Heartland.’18 The dryer and less populated part west of the river was referred to as ‘Purušhaddum’.19 The Assyrian colonial system appears to have operationalised this geographical partition, so that letters and envoys sent out by the Assyrian authorities to colonies and stations located within the river bend were kept separate and could be different from contemporary messages sent west of the Kızılırmak. Rivers in general seem to have served as boundary markers for political frontiers. Obvious advantages of river as borders include the fact that they by nature may form precise and fairly permanent lines in the landscape, and that crossing them is often easily policed and controlled. A complicating factor is that rivers often define a valley as a single geographical

13

 Veenhof 2013.  Barjamovic 2011, Chapter 4.7. 15  Barjamovic 2008, 2018. 16  Barjamovic 2011, pp. 101, 157. 17   Barjamovic 2011, Chapter 4.1. 18  See also Kryszeń 2017. 19  Barjamovic 2011, Chapter 4.7. 14

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entity along both banks. Texts nevertheless show that the border between Šalatuwar and Purušhaddum was formed by a river crossed by a bridge, that there was a river named Zuliya separating Wahšušana from Ninašša, that there was a river ford on the frontier of Durhumit, and that Wašhaniya and Kaneš were separated by a river.20 Rivers as boundaries are also attested in the Hittite treaties, which often provide detailed topographical information in their definition of borders.21 In addition, the Hittites list various landmarks, including villages and mountains that are lined up to define frontiers (see, for example, CTH 106a obv. 20 and 106b i 29). Comparable phenomena are not known from the Assyrian texts but may well have applied. The Taurus Mountains certainly formed a conceptual line to the Assyrians,22 and just as the colonies inside and outside the Kızılırmak sometimes constitute separate entities, the cities east of the Taurus may have been seen to constitute a distinct unit in the colonial system. Mountains also occur as a topographical feature in the treaty between Assur and Hahhum, which mentions “the River, your territory, and your mountains” as if they were seen as the three constitutive elements comprising the state territory.23 Similarly, texts refer to events in the mountains of Mamma, Zalpa and Haqa.24 Perhaps mountainous regions could be conceptually associated with a given state for certain purposes, but not considered part of their territory in most other respects. There may also have been regions in Anatolia that were seen to lie beyond even the formal claim of any state. A possible case of such ‘no-man’s lands’ relates to the network of smuggler’s routes that led traffic east of Kaneš and north from the Euphrates ports to the copper markets.25 But mostly, when we hear about territories beyond the urban centres, this happens in relation to ‘villages’ (ālāne, viz. ‘settlements’) or the movement of guards and armies. One letter reports that: The son of Erraya sent his smuggled goods to Pušu-kēn, but his contraband was caught, and Pušu-kēn was seized by the palace and put in jail. The guards are strong. The Queen (of Kaneš) wrote to Luhuzattiya, Hurrama, Šalahšuwa and her own country about the smuggling, and spies have been posted (ATHE 62:28–36).

The most precise topographical term found in the commercial records pertaining to political authority is a word alternately transcribed as pāṭum or battum in the dictionaries. Semantically, it seems to cover both the English concepts of ‘border’ and ‘territory’ without any obvious effort to distinguish the two. This has led to some confusion in the lexica, which take both possible readings of the initial consonant (b/p) and assign them to individual lemmata, but in such a way that the spelling battu is reserved exclusively for the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian (where the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary s.v. translates the term as ‘a side’, the ‘edge of an object’ or a ‘region’, ‘surroundings’ etc.), and that the word pāṭu 20

 Barjamovic 2011, pp. 343–344 (Purušhaddum and Šalatuwar), 328 (Wahšušana and Ninašša), 271 (ford in Durhumit), 321 (bridge in Wašhaniya). 21  Beckman 1999. 22  Barjamovic 2011, p. 207. 23  Günbattı 2004; Veenhof 2013. 24  Barjamovic 2011, pp. 111, 168, 200, 207. 25  Barjamovic 2011, Chapter 4.9.

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is kept to the Babylonian dialects of Akkadian (including Amarna, Alalakh, Ugarit, Šemšara and Mari) and is translated as ‘edge, border (of a plot of land)’ and ‘boundary, border (between two territories)’. Given the dialectal distribution one may as well take the two to represent one and the same word. Judging by context, the Old Assyrian references seem to cover both meanings; battum as ‘region’ would perhaps fit all attested examples, but then it is unclear how the semantic field of this term would be different from mātum – ‘land, region, territory’. In fact, the words mātum and battum are not used interchangeably, and one gets the sense that the latter refers to something more specific. A collection of references shows that the word could be constructed with the two prepositions ana (‘at/on/to’) and ina (‘in(side)’), and that the contexts in which these two prepositions appear seem to be decisive for the translation of the term as either ‘territory’ (spatial) or ‘border’ (punctual/linear). All instances are in the plural, which may in itself suggest a notion of extent in space. The common word for (political) ‘border’ in the Babylonian dialect ‘miṣru’ does not appear in the spatial vocabulary of the Assyrian texts. With ina: “I gave 1/3 mina of cedar in the territory (battum) of Burullum” (O 3675: 9–12) “They held me back and I paid 2 minas of copper in the territory (battum) of Tišmurna” (AKT 8, 153: 4–7) “Upon the king’s return from the war I approached him inside his territory (battum)” (Kt n/k 388: 4–6) “I paid 6 shekels of tin for lodgings … in the territory (battum) of Hanaknak” (AKT 8, 146: 3–5) “They took 6 1/3 shekels of tin as excise-tax in the territory (battum) of Zuhta” (AKT 6a, 273: 14–16, coll.) “I paid 2 shekels less 1/4 of tin for lodgings in the territory (battum) of Razama” (BIN 4, 124: 1–5 and related) “I paid 11 minas and 10 shekels of tin to the caravans in the territory (battum) of Eluha” (Kt c/k 595: 16–18) With ana: “The palace wrote to its guide at the border (battum) and I will return to Wahšušana” (CCT 2, 19b: 11–16, coll. Larsen) “We paid [x] shekels at the border (battum)” (Kt 87/k 518: 12–13) “Take the servant with you, and he should hand them over at the border (battum) of Kaneš” (OIP 27, 13: 5–7) “We had 1 1/3 minas and 2 shekels of silver brought to the border (battum) of Wašhaniya” (Kt e/k 34: 18–20, coll. Erol) Table 2: The linguistic construction of borders (see Barjamovic 2011, n. 871).

Regardless of the exact translation of battum/pāṭum, the precision of terminology suggests the importance of defining exact state boundaries. The obvious reason for such a focus on accuracy was an economic one. Firstly, traders paid fees in order to cross a given area, and

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so borders constituted fiscal boundaries akin to Liverani’s “watersheds of taxation”.26 Charpin saw the frontiers of the Middle Bronze Age mainly as limits of “circulation” and “customs control”, as well as boundaries for the traffic of diplomats and traders.27 This leaves the landscape open and the policing and control of state frontiers at a minimum. Charpin pointed to the conflicting logic of state sovereigns, who feared the free movement of the mobile pastoralists, traders and diplomats, although these were at the same time a vital condition for their own success. In such a landscape, frontiers were often imagined and permeable. State control of territory was only manifest whenever it was exercised. Most of the time, territorial limits were fuzzy and vague. In one special set of circumstances, however, the concept of territoriality must have required a more precise definition. The Assyrian caravan records and commercial treaties texts clearly demonstrate that state borders were related to the issue of financial liability. The overland trade system operated without a concept of private insurance and the network was instead set up in such a way that local polities assumed full financial liability for commercial losses (huluqqā’um) incurred within their territory by merchants in transit.28 The merchants received such guarantees in return for their payment of transport duties and other fees. The income associated with the trade was of such magnitude that the individual states were competing to attract the revenues.29 One example of Assyrian colonial authorities receiving compensation for a lost shipment comes from the following letter: To our envoys and the Kaneš colony: thus (says) the Station of Kuššara. Here we heard that two citizens of Aššur were killed in the land of Luhuzattiya. We went up to the palace and said: “In your land, citizens of Aššur have been killed” … On the following day we [took] the money for their goods (Kay. 1830).

Similarly, the commercial treaty between Assur and Kaneš lays out the basic rights of the foreign merchants with reference to the state territory of their host community. It also operates with a concept of citizenry (‘sons’), territory (‘land’) and population (‘land’): If the blood of a son of Assur is shed in your city or in your land … If there is someone who lost his textiles in your city or your land … If a son of Assur becomes indebted to a citizen of Kaneš and leaves for another land … When you call up your land for state service30

The merchant records suggest that state frontiers were guarded along traffic corridors and bottlenecks, and that guards and bridge keepers were posted at river crossings that would constitute political borders.31 In addition, the texts often mention payments made to guard posts and one record even suggests that ‘forts’ may have guarded the road between two states (Kt 94/k 340). Finally, rulers were in a position to open and close roads, both during times of conflict, and as a political weapon:

26

 Liverani 2001.  Charpin 2004. 28  Veenhof 2013. 29  Guichard 2008; Barjamovic 2018. 30  Günbattı 2004; Veenhof 2013. 31  Barjamovic 2011, Ch. 1. 27

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The ruler of Wašhaniya came here. He has held me back from going to Purušhaddum or to Hattum. If he has not given the road to Hattum free within five days, then … I will leave for Kaneš (CCT 5, 15b).32 Instead of protecting my territory and encouraging me, he set fire to my land and made it reek of smoke. Did my land invade your land when your father Inar laid siege to the city of Harsamna nine years ago? Did my country fall upon your country, and did it withhold a single ox or sheep? Now you wrote to me, saying: “Why do you not open the road for me? I will open the road from here.” […] and I will […] the settlement, and then […]. Let me […] a single road, and then I will open the road from here (Kt g/k 35).

Interestingly, in Anatolia dominion was considered (or at least presented) in personal terms, as vested in the ruler as opposed to being more generally situated in the political institutions or citizenry. Yet, it was limited geographically and circumscribed by the borders of the polity. Keeping routes open or closed was a matter of policy, and would relate to war and territorial sovereignty. The fact that roads could be closed suggests that in some cases traders would need to obtain permission to travel on them.33 Also, it implies that the bans on travel could be related to the issue of treaty and liability. During periods of conflict, the rulers would not want to risk being held accountable for what was presumably an increased danger of losses. The passage from the letter Kt g/t 35 written by one Anatolian ruler to another quoted above can be contrasted to the more general statement found in a letter from Mari in Syria that compares mobile pastoralists, whose way of life was dependent upon relatively unrestricted access to pasture, to: “the trader, who can travel (at will) between war and peace.”34 It is unclear to what extent early states would police their territory and project their authority. It has generally been assumed that state power had a limited range, but the Assyrian case suggests that the Bronze Age micro-polities did monitor and protect passing traffic along defined corridors in the landscape. In addition, the states of Anatolia also policed what they perceived as their state territory in more general terms so as to prevent smuggling. The traders shared in this knowledge, and thought about borders as part of their planning, risk assessment and choice of routes. Whether this would have been any different for later and larger territorial entities, such as the Hittite state or the Assyrian Empire, is unclear, but presumably it was not. Letters from later imperial Assyria also reflect strong notions of border and territoriality, particularly evidenced in association with visits from foreign emissaries.35 There were restrictions on who could travel on the roads,36 as well as demarcated provincial boundaries in terms of financial obligations. The existence of fairly distinct political borders did not exclude a simultaneous use of much more general terms to describe the world in geographical terms. The literary text about Sargon of Akkade (Kt j/k 97) found at Kültepe demonstrates that its author juggled 32

 The same expression occurs also in the Babylonian letter IM 49307:10 (refer Leemans 1960, pp. 106– 107), where the kārum of Sippar writes that the king said: ‘Until we have captured the cities K. and H. we will not give the road free.’ 33  Charpin (2004, p. 62), on the other hand, points out that the idea of a more general need for travel passports is probably to be abandoned. 34  Charpin 2004, p. 58. 35  Jakob 2003 (Middle Assyrian). 36  Kessler 1997 (Neo-Assyrian).

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Fig. 4. A mental map drawn from the Assyrian Legend of Sargon.

effortlessly a mental map stretching from Iran to Cyprus. This was a map that included states, cities, regions and tribal groups (Fig. 4). On the other hand, linguistic borders are never directly mentioned in the texts, although languages and interpreters are.37 Society was presumably multi-lingual, and spoken language may not have been a distinguishing ethnic marker. The case of Middle Bronze Age Anatolia challenges some of the commonly repeated assertions about early states. This includes the notion that frontiers were entirely permeable and that political control was more of an ideological claim than reality. The states of Syria and Anatolia in the first quarter of the second millennium BCE were effective in asserting control of their territory at least along main routes. Borders were precisely defined in places where they intersected those routes, this being a necessity for taxation and tolls.38 Beyond that, frontiers were probably fuzzier, but even so, issues of treaty, liability and smuggling suggest that claims to authority in the countryside were backed by some measure of policing. We cannot, however, trace direct cognates between such fiscal or political borders and ceramic assemblages. Texts show the world from the point of view of the Assyrian traders, and they relate to a political reality over a brief timespan. Material evidence reflects broader cultural developments over longer periods, and the signals we pick up from the two data sets are therefore different and only partially compatible. Political and fiscal borders do not seem to have been ambiguous. Cultural and material frontiers certainly were. The texts provide a perspective on how landscape was divided by people in terms of travel, transport, 37

 Barjamovic forthcoming, §3.  Barjamovic 2020, §7.

38

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taxation and warfare. Their cognates are often invisible in the archaeological signature of early states. Yet, broader cultural divisions are clearly discernible and seemingly identifiable in both datasets at the same time. For example, the conceptual division of Central Anatolia into an eastern and a western half seems to correspond to identifiable differences in the material record.39 If anything, the Old Assyrian case suggests that a study of ancient borders should begin with the question of exactly what kind of border is meant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BARJAMOVIC, G. 2008 “The geography of trade – Assyrian colonies in Anatolia c. 1975–1725 B.C. and the study of early interregional networks of exchange,” in Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (PIHANS 111; OAAS 3), edited by J. G. Dercksen, pp. 87–100. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. 2011 A Historical Geography of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period (Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 38). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 2014 “The size of Kanesh and the demography of Early Middle Bronze Age Anatolia,” in Current Research in Kültepe/Kanesh: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Approach to Trade Networks, Internationalism, and Identity during the Middle Bronze Age, edited by L. Atici, F. Kulakoglu, G. Barjamovic and A. Fairbairn, pp. 55–68. Boston: The American Schools of Oriental Research. 2018 “Interlocking commercial networks and the infrastructure of trade in western Asia during the Bronze Age,” in Trade and Civilization in the Pre-Modern World, edited by K. Kristiansen, T. Lindkvist and J. Myrdal, pp. 113–142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2020 “Extraction and Inequality in Middle Bronze Age Anatolia,” in Economic Complexity in the Ancient Near East: Management of Resources and Taxation (Third–Second Millennium BC), edited by J. Mynářová and S. Alivernini, pp. 87–126. Leiden: Brill. forthcoming “Before the Kingdom of the Hittites: Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age,” in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, edited by N. Moeller, D. T. Potts and K. Radner. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BECKMAN, G. 1999 Hittite Diplomatic Texts (Writings from the Ancient World 7), 2nd ed. Atlanta: Scholars Press. CHARPIN, D. 2004 “La circulation des commerçants, des nomades et des messagers dans le ProcheOrient Amorrite (XVIIIe siècle av. J.-C.),” in La mobilité des personnes en Méditerranée de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne (Collection de l’École Française de Rome 341), edited by C. Moatti, pp. 51–69. Rome: École Française de Rome. DERCKSEN, J. G. 2008 “Observations on land use and agriculture in Kaneš,” in Old Assyrian Studies in Memory of Paul Garelli (PIHANS 112; OAAS 4), edited by C. Michel, pp. 139–157. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. FLEMING, D. E. 2004 Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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FORLANINI, M. 1992 “Am mittleren Kızılırmak,” in Sedat Alp’a armağan = Festschrift für Sedat Alp. Hittite and other Anatolian and Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Sedat Alp, edited by H. Otten, E. Akurgal, H. Ertem and A. Süel, pp. 171–179. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. GOEDEGEBUURE, P. M. 2008 “Central Anatolian languages and language communities in the colony period: A Luwian-Hattian symbiosis and the independent Hittites,” in Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (PIHANS 111; OAAS 3), edited by J. G. Dercksen, pp. 137–180. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. GUICHARD, M. 2008 “Naḫur et la route des marchands assyriens à l’époque de Zimrî-Lîm,” in Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (PIHANS 111; OAAS 3), edited by J. G. Dercksen, pp. 43–56. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. GÜNBATTI, C. 2004 “Two treaty texts found at Kültepe,” in Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen (PIHANS 100), edited by J. G. Dercksen, pp. 249–268. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. HANSEN, M. H. 2006 Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. JAKOB, S. 2003 “Diplomaten in Assur – Alltag oder Anzeichen für eine internationale Krise?” ISIMU 6: 103–114. KESSLER, K. 1997 “‘Royal Roads’ and other questions of the Neo-Assyrian communication system,” in Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, edited by S. Parpola and R. Whiting, pp. 129–136. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. KRYSZEŃ, A. 2017 “Ḫatti and Ḫattuša,” Altorientalische Forschungen 44(2): 212–220. LAKOFF, G. 1987 Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. LARSEN, M. T. 1976 The Old Assyrian City State and its Colonies. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. LEEMANS, W. F. 1960 Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period as Revealed by Texts from Southern Mesopotamia (Studia et Documenta 6). Leiden: Brill. LIVERANI, M. 2001 International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600–1100 BC. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. MELLAART, J. 1954 “Preliminary report on a survey of pre-classical remains in Southern Turkey,” Anatolian Studies 4: 175–240. 1958 “Second millennium pottery from the Konya Plain and neighbourhood,” Belleten 22(87): 311–342, pl. 1–9. MICHEL, C. 2003 Old Assyrian Bibliography of Cuneiform Texts, Bullae, Seals and the Results of the Excavations at Aššur, Kültepe/Kaniš, Acemhöyük, Alişar and Boğazköy (PIHANS 97; OAAS 1). Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. MULLIN, D. 2011 “Border crossings: The archaeology of borders and borderlands: An introduction,” in Places in Between: The Archaeology of Social, Cultural and Geographical Borders and Borderlands, edited by D. Mullin, pp. 1–2. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

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Kültepe Kaniš/Neša. The Earliest International Trade Center and the Oldest Capital City of the Hittites. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. “İlk Tunç Çağı ve Orta Tunç Çağı’nda Batı Anadolu’nun Kültürel ve Siyasal Gelişimi,” in Küllüoba Kazıları ve Batı Anadolu Tunç Çağları Üzerine Yapılan Araştırmalar (MASROP 7), edited by T. Efe, pp. 112–249. Istanbul: Masrop e-Dergi.

“Village life in ancient Anatolia: The case of Talwahšušara,” in Proceedings of the Kültepe International Meeting 1, edited by F. Kulakoğlu and C. Michel, pp. 147–154. Turnhout: Brepols. VEENHOF, K. R. 2008 “The Old Assyrian period,” in Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/5), edited by K. R. Veenhof and J. Eidem, pp. 13–264. Fribourg; Göttingen: Academic Press; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2013 “New Mesopotamian treaties from the second millennium BC from kārum Kanesh and Tell Leilan (Šehna),” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtgeschichte 19: 23–58. VON DER OSTEN, H. H. 1927 Explorations in Hittite Asia Minor: A Preliminary Report (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Communications 2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1929 Explorations in Central Anatolia: Season of 1926 (Oriental Institute Publications 5). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

SOCIAL BOUNDS AND SEASONAL ROUNDS: TERRITORIAL IMPLICATIONS OF HIGHLAND INTERACTION AND OBLIGATION IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE SOUTH CAUCASUS Ian LINDSAY ABSTRACT This chapter examines evidence for the spatial and socioeconomic relationships between Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500–1150 BCE) hilltop fortifications and mobile agro-pastoralists in Armenia within a broader consideration of politics and territoriality. The construction of cyclopean fortresses across much of Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus during the mid-second millennium BCE replaced burial tumuli (kurgans) as the dominant manifestation of authority on the landscape, even as centuries of mobile pastoralism continued to shape the region’s political economy in important ways. Integral to political relations between fortress-based institutions and seasonally mobile subjects was the need to create highly legible places for political subjection and social reproduction. But how does one track geographical control when much of a subject population remains “on the hoof”? Drawing on two decades of archaeological research on Armenia’s Tsaghkahovit Plain, this paper questions the notion of fortified landscapes as tightly regimented sovereign spaces, instead examining boundary making within the spatial ties and obligations that were expressed in a variety of culturally significant activities – material production, seasonal movement, mortuary and ritual attendances – that anchored communities not to rigid political cartographies but to significant locales on the landscape, including fortresses, shrines, and settlements.

INTRODUCTION The Caucasus region geographically occupies a narrow isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas, but cartographically and geopolitically has long occupied a space in the shadow of its continental neighbours – the quintessential space “in-between”. Situated on the frontiers of Anatolia, the Steppe and western Asia and the southernmost border of the former Soviet Union, the region has been imagined as a liminal space not just geographically, but in literary traditions from Prometheus to Pushkin as a space of transgression and redemption.1 Archaeologically, it has lingered in the shadows in between the better-studied region of the literate Anatolian and Near Eastern worlds to the southwest and the Steppe traditions to the north.2 However, a new generation of survey and excavation in eastern Anatolia, northern Iran, and particularly the South Caucasus, has dramatically expanded our understanding of local (pre)historic traditions and ancient political development. As a result, we are in a much better position to examine how patterns of political organisation reflect local territorial commitments at the interface with neighbouring groups. This paper

1 2

 Grant 2005; Smith 2005.  Smith and Rubinson 2003.

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Fig. 1. Map of selected Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortress sites showing the general distribution of sites on the Armenian Plateau and adjacent regions of the South Caucasus and northern Iran (DEM data: SRTM 90; modern borders: ESRI World Data 2004). Numbered sites are mentioned in the text: (1) Udabno, (2) Keti, (3) Horom, (4) Gegharot, (5) Tsaghkahovit, (6) Lchashen, (7) Metsamor, (8) Pulur, (9) Oğlanqala, (10) Hasanlu.

will engage such issues as how might we recognise ancient borders through available archaeological data in the Armenian Plateau, and the South Caucasus in particular, and whether territoriality is a proper way of reckoning political strategies among these early complex societies. In the broad, mountainous expanse of Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus, the political landscape of the Late Bronze Age and Iron I period (ca. 1500–800 BCE) is marked most distinctively by an extensive, if yet ill-defined, network of hilltop “cyclopean” stone fortifications (Fig. 1). These fortresses, along with their associated cemeteries and less discernable settlements, oversaw at least the partial settlement of agro-pastoral communities for the first time since the dispersion of Kura-Araxes farming villages 700 years earlier.3 The preceding Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2200–1500 BCE) is generally characterised by increasingly stratified, nomadic pastoralists, with ostentatious burial traditions of kurgans that indexed the rise of social status around the turn of the second millennium BCE (Table 1).4 With the onset of the Late Bronze Age, however, the monumental burial tradition of the Middle Bronze Age moderates considerably as the construction of hilltop fortifications replaces kurgans as the dominant markers of authority on the landscape. The reconstitution 3

 Badalyan et al. 2003; Lindsay and Greene 2013; Özfırat 2008; Sevin 2004.  Dedabrishvili 1979; Gogadze 1970; Kuftin 1941; Özfırat 2005; Pitskhelauri 2003; Sagona 2004, 2013.

4

SOCIAL BOUNDS AND SEASONAL ROUNDS

Local Periodization Phase

South Caucasus Horizon Styles

Iron IIIb Iron III

Regional Sequences Anatolia

350–200 Armavir-Tsaghkahovit

Iron IIIa

Iron II

Dates BC (approx.)

143

Hellenistic Yervandid

600–350

Iron IIb Iron IIa

LchashenMetsamor 6

Iron Ib

Lchashen-Metsamor 5

1000–800

Iron Ia

Lchashen-Metsamor 4

1150–1000

LB III

Lchashen-Metsamor 3

1300–1150

Urartu

Mesopotamia

700–600 800–700

Iron I

Achaemenid

Urartu

Neo-Assyrian

Syro-Hittite states

Middle Assyrian Hittite Empire

Late Bronze Age LB II

Lchashen-Metsamor 2

1400–1300

LB I

Lchashen-Metsamor 1

1500–1400

MB III

Karmir-Vank; Karmir-Berd; Sevan-Uzerlik

1750–1500

Middle Hittite Mitanni Old Hittite

Old Assyrian Middle Bronze Age MB II

Trialeti-Vanadzor

2150–1750 Ur III

MB I

Early Kurgan

2400–2150

Kura-Araxes II

Karnut-Shengavit; ShreshblurMokhrablur

2900–2400

Early Bronze Age 3500–2900 Kura-Araxes I

Elar-Aragats

Akkadian

Early Dynastic

Jemdet Nasr Late Uruk

Table 1. Abbreviated chronology of the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods in Southern Caucasia (after Smith et al. 2009, Fig. 2).

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of the built environment was not only a novel means of projecting political power, but also likely restructured the terms of political association between authorities and subject communities in ways that we are just beginning to understand. While there is near universal acceptance that Late Bronze Age forts represent increased political centralisation, there remain important issues surrounding the scales at which these new polities are organised and how we might trace territorial behaviour through the practices and institutions that constitute and reproduce these polities. In addition to the proliferation of forts, the scale, intensity, and diversity of bronze production increased dramatically in the later second millennium to include new forms such as battle-axes, mace-heads, shaft-hole daggers, flanged-hilt weapons, bits, jewellery, and statuettes. As the painted pottery of the Middle Bronze Age dissipated, new black, gray, and buff wares with incised and pressed circumferential decorations come to dominate Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 assemblages.5 These transformations have received the most sustained archaeological attention in the South Caucasus, where contemporary technical and stylistic traditions are consistent enough to be subsumed under a single material culture horizon named Lchashen-Metsamor in Armenia6 and Lchashen-Tsitelgori in Georgia.7 Broadly similar stylistic and technological traditions have also been traced through assemblages in eastern Turkey and northern Iran that have been used to argue for cultural affiliation and interaction between highland communities.8 The Armenian Plateau, and the South Caucasus in particular, provides an excellent setting for the study of territoriality and social boundaries that deserve further critical engagement. Unfortunately, a number of practical and theoretical obstacles in the region have, with a few exceptions, precluded more detailed considerations of these issues to date, including the limited number of stratified excavations of Late Bronze Age highland fortresses and settlements and, more broadly, dismissive assumptions about the peripheral nature of the South Caucasus relative to contemporary historical forces at work in western Anatolia and Mesopotamia. As a result, this chapter will be equal parts diagnostic and prescriptive. I begin by assessing the state of knowledge about the Late Bronze Age in the highlands, including the extent of fortress construction on the Armenian Plateau, northern Iran, and the South Caucasus based on recent settlement data, followed by an overview of how themes of social boundaries and territoriality have been applied in the region thus far. I then focus more specifically on intensive research at a handful of Late Bronze Age fortresses in the Lesser Caucasus of northwestern Armenia undertaken by Project ArAGATS, where systematic survey, stratified excavations, and materials analysis studies have demonstrated unique insights on the spatial parameters of political and economic control within a Late Bronze Age fortified landscape. Finally, I discuss how these methodologies suggest ways forward as we productively engage questions of boundary and territoriality that will allow the highlands to contribute to a better understanding of South Caucasian prehistory. 5

 Areshian et al. 1990.  Avetisyan and Bobokhyan 2008. 7  Abramishvili and Abramishvili 2008; see also Birkett-Rees, this volume. 8  Çilingiroğlu 1984; Danti 2013, p. 344; Piller 2013; Rubinson and Marcus 2005; Shanshashvili and Narimanishvili 2013. 6

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I suggest that conceptualising fortress communities in terms of networks of interaction and allegiance governed by ties of ritual obligation may be a more useful way of conceptualising the terms of political association among Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortresses than as fixed polities circumscribed by clearly demarcated political boundaries.

CONCEPTUALISING HIGHLAND TERRITORIALITY Following attempts to expose the complex ways in which social and political boundaries are established, maintained and redefined, in this paper I situate “territory” at the intersection of physical environments, political institutions, and human subjectivities, encompassing a diverse array of practices that link land, politics, and social identities.9 I use this intentionally loose conception of territoriality and boundary formation as a framework for locating Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortress systems as discrete political units in the Southern Caucasus and Armenian Plateau, and for forwarding some initial thoughts on the relations of political association between fortresses. In emphasising the slippery notion of territorial boundaries in antiquity, we must recognise the challenges fortress elites may have faced in integrating and maintaining a political and economic hold over populations that appear to have maintained seasonally variable settlement and subsistence strategies. At the same time, it remains critical to account for spatial dimensions of power during the Late Bronze Age and Iron 1 not only as a means of understanding the terms of political association and organisation during the latter half of the second millennium BCE, but also as a means to assess the political landscape that served as a general “template” (as Adam Smith has described it10) of highland politics subsumed under the Urartian Empire as it spread east from Van into the South Caucasus during the eighth century BCE. In contesting the assumption that sovereignty is defined by strict borders, and that states are therefore “containers” enclosing economic and political processes, it has been increasingly evident to archaeologists (including many of the contributors to this volume) that political authorities within middle-range societies and pre-modern states did not always conceive of control over territorial boundaries as a strategy for centralising power. In numerous cases documented in the archaeological and ethnohistoric record, control over population and labour trump territory as the primary defining goals of statehood. As James Scott, quoting Geertz, remarks in his account of pre-colonial kingdoms in highland southeast Asia,11 the frictions of distance and provisioning in mountainous environments meant that political rivalries were “a struggle more for men than for land.” Scott details how, much to the confusion of British colonial surveyors, Siamese leaders of highland principalities paid more attention to the manpower they could summon than to sovereignty over land that had no value in the absence of labour. Elizabeth Stone draws similar conclusions about early Sumerian city-states,12 where she suggests that the key to political power was not so much 9

 Osborne and VanValkenburgh 2013.  Smith 2010; Smith and Thompson 2004. 11  Scott 2009, p. 67, after Geertz 1980, p. 24. 12  Stone 1997. 10

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the ability to control arable land, but rather to attract the labour for the creation of arable land through irrigation projects and collective land management projects. Moreover, the archaeological record is replete with examples of polities, such as in highland Mexico, Peru, and the American Southwest, where societies were aggregated through networked connections between populations in non-contiguous areas. Such highly variable expressions of territoriality raise important questions, such as how do social networks and territorial patterns configure social and political life? What effects do territorial claims and boundary behaviours have on the construction of networks, and how are social ties mobilised to establish territorial control? The problems of “delimiting and asserting control over a geographical area”,13 as territorial behaviour is often framed, are compounded when much of a subject population may be living on the hoof and local lands are essentially seasonal transit points for semi-mobile groups of agro-pastoralists, as was likely the case in the Late Bronze Age Armenian Plateau. In such cases, tracing the relationship between land and political economy goes beyond delimiting the extent of material culture styles, but requires that we attend to the activities and practices at places of institutional significance and the relational ties and obligations that connected people and places in the past.

LATE BRONZE AGE/IRON 1 HIGHLAND FORTS The documentation of highland fortifications has a long history on the Armenian Plateau, and is particularly well documented in the South Caucasus. Here, examinations of Late Bronze Age and Iron I fortresses began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with a series of non-systematic surveys.14 The past couple of decades in particular have witnessed an encouraging surge in the documentation of pre-Urartian and Urartian-era fortress and associated sites in eastern Turkey, the South Caucasus, and northern Iran that have allowed us to more fully trace their geographic extent in the highlands and expand our understanding of fortification architecture.15 While the settlement history at most of these fortresses is unclear due to lack of stratified excavations, characteristics derived from a handful of excavated pre-Urartian forts have identified a series of shared elements, which when combined with surface collections, can distinguish them from later Urartian forts.16 1. Fortress location: Nearly all of the fortresses were built atop hills or rocky outcrops with good visibility of underlying plains and valleys. Fortresses are also typically associated with large cemeteries, and occasionally settlements at the base of their hills (Fig. 2a).

13

 Sack 1986.  Adzhyan et al. 1932; Kalantar 1994; Toramanyan 1942. 15  Biscione 2009; Biscione and Dan 2011; Biscione et al. 2002; Esaian 1976; Isıklı 2013; Isıklı and Can 2007; Khatibshahidi and Rezeloo 2006; Kleiss 1980; Kroll 2005, 2006; Marro and Özfırat 2003; Mikaelyan 1968; Mikaelyan and Esaian 1968; Özfırat 2009, 2010; Parker 2011; Pitskhelauri 1979; Ristvet et al. 2012; Shanshashvili and Narimanishvili 2013; Smith 1998; Smith et al. 2009; Xnkikyan 2002. 16  Smith and Kafadarian 1996. 14

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Fig. 2a. Representative hilltop locations of select Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 forts: (a) Böyük Qaleh, northwestern Iran (Biscione 2009); (b) Horom, northwestern Armenia (photo by author); (c) Tsaghkahovit, northwestern Armenia (photo by author); (d) Mtsvane Gora, southern Georgia (Erb-Satullo 2018).

2. Fortress Design: Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortress layouts are generally irregular, conforming to the natural topography of the site. This is in sharp contrast to Urartian and later fortresses that are defiantly rectilinear in the face of undulating terrain. Many forts also display a series of terrace walls placed irregularly along the slopes of their hills, often connected to the primary citadel walls (Fig. 2b). 3. Construction Technology: Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 forts employed fairly rudimentary technologies, with walls constructed of variably sized, roughly hewn, undressed stones (in contrast to the clean, ashlar masonry of the Urartians). Wall stones are rarely laid in regular courses, and the walls rarely exhibit buttresses, towers, or other projections. Generally, the fortresses exhibit a shared architectural grammar, and broader similarities in material culture that suggest a level of regional interaction that was probably more than superficial. Additionally, while rather crude and brutish on their face, the cyclopean scale of walls points to ability to marshal impressive amounts of labour and resources, underlining the social distance between rulers and subjects. As a result, there is almost universal acceptance among regional scholars that these fortresses represent important changes in social organisation and increasing centralisation of power.

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Fig. 2b. Representative construction styles of select Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 forts: (a) Tsaghkahovit, Armenia (Lindsay 2011); (b) Knole, Georgia (Shanshashvili and Narimanishvili 2012); (c) Çubuklu, Van Basin, Turkey (Özfirat 2009); (d) Voskevaz, Ararat Valley, Armenia (photo by author).

Given the wide extent of fortress construction in the highlands, archaeologists have yet made surprisingly little progress documenting the social issues associated with the rise of political complexity generally – and territoriality, and boundary making more specifically – during the Late Bronze Age due to a number of historical factors. The first is the long standing assumption, going back at least to Childe (1936), that the novel sociopolitical formations that arose in the Caucasus (and the highland plateau in general) only developed with the diffusion of civilising impulses from Mesopotamia, thereby underplaying localised processes of transformation and innovation. Consequently, the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age has historically been overshadowed by research on the enigmatic expansion of the Kura-Araxes (or, Early Transcaucasian) phenomenon during the Early Bronze Age, and by the imperial grandeur of Urartu, both of which bore tangible connections to the wider Near Eastern ecumene. A second impediment to a more comprehensive understanding of the Late Bronze Age polities throughout the highlands has been the disproportionate attention to burials at the expense of settlement data. Since the late 19th century when de Morgan excavated nearly 900 Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age tombs in northern Armenia with subsequent tomb excavations in northern Iran, burials have provided the material culture used to establish regional chronologies, to define the geographical limits of archaeological “cultures”, and to

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generalise about interregional ties or connections.17 By contrast, there has been a relative lack of systematic survey and stratified excavations at Late Bronze Age and Iron 1 fortresses and settlements despite clear evidence for their presence in the Van region, northeastern Anatolia, Georgia, Armenia, and northern Iran. There has been almost universal acceptance among regional scholars that these fortresses represent important changes in social organisation, such that by the end of the second millennium BCE, all quarters of the highland plateau were evidently ruled by small, perhaps rival, polities centered in hilltop fortresses that were united in some way by a widely shared material culture repertoires. Unfortunately, only a handful of Late Bronze Age /Iron 1 fortresses have hosted intensive research, most notably Tsaghkahovit and Gegharot, Elar, Horom South, Keti, and Metsamor in Armenia; Udabno in Georgia; Hasanlu in Iran; and Oğlanqala in Nakhchivan.18 Consequently, archaeologists will continue to have difficulty capturing what the stakes of these interregional encounters might have been until data from a wider range of sociological contexts outside of cemeteries becomes available. In light of this, it is worth taking a moment to take stock of the pace of research in various parts of the highlands. It has often been noted that the cataclysmic events that brought an end to the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean did not reverberate visibly on the highland plateau; as a result the Late Bronze Age material culture tradition in much of the highlands blend rather seamlessly into the Iron 1, referred to collectively in Armenia as the Lchashen-Metsamor horizon. This degree of continuity suggests that unlike in the Upper Euphrates region, polities on the Armenian Plateau were not as tightly bound to the fortunes of Near Eastern territorial states; however, a growing number of Mitannian cylinder seals from Armenia and Georgia also indicate that fortress polities did not arise in isolation.19 To date many of the seals have been recovered from burial contexts suggesting their role as status symbols; others have been found at settlements such as Metsamor and Gegharot in Armenia, both of which also produced examples of balance weights, incised astragoli, evidence for metallurgical production, and ritual installations. If Bobokhyan and Badalyan are correct that the constellation of seals, astragoli, weights, and metallurgy constitutes a coherent repertoire analogous to assemblages in Mediterranean cities such as Ugarit,20 there may have been practical interregional links between the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean world tied to recognised standards of production and exchange. As a result it seems certain that fortress polities on the highlands interacted with each other, with the Van and/or Urmia regions mediating access to the eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia, at least until the collapse of the Late Bronze Age trade system. While the sequence of material development from the mid-second millennium BCE has come to be better understood in the South Caucasus north of the Araxes river (discussed in more detail below), far less is currently known about what was happening in eastern 17

 Lindsay and Smith 2006; Sagona 2012.  Badalyan et al. 1992; Badalyan et al. 1993; Badalyan et al. 1994; Badalyan et al. 2008; Badalyan et al. 2010; Badalyan et al. 2014; Danti 2013; Dyson Jr. 1973; Hammer 2014a; Khanzadian 1979; Khanzadian et al. 1973; Petrosyan 1989; Pitskhelauri 2003; Ristvet et al. 2013. 19  Shanshashvili and Narimanishvili 2013, fig. 3. 20  Bobokhyan and Badalyan 2013. 18

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Turkey and northwestern Iran. Özfirat notes that museum collections from the Ağri Dağ (Mt. Ararat) region, display “full parallelism with the pottery of [the] South Caucasus”21 where Middle Bronze Age painted wares are succeeded by black and gray LchashenMetsamor ceramics.22 By contrast, Özfirat and others note that in the Van Basin, Late Bronze Age ceramic assemblages are dominated by Red-brown burnished ware and buff wares that presage – and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from – the Urartian repertoires of the Middle Iron Age.23 The area from Lake Van to south of Erzurum as well as in parts of Nakhchevan appears to have experienced a more sustained Middle Bronze Age than in much of the South Caucasus, with polychrome wares continuing until ca. 1400/1300 BCE.24 Unfortunately, none of Van’s pre-Urartian fortresses have undergone stratified excavations, and their attribution to the Early Iron Age has so far rested on the presence of iconic so-called “Groovy Ware”, whose appearance in burials alongside Urartian wares and metal work has called into question its reliability as a chronological indicator. It is unfortunate that the region of the highlands perhaps most poised to advance discussions about borderland processes during a formative period of political development is also one of the least understood. In addition to figuring as a likely intermediary point between Mitanni and the highland plateau, the Van region figures in the later annals of Middle Assyrian kings that record the presence of highland polities predating the formation of Urartu. So investigation of Van’s forts would not only provide foundational data on the roots of the enigmatic Urartian Empire, but would contribute substantially to current discourses on borderlands as dynamic loci of cultural production and identity and networks of political economic interaction on the highlands. The Erzurum-Kars region is another area that has not yet seen detailed attention to the Late Bronze Age. Though the Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 layers at Sos Höyük were quite minimal, Sagona documented intriguing evidence for a Late Bronze Age production area.25 The materials Isıklı recovered from burial excavations at Pulur and radiocarbon dated to the 14th–13th centuries BCE were handmade gray and black wares, mostly bowls and cooking vessels, which he refers to as “Dark and Light Faced Wares”.26 Sagona describes similar wares at Sos, along with a handful of sherds that he sees as analogous to the LchashenMetsamor tradition in the South Caucasus, particularly impressed wheat stalk elements on the vessel shoulder. These parallels warrant further exploration, and the mounds, cemeteries and fortifications recorded on surveys of the Erzurum and Pasinlur Plains suggest a substantial Late Bronze Age occupation awaiting further investigation.

21

 Özfirat 2009, p. 226.  See also Özfırat 2008, p. 105. 23  Özfirat 2009, p. 226. 24  Özfırat 2008, p. 106. 25  Sagona 1999, 2012. 26  Isıklı 2013; Isıklı and Can 2007. 22

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An additional challenge to discussions of territoriality during the Late Bronze Age is that the limited work that has been published on fortifications during the 20th century was either narrowly site-centric, or consisted of rudimentary inventories of sites in a given study area; in both cases, few attempts were made to place Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortresses within their regional contexts and to examine the spectrum of social, economic, and martial relationships among settlement systems, precluding discussion of the highlands as a nested scale of dynamic political landscapes.27 As a consequence, critical questions of social process, including detailed study of the period’s political economy, domestic life, the practices that constitute and reproduce authority, and the nature of territoriality among emerging fortress polities, remain underdeveloped and attempts directly engaging with questions of territoriality, frontiers, and boundaries during the Late Bronze Age are few.28 Exceptions include Mitchell Rothman’s assessment of modern Muş province as “beyond the frontier” of the territory of Mitanni and Assyria,29 though a lack of archaeological (that is, non-textual) work on the Late Bronze Age and Iron 1 periods prohibited a detailed consideration of highland interactions with Northern Mesopotamia toward the end of the second millennium BCE. In the South Caucasus, where volumes of material culture from burials were used to establish regional chronologies in reference to Aegean and the Near Eastern assemblages, parallels in pottery and metal weapons and personal adornments derived from funerary assemblages have led several authors to suggest the presence of social/ethnic boundaries and inter-connections between sub-regions of the highlands,30 though few go so far as to fully examine the stakes and contexts of the proposed entanglements. Focusing on monumental barrows of the Middle Bronze Age, Sagona employs the language of territoriality, proposing that the appearance of ostentatious kurgan burials is rooted in claims to “contested territory – its ownership, and more specifically its boundaries”.31 His assessment of kurgans as markers of land ownership via expressions of group identity is a variant of territorial models rooted in cultural ecology that emphasise control over resources.32 Sagona notes that control over grazing rights is a common form of territorial behaviour among pastoralists, but the pastoralist literature suggests that it is by no means universal. Bradburd, for example, argues at length through his ethnographic data on Iranian pastoralists that herders were not always territorial, in the sense of controlling and protecting resources against competing groups.33 As in the limited examples cited above, burial assemblages are often a traditional starting point for charting the geographic limits of social identity. Others, however, argue that domestic contexts and activity areas of the living are even more important than funerary traditions as markers of identity as these are the places

27

 Smith 2005.  See Greene and Lindsay 2012. 29  Rothman 2004. 30  For example, Piller 2013; Rubinson and Marcus 2005; Thornton and Piggot 2011. 31  Sagona 2004, p. 498. 32  Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978. 33  Bradburd 1992. 28

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where social knowledge is passed on – that is, where the habitus of socio-technical skills involved in production, consumption, and other social activities are transmitted from generation to generation.34 Just as we are widening the interpretive lens through which we view the social role of funerary monuments and assemblages in identity formation, so too must we reconsider the role of fortresses – the most iconic archaeological signature of Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 power and authority. Particularly misleading to discussions of territoriality are overly instrumental views of forts as defensive nodes in the military apparatus of emerging polities. As a medium for projecting authority, fortresses deserve special attention outside the one-dimensional discourses of militarism and armed conflict, since martial defense as the lone guiding purpose of fortifications veils the political implications of their distribution across the landscape, their role as a discursive element in shaping the political experiences of local communities, and the creation of corporate identities that are necessary perspectives for a consideration of boundaries and territoriality. Indeed, considered holistically, fortresses and their attendant cemeteries and residential complexes are key elements in highland settlement systems, not simply as defensive nucleations, but also in the creation of buffer zones, the demarcation of friendly from hostile terrain, and the dislocation of certain communities and the unification of others.35 Indeed, Adam Smith has argued forcefully that the aesthetics of fortified landscapes were vital to the Iron Age Urartian imperial goals of shaping political subjectivities and securing power and legitimacy in newly conquered territories in the South Caucasus.36 However, in pre-state societies, recent studies drawing on the work of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres,37 and given more recent voice by James Scott,38 suggest that conflict and defensive fortification were also complicit in projects of social segmentation that defied regional scale integration. Archaeological and ethnographic cases provide examples of fortified landscapes that remained segmented due to social organisations that emphasised collective resistance to incorporation within “state space”,39 to an inability by peer polities to monopolise the political economy on a wide geographic scale, or simply to the difficult practical exigencies involved in centralising the political administration of fortified landscapes among societies with similar technological and military capabilities.40 The idea that fortifications can be deployed in projects of either centralisation or segmentation suggests that the life history of fortresses – together with their attendant cemeteries and residential complexes – affect associations between forts, and relations between political subjects and institutions of authority.41 In this vein, fortresses do much more than assemble the elements of a state military apparatus, they also assemble subjects, practices, and routines crucial for the (re)production of social

34

 Dietler 1998.  Greene and Lindsay 2012. 36  Smith 1999, 2003. 37  Clastres 1980 [2010]. 38  Scott 2009. 39  Scott 2009. 40  Angelbeck and Grier 2012; Arkush 2011; Galaty 2007; Kristiansen 2010; Sastre 2010. 41  Greene and Lindsay 2012. 35

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orders, which are necessary to recognise within more recent formulations of territoriality within archaeology and the social sciences. Among the productive recent advances in the archaeology of the South Caucasus is the use of explicitly landscape approaches42 – in line with a body of archaeological method and theory that emphasises the social construction of ancient landscapes – that are bringing to light a more holistic conception of Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 settlement systems, and further details about the mobile-pastoral groups that many scholars agree inhabited them.43 These deeper investigations into highland political landscapes have begun to yield datasets that can be used to reconstruct the spatial politics among Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 fortresses, as discussed below.

EVIDENCE FOR LATE BRONZE AGE TERRITORIAL COMMITMENTS THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

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OBLIGATIONS IN

What, then, were the relations between the highland fortresses, and how were these polities defined spatially and institutionally? How do social networks and territorial patterns configure social and political life within the broad expanse of the highlands? What effects do territorial claims and boundary behaviours have on the construction of networks, and how are social ties mobilised to establish territorial control? At this point, I turn to the more prescriptive aspect of this paper, where I hope to show how detailed excavations by Project ArAGATS at a sample of fortresses on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of northwestern Armenia has helped address critical questions of social process, including the period’s political economy, domestic life, and the nature of territorial politics in this part of the highlands. As I noted previously, the South Caucasus has witnessed the most sustained attention to the Late Bronze Age through systematic excavation of settlements and mortuary assemblages and a growing body of 14C dates – in the Tsaghkahovit Plain alone, Project ArAGATS has data from 110 radiocarbon determinations from the Late Bronze Age and (to a lesser extent) the Iron 1 periods. The Tsaghkahovit Plain is a 190 sq. km area in Armenia’s northwestern uplands at approximately 2000 m above sea level and situated between the Pambak Range to the north and Mt. Aragats to the south (Fig. 3). The plain can be accessed via four geographic approaches: (1) from the Aparan (Kazakh River) Valley along Mt. Aragats’ eastern flank, (2) from the west through the wide gap between Mt. Kolgat and Mt. Aragats, (3) from the north through a winding passage across the Pambak Range, and (4) through the Sipan Canyon Road, which enters the plain at its most northeasterly point via the Spitak Pass. From a strictly topographic perspective, the plain is easily monitored and defensible, and so we can look to see whether the geospatial configuration of the plain’s Late Bronze Age fortresses, settlements and cemeteries might have signalled territorial control of the plain, as predicted by traditional notions of territorial sovereignty. 42

 Birkett-Rees 2010; Hammer 2014a; Lindsay 2011; Smith et al. 2009.  Hammer 2014b; Lindsay and Greene 2013; Lindsay et al. 2010.

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Fig. 3. Map of Late Bronze Age/Iron 1 sites in Mt Aragats region of Armenia, including Project ArAGATS’ primary study area in the Tsaghkahovit Plain.

A systematic pedestrian settlement survey conducted in 1998 and 2000 by Project ArAGATS identified at least ten Late Bronze Age fortresses and associated cemeteries in the northern foothills of Mt. Aragats and southern foothills of the Pambak Range. The fortresses hold in common elements of cyclopean architecture and hillside terracing design – in some cases numbering four or five successive, descending levels cut into their slopes – while differences in intervisibility, orientation, size, and elevation reflect the logics of site arrangement and perhaps functional variations. Though detailed survey and spatial analyses of fortress distributions in the Mt. Aragats region are ongoing, in looking at the geographic distribution of the sites on the plain and the activities represented at them, it is not immediately clear that sovereign authorities were universally interested in direct surveillance, regulation, or even defense of the plain itself. Fortresses and residential areas do not seem to be distributed throughout the plain in the path of regional movement corridors (that is, ‘‘choke-points’’) to assert a direct, dominating physical presence. Instead they are positioned atop mountain foothills, set back from the plain. Line of sight communication between most of the fortresses is also difficult across the undulating foothills. Instead, it appears that authorities were more interested in remotely observing the territory and access routes of the plain than in directly regulating the movement of people and goods within.44 44

 Greene and Lindsay 2012.

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Fig. 4. Optimised Hot Spot Analysis of burial clusters recorded during Project ArAGATS’ 1998– 2000 settlement survey (delimited by polygons). Density levels are highest in red, lowest in green. Note the sharp breaks in burial frequencies at the western and eastern edges of the survey area along the north slope of Mt. Aragats (adapted from Badalyan et al. 2003, Fig. 7.3).

Funerary traditions are also commonly cited markers of social boundaries. As in many other regions of the highlands, the Tsaghkahovit Plain’s cromlech burials and cemeteries occur in high frequencies, particularly along the northern slope of Mt. Aragats. During our settlement survey, Project ArAGATS documented an estimated 5970 cromlech burials concentrated along the central portion of Mt. Aragats’ northern slope.45 The survey data revealed a sharp break in the spatial distribution of cromlechs (Fig. 4). As Smith and colleagues have suggested,46 the non-uniform distribution of burials, affiliated as they are with distinct geographic features, may have distinguished the boundaries of political communities in the Tsaghkahovit Plain from neighbouring ones to the west and east. We intend to test this hypothesis further in future seasons of systematic settlement survey. Recent excavations at the fortresses of Aragatsi Berd, Gegharot, and Tsaghkahovit, have resulted in an increasingly detailed understanding of the variability of spaces and activities that allow us to delineate aspects of institutional practice and to understand the sociopolitical relationships between sites. 45

 Badalyan et al. 2003; Smith et al. 2009, p. 396.  Badalyan et al. 2003, p. 163; Smith et al. 2009.

46

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Excavations along the eastern edge of the Tsaghkahovit fortress citadel revealed a doublefaced stone wall, approximately 2 m in width, running for a length of 25 m roughly northsouth not far from the encircling cyclopean wall.47 The size and location of the walls, likely representing the foundations for a large-roomed complex, all suggest a substantial institutional building program and an ability to recruit significant amounts of labour.48 While intact floor levels associated with these foundations appear to have been destroyed by later building activity, the frequency of ceramic remains from large Late Bronze Age pithoi vessels on the citadel suggest the capacity for large-scale storage. Operations on the fortress’ western and northern terraces revealed rooms cut into the sides of the hill, with grinding installations and tools on the west terrace suggesting the presence of a workshop space. Excavation on the north terrace produced a diverse array of ceramic materials, burned architectural beams, and a possible stone phallus.49 Together with the building activity on the citadel, these indications of production suggest the tightly intertwined, and spatially correlated nature of sociopolitical authority and economic production (for example, food and containers) in the fortress’ Late Bronze Age contexts. The fortress of Gegharot on the north side of the plain was also a site of large-scale building construction. Excavations on the eastern and western terraces have revealed multiple Late Bronze Age spaces dedicated to the processing of food, the production of jewellery and textiles, large-volume storage, ritual performance, and the mass consumption of cattle, goats, and sheep, providing the most detailed information to date regarding the convergence of Late Bronze Age sociopolitical, economic, and religious domains in the South Caucasus.50 Work on Gegharot’s west terrace revealed two superimposed Late Bronze Age shrines oriented around a central altar, basin, and stela complex, and a third shrine has recently been uncovered on the eastern terrace.51 These religious complexes contained a diverse set of material remains including cultic vessels such as censers, ceramic idols, and bifacial jewellery moulds, spoon-style crucibles, and bone spindle whorls and a comb suggesting textile production.52 Middens to the east of the shrines and on the citadel point to animal consumption so intense as to outstrip the reproductive viability of a single sheep/goat or cattle herd,53 suggesting provision of the site from outside the fortress. As noted earlier, it is within this combined ritual-productive space that the repertoire of cylinder seals, incised astragoli, and possible domed balance weights were discovered in concert with clear production of metals and other goods. While Gegharot hosts several unique architectural features in the multiple shrine rooms, less than ideal preservation at Tsaghkahovit and insufficient horizontal exposures at Aragatsi Berd mean that similar kinds of productive and ritual activities may well have taken place there as well, especially considering the parallels between the Gegharot and Aragatsi Berd assemblages.

47

 Badalyan et al. 2008, pp. 74, 76; Smith et al. 2004, p. 8.  Badalyan et al. 2008. 49  Smith et al. 2004. 50  Smith and Leon 2014. 51  Badalyan et al. 2008, pp. 65–72; Baydalyan et al. 2014. 52  Badalyan et al. 2008. 53  Smith et al. 2004, pp. 30–35. 48

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Perched on a large conical outcrop in the Pambak foothills on the plain’s northeast margin, the fortress of Aragatsi Berd features at least three successive, descending terraces on its northern slope and at least two on the southern slope. As at Tsaghkahovit and Gegharot, the terraces exhibit foundation walls that define individual rooms and serve to compartmentalise each terrace level. Work on the site’s north terrace exposed Late Bronze Age rooms dug into the hillside by flattening the andesite bedrock into level floor spaces, and reinforcing the vertical cut with retaining constructions. Most revealing was the exposure of a room containing a freestanding basalt basin 40 cm in diameter, a 2.1 m diameter storage pit, as well as an enigmatic ovoid ceramic artifact called a manghal – what may be a portable hearth that closely resembles examples from both Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit with additional analogs from the sites of Metsamor and Karmir Blur in Armenia’s Ararat Valley, and Uzerlik Tepe in Azerbaijan.54 The large storage pit contained a bone awl and spindle whorl, and a unifacial jewellery mould in the same style as moulds recovered at Gegharot and Metsamor. While complete room contexts have yet to be fully exposed, the assemblages recovered so far from Aragatsi Berd are notable for their affiliation with material at Gegharot and Metsamor and its duplication of building practices and production activity observed at Tsaghkahovit. In sum, the construction of monumental fortresses and the sacro-institutional contexts of craft production, storage, and consumption behind their cyclopean walls suggests an investment in the built environment and place-making during the Late Bronze Age that stands in stark contrast to the dearth of settlement remains in the Middle Bronze Age, when the kurgan and its attendant rituals and construction activities likely formed the primary foci for reproducing political authority. And what is known about the subject communities on the plain? Our settlement survey in 2000 was successful at recording fortresses and cemeteries; however it failed to positively identify a single Late Bronze Age settlement. A residential complex at Tsaghkahovit was only identified through a combination of geophysical survey and excavations, which indicate that while the settlement may have accommodated a substantial Late Bronze Age population, it was not built or utilised as intensively as the fortress precincts.55 It seems likely, then, that this part of the site was not occupied permanently by all members of the group, but by mobile pastoralists who returned to farm wheat and barley on the plain during the short growing season (Fig. 5). The ephemeral nature of residential remains, then, would suggest that strategies of authority, be they territorial, ritual, or economic, needed to accommodate communities with significant commitments to maintaining practices of seasonal mobility. Understanding of territorial politics also benefits from the analysis of trade, exchange, and distribution of goods. Our pottery circulation study has involved over 400 sherd samples from several sites, and samples from 20 workable clay sources inside the Tsaghkahovit Plain

54

 Lindsay and Greene 2013, fig. 7.  Lindsay 2011; Lindsay et al. 2010; Lindsay et al. 2014.

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Fig. 5. Tsaghkahovit Residential Complex operations excavated between 2003 and 2011. Thin stratified floor levels are highlighted from Operation SLT 14 (loci 5, 9, & 14); calibrated 14C dates reported in 2σ.

and in surrounding valleys, identifying three compositional groups.56 All three groups were quite well represented in the pottery recovered from Gegharot while assemblages from other sites on the south side of the plain, such as Hnaberd and Tsaghkahovit, were more restricted to local clays. Specifically, over three-quarters of the pottery from Tsaghkahovit and Hnaberd were made from their local clay sources, but at Gegharot the inverse is true; approximately 80 per cent of the pottery was produced elsewhere (Fig. 6). In other words, it appears that goods were moving into Gegharot far more than they were moving out to other contemporary fortresses, indicating a significant asymmetry in local exchange relationships possibly in the context of religious offerings, obligations, or tributes to hilltop institutions. This impression was further supported by analysis of survivorship patterns among the faunal remains recovered at Gegharot. Sheep/goat comprise more than 60 per cent of the recovered sample (with cattle roughly another 30 per cent of the sample57). The kill-off pattern of ovicaprines at Gegharot does not resemble that of a group attempting to maintain a sustainable herd, but more likely represents a community that was being supplied with animals from elsewhere. Examination of the ovicaprine parts at Gegharot suggests that the meat brought to the site was travelling either in discrete packages or as complete animals. What the faunal data suggest is that the Late Bronze Age denizens of Gegharot did not control their own herds but were instead supplied from outside. Again, we see strong indications of a flow of goods into the fortress of Gegharot. Given the presence of ritual and/or religious spaces and large middens at Gegharot, it seems likely that the animals were contributed as ritual offerings or obligatory contributions to the shrines.

56

 See Lindsay et al. 2008 for details of this study.  Monahan 2012.

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Fig. 6. Frequencies of ceramic sherds within chemical characterisation groups by site identified via INAA (after Lindsay et al. 2008, fig. 5). Note that pottery at the sites of Tsaghkahovit and Hnaberd originate primarily from Group 2 (local) clay sources, while Gegharot had pottery from all three clay groups.

DISCUSSION As noted above, the size, placement, and orientation of the Tsaghkahovit Plain’s Late Bronze Age fortresses evoke multiple aspects of political practice – communication, surveillance, and defense – but do not appear to prioritise any one of these activities above the others. Fortresses and residential areas are not distributed throughout the plain at topographic choke points. Rather, they are positioned in mountain foothills, set back from and above the plain, suggesting direct surveillance was not a primary function of the forts’ geographical positions. Defensive and direct control over access to the plain may not have been of primary importance either, as no fortresses effectively dominate major mountain passes. Instead, it appears that authorities ensconced within the plain’s fortresses, and their less ubiquitous settlement areas, were most interested in remotely monitoring the various routes in and out of the plain than in directly regulating the movement of people and goods. This is not to say that authorities did not participate or intervene in such movements, but that the involvement of the fortress in such circulation activity was either unnecessary or politically or practically untenable. To some extent this is not surprising, considering that significant movement may have characterised the lifeways of Late Bronze Age populations.58 If fortress-based authorities found themselves attempting to rule over and draw legitimacy from a population even partially in motion, then tightly controlling the movement of people and goods may not have been a savvy approach to the production and maintenance of political authority.59 From 58

 Lindsay and Greene 2013.  Barnard and Wendrich 2008; Bradburd 1992.

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these local and regional patterns emerge two important points with implications for how we might interpret the territorial extent of a putative polity’s influence. First, the interpretations of the Gegharot shrines are still in their early phases,60 but it is clear thus far that an asymmetrical relationship was present by which Gegharot received many more goods from surrounding sites in the plain, and beyond, than it exported. Eliciting tribute may have been one component of a legitimising ideology targeting mobile subjects (such as the seasonal occupants of the Tsaghkahovit settlement), a new pattern in material circulation that may well have coincided with the need to create forms of political legitimacy and legibility of power distinct from those of the previous period. The disproportionate quantity of vessels at Gegharot originating somewhere outside the plain – those with currently unknown geochemical origins – also suggests that the relationships of obligation and patronage that existed between mobile population and hilltop institutions differed from fortress to fortress, providing particular fortresses with a claim to institutional authority over a greater geographic extent than others. It is almost impossible to avoid the fact that a remarkably wide variety of material culture was implicated in Late Bronze Age socialisation and political reproduction. Architecture, mortuary practices, object economies – all of these were marshalled by Late Bronze Age authorities, and all are relevant in examining the spatial extent of political power. Within the broader comparative study of territoriality in middle-range or early complex societies, the Late Bronze Age southern Caucasus illustrates the need to look beyond the “blobs on maps” metaphor of territoriality61 to the multiple spatial arenas in which power is imagined and instantiated. In the case of the Tsaghkahovit Plain, political authority was rooted not in laying claim to land and maintaining fixed boundaries, but rather was legitimated in the maintenance of places of social significance and access to flows of products within that land. A political territoriality in this case lay in the need for authorities to ensure that mobile pastoralists maintained their allegiance and returned to the plain regularly to perform seasonal production activities (pottery production and cereal farming) and to fulfill their religious obligations to important places (burials, shrines). In articulating and developing some of the earliest complex political practices in southern Caucasia, the Late Bronze Age residents of the Tsaghkahovit Plain drew on innumerable levels of built and circulating, fixed and movable materials. Through those instruments, they actuated a complex web of political institutions in the intermontane recesses of the highlands.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ABRAMISHVILI, R. and ABRAMISHVILI, M. 2008 “Late Bronze Age barrows at Tsitelgori,” in Archaeology in Southern Caucasus: Perspectives from Georgia, edited by A. Sagona and M. Abramishvili, pp. 275–290. Leuven: Peeters.

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 Badalyan et al. 2005; Badalyan et al. 2008.  Smith 2007.

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BORDERS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE HITTITE EMPIRE Lorenzo D’ALFONSO ABSTRACT The distribution of random monuments, architectural remains and material culture over a given territory is hardly representative of the borders of a political activity. However, the distribution of remains that were the direct product of the activity of a political authority are a tangible expression of the geographic range of impact of that authority. In the case of the Hittite empire the spread of infrastructure for water catchment (dams, reservoirs, springs), grain storage, defence (city- and citadel walls), and the cult (temples), the spread of similar ceramics for communal food consumption and the spread of administrative tools provide a sense of the borders of the impact of the Hittite royal court over the territories subjected to its authority. The distribution of these diagnostic features highlights the presence of multiple political borders within the territory of the empire, corresponding to the different degrees of involvement of the subjected regions with the central Hittite authority. Shifting the viewpoint from the core in north-central Anatolia to the other regions participating in the Hittite empire, it becomes evident that some of them, and in particular northern Syria and Cilicia, may have provided a substantial contribution to the definition of the politics of the Hittite central authority. The case of the spread of seals with Anatolian Hieroglyphic legends, as well as the spread of landscape monuments, show that the diachronic change of the spread implies also a change in political borders within the empire. At the same time, the archaeological record provides evidence for direct interaction among regions within the Hittite empire which did not necessarily involve the core of the empire. A comparison with the written sources shows that, given the conflictual structure of the Hittite polity, borders were signalled and perceived with stronger emphasis inside of the empire than at the frontiers with other major powers, such as Assyria and Egypt.

The fourth and third millennium BCE growth in social complexity in Anatolia produced significant changes in the organisation of living, working and burial spaces. These changes are recognisable and documented in archaeological records both within and outside ancient cities and villages. These new spatial borders found likely correspondences in differentiations in people’s physical appearance that in turn communicated social and individual diversity (on this subject, see Frangipane and Massa in this volume, with literature therein). Looking at the formation of the Hittite empire (1500–1200 BCE), the main question in recent archaeological research is in which ways, and on which premises, this great power was realised throughout Anatolia, and, in a ‘past-that-is-no-longer’ perspective (see Campbell, this volume), how this political entity is identifiable through its borders in the archaeological record (Fig. 1). Since borders are cultural facts, their manifestation depends foremost on the scale that is taken into consideration. In this paper, borders between individuals are not considered; the main focus will instead be on the visibility of the political activities that characterised the first great power of ancient Anatolia.

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Fig. 1. Map of the archaeological sites of Late Bronze Age Anatolia and northern Syria considered in this contribution (by L. Castellano and L. d’Alfonso): 1) Oymağaç Höyük; 2) Inandiktepe; 3) Ortaköy; 4) Alaca Höyük; 5) Maşat Höyük; 6) Hüseyindede Tepe; 7) Böğazköy; 8) Hısarlık; 9) Uşaklı Höyük; 10) Çadır Höyük; 11) Pozantı-Yassı Höyük; 12) Kayalıpınar; 13) Alişar Höyük; 14) Buklukale; 15) Gavur Kalesi; 16) Kaman-Kalehöyük; 17) Kuşaklı Höyük; 18) Kayseri-Karakoyu; 19) Noršuntepe; 20) Tepecik-Makaraz Tepe; 21) Korucutepe; 22) İmikuşağı Höyük; 23) Yalburt; 24) Arslantepe; 25) Beycesultan; 26) Niğde-Kınık Höyük; 27) Eflatun Pınar; 28) Tille Höyük; 29) Miletus; 30) Porsuk-Zeyve Höyük; 31) Lidar Höyük; 32) Sirkeli Höyük; 33) Gozlukale; 34) Kinet Höyük; 35) Karkamiš; 36) Mersin Yumuktepe; 37) Tell Shioukh Fawqani; 38) Oylum Höyük; 39) Dağilbaz Höyük; 40) Kilise Tepe; 41) Tell ‘ayn Dara; 42) Tell el-Qitar; 43) Tell Tayınat; 44) Tell Atçana; 45) Aleppo; 46) Tell Meskene; 47) Tell al-Faqous; 48) Tell Afis; 49) Tell Fray; 50) Tell Mardikh; 51) Ras Shamra.

I. THE

CONTEXT

Historians define the Hittite empire as the polity that, after a formative phase of positive and negative military confrontations in the 17th century BCE (Old Kingdom), established itself as a great power with a robust administrative control over its core territory in NorthCentral Anatolia. In time, its policy of expansion resulted in its hegemony over a vast area, from the Aegean coast to Syria and the Levant.1 The term ‘empire’ is used in literature to reflect a significant change in political dimension from a phase of coexistence between micro-regional principalities in permanent state of competition and war (end of third, beginning of second millennium BCE), to the formation of the first supra-regional, long lasting great power of Anatolia. 1

 Bryce 2005; Collins 2007; De Martino 2003, pp. 30–41; Klengel 1999. For the adoption of the middle chronology, see lastly Manning et al. 2016.

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The history of the Hittite empire is based mostly on written sources from the Hittite capital Hattusa and other main Late Bronze Age centres in western Asia. Many scholars identify the formation of the empire with the late 15th century BCE and the reigns of King Tuthaliya I and of his son Arnuwanda I.2 This periodisation is not based on the evaluation of the impact of military deeds – which in fact happened much earlier in Hittite history – but rather on the great normative effort that took place in the late 15th century, which resulted in the production of a body of administrative instructions and loyalty oath texts for Hittite groups of officials.3 No less important is the establishment and maintenance of religious cults: the regular celebration of the main festivals and the collection of a rich body of ritual texts from all the Anatolian regions under Hittite hegemony that defined the ritual performances held both in the capital and outside it, under royal auspices, also date to this period.4 Evidence of a territorial organisation of North-Central Anatolian lands by the Hittite power dates in fact to the earlier reign of king Telipinu (c. late 16th century BCE). This evidence derives primarily from the Land Grants, cuneiform tablets assigning large plots of lands in North-Central Anatolia, sometimes also including the relevant workforce, to prominent elites connected to the Hittite court.5 The collection of Hittite Laws may date even before the reign of Telipinu;6 however, while this collection does attest to the commitment of the Hittite court to receive and reflect current law, its actual adoption in daily justicial praxis, even only within the Hittite capital, is subject to debate, as it is unclear whether laws were praxis-oriented, or if they responded to scholarly intents.7 The edict of Telipinu is instead considered as a properly normative text (that is, a text that was applied in the legal and administrative praxis). Adopting a very strong and modern term, A. Götze defined this edict as the constituent act (eine Art Verfassung) of the Hittite polity.8 The broad hegemonic expansion of the Hittite empire in Western Anatolia, Syria and the Levant resulted from the military campaigns of the Great Kings of the late 14th–early 13th centuries BCE: Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II.9 By the 13th century, the area under the direct control of the Hittite kings was three times larger than it was in the Early Empire period. The existence of widespread, homogeneous imperial marks in all different regions is not extant (see below). At the turn of the 13th century BCE, or shortly thereafter, the empire eventually came to an end, due to a set of concurrent causes that still remains not satisfactorily explained.10 Available evidence points at the existence of borders inside of the empire that, when activated by external factors, became fatal to the empire’s stability.

2

 For example, empire in Gurney 1991; early empire in Archi 2005; new kingdom in Bryce 2005.  Giorgieri 2005; Pecchioli Daddi 2005; Miller 2013. 4  Miller 2004; Taracha 2009, p. 152; Trémouille 2000, p. 115. 5  Rüster and Wilhelm 2012; Wilhelm 2005, 2009. 6  For example, Archi 2008; Hoffner 1997. 7  d’Alfonso 2008. 8  Götze 1957, p. 84. 9  Klengel 1999, pp. 135–201. 10  For example, Knapp and Manning 2016; Kuzucuoğlu 2015; Strobel 2011. 3

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II. AN IMPERIAL LANDSCAPE For the last hundred years, the Hittite empire has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of the information provided by the rich cuneiform archives of its capital, Böğazköy, ancient Hattusa,11 and some actual remains, such as the reliefs of the sacred complex of Yazilikaya.12 Even though it has been long known that the fortifications of the main Late Bronze Age sites in North-Central Anatolia were definite Hittite projects,13 it is only in the last two decades that an archaeological discourse on the development and infrastructure of the Hittite empire has been advanced. This discourse bears rich perspectives on the theme of the emergence and significance of Hittite borders in the archaeological records. From the texts and material culture, it is clear that a crucial priority for the Hittite power was the sustained accumulation of water and grain.14 These were basic needs for any ancient society, but the peculiar environment of the Anatolian Plateau, with its overall low agrarian productivity and fragility caused mainly by climate change, explains why this was a priority in the achievement of great power.15 In Anatolia, the quantitative impact of Hittite public infrastructures for the accumulation/preservation of water and grain is not archaeologically attested before the development of the Hittite empire, and, more significantly, it almost disappears with the empire’s demise. Early Anatolian underground storage facilities were almost unknown until the late ’90s. Before that time, the best known non-private Late Bronze Age storage facilities were the magazines of Temple I at Böğazköy Hattusa, where hundreds of fragmentary pithoi were found.16 A similar storage facility with seven pithoi was brought to light next to the administrative building known as the House on the Slope.17 Outside of Böğazköy Hattusa, nonprivate magazines with interred pithoi were also uncovered in the ’70s within the temple/ palace at Maşat Höyük Tapikka, a Hittite outpost north of the capital. In addition to the large interred pithoi, this building also featured squared rooms that were enclosed and plastered to function as granaries.18 The ’90s excavations at the peak of Büyükkaya and along the southwestern edge of the lower town at Böğazköy Hattusa revealed very big underground storage facilities.19 Either built into the soil with mudbrick, or in the shape of large squared pits, these facilities were paved in stone, often with multiple layers of straw plastered over the floor and the walls. More recently, large underground facilities at Kaman-Kalehöyük and Alaca Höyük have also been reinterpreted as granaries.20 Sizeable granary pits have also come to light at Kuşaklı Sarissa and Oymaağaç Höyük Nerik.21 H. Hoffner (2001) and A. Fairbairn and S. Omura 11

 Bryce 2005; Collins 2007; Klengel 1999.  Alexander 1986; Bittel 1934; Bittel et al. 1941; Bittel et al. 1975; Seeher 2011. 13  Darga 1971; Naumann 1971. 14  Schachner 2009, 2011. 15  Castellano 2018. 16  Bittel and Neve 1970; Neve 1969. 17  Schirmer 1969. 18  Özgüç 1978, pp. 55–56. 19  Seeher 2000; see now Seeher 2018. 20  Çınaroğlu and Çelik 2010, pp. 140–147, 311–319; Fairbairn and Omura 2005. 21  Mielke 2001 (Kuşaklı); Czichon 2015, pp. 235–236 (Oymaağaç Höyük). 12

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(2005) have interpreted these features as the underground granaries referred to in the Hittite cuneiform sources by the sumerogram ÉSAG. These underground grain storage facilities are a key element in the definition of the urban space within the cities at the core of the Hittite empire (Fig. 2a).22 Their technology required that they could be opened only once, as the repeated and prolonged shift from an anaerobic to an oxygen-rich environment through exposure would have caused the loss of the still stored grains.23 The long-term preservation of grain stored in an underground, anaerobic, cool and dry setting was thus dependent upon a central organisation that dictated the openings. Given the capacity of each granary, a non-private, large-scale use and redistribution of stored grain in each underground pit/room was a prerequisite for the successful functioning of these installations. While the figures for the quantities of grain vary based on the state of preservation and hypothetical reconstruction of the different underground storage pits,24 they fluctuate from a minimum of 60 t at Kaman-Kalehöyük, 150 t for the silo-pits in the Middle Plateau of Büyükkaya, about 200 t for each room of the underground granary in the lower town of Hattusa, up to the 900 t for the large silo-pit of Kuşaklı. The effective use of this large amount of grain is conceivable only in the presence of a system for its redistribution and/or the organisation of its use.25 The landscape of modern Central Anatolia does not provide us with sufficient information on the territorial borders that must have resulted from the intensive agricultural exploitation needed to fill these huge underground storage facilities. However, the presence of these facilities in the extensively excavated sites of North-Central Anatolia implies that they must have defined the rhythm and organisation of agricultural production, at least in the non-private sphere, and the (pre)occupation of a significant part of the administration of each town in that region. As F. Imparati noted, “in an edict issued by Tuthaliya I/II that establishes who does or does not have the right to open a royal granary, the ‘men of the town’ are charged with the task of seizing whoever has opened the said granary against the royal will and taking the guilty person to the ‘king’s gate’”26 (for the edition of the edict, CTH 258.1: Marazzi 2011; Miller 2013, pp. 134–139). This edict demonstrates the high level of attention paid by the central authority in regulating the opening and access to the granaries: any potential offender was judged not by the local authorities but directly by the King. No less relevant was the impact generated by the ubiquitous water catchment facilities (Fig. 2b). Many researchers have pointed out that Anatolian dry farming is particularly susceptible to even short cycles of drought.27 Only an intensive and sustained investment in water catchment could allow for stable land productivity, which is a fundamental necessity for any large polity. Consequently, tunnelled stairways to access underground springs, 22

 Mielke 2011a.  Seeher 2000. 24  Numbers offered here take as a standard weight 0.75 kg for one litre of grain, following Akkermans (1993) and Fairbairn and Omura (2005). Volumes of the underground grain store facilities underlying the figures provided in the texts result from the average of the reconstructions suggested by each team (see Fairbairn and Omura 2005, Table 2; Mielke 2001, p. 241; Seeher 2000, pp. 292–293). 25  Schachner 2009, p. 20. 26  Imparati 2001, p. 99. 27  Dörfler et al. 2011; Kuzucuoğlu 2015. 23

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Fig. 2. Infrastructure of thee Hittite empire. a: Pit granaries from Hattusa, Büyükkaya (imagessource: https://fallback.dainst.org/projekt/-/project-display/48193); b & c: the artificial ponds of Eflatunpınar and Alaca Hoyuk (pictures source: www.hittitemonuments.com).

the creation of ponds and artificial basins, and the construction of dams outside the main sites became part of the Hittite landscape. Extramural dams and water reservoirs were excavated at Kayseri-Karakoyu, Küşaklı Sarissa, Gölpınar near Alaca Höyük, Eflatun Pınar, Yalburt, and possibly at Köylütolu.28 Water reservoirs were also uncovered inside the fortification walls, in particular at the Hittite capital and at Kuşaklı Sarissa.29 An alternative method for water catchment involved the excavation of tunnels leading to underground water springs. The cultic significance of this practice has been recognised in the philological studies dedicated to the compound ideograms path+land (KASKAL.KUR in Hittite cuneiform, and TERRA.VIA in Anatolian Hieroglyphic30), but its role in the subsistence of a settlement’s inhabitants has been generally overlooked, a recurrent trend in Hittite studies that tends to separate the sacred from the secular spheres. Underground stone stairways have been uncovered at Boğazköy Hattusa and other Hittite sites, most recently at Oymağaç

28

 Emre 1993 (Kayseri-Karakoyu); Hüser 2007 (Küşaklı Sarissa); Çınaroğlu and Çelik 2010, pp. 341–352 (Gölpınar); Bachman and Özenir 2004 (Eflatun Pınar); Johnson and Harmanşah 2015, with literature therein (Yalburt); Hüser 2007, p. 142 (Köylütolu). 29  Hüser 2007, pp. 137–142, with literature therein (Boğazköy), pp. 115–119 (Kuşaklı). 30  Harmanşah 2014, pp. 42–45; Hawkins 1995, pp. 44–45.

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Höyük Nerik.31 Both the immediate presence of water and its direct access are to be understood as specific features in the Hittite urban spaces.32 There is no direct evidence for the canalisation of water from these public structures for water catchment for field irrigation, and the processes involved in the discharge of basins and reservoirs are still little understood. Nonetheless, it is commonly held that agriculture and herding relied on dams and reservoirs.33 Two indirect pieces of evidence support, in particular, the existence of irrigation for agricultural purposes during the Hittite empire: textual sources explicitly mention canals, ditches (PA5, amiyara-: see HW A, 67), and irrigation (sissur, with the derivative verb sessuriya-, to irrigate), while palaeobotanical analyses often show the presence of cultigens that likely required irrigation, as in the case of grapes or other fruits and vegetables. Texts mainly refer to irrigation and irrigated fields in association with orchards, so that whether irrigation was limited to orchards, or could also involve grain cultivation, still remains an open question.34 Despite the paucity of textual and archaeological record in the reconstruction of the main water catchment facilities, and consequently the expansion of cultivated land in public fields that could fill the royal granaries, the changes to the Central Anatolian landscape as the consequence of this practice must have been evident in ancient times. The valleys in the Anatolian Plateau that were settled by Hittite cities must have looked very different from those in the peripheral areas where a centralised system of grain storage and water catchment facilities was not present.

III. ADMINISTERING BY DIVINE

MANDATE:

TEMPLES AND FORTIFICATIONS

Before the ‘revolution’ spurred by J. Seeher’s studies in the ’90s, the visibility of the Hittite empire in the archaeological records was mainly associated with public architecture, most notably temples and fortifications. Since the earliest studies on pre-classical Anatolia, fortifications and temples have been presented together as essential features of the Hittite empire, but a clear definition of their technical and formal aspects, as well as their origin and legacy, was first introduced by the work of K. Bittel and R. Neumann.35 In recent years, P. Neve has devoted several works to the study of Hittite public architecture, with particular attention to the temples and urban spaces dedicated to performative aspects of the cult – namely feasts and processions.36 Recent investigations at the site of Kuşaklı Sarissa have provided the first comprehensive excavations of two temples (named buildings C and E) outside of Böğazköy.37 The comparison of the plans of the temples

31

 Czichon 2015, pp. 236–238.  Schachner 2011, pp. 227–232. 33  Schachner 2011, p. 231. 34  Hoffner 1974, pp. 22–24; Hüser 2007, pp. 131–132. 35  Bittel and Naumann 1938; Naumann 1971. 36  Neve 1969, 1982, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2001. 37  Mielke 2011b, with references. 32

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excavated in Kuşaklı and Boğazköy confirmed that temple plans were built on the basis of a commonly shared concept: a central, square or rectangular court that was accessible via a monumental entrance (that is, a gate), with often one or two side porches that opened on a row of rooms on each of the four sides. When the court was rectangular in shape, one or more adyta were located on the short sides, usually protruding from the external perimeter of the building and thus visible from the outside.38 This model was common but not the norm, as attested by the significant variations recognised in plans of Hittite temples both at the capital and in other centres. For instance, the position of the entrance in respect to the adyton, the number and dimensions of the rooms on each side of the court and the presence of a second storey differ from temple to temple.39 Despite the convincing theory of the sacred function of a building based on the presence of these core features, it often remains problematic to distinguish temples from palaces. For example, the plans of building C in Kuşaklı Sarissa and the main building excavated at Maşat Höyük Tapikka shared many elements, similar dimensions, and even their position on the top of the mound overlooking the lower town. Because of their finds, however, building C is interpreted as the Temple of the Storm-god of Sarissa, while the latter is understood as the local Palace.40 The apparent similarity in the overall plan of palaces and temples likely results from the fact that the temple plan in Hittite Anatolia might derive from the plan of Middle Bronze Age Anatolian palaces, the most important example being the Waršama Palace at Kultepe Kaneš.41 In the absence of well-stratified finds indicative of a cultic function, as in the case of Kuşaklı,42 the attribution of a sacred versus secular function of Hittite monumental buildings with central quadrangular court and the abovementioned features is tentative at best (besides Tapikka also Gözlükale Tarsa). Notwithstanding this need for caution, temples prominently recur in textual sources as specific and well-defined places, and in the last 20 years more temple buildings have been identified in other Hittite sites of North-Central Anatolia (Fig. 3a), in addition to those at Boğazköy Hattusa, Kuşaklı Sarissa, Oymaağaç Höyük Nerik,43 and Uşaklı Höyük Zippalanda.44 Despite the plan variations mentioned above, secure Hittite sacred buildings tend to incorporate specific construction techniques and a spatial organisation that markedly differentiate them not only from coeval buildings in Mesopotamian and northern Syria,45 but also from the less-known urban sacred buildings of the Mycenaean world.46 Because of their prominence in the urban space and their usual visibility even from outside the towns, temple distribution contributed substantially in defining the regions under direct Hittite political control.

38

 Naumann 1971, pp. 451–458.  Zimmer-Vorhaus 2011. 40  Mielke 2011b. 41  Müller-Karpe 2000a, p. 104; Zimmer-Vorhaus 2011, p. 215; more cautiously Schachner 2011, pp. 177– 179. 42  Müller-Karpe 2000b. 43  Czichon 2015. 44  Mazzoni and d’Agostino 2015. 45  Heinrich 1982; Werner 1994. 46  Palaima 2012, p. 350. 39

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Fig. 3. Infrastructure of thee Hittite empire. a: aerial picture of Temple C, Kuşaklı Höyük Sarissa (from https://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~kusakli/sites/frames/grfr_geb_c.htm); b: plans of Temple C at Kuşaklı Höyük Sarissa (left), and of Temple 1 at Böğazköy Hattusa (right: from Müller-Karpe 2003, fig. 5); c: Casemate walls from Hattusa Böğazköy (source: German Archaeological Institute); d: Postern Gate underground corridor (from Neve 1992, fig. 227).

“The striking impact of Hittite urban sites on the landscape is most apparent in Hittite fortification,” writes D. Mielke.47 In Hittite North-Central Anatolian cities and citadels, fortifications adopt the same construction techniques and plans to such a degree that one can infer the intervention of the central imperial power in their construction. These fortifications were characterised by the use of the casemate technique in the construction of the stone foundations and socles (Fig. 3b). Over the stones, mudbrick superstructures were supported by timber beams with 5 to 6 m-wide squared towers at regular intervals that projected half of their width from the walls. The gates consisted of two imposing towers on either side of a single passageway. Postern gates, an underground stone passage running beneath the walls that was created by the erection of a megalithic-walled chamber in the false-vault technique, provided additional access. Though unusual in Near Eastern fortifications, the postern gate was a typical feature of Hittite defensive walls. The visual impact of the remains of these fortifications and of their posterns is still the most evident mark of Hittite imperialism in the archaeological landscape of Anatolia. 47

 Mielke 2013, p. 138.

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The geographic spread of Hittite fortifications is noteworthy. Fortifications displaying the aforementioned features have been excavated at Hattusa Böğazköy, and in many NorthCentral Anatolian sites such as Alaca Höyük, Çadır Höyük, Kuşaklı Sarissa, Oymağaç Höyük Nerik, and possibly Örtaköy Sapinuwa.48 At many other sites across the region, fortification structures were not investigated, but were likely part of the settlement. Interestingly, this type of fortification is also found beyond North-Central Anatolia, eastwards at Arslantepe Malatya, and southward on the western Kızılırmak at Büklükale, on the Tauros at Zeyve Höyük Porsuk, and in Cilicia at Mersin Yumuktepe.49 Many Hittite texts provide information on temples and fortifications: among them, the most significant are the early Empire standard instructions for the auriyas ishas, literally ‘Lord of the watchtower’, but better translated as ‘Governor of the Border Province’ (CTH 261.1: Miller 2013, pp. 212–237; Pecchioli Daddi 2003). In this text, a long passage instructs the Governor on the construction of fortified towns – it is unclear whether we are dealing with new foundations or the fortification of earlier unfortified settlements. Despite the frequent lacunae in all nine preserved copies of these instructions, one can recognise in this specific passage architectonic information about the fortifications’ dimensions, materials and building techniques: §18. Concerning the fortified towns in the province, they should keep track of the ḫurupa -. But the towns of the frontier post [wh]ich the enemy can reach [quic]kly, when the governor of the [post buil]ds in those towns, he shall during that time build [very quic]kly[, and] he shall [de]fend [them]. And he shall enclose them like a courtyard. §19. [… shal(l be)] 4 ell and 4 hands. [… x h]ands, b[ut especia]lly (?) the ḫu[ri]ppata - […] large stones [… sha(ll b)e (?) … hand(s) (?) …] ḫunipis [a- … (they shall) … ] he/they shall, and [(they shall be) … (they will) …]. §20. He will […], and a/the stone (acc.) 2 han[ds] [… s]âtu (?) -measure(s), and further, […] the ston[e (acc.) … (e)ll … to(wers … high… i]sparuzzi -beam 4 han[ds … (he) buil(ds a single to)wer, (though, 3 ell) …] it shall be. The wall, though, d[own? … (it shall be 4?/5? ell fo)rth … (not in) …]. [Fu]rther? , inside [… (the tower of) … (it shall be)] 4 e[(ll)] out [fron]t?. §21. It shall, however, extend forth 3! el[(l)]. (2– 4) Further, it shall be encircled by a gutter and a mariyawanna -structure. The mariyawanna - structure, though, shall extend 6 ell out in front, but it shall come out 6 hands. §22. Furth[er, as concerns the town that] you build, the ḫūtanu - trenches shall be taken 2? ell deep, and out above they shall be 2 ell. By the time he finishes building the town, the ḫerītu -trench shall be 6 ell deep, and out above it shall be 4 ell. But if/when the water raises (it) up/ over, they shall sti[ll] pave (it) over with stone. §23. [But] as soon a[s he] fin[ishes] building […] the posts, […] of [the pos]ts [(in) …] and […] they shall be […] [p]laster[ed (pl.) … x] ell [… ]but the wall shall be 4 hands. The height […], but it shall be plastered once. […] §24′. Further, for the heads of the stairways of postern gates of fortified towns there shall be doors (and) bolts. Nothing shall be missing. To apply plaster (to) the wall, though, it shall be

48  Koşay and Akok 1966, pp. 123–125, Mielke 2011b, p. 1041, Naumann 1971, p. 234 (Alaca Höyük); Şerifoğlu et al. 2016 (Çadır Höyük); Mielke 2011a, 2011b (Kuşaklı); Czichon et al. 2011, Czichon 2015, pp. 234–235 (Oymağaç Höyük); Süel 2008, pp. 721–722 (Örtaköy). 49  Alvaro 2012, Manuelli 2013, pp. 39–52 (Arslantepe); Matsumura 2011, 2017 (Büklükale); Beyer 2015, Tibet and Laroche-Traunecker 2015 (Zeyve Höyük Porsuk); Garstang 1953, pp. 236–243, Naumann 1971, p. 234, Sevin and Köroğlu 2004 (Mersin Yumuktepe).

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2? alla-? ( thick? / high? ). Further, let it be smoothed, and the roof must not (be) rough. It must not leak! §25′ Concerning the town that you build, though, the coppersmith shall [p]refabricate a st[on]e ḫakkunnai-installation, also for the gate [of] the wall inside and outside, likewise[e] with stone (Translation from Miller 2013, pp. 221–223).

This passage confirms the homogeneity of Hittite fortification as attested by archaeological investigations, suggesting a highly centralised control by the Hittite central power in the construction of its infrastructure in North-Central Anatolia and some other adjacent regions. Moreover, the instructions for the ‘Governors of the Border Province’, when considered in conjunction with practical administrative texts, such as lists and letters from the borderland site of Maşat Höyük Tapikka,50 provide further details on the relationship between central and local authorities. These texts shed light on the spread of technical knowledge, the individuals in charge of these projects, and the high degree of involvement of the central administration in dictating these large infrastructure projects and in scheduling their regular maintenance. These texts also highlight the limits of the central power over local communities and the processes by which local rules and authorities were accepted. A striking aspect of this normative text is the difficulty in controlling the territories surrounding borderland towns. In the case of Tapikka, these limits are amplified by the fact that both the instructions and other praxis-related texts come from a specific context: the development of a border along the yokes of the Pontic region between an expanding centralised political entity, Hatti, and local, independent, partially mobile communities referred to in the Hittite texts as the Kaska.51 Moreover, the existence of many later copies of the instructions for the Governor of the Border Province, as well as some variants referring to different areas of Central Anatolia, are clues to the expansive adoption of these instructions in the different regions of the Hittite empire.52 The instructions, however, were not adopted in all regions. Indeed, there is no evidence in support of the adoption of these instructions in western Anatolia, or in northern Syria, nor is the Governor of the borderland mentioned in any written source describing the activity of the Hittite administration in these regions. I would argue that in those areas that the Hittite court conceptualised as a border of the Land of Hatti, territories over which the core of the empire sought to exercise a tight and direct control,53 fortifications may have been understood as a signifier for the distinction between different rates of integration. This assertion of direct territorial control must be separated from the claim of political control/hegemony, and in fact regions we know to have been under Hittite hegemony, such as western and central-western Anatolia and Syria, no Hittite fortification has been found. Interestingly, this does not seem to be the case at Karkemiš, the main Hittite administrative centre in northern Syria.54 Instead of affirmation of the central control, the presence of fortifications consistent with those found in the Central Anatolian Plateau in more distant locations such as Arslantepe to the east, the 50

 Alp 1991; Del Monte 1995; Klinger 1995; Marizza 2007.  Gilan 2008; Glatz and Matthews 2005; Klinger 2010. 52  Miller 2011; Pecchioli Daddi 2003. 53  Gerçek 2017. 54  Mora 2008. 51

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Upper Euphrates, and south of the Taurus at Mersin might well reflect a response to the adoption of architectural defensive technologies by some local communities. This seems to be confirmed by the adoption of posterns in regions beyond the area of diffusion of the entire ‘fortification package’, such as at Korocutepe to the east, beyond the Euphrates, and in the northern Levant, at Ras Shamra Ugarit.55 In the case of Mersin I would not exclude, however, that this region may have participated in the development of this type of fortification due to the intense exposure to many of the elements that defined the Hittite empire (see section §V below). Grain storages, water catchment facilities, temples and fortifications are the most prominent archaeological remains visualising the impact of the political definition of the landscape by the first great power of Anatolia (Fig. 4). While in the modern perception these structures belong to three different spheres, namely economic, religious and/or ideological, and military,56 by looking at them from the emic view afforded by the cuneiform archives of Hattusa, it becomes evident that these four infrastructures are all bound to the conception of sacred kingship that characterised the Hittite empire.57 The significance of storing agricultural products and collecting water is constitutive of the Hittite religion, as is the successful administration of the land and its products (see more in detail below §VI). In this respect, the change of scope of the fortifications from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age Hittite empire must be emphasised. Hittite fortifications are no more exclusively conceived for the defence of the wealth accumulated by the elites living in the citadels, as was the case in the third millennium in Western and Central Anatolia.58 Instead, fortifications now defended stored agricultural products and water, for which the Hittite Great King was directly responsible. His role in this capacity, as administrator of the land, was perceived as assigned by the Storm-god himself. A. Schachner and M. Frangipane have both recently suggested that this shift towards a sustainable model of administration over the fragile ecosystem that characterised Central Anatolia constitutes a marked discontinuity from the earlier third-millennium political perception and definition of the Anatolian Plateau landscape through power.59 While Schachner highlights the relevance of the development of these new infrastructures as part of the success of the 500-year-long political experience of the first great power of Anatolia, Frangipane argues for the introduction of Mesopotamian models of centralised staple organisation in the system as a relevant element in such success. While the centrality of temples and fortifications in the definition of the archaeology of the Hittite imperial landscape is an integral aspect in the arguments of both scholars, it also attests to the main religious role of the king in the emic definition of the territorial administration, and reaffirms Hittite kingship and imperial rule as receptive of many local, even peripheral, inputs as part of its own core components.

55

 Greaves 2002; Yon 2006, pp. 31–34.  Mann 1986. 57  Sürenhagen 2001; Klinger 2014. 58  Bachhuber 2015; Düring 2010. 59  Frangipane 2011; Schachner 2011. 56

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Fig. 4. Maps of the distribution of Hittite infrastructure. a: underground granaries and water catchment facilities in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and northern Syria; b: Hittite fortifications and temples (produced by L. Castellano and L. d’Alfonso).

IV. CENTRALISED VERSUS

LOCAL PRODUCTION: IMPERIAL BORDERS AND CERAMICS

From the Neolithic period onwards, ceramics have always been the most common category of finds in the archaeological records. For many years, the ceramic typology attributed to the Hittite empire has been reconstructed only from the sherds excavated at the capital

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Hattusa.60 More recently, a revision of the stratigraphy of the capital, and in particular of the Oberstadt, and the implementation of advanced quantitative analysis resulted in a greater understanding of the main features of the ceramic production at Hattusa.61 Hittite pottery is characterised by coarse to medium, orange to buff-coloured fabrics with mainly mineral inclusions. Additional features are the limited repertoire of forms, the use of the wheel, and a general lack of refined surface finishing that brought scholars to address this production as ‘drab ware’ (see below). Coarse fabrics, typically used for cooking vessels, are characteristic of two widespread types: hole-mouth globular pots with outer thickened rims, and plates with slightly flared and thickened rims. Medium fabrics were used for all remaining vessels, the most common being: 1) hemispherical bowls; 2) shallow bowls with inner thickened rims; 3) small-mouthed single-handled transportable storage jars with elongated body, long narrow neck, and slightly everted, thickened rims (or bottles62); 4) large-mouthed jars with globular lower body, long concave necks, and outer flattened rims; and 5) large-mouthed kraters with thickened and flattened, or even squared, outer rim, long vertical or minimally outward-slanting walls, and globular bases.63 Further types such as neckless pithoi with outer thickened, often flattened, rims, or miniature jugs and bowls, are often respectively associated with public buildings and cultic contexts. While most of the aforementioned vessels present poor surface finishing, a limited number has a red slip (more rarely a white slip) more or less effectively produced. It is important to note that examples exhibiting finer finishes do not correspond to a fully different chaîne opératoire, since the fabric of the poorly finished vessels and that of fine-slipped vessels are by and large identical.64 Assemblages of other North-Central Anatolian sites that present substantial similarities to those characterising the Late Bronze Age Levels of Böğazköy Hattusa were the subjects of systematic study in recent years, most importantly at Küşaklı Sarissa and Kayalıpınar.65 At these sites, the minor differences in the assemblages correspond to the quantitative prevalence of specific forms and to their diachronic range, rather than to the presence of types not at all or only marginally attested at the capital. At Kayalıpınar, T. Mühlenbruch highlights the impact of individual potter workshops in generating some of these variants.66 Despite the lack of solid quantitative data, the inventories from other Late Bronze Age sites of North-Central Anatolia, such as Maşat-Höyük Tapikka and Örtaköy Sapinuwa present similar characteristics.67 Based on the existence of this common shared inventory of ceramic types, C. Glatz has recognised a common repertoire that she identifies as the ‘NCA [North-Central Anatolian] pottery assemblage’ and that she utilises as one of the benchmarks in the spread of the

60

 Boehmer 1983; Fischer 1963; Müller-Karpe 1988; Parzinger and Sanz 1992.  Schoop 2003, 2011. 62  See Manuelli 2013; Müller-Karpe 1988. 63  Müller-Karpe 1988, pp. 146–148; Schoop 2011. 64  Schoop 2011. 65  Mielke 2006 (Küşaklı); Mühlenbruch 2014 (Kayalıpınar). 66  Mühlenbruch 2014, pp. 189–191. 67  Özgüç 1982 (Maşat-Höyük); Mühlenbruch 2014, p. 168 (Örtaköy). 61

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impact of the Hittite power over the various regions under its political influence.68 The premise of associating pottery production with imperial expansion and imperial control lies in the suggestion that the Hittite power promoted, more or less directly, the standardised, even industrial, production of the progressively poorer ‘drab ware’.69 Whether the presence of potmarks on ‘drab ware’ is to be related to the direct intervention of the Hittite administration over the chaîne opératoire of pottery production,70 or rather represents the contribution of individual potters,71 remains open to debate. Despite the evident lack of standardisation in potmarks design, the impact and distribution of the practice of pre-fired potmarks and their increased use in Central and South Anatolia during the Hittite period as opposed to earlier (Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age) or later (Iron Age) periods, are both clues to the link between potmarks and the presence of the Hittite empire72. If Late Bronze Age sites of North-Central Anatolia located at the core of the Hittite empire are characterised by very similar ceramic assemblages, other sites at more distant areas of the Plateau, such as Yassı Höyük (later Gordion),73 Zeyve Höyük Porsuk,74 Arslantepe Malatya, Korocutepe, and Norşuntepe, but also Cilician sites such as Yumuktepe Mersin, Gözlükale Tarsa and Kinet Höyük, present a ‘truncated’ version of these ceramic assemblages (Fig. 5). In her 2009 study, Glatz selected a group of diagnostic ceramic types that were new local productions of Late Bronze Age North-Central Anatolian sites and, by investigating their distribution, she reached initial conclusions on the reception of typically North-Central Anatolian ceramic classes in different regions under Hittite control. The results of her analysis show that this ‘truncated repertoire’ extends all over the Plateau from the western Plateau to the Upper Euphrates region, and southwards to the Cilician Gates on the Taurus. To a lesser degree, typical Late Bronze Age North-Central Anatolian ceramic classes are also attested on the Cilician Plain, whereas Syria, northern Mesopotamia, and Western Anatolia yielded almost no traces of North-Central Anatolian ceramic types. In Glatz’s interpretation, this phenomenon reflects a lesser integration of these regions within the imperial network. While the theoretical framework of Glatz’s research emphasises the agency of the periphery in selecting, and in some cases enhancing, the degree of interconnectivity with the core of the empire, the selection of the classes for her analysis is typological, not functional or contextual. Moreover, her study focuses on classes that are new Late Bronze Age North-Central Anatolian products, in order to better track their expansion from North-Central Anatolia to the other regions of the empire, but does not investigate the level of homogeneity and contacts between central and peripheral assemblages within the empire (see section V below). 68

 Glatz 2009.  Gates 2001; Schoop 2003. 70  Gates 2001; Mielke 2017; Postgate 2007. 71  Glatz 2012. 72  Potmarks may be a practice developed not by the Hittite administration but by professional potters serving privates but operating in contexts of mass productions for public demands. This would explain the different local marks, and their quantity. 73  Gunter 1991, 2006; Henrickson 2002. 74  Dupré 1983. 69

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Fig. 5. Typical Hittite empire ceramic vessel shapes spread on the Anatolian Plateau and beyond (from Schoop 2011, figs 1 and 4).

Recent work is advancing the picture offered by Glatz. Based on a morpho-technological but also contextual analysis, F. Manuelli has compared the assemblage of Arslantepe Malatya, the main urban centre of the Land of Isuwa, one of the easternmost regions under Hittite rule, to the ceramic assemblages of North-Central Anatolian sites and to the assemblages from other regions under Hittite rule.75 This analysis shows the growing presence of the North-Central Anatolian repertoire within the three Late Bronze Age levels at Arslantepe Malatya for all ceramic classes, but in particular for open forms, more specifically bowls.76 As noted at other sites, these exogenous classes were introduced and produced together with 75

 Manuelli 2013.  Manuelli 2103, pp. 355–397.

76

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Fig. 6. Map showing the degree of interconnection between the ceramic assemblage of multiple sites within the Hittite empire (from Manuelli 2013, Pl. VIII).

some local ceramic classes whose number in time decreased but still continued to be produced. The most innovative result derives from the comparison of the Malatya assemblages with regions other than the North-Central Anatolia core of the empire, bringing to light the different dynamics that occurred between different regions (Fig. 6). For example, similarities of ceramic types with sites in the west such as Polatlı Yassı Höyük, or Porsuk Zeyve Höyük, to the south of the Plateau, derive from indirect contacts; such types are all present also in the North-Central Anatolian assemblage, so that they likely derive from the influence of the core of the empire over the two peripheral regions. Similarities with sites on the Middle Euphrates and Syria, instead, derive from direct contacts – they are not shared with sites of other regions. Finally, similarities with Cilician sites, such as Tarsus, Mersin Yumuktepe, Kinet Höyük and Kilisetepe are both direct and indirect in nature – some seem to derive from common-shared participation in the Hittite imperial influence zone, while other types reflect direct contacts. Given that a number of common shared classes are closed forms, jars in particular, Manuelli connects the latter types to the existence of trade routes directly connecting the Upper Euphrates to Cilicia. An interpretation that assigns significant political agency to South Anatolia within the Hittite empire is also possible (see below). In both cases Manuelli’s research shows that within the Hittite empire important independent networks existed in regions like Cilicia, Commagene and the Upper Euphrates, and that such networks were not shared with other regions of the Anatolian plateau, and North-Central Anatolia in particular. Manuelli bases his analysis on

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Malatya, a centre that undoubtedly adhered to the Hittite political rule, so that the regionalexclusive developments within the empire should not be interpreted as a lack of Hittite control or lack of participation in the imperial networks. Rather, they represent clear evidence of the existence of other synchronic, non-imperial networks, which were highly active within the regions under imperial rule. The morpho-technological analysis of North-Central Anatolian ceramics has been used as the way for investigating the expansion and extension of Hittite imperial control over Anatolia and northern Syria. Whether or not this standardised production was imposed by the core of the empire and/or received and implemented by the peripheries as a means of participation in an imperial network,77 the motivations underlying this standardisation, and the physical place in which standardised ceramics were in use, all remain fundamental questions. To answer these questions simply through morpho-technological analysis is, however, problematic. A contextual functional analysis of the ceramic assemblages in public buildings promoted by the Hittite hegemony compared to those from private buildings both in the centre and peripheries is needed in order to address these questions. The lack of excavations of private buildings and the rather limited archaeological investigation at most sites skews the available data. The near absence of excavations at small sites of the Hittite period adds to this problem. Without these elements it is extremely difficult to define the relations between the borders of the Hittite political control and the distribution of some of the classes of the North-Central Anatolian ceramic repertoire. The recent comparative functional analysis of the assemblages of ‘institutional’ buildings of the core and the peripheries of the Hittite empire allowed Mühlenbruch to investigate the distribution of ceramic macro-classes (meal/table-vessels; cooking-vessels; pouringvessels; storage-vessels) according to the type of building (palace vs. temple vs. storehouse etc.).78 In his conclusions, the unifying element for the different figures of distribution of macro-classes is the significance of meal/table vessels in all types of non-private buildings. When taken together with other data – in particular palaeozoological evidence – the relevance of meal/table vessels supports his interpretation of institutional feasting as the primary key in understanding the archaeological contexts.79 Following the results of his analysis, one might suggest that ceramic standardisation was functional to the material realisation of feasts (distribution of food and drinking among a large number of individuals), but was also functional to its ideological manifestation (that is, ceramic assemblages recognisable as products of the promoter of the feasting, and then as part of the feasting itself). Mühlenbruch did not investigate the variation of vessel types between different institutional buildings within the same site or between different sites but his work emphasises how the standardisation of Hittite ceramic assemblages concerns their overall visual appearance determined by wheel-based manufacture, surface treatment, colour, and standardised vessel shapes. However, while standardisation affected shapes, it did not involve size or the volume/capacity 77

 Glatz 2009.  Mühlenbruch 2014, pp. 215–235. 79  Mühlenbruch 2014, pp. 263–274. 78

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of distinct vessel shapes.80 Lack of standardisation in Late Bronze Age assemblages’ dimensions (mainly diameter) and capacity was also observed for each ceramic type from Arslantepe Malatya.81 This suggests that the economic standardisation linked to the capacity of given vessel types was not a priority and possibly not even a criterion in their production. In this respect, the comparison with the ceramic production at the Middle Assyrian Empire’s periphery is very much telling. The case of the ceramic production at the peripheral Dunnu of Tell Sabi Abyad’s levels 6–3 (c. 1250–1150 BCE), shows the same standardised exterior appearance due to technique, surface treatments, and shapes, but also demonstrates an adherence to a system of sizes and/or volumes. More specifically, a controlled set of shapes such as bowls, pots and jars were produced in a number of size series 1.5 times larger than the basic small shape.82 The variation of diameter and capacity/volume within the same types of vessels is also attested in the Hittite context, but here it is so high that it prevents formulating a definition of size classes and a correspondence with a system of sizes and/or volumes. This consideration impacts the interpretation of the nature of standardisation of the Hittite ceramic repertoire and its distribution. The kind of standardisation related to an economic agenda of the empire as envisioned by Gates83 finds little support in the records. On the other hand, a connection with the impact of the presence of Hittite officials living in peripheral centres84 fits within the celebrative feasting hypothesis suggested by Mühlenbruch. The ‘truncated repertoire’ of North-Central Anatolian ceramic classes may be connected to the degree of involvement in local gathering and feasting of the powerful foreign high officials from the core of the empire, whether exclusive or inclusive in nature. The significant spread of this production has been also tentatively related to the distribution of meals for the Hittite army, in addition to the officials living in the periphery.85 This seems, however, more difficult to demonstrate due to the lack both of volume/capacity standardisation (see above) and of information on the presence of Hittite military contingents living in the peripheries.86

V. TOWARDS A

DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF IMPERIAL BORDERS

In his recent contributions, Schachner interpreted the 16th century BCE as the moment in time when a large number of imperial infrastructures and even new foundations were established at the core of the empire.87 His analysis demonstrated that a large number of elements that today constitute the visible evidence of the Hittite polity (that is, religious and military architecture, pit granaries, dams and reservoirs) were planned and executed within 80

 Mühlenbruch 2014, pp. 189–196.  Manuelli 2013. 82  Duistermaat 2008, 2015. 83  Gates 2001. 84  Postgate 2007. 85  Archi and Venturi 2012; Postage 2007. 86  d’Alfonso 2005, p. 22; Genz 2006, p. 505. 87  Schachner 2009, 2011. See already Müller-Karpe 2003. 81

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the Land of Hatti proper, the region defined in the 16th century by the course of the Kızılırmak (Hit. Marasantiya). It is also by this period that the main classes of the Hittite ceramic repertoire were defined.88 As described above, together this package of technologies defined archaeological borders within the territory controlled by the Hittite empire that very likely corresponded to borders of different socio-economical organisations as expressed by different local communities that participated in the imperial network. I envision these units as the political facet of what Harmanşah, with his emphasis on the diachronic development, has labelled “local histories”.89 Compared to other regions of the empire, the presence of all aforementioned elements in many North-Central Anatolian towns embodied the definition of an imperial holistic plan in the territorial administration (see section VI below). The spread of these features beyond North-Central Anatolia occurred at different moments. Yassı Höyük in the western Plateau, Arslantepe Malatya on the Upper Euphrates, and other sites in Cilicia prove that while the diffusion of some ceramic types predated the 14th-century expansion of the empire towards the west, the east and the south, they became quantitatively prominent at the time of the expansion as a result of the participation of these regions outside of the Kızılırmak course in the Hittite imperial power dynamics.90 The spread of these features in these new regions may also be associated with the development of a new territorial definition of some of the empire’s regions as provinces. As a matter of fact, in the 14th century two main provinces, the Upper Land and the Lower Land, were created. They each exercised territorial control over an entire region and they were no longer connected by dynastic ties with individual towns. The Upper Land covered the territory northeast of Hattusa.91 The Lower Land corresponded roughly to the Konya plain, and possibly to south Cappadocia.92 Thus, the 14th century represents a second moment in time where the formation of new borders within the empire due to a new territorial organisation directly corresponds to a significant change in the archaeological record. In recent years, much emphasis has been placed on the spread of landscape monuments commissioned in the 13th century BCE by local rulers as a way to manifest their claim on the territory within the empire, normally in peripheral regions and often adopting the imperial artistic language to oppose the actual central power (Fig. 7).93 This phenomenon represents the third moment in the emergence of political borders within the empire. More importantly, the landscape monuments spread over a different region, the Anatolian peripheries, and at a different time when compared to the markers along the river Kızılırmak that Schachner has interpreted as the empire’s visible identifiers. Notwithstanding the active role of opponents to the legitimate Hittite Great King, the emergence of these borders is not indicative of a phase of crisis, rather it is constitutive, characteristic and endemic to the Hittite political system, as proven by the fact that these monuments

88

 Schoop 2003, 2006, 2011.  Harmanşah 2014. 90  See, for example, Matessi and Tomassini-Pieri 2017; Manuelli 2013. 91  Alparslan 2017; Gurney 2003; Wilhelm 2003; see also the discussion in Ökse et al., this volume. 92  Matessi 2013 and 2017; for Cappadocia, Yakubovich 2014. 93  d’Alfonso, in press; Glatz 2009; Glatz and Proudre 2011; Harmanşah 2014. 89

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Fig. 7. Drawing of the rock reliefs of Great Kings Muwatalli (a) and Kurunt(iy)a (b). The former was a Hittite Great King, the latter was competing with the Hittite Great Kings of Hattusa for imperial power. Despite using two different standard representations of Hittite elites, the organisation of space of the relief, the position of the inscription vis-à-vis the figurative part of the relief and the content of the inscription (personal name, father’s name, Great King, Hero, son of) are the same (image source: Ehringhaus 2005, figs 176 and 186).

and artistic language completely disappeared in north and west Anatolia at the time of the empire’s demise, whereas they were radically transformed in south Anatolia and Syria. Diachronic changes in the archaeological visibility of Hittite imperial borders can be perceived at a smaller scale in the analysis of several classes of material. I will discuss here only the adoption of Anatolian Hieroglyphic (AH) on seals as a marker of the activity of the Hittite officials and court personnel. Seals and seal impressions with AH legends are, together with clay tablets, the most visible Hittite administrative tools.94 A diachronic study of Anatolian seals and seal impressions of the second millennium BCE shows the existence of different stages of development in the adoption of AH signs. A first stage, dated to the Old Assyrian period (20th–18th century BCE), is characterised by pictographic representations on Anatolian cylinder seals. These pictograms do not find any direct correspondence in later AH signs on stamp seals, but they already demonstrate the symbolic value of elements such as the thunder or the deer as a representation of the Storm-god and the Tutelary god respectively.95 Both symbols played a prominent role in the visual inventory of the Hittite empire and became AH signs. A second stage is characterised by the presence of few of the signs present in the later AH sign repertoire: interesting is the increasing frequency in use of the auspicious signs VITA and BONUS2, together with other signs that remained outside the later repertoire. This early and still experimental phase came after the end of the Assyrian colony period and before the end of the old Hittite period (ca. 18th-mid 16th century BCE).96 The analysis of 94

 Glatz 2009, pp. 134–136.  Hawkins 2003; Mora 1994; Mouton 2002; Payne 2015, pp. 69–70; Yakubovich 2008. 96  Mora 1991. 95

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new material from 14C dated contexts showed that the 16th century, particularly its second half, was a period of intense experimentation in stamp seal design and signs arrangement within the territory of the Plateau under Hittite hegemony.97 The earliest coherent use of the repertoire of signs of the AH scribal system is attested on the mid-15th century digraphic seal of the Great King Tuthaliya, son of Kantuzili.98 Beginning with the reign of this king, the use of AH becomes the norm on all 15th and 14th century BCE seals found at NorthCentral Anatolia archaeological sites. By the mid-14th century, the AH scribal system spread over the whole Hittite territory, and in Anatolia and Syria by the Late Hittite empire (13th century BCE). The adoption of AH in North-Central Anatolia in the 15th century BCE occurred slightly later than the architectural and engineering works discussed above, and the same is true for the adoption of the cuneiform script.99 The 15th century BCE also witnessed the most intensive effort to create administrative norms to define the ceremonial and practical roles of various official groups of personnel, a programmatic effort unparalleled in other early political entities.100 This effort coincided with the large-scale compilation of normative texts that codified the cultic rituals that were central to, and promoted by, the Hittite court (see section I above). This period is therefore understood as significant in the transformation of the conception of the Hittite polity, one that also shaped the visibility and effectiveness of the Hittite presence in different regions. This particular period of change, however, is significantly different from the earlier ones in that the process of producing material signs of the administrative activity was determined by a trajectory that moved from the periphery towards the centre. This is particularly evident in the relation of North-Central Anatolia with south Anatolia and north Syria. The reception of elements from these southern regions beyond the Taurus in shaping the Hittite imperial identity is a well-known fact in the study of Hittite religious and literary texts.101 This assimilation was once thought to be a result of the expansion of the Hittite empire towards Syria and Northern Mesopotamia by the mid-14th century, but it is now understood as dating back to the early Empire period. In the study of Hittite archaeology, the central reception of southern elements has received much less attention. Outside of the historical-philological literature, this topic is only associated with the representation of southern divinities in Hittite imperial reliefs and figurines, primarily in the representation of the Hittite pantheon at Yazilikaya.102 The case of the adoption by the Hittite empire elite and administration of seals with names and titles in AH signs may represent an earlier case of interaction with the southern Plateau, but above all Cilicia and north Syria.

97

 Weeden 2018.  Payne 2015, pp. 70–71. 99  van den Hout 2012. 100  Giorgieri 2005; Pecchioli Daddi 2005; d’Alfonso 2008; Miller 2013. 101  Archi 2002; Hoffner 1992; Taracha 2009, pp. 118–128. 102  Seeher 2011. 98

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Glatz interpreted the discovery of seals and seal impressions in Cilicia and Syria bearing an AH legend as a sign of the direct interaction of local institutions with administrative standards developed in North-Central Anatolia.103 The presence of seals and seal impressions bearing AH legends from Tarsus dating prior to c. 1350 BCE is understood as a sign of an earlier reception in Cilicia of these North-Central Anatolia seal and sealing traditions than in Syria. In Syria, where the Anatolian practice of using sealing bullae and preserving them in archives before throwing them in large pits is unattested, the spread of seals and sealings with AH signs dates to the 13th century BCE.104 At Ugarit, Emar and other Syrian sites, seal impressions are found almost exclusively on clay tablets. There is no doubt that the abundant presence of AH inscribed seals and seal impressions in Syria and Cilicia is a consequence of the expansionistic Syrian campaigns of Suppiluliuma I. However, it would be misleading to understand the seals’ successful proliferation as exclusively derived from their production and use at North-Central Anatolia. As a matter of fact, some of the seals, belonging to the second, experimental stage of development of the AH writing system (see above) come from Tarsus, suggesting that this experimental stage was a shared development that took place not only in North-Central Anatolia, but also in other southern regions, such as South-Central Anatolia and Cilicia. There is also evidence of northwest Syria and Cilicia as the regions from where this second stage involving the selection of a sign repertoire originated, a reconstruction already suggested by several scholars.105 Three pieces of evidence support this scenario (Fig. 8): 1) The attribution of the seal of Indi-limma (from the collection of the Ashmolean museum; Mora 1987, IX 4.3) to Indi-limma, king of Ebla, who reigned toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age, between the late 18th and the early 17th century BCE.106 Besides a legend in cuneiform providing the king’s name, this seal bears four signs which later on became part of the AH repertoire. While a later carving of the AH legend on the seal cannot be entirely ruled out, the lack of traces of abrasion on the seal’s surface and in the sections, as well as the coherent and well-executed organisation of space on the seal’s surface make this hypothesis unlikely. The association of the two auspicious signs VITA and BONUS2 became then typical of stamp seals from South and Central Anatolia of the 17th–15th century BCE. The fact that later seals from the time of Arnuwanda I onward may carry the Sumerian cuneiform sign SIG5, ‘good’ and/or TI ‘life’, instead of BONUS2 and VITA respectively, indicates that by the end of the 15th–beginning of the 14th century BCE the value of the two signs had been received, defined and integrated in the writing of the Hittite capital.107 103

 Glatz 2009, pp. 134–136.  Mora 2000. 105  Boehmer and Güterbock 1987, p. 40; Mora 1991, p. 3; Neumann 1992. Contra Hawkins (1986, 2003), supportive of a hypothesis of formation of AH in western Anatolia. AH inscriptions from western Anatolia all date to after the fall of Arzawa against Mursili II (Mora 1991; Yakubovich 2008). Yakubovic recently supported the centrality of Hattusa in the definition of the syllabic values of the AH signs through achrophony of Hittite and Luwian words. This stage is, however, an advanced one. Dating to the 15th century onwards. The definition of the repertoire of signs, whatever their syllabic value – which could also have changed along the years – is attested earlier in South Anatolia and Syria (see below). 106  Archi 2015. 107  Archi 2016, p. 21. 104

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Fig. 8. Early seals and sealings from Cilicia and the northern Levant with Anatolian Hieroglyphs. a) Cylinder seal of Indi-limma, 18th c. BCE (Ashmolean Museum, image from Archi 2015, fig. 1); b) Seal of Isputahsu found at Tarsus, 16th–15th cc. BCE (image from Mora 1987, 6.1.1); c) Seal impression from Dagilbaz Höyük, 15th–14th cc. BCE (from d’Alfonso and Killebrew 2011, fig. 5).

2) The earliest seal with AH signs known from regular archaeological excavation is a bulla with the seal impression of Išputahšu, king of Kizzuwatna, found at Tarsus (Mora 1987, VIII 1.1). A circular frame of cuneiform signs with the name and genealogy of this king defines the central field of the stamp seal that contains, at the centre, the two signs TONITRUS.REX one above the other, and the auspicious signs VITA and BONUS2 to the left and to the right of the other two. The seal is dated to the 16th century, a time in which experimentation in the selection of signs on seals was ongoing also in North-Central Anatolia.108 3) Besides the seal of Išputahšu, some other seals and seal impressions dating before the Syrian campaigns of king Suppiluliuma are known from Cilicia (for example, the three seal impressions from Tarsus: Mora 1987, IIb 1.7–9). Glatz has suggested that the presence of these bullae is to be connected with the Hittite control over Cilicia from the early 14th century BCE,109 but it is worth considering that they might belong to officials of

108 109

 Payne 2015, p. 71; Weeden 2018, pp. 58–60 et passim.  Glatz 2009.

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the administration of the local kingdom of Kizzuwatna.110 This hypothesis is confirmed by the recent find of a seal impression on a jar handle found at Dağılbaz Höyük in the Iskenderun Plain, in the northern Levant,111 an area south of Cilicia, where Hittite direct control during the mid-second millennium is unattested. The seal impression might be in fact related to the local Kizzuwatnean administration. If one accepts that during the 18th–15th centuries BCE, also Cilicia and northwest Syria were regions in which the repertoire – not the syllabic value! – of AH was defined by its use on seals for administrative purposes, then the script’s rapid and pervasive adoption in the 13th century can be understood as a direct and natural consequence of this earlier exposure rather than an exclusive effect of Hittite imperial and Anatolian influences, as it has normally been considered. In contrast, Western Anatolia, where only a few seals with AH legends were found,112 some of them possibly dating to the post Hittite period,113 would represent a different model in the construction of stabilised networks of power. This model was in contrast to the one of Syria and Cilicia, which shared cultural features that were developed very early on and later became constitutive of the Hittite imperial identity. In addition to seals, Mühlenbruch’s argument on the standardisation of the ceramic repertoire as not directly dependent on economic centralised inputs (capacity and volume) but rather on appearance, would imply that the local Late Bronze Age standardised, common ware assemblages of Cilicia and northern Syria -particualrly the shallow bowls repertoire – are ‘closer’ to the ones from the Anatolian plateau than to those that originated from the Middle-Assyrian standardised production attested east of the Euphrates.114 For instance, Cilicia and Syria assemblages are more similar to the repertoire from the Anatolian plateau than the ceramic material from western Anatolia under Hittite hegemony, which differs greatly in shapes, surface treatments and colours.115 These common traits are less notable in Glatz’s study (2009), as the scholar selected only ceramic types that were original products of Late Bronze Age North-Central Anatolia. However, recent re-examinations of local Late Bronze Age Syrian assemblages have made this similarity more evident.116 M. Pucci has recently demonstrated that in Northern Levant under Hittite hegemony the practice of drinking was characterised by the use of vessels that differed from those in use in North-Central Anatolia. Particularly distinctive is the use of jugs, a form widespread in the central Anatolian Late Bronze Age production associated with serving liquids but absent in the northern Levant.117 While this is surely correct, the production of beak-spouted and red-slipped pitchers, derivative of the central Anatolian Bronze Age tradition, considerably shrank during the empire, when contacts with the southern regions became more prominent. Moreover, jugs seem to be related to cultic practices, as often represented in orthostats for libation scenes, rather than to secular 110

 Novák 2010, and Hawkins and Weeden 2017, with literature therein.  d’Alfonso and Killebrew 2011. 112  Yakubovich 2008. 113  Mora 2016. 114  Duistermaat 2008. 115  For example, Hnila 2012; Pavúk 2005, 2010. 116  Notably Venturi in Archi and Venturi 2012. 117  Pucci 2018. 111

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or private drinking practices.118 The Hittite cultural construct is better understood as a melding of traditions promoted by the royal dynasty of Hattusa. It would be incorrect to consider the Hittite power a locally defined North-Central Anatolia cultural construct. In order to evaluate the impact of Hittite control in Syria after the campaigns of Suppiluliuma I, the analysis should start from the presupposition of a very strong, long-lived and well-established cultural common ground with the Anatolian Plateau, despite the undeniable linguistic, geographic, social, and political differences.

VI. POLITICAL BORDERS

IN ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE WRITTEN RECORDS: THE SEARCH FOR

A COHERENT CONCEPT

The Hittite empire produced a model of political economy based on centralising, storing, preserving and defending primary goods such as grain and water that can be only entirely appreciated if the environmental context of the core of the empire is also taken into account. This model is visible in the archaeological records, as I have demonstrated above. Inherent to this model, and visibly manifest, is the religious tension towards obtaining the benevolence of the gods for the king as the model administrator of this basic political economy.119 It is only the adoption of our modern terms and categories that makes us perceive Hittite political economy as divided from the religious and cultic sphere, an occurrence that is not confirmed by historical data. In a holistic perspective associating economic and ecological factors to conceptual, humanistic ones,120 rituals seeking the benevolence of the gods, recurrent annual festivals on the occasions of sowing and harvesting, and other festivals performed at various intervals such as seven, nine or thirty years in many centres of central and south Anatolia, were all integral parts of a coherent program which occupied a substantial portion of the time of the royal family and the Hittite officials. When military activities interrupted that program, it was justified as a way to respond to the enemy’s wrongdoing,121 an enemy who sought to undermine the role of the Great king as good administrator of the land of Hatti and could have thus jeopardised the benevolence of the gods towards the land itself. I would argue that this sacredly sanctioned large-scale organisation of primary production is key in defining Hittite power. As such, it has large visibility also in the archaeological records, as standardised architectural techniques and plans were utilised in the infrastructures, together with consistent artistic iconology, administrative procedures, and standardised pottery production, all well recognisable in the excavated assemblages. This confirms the data obtained by Glatz (2009), Glatz and Proudre (2011), Harmanşah (2014), Schachner (2009), and others, all of whom have emphasised the existence of borders internal to the territory of the empire as demonstrated by the distribution of the archaeological remains that also reflect the impact of this major political power. 118

 Schoop 2011, pp. 251–253.  Refer KUB 29.1, on which lastly Klinger 2014, p. 83. In general on this topic see Gilan 2011. 120  Marcus and Flannery 1994. 121  Liverani 2001, Part 2. 119

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This scenario is in fact more dynamic if we also factor in a diachronic approach. The core of the empire, as defined by the course of the Kızılırmak, archaeologically shows a concentration of all elements indicative of the Hittite imperial sacredly sanctioned, largescale-organised primary production by the 16th and then the 15th centuries BCE. At the western, southern and eastern regions of the Plateau, the continuously renewed Hittite presence resulted in the adoption by local urban communities and Hittite officials of shared selected North-Central Anatolian elements.122 Rather than only focusing on the imposition of imperial rule or of local agencies working within the imperial network, the archaeological evidence of interconnections of North-Central Anatolia with Cilicia and northern Syria is better explained by several processes of direct and strong convergences with the Hittite power and its elites, processes that started even before the Hittite empire’s formative phase and continued uninterruptedly until its demise (Fig. 9). Conversely, the exclusive presence in western Anatolia of artistic iconology of the Hittite power resulted from the apparently small convergence between that region and the Hittite empire before the 14th century BCE. More generally, the production of landscape monuments in peripheral regions by local rulers or officials responds to divergent, even contrasting, claims of territorial control from the ones of the Hittite Great Kings. The monuments’ distribution is independent from the sacredly sanctioned, large-scale-organised primary production recognised as key

Fig. 9. Map showing diachronic formation and circulation of regional archaeological features within the territory of the Hittite power. The map is interpreted as indicative of the existence of synchronic networks of power independent from the core of the empire, and nonetheless constitutive of the empire as a multi-regional political entity (produced by L. d’Alfonso and L. Castellano).

122

 Manuelli 2013.

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to the Hittite power: linked to local ephemeral conflicts, often personal or dynastic, and episodic in nature, it was by contrast visualised by the most lasting type of remains, the production of rock reliefs on stone. Despite the fact that the archaeological remains of the Hittite power are clearly distinguishable from those of other major Late Bronze Age powers such as Egypt, Assyria, and the Mycenaean world,123 researchers have devoted more attention to the recognisable borders within the territory controlled by the Hittite power than to the borders separating the Hittites from the other Great powers. No doubt this results from the uneven degree of homogeneity within the Hittite territory, which stands in sharp contrast with the models that instead characterise the three aforementioned coeval powers. Still, the archaeological visibility of borders within the Hittite empire is an interesting subject of investigation as the data do correspond to the emic perspective on borders that emerges from the Hittite texts. The Hittite word for border is irha-/erha-, often represented by the sum. ZAG. The adverb arha, meaning ‘out, away of’, is a cognate of the word for border, and a derivate of it is arahzena-, lit. ‘the one from beyond the border, foreign, alien’.124 This definition is not necessarily geographical; rather, it refers to separation of people at a level of social complexity that goes beyond the family/kin sphere – the one Schloen defined as ‘the house of the father’.125 As a matter of fact, it mirrors the concept of āra, ‘righteous, socially permitted/recognised’, with a set of cognates such as ara-, ‘friend, companion (strong social relation outside of the kin)’, and arawa-, ‘freeman, full member of the community’.126 Both sets of concepts define socio-political borders (who is in and who is out of the Hittite network) and are very rarely reflected in texts defining the Hittite relations with the other great powers. Borders are not mentioned in the treaty or in the correspondence with Egypt.127 There is no treaty with Assur,128 but the correspondence, also dealing with confrontations, never outlines clear borders among the two lands.129 The same holds true for the relations with Babylon. The situation with Kizzuwatna, a polity tied to the Hittite power since its early development (see above), is slightly different. In the treaty between Tuthaliya I of Hatti and Šunaššura of Kizzuwatna, possibly stipulated in the 14th century BCE, before Kizzuwatna became an integral part of the Hittite polity, borders are described in some detail,130 but they are clearly conceived as a neutral zone between pairs of towns, each controlled by one of the two polities: In the direction of the sea, the city of Lamya belongs to his majesty and the city of Bitura belongs to Šunaššura. The border district between them will be surveyed and defined/established … 123

 Higginbotham 2000 (Egypt); Duistermaat 2008 (Assyria); Dickinson 1994 (Mycenaean world).  Klinger 1992; Kloekhorst 2008, pp. 245–247. 125  Schloen 2001. 126  Cohen 2002; d’Alfonso 2004. 127  Breyer 2011; Edel 1992, 1994; Klengel 2002. 128  d’Alfonso 2006. 129  Giorgieri and Mora 2004, nos. 5 and 15. 130  Novák and Rutishauser 2012. 124

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The city of Šaliya belongs to his Majesty and the towns of Zinziluwa and Erimma belong to Šunaššura. The border between them will be surveyed and defined/established … (CTH 41, A iv, 40-49; Beckman 1996, p. 24).

In this treaty, and in other treaties dealing with lands belonging to the Hittite empire, borders are carefully defined, as borders between two lands within the empire were a major strategic concern for its stability. In the treaties with Mittani (CTH 51 and 52; Beckman 1996, pp. 38–50) that followed the Syrian campaigns of Suppiluliuma, when Mittanni was no longer independent, the new frontier between Mittanni and Karkemiš, both recent and important additions to the Hittite hegemony, was carefully defined. However, no attention was paid to the northern, eastern, and southern borders of Mitanni that separated this kingdom from regions that were under the hegemonic claims of other big powers. Furthermore, frontiers were described in detail in those treaties that dealt with contested territories within lands that were under Hittite control, as in the case of the border between Ugarit and Siyannu in the Northern Levant,131 or Mira-Kuwaliya and the Seha River Land in West Anatolia (CTH 68 and 69; Beckman 1996, pp. 69–81). In the Hittite texts, the most detailed descriptions of borders refer to the boundaries between the Land of Hatti proper and the Land of Tarhuntassa.132 Beyond the definition of the borders between Hatti and Tarhuntassa lay a claim for the control of the empire following the move of the capital to the south and the consequent relocation of gods, products and ruling elites within the Hittite network.133 This contested border lasted for some 40 years around the second half of the 13th century BCE; its description allows us to appreciate the shifting nature of its very definition: In the direction of Mount Huwahuwatnuawanta, his frontier is the hallapuwanz, but the hallapuwanz belong to the land of the Hulaya river (i.e. Tarhuntassa). Up behind the city of Kusawanta, his frontier is the Stone Monument of the Dog. In the direction of the city of Ussa, his frontier is the city of Zarata, but Zarata belongs to land of the Hulaya river. In the direction of the city of Wanzataruwa, his frontier is the city of Harazuwa, but Harazuwa belongs to the land of Ussa. In the direction of Mount Kuwakuwaliyatta, the city of Suttasna was made his frontier on my father’s first treaty tablet, but it happened that my father himself later made the city Santimma the frontier. But Santimma belongs to the land of the Hulaya river … (from CTH 106 I.1, col i 29-40; translation from Beckman 1996, pp. 114–115).

A significant number of landscape monuments of the Hittite empire are scattered on the two sides of the border between Hatti and Tarhuntassa, representing clear visual markers of the specific importance of this inner border, confirmed by the textual sources. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most articulated border of the Hittite empire should divide two regions, the Land of Hatti proper and the Hittite Lower Land, whose archaeological remains are instead characterised by many common shared elements, from ceramic assemblages to settlement patterns.134 It is worth noting that in treaties between regions under Hittite 131

 d’Alfonso 2005, pp. 155–158.  van den Hout 1995. 133  d’Alfonso 2014. 134  Glatz 2009; Harmanşah 2014; Matessi 2013, 2017. 132

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hegemony, cities or other natural elements are considered to be the border, while the empty stretches of lands between the two sides are not mentioned, as was instead the case in the Šunaššura treaty. It seems that the most precise political borders needed to be more minutely drawn in those instances where difference and distance, in another word, diversity, was the least evident. In all other situations, distance and neutral landscapes were borders’ signifiers. Thus, borders were not clear demarcations comprising well-recognisable landmarks, but rather a ‘no man’s land’ beyond the last outposts, where enemy movements could be detected (but no further that a three-day march): §14 (5’) But as far as the roads being covered is concerned, as soon as the scouts (6’) come upon sign of the enemy, they will bring word immediately. §15 (7’f.) And they shall close up the towns. They shall not let the field workers, cattle, sheep, horses (or) [don]keys down out (of the town). They shall protect (them). The governor of the post, though, (9’f.) shall keep track of and record the frontier posts and the enemy routes. (11’f.) Further, three scouts shall hold each road, while three commanders shall supervise. §16b … (27’) But if the enemy attacks at some point, then the troops shall follow the track of the enemy for three days, (28’) and they shall hold the [roa]ds for three days. (From CTH 261, §14-16: translation by Miller 2013, pp. 217–219).

Tentative and general as it might be, this analysis of the conception of borders in the Hittite texts lets us glimpse the existence of a Hittite, emic conception of socio-political borders that is also confirmed by the archaeological data. Despite the fact that the Hittites were well versed in geographic knowledge of the location of major centres and long-distance routes of the foreign great powers, their conception of political borders lacked well-defined external frontiers with outside powers, as it was instead focused on internal, movable borders. The latter were drawn through long-term strategies of territorial administration and religious praxis as well as extemporaneous changes brought about by the balance of power within the imperial network. Written documents on Hittite political activity describes borders reflecting a punctual, event-oriented scope as the landscape monuments do. Conversely, borders emerging from other archaeological evidence responded to longer processes, involving more directly a larger part of the population. All of them, however, depended upon the coexistence of several processes that involved from time to time different sets of cities and communities in the definition of the Hittite power, its territory, and ultimately the conscious decision of the core to refrain from imposing a sole economy and legal and religious system over the whole extant of the empire.135 While enforcement of external borders was beyond the capacity of the Hittite polity due to environmental and demographic limits, the memory of the particular relations with specific cities and communities of Anatolia and Syria that played a fundamental role in the establishment of the royal dynasty’s authority prevented the Hittite court from setting homogeneity as the main criterion to administer the empire, thus resulting in an empire with strong and diachronically changing internal borders.

135

 d’Alfonso 2008.

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I would like to dedicate this paper to Dietrich Sürenhagen. His approach to Sakrales Königtum and many of the conversations of the years I spent as his assistant in Konstanz have inspired much of this paper and of my career.

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PART IV:

BORDERS IN AN AGE OF TRANSITION. ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS AT THE TURN OF THE 2ND – 1ST MILLENNIA BCE

CULTURAL BORDERS IN THE CENTRAL CAUCASUS: THE MIDDLE KURA RIVER VALLEY IN THE LATE BRONZE AND EARLY IRON AGE Jessie BIRKETT-REES ABSTRACT The identification and investigation of social boundaries and frontiers has long been a pursuit of archaeologists and, due to the spatial component of these features, is prominent within landscape archaeologies. This paper examines the record of the middle Kura River valley in the central South Caucasus, drawing on material evidence and social theory to investigate the relationships between material culture, social groups and their spatial organisation. Investigating these relationships can shed light on the socialisation of the landscape. The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age saw a widespread regional shift in lifestyle and new expressions of authority within the South Caucasus that began at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. People establish settlements in the middle Kura River valley in the Late Bronze Age and this process intensifies in the Early Iron Age, as settlements with cemeteries in close proximity become the defining feature of the archaeological landscape. This trend can be traced throughout the South Caucasus and neighbouring regions but the middle Kura valley is particularly interesting for the cultural interactions it reveals. The material remains of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age (1500–600 BCE), particularly burial style and associated burial assemblages, reveal the formation of a porous frontier between the Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori cultural groups during the Late Bronze Age, particularly the 15th to 13th centuries BCE. From the 14th century, the influence of the Samtavro culture gradually increases in the Tbilisi valley and spreads eastward, while the Lchashen-Tsitelgori influence withdraws eastward to Kakheti. The nature of social boundaries in the archaeological record is examined and the changing distribution of distinctive material elements of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture and the Samtavro culture is charted.

I. INTRODUCTION The identification and investigation of social borders, boundaries and frontiers has long been a pursuit of archaeologists and, due to the spatial component of these features, is prominent within landscape archaeologies. The study of the spatial distribution of archaeological cultures has a long history and, although most archaeologists would now question the normative assumptions of early studies, such as those by Childe1 and McKern,2 our fascination with defining and locating cultural groups continues. Recent approaches to the study of borders and boundaries in the archaeological record have seen an expansion of the ontology, the study of what boundaries are, and a broadening of the epistemology, the study of how we know what boundaries are.3 Where researchers once sought to determine 1

 Childe 1929, 1939.  McKern 1939. 3  Mullin 2011; Rubinson and Smith 2003; Van Houtum 2005. 2

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territorial lines and define somewhat rigid cultural mosaics, attention is now directed to the investigation of the boundary zone as an area in which socio-spatial differences are expressed. The nature of sociocultural boundaries is complex and typically the material evidence for such boundaries is historically situated and highly contextualised.4 Even so, the studies in this volume demonstrate that the search for and critical examination of boundaries in archaeological contexts remains a productive avenue of research. Drawing on material evidence and social theory, investigation of the complex relationships between material culture, social groups and their spatial organisation can shed light on the socialisation of the landscape. The diversity of cultures in the Caucasus is contextualised by the complex and unique geography of the region, which connects certain areas whilst partitioning others. Continental boundaries meet in the South Caucasus, at the intersection of the Eurasian, Anatolian and Arabian tectonic plates, creating a landscape of striking mountains and highland plateaus between the Kura and Aras Rivers. The range of resources available to communities in the South Caucasus has also enabled a variety of lifestyles and uses of the landscape within and across archaeological periods. This is true throughout the region and within the smaller area of the middle Kura Valley at Tbilisi and Mtskheta (Fig. 1). The South Caucasus is today the locus for productive interactions between different traditions of archaeological research, as well as the scene of numerous sociocultural boundaries in past and present. I concentrate on the shifts in lifestyle, reorganisation of social space and new expressions of cultural identity in the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age. The chronological division of archaeological periods remains a challenge to Caucasian archaeology. Suites of calibrated radiocarbon dates are being gathered by current excavation teams but the scarcity of radiocarbon dates amongst previously excavated assemblages has resulted in relative chronologies, based on seriation and competing typologies of materials. The transition to the Late Bronze Age is contentious in central South Caucasus, with debate focussed around the third quarter of the second millennium BCE and the division of cultural groups within the region.5 Here, I follow the widely accepted chronology, dating the Late Bronze to the 15th –13th centuries, and then transitioning to the Early Iron Age, which extends across the 12th to 7th centuries. The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age are typically united as a period of cultural transition and consolidation of traditions in Georgia and South Caucasia more generally.6 This chronology aligns relatively well with the accepted chronologies for neighbouring regions of the South Caucasus, including the geographically related region of the Armenian highlands. Approach to the problem I firstly address the relationship between physical and cultural boundaries in the archaeological landscape of Tbilisi-Mtskheta, discussing the extent to which the physiographic landscape participates in shaping human interactions. In the middle Kura Valley, the confluence 4  Barth 1969; Donnan and Wilson 1999; Green and Perlman 1985; Hodder 1979; Lemonnier 1986; Mullin 2011; Prescott 1965; Stark 1998a. 5  Abramishvili 2003; Akhvlediani 2005; Pitskhelauri 1973. 6  Abramishvili 1999, p. 57; Japaridze 1999, p. 64.

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Fig. 1. Map showing the Republic of Georgia within the South Caucasus and the major rivers, including the Kura and Aras Rivers.

of rivers and mountain ranges create a geographic threshold, which is significant to social expression in the area. But the identification of sociocultural boundaries is not as clear-cut as the delineation of geographic features. Sociocultural boundaries do not necessarily adhere to physiographic borders and their identification in archaeological contexts must initially be addressed. In the territorial frameworks of the past and in the residual archaeological record, social boundaries include material and spatial attributes. The concepts of archaeological cultures and material style (which as a concept will be explained below) are addressed in relation to the association between material assemblages and social boundaries. The use of stylistic similarities to distinguish social groups and to determine their spatial relations, a standard methodology in archaeological research, is examined and is then applied to the record of Tbilisi-Mtskheta. In the context of the archaeological landscape, the spatial attribute of social boundaries is as significant as the material attributes. The modification of the landscape to create culturally distinctive features is a powerful means of signifying group identity. The location of culturally distinctive landscape modification, such as settlements or cemeteries, and the spatial patterns of social behaviour help to define frontier zones, shared or contested landscapes. In marking out the landscape these cultural features participate in the complex negotiation of social space. The mosaic of cultural geographies in the modern world, in which largely homogeneous cultural spaces are generally separated by well-defined edges, does not reflect the variable or porous nature of frontiers or the fragmentary nature of the

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archaeological record.7 This is particularly apparent in the South Caucasus, where cultural ebb and flow across the landscape has created dynamic frontiers rather than stable borders. Investigating interfaces within the region provides an interesting opportunity to identify cultural preferences within and between groups of people. Geographic boundaries and social landscapes The physical landscape of Tbilisi-Mtskheta affected the development of social systems. Tbilisi exists at an ecotone, the transitional zone between forest and steppe ecology, and several prominent physical features converge in this region. These landscape features are not entirely constant, varying slightly within geomorphological time frames,8 but made insistent demands on each generation throughout prehistory. This geography contributes to the enduring human use of the Tbilisi region and to the spatial arrangement of archaeological features. From the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi Rivers at Mtskheta, beyond which the Kura continues southeast through the Tbilisi valley toward the Caspian Sea, the rivers clearly shape the physical landscape. The convergence of the highland fringes between Tbilisi and Mtskheta also creates a physical threshold between the open Kura River plain to the southeast and the central Georgian Gori plain and Caucasus Mountains to the northwest. Waterways and highlands are often considered in the literature as physical elements preventing interaction between people living in regions which were in fact part of a vast, well-integrated region. The Tbilisi plain and at least parts of the Gori plain extending west from Mtskheta had been integrated into the same broad cultural territory at several points in time prior to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, as part of the Early Bronze Age KuraAraxes cultural range and again during the Middle Bronze Age. The meeting of highlands and rivers between Tbilisi and Mtskheta does not therefore appear to present a firm boundary to interaction. The intersection of the waterways and mountains does however form a physical threshold in the regional landscape, since the meeting of the mountains obstructs sight lines between the Tbilisi valley and Mtskheta, and the confluence of the rivers presents a disjuncture in human movement through the landscape. In later periods, this geography would serve as a boundary between Persian and Byzantine imperial territory. The potential of the rivers and river valleys as corridors is another influential attribute in human interactions with this landscape. The Kura River course skirts the Armenian highlands between the modern regions of northeastern Turkey and central Georgia. Whether transport is by water or by land, the river valley is particularly important for east–west passage through the central Caucasus. Likewise, the Aragvi River flows from the Caucasus Range along one of few routes north–south between the plains and plateaus of the central Caucasus and the Eurasian steppe to the north. The local geography of Tbilisi-Mtskheta presents a meeting point, a threshold within the landscape, and the regional geography places it on historic passageways east–west and north–south. This distinctive landscape contributes to sociocultural interactions in this area. 7

 Rubinson and Smith 2003.  Janelidze 1980; Tsagareli 1964.

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Material remains and stylistic differences Recent reconsiderations of ancient landscapes give due attention to human figures alongside physical features;9 people reinvent the physical landscape according to sociocultural influences.10 As to the Tbilisi region, we observe different uses of the landscape from one period to another11 and these different interpretations of the physical terrain have created a distinctive and informative palimpsest. The identification of sociocultural groups within the material record and, following this, the investigation of social interfaces within the landscape are the next issue. How do we distinguish culturally related groups within the record and, from these deductions, can we begin to reconstruct sociocultural interactions and the articulation of boundaries within the archaeological landscape? In identifying different archaeological periods and different cultural groups within the record I rely on stylistic differentiation of material remains as defined below. The use and ‘making’ of a landscape is a facet of the production of material culture; there is always more than one way of manufacturing, using or doing things and people choose amongst these equivalent ways based largely on their cultural traditions.12 As the only social science that has no direct access to information about human behaviour, prehistoric archaeology relies on material culture to determine the non-material aspects of society that inform these choices.13 The methods used to distinguish one group from another are worth considering because this is how cultural interfaces are identified in the archaeological record. Two issues are fundamental: what constitutes an archaeological culture and how archaeologists define and interpret ‘style’. V. Gordon Childe outlined the fundamental logic that forms the basis for the archaeological equation of materially related remains with culturally related people: “We find certain types of remains – pots, implements, burial rites, house forms – constantly recurring together. Such a complex of regularly associated traits we shall term a ‘cultural group’ or a ‘culture’. We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today would be called a people.”14 Childe’s method of identifying archaeological cultures influenced Boris Kuftin, who identified a series of successive culture-areas in the South Caucasus based on shared material culture and style.15 Even though archaeological approaches have become more nuanced since Childe’s and Kuftin’s day and correlations between material and sociocultural systems are now less categorical, this methodology remains fundamental. Identifying cultural change and differentiating between groups is important in archaeological analyses, yet researchers are at pains to highlight the flexibility of social and cultural identities and to emphasise the conditional nature of social groupings. Overly simplistic equations of material assemblages with racial or ethnic identities, which derive from 19th century nationalist histories and the related organic model of culture that developed in functionalist 9

 Roberts 1987, p. 79.  Bender 1993; Hodder and Cessford 2004; Schama 1995; Thomas 1993. 11  Abramishvili 1978; Birkett-Rees 2012. 12  Bourdieu 1977; Dietler and Herbich 1998; Hegmon 1998; Lefebvre 1991; Sackett 1982. 13  Trigger 1989, p. 357. 14  Childe 1929, pp. v–vi. 15  Kuftin 1946; Smith 2005. 10

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social anthropology, were critically dismantled by archaeologists in the 1970s.16 Even so, the archaeologies conducted in former Soviet countries are informed by the archive of Soviet archaeological and anthropological research, in which a guiding concept was the ethno-social group.17 The Soviet definition of archaeological culture was largely informed by this concept of the ‘ethnos’, which has been enduring and influential in post-Soviet archaeology.18 The contemporary Anglo-American view of the nature of ethnic identity as situational and relativistic has been embraced to varying degrees in the republics which emerged from the Soviet collapse but the differences in the archives of research, with regard to the association of archaeological cultural groupings with ethnic or national identities, remains an issue. Given that archaeological cultures are identified on the basis of distinctive material traits, the archaeological definition and interpretation of material ‘style’ is also significant. Arguing against the equation of archaeological material culture and ethnicity, without denying the use of material culture to distinguish social groups, was a valuable contribution of New Archaeology.19 However, a further legacy of this theoretical movement was the separation of style, function and technology in material analyses. This partitioned method of dealing with the social dimension of material culture generally defines function as utilitarian purpose and technology as the techniques and materials used in production of an object. ‘Style’ is located negatively within this framework, consisting of residual features once utilitarian function and technology have been accounted for.20 Often this reduces style to decoration. Style is not merely aesthetic but is bound with technological and functional considerations, as outlined below. Decoration is an important component of style, but style is more than ‘adjunct form’.21 Locating style in isolation from function and technology negates the culturally significant aspects of use and of production.22 Nor is it viable to interpret style as a passive by-product, rather than an active choice. Anthropological research has demonstrated that technical choices are governed by shared understandings of how things ought to be achieved as much as by the available resources.23 These shared understandings imbue material style with meaning in social contexts and provide a means for the expression of identity within and between social groups.24 The volume of social theory, archaeological and ethnoarchaeological scholarship addressing ‘style’ highlights the diversity of opinions on the location and definition of material style.25 By adopting an integrated view of material style that encompasses technological, formal and decorative aspects, archaeologists are now repairing the style/function/technology schism. Technology has style, style has function and all three aspects of material culture contribute to the construction and identification of cultural assemblages. The material remains of 16

 Barth 1969; Jones 1997; Klejn 1977; Shnirelman 1995.  Anthony et al. 1986, p. 186; Smith 2005. 18  Anthony et al. 1986; Bulkin et al. 1982; Gotije 1930; Mongait 1961; Udaltsov 1943, pp. 67–72. 19  Binford 1973, 1980; Clarke 1968; Renfrew 1977. 20  Dietler and Herbich 1998, p. 237; Shanks and Tilley 1987. 21  Sackett 1982. 22  Dietler and Herbich 1998; Hodder 1990; Lemonnier 1986. 23  Stark 1998b. 24  Conkey 1990. 25  Conkey and Hasdorf 1990; Stark 1998a. 17

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intercultural encounters may be evident through context, simply through the instance of objects from one cultural tradition in the company of those from another, or through the integration of distinctive attributes from multiple traditions in a single artefact. The interplay between material cultural traditions, involving the appropriation and integration of objects or symbols belonging to another group, has been approached through the theoretical framework of cultural ‘entanglement’ in recent years,26 in a refreshed approach to cultural change and identity negotiations. Having established how style is used by archaeologists and what contributes to cultural styles, we may examine the interplay evident in the material cultures of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age transition in the Tbilisi-Mtskheta region.

II. CULTURAL BOUNDARIES

IN THE

CENTRAL CAUCASUS

The Late Bronze and Early Iron Age saw a widespread regional shift in lifestyle, significant reorganisation of social space and new expressions of cultural identity within the landscape of the Tbilisi valley and Mtskheta region. Settlement of the valley began in the Late Bronze Age (15th–13th centuries BCE) and intensified in the Early Iron Age (12th–7th centuries BCE), as settlements with cemeteries in close proximity became the defining feature of the Tbilisi-Mtskheta region (Fig. 2). This trend can be traced throughout central South Caucasus and neighbouring regions but the middle Kura valley is particularly interesting for the cultural interactions it reveals between the Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori communities during this period. During the 15th century BCE, the archaeological landscape of Tbilisi-Mtskheta underwent a major transition in which the mortuary landscape of the Middle Bronze Age Trialeti culture was transformed into one of intensive settlement. Communities converged on the Kura valley, using parts of the foothill zone but largely abandoning the highlands, which had played a prominent role in the socio-economic system of the Middle Bronze Age.27 The Tbilisi valley was not unique in this new settlement trend, which extended in various regional forms through the South Caucasus during the Late Bronze Age.28 The development of many small scale ‘farmsteads’ and two substantial settlements in Tbilisi, the sites of Sajoge and Treli, occurred together with numerous cemeteries established in close proximity to settlements. As the Late Bronze Age transitioned into the Early Iron Age, the period from the 12th to the 7th centuries BCE, the Tbilisi valley and the Mtskheta lowlands became heavily populated. This is inferred from the increasing number of settlements, which were established in the valley (below 600 m asl) and the number of burials at sites such as at Samtavro, which includes 63 burials identified with the Late Bronze Age and 560 with the Early Iron Age.29 26

 Hodder 2011; Thomas 1991.  The Middle Bronze Age (MBA) communities of the South Caucasus were mobile and only fugitive settlement remains are known. The MBA archaeological record consists predominantly of burial barrows (kurgans), which primarily marked the highlands. 28  See Lindsay, this volume. 29  Tsetskhladze 2006/07, p. 79. 27

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Fig. 2. Map of the middle Kura River valley between the cities of Mtskheta and Tbilisi, showing the location of Late Bronze–Early Iron Age sites referred to in the text.

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Spatial analyses of the settlement sites and numerous cemeteries within the Tbilisi valley indicate dispersal throughout the valley.30 Treligorebi, Samtavro and the settlement of Narekvavi to the north of Samtavro became prominent settlement sites, each with a cemetery in close proximity. Burial mounds, popular in the Middle Bronze Age, and cromlech-style burial were phased out and less conspicuous forms of burial prevailed, such as pit burials.31 In addition to Treligorebi, Samtavro and Narekvavi, the sites of Xevdsmara, Chalipiragorebi and Nakulbakebi became significant locations of settlement and burial also. These village settlements and smaller ‘farmsteads’ reconfigured the archaeological landscape and represent a new framework of tenure in the region.32 A progressive and lasting decrease in temperature and precipitation beginning in the early second millennium BCE had significant consequences for the landscapes of the South Caucasus.33 Pollen records from lakes in the central Caucasus indicate that coniferous forests replaced the oak savannah of the Middle Bronze Age on the highland plateaus, whilst the oak forest on the foothills above Tbilisi (600–1200 m asl) was replaced by steppephrygana assemblages.34 Vastly increased dung fungal spores from the foothills imply heavy grazing in this landscape zone, and the disappearance of remaining oak-ash forests in the pollen record over time may be related to intensified human activity in the valley.35 The climatic shift and change in vegetation regime may have attracted people to the arable areas of the valley plain,36 with environmental and climatic changes supporting a redefinition of human settlement and subsistence strategies in the mid-second millennium. In this period, stock grazing was maintained in the foothills alongside agrarian strategies in the valley. The levels of wheat pollen recovered from Lake Imeras, a maar (crater) lake on the subalpine Tsalka Plateau west of Tbilisi, suggest that crops, including wheat, were also grown on the high plateau west of Tbilisi-Mtskheta in areas with reliable water sources.37 The material remains of the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age, particularly burial style and associated burial assemblages, reveal that there were two different sociocultural groups sharing the Tbilisi-Mtskheta region. These were the Samtavro communities, identified initially with Samtavro in Mtskheta, and the Lchashen-Tsitelgori communities, identified with Tbilisi and the broad region to the east (Kakheti). The formation of a porous frontier 30

 Dispersal of archaeological features in the landscape is supported by GIS average nearest-neighbour analyses performed on settlements, settlements and burials, and finally on all archaeological features from the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age. Location Quotient (LQ), developed by geographers to describe the ratio of features in one area compared to another (area A and B: ΣA/ΣB=LQ). LQ greater than 1.0 indicate a bias towards area A, LQ of less than 1.0 reflects a bias toward area B (see Barber 1988, pp. 87–88; and Smith 1999, p. 52). In the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age, where area A is the foothill zone at 600–1199 m asl and B is the valley at < 600 m asl, the ratio of settlement and burial location is 0.06 (1/17), indicating a strong preference for the valley zone. 31  At the necropolis of Treli, there is one significant exception: a burial mound with rich grave goods dating to the eighth to seventh centuries BCE, an unusual burial form for the period and the only such example in Tbilisi-Mtskheta. 32  Birkett-Rees 2010. 33  Connor 2011; Wick et al. 2003. 34  Connor 2011. 35  Connor 2011; Gogichaishvili 1990. 36  Kvavadze 1999. 37  Connor 2011.

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between the Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori cultural groups is evident during the Late Bronze Age, the 15th–13th centuries BCE. From the 14th century, the influence of the Samtavro culture gradually increased in the Tbilisi valley and spread eastward, whilst the Lchashen-Tsitelgori influence gradually withdrew to Kakheti.38 The changing distribution and combination of distinctive material elements of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture and the Samtavro culture is examined below, following a brief explanation of cultural groupings in the region. The chronological issues beleaguering the South Caucasus were flagged at the beginning of this chapter, but there are key issues pertinent to the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age sociocultural groupings. There has been some contention over the interpretation of the record of the third quarter of the second millennium within the region. Konstantine Pitskhelauri suggests that at this time the central South Caucasus was inhabited by a unified culture (the Central Transcaucasian Culture) and that, later, in the Late Bronze Age (1500–1100 BCE), localised communities with their own traditions and customs developed from this single culture.39 These communities include the Late Bronze Age Samtavro culture in the territory around Mtskheta and Tbilisi, and the Ioro-Alazan culture in what is now Kakheti, in eastern Georgia.40 The alternative hypothesis, proposed by Rostom Abramishvili, sees Pitskhelauri’s Central Transcaucasian Culture already as a complex of local variants, including the Ioro-Alazan culture and the Tori culture, and dates this complex as contemporary with the Samtavro culture.41 Abramishvili refers to the Central Transcaucasian Culture as the Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture, whose territory extends into the Armenian highlands (around Lchashen in Armenia). The chronology of the Central Transcaucasian Culture/Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture was initially dependent on the burial mounds of Tsitelgori in Kakheti and Lchashen in Armenia. The two burial mounds in the Tsitelgori hills and the burial mounds of Lchashen are from the same integrated culture and stand out because of the wealth of artefacts discovered at each.42 Both Pitskhelauri and Abramishvili date burial 2, the earlier of the two Tsitelgori burial mounds, to 1450–1350 BCE. Pitskhelauri’s lower chronological scheme places this burial within the transitional phase between Middle and Late Bronze Ages, preceding the Samtavro Culture of the Late Bronze Age. Under Abramishvili’s chronology, burial 2 at Tsitelgori dates to the Late Bronze Age, the same period as the burials from Samtavro that contain distinctive leaf-shaped bronze daggers, further discussed below. Abramishvili proposes this dating because in burial 2 at Tsitelgori, alongside pottery from the Middle Bronze Age, a vessel with an inverted lip and snapped carnelian beads were discovered. These are materials that are shared with the Late Bronze Age Samtavro culture and are found together with the leaf-shaped blades at Samtavro.43 Reliable radiocarbon dates for late prehistory and

38

 Abramishvili 2003; Akhvlediani 2005; Miron and Orthmann 1995, p. 192.  Pitskhelauri 1973, 1979. 40  Akhvlediani 2005. 41  Abramishvili 1997, 2003. 42  Akhvlediani 2005, p. 259. 43  Abramishvili 1997. 39

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the early historic period are still quite rare in the South Caucasus, although dates from Sajoge help secure the Late Bronze Age within the 15th–13th centuries.44 In the Tbilisi region of the central South Caucasus, the Lchashen-Tsitelgori and Samtavro material assemblages attest to the enduring role of this territory as a meeting point in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age and beyond. The sites of Sajoge, Namgalamitsa, Chalipiragorebi, Treligorebi (Treli) and Samtavro are particularly relevant to discussion of the cultural landscapes of Late Bronze-Early Iron Age Tbilisi-Mtskheta. The first four sites are located in the northwestern districts of Tbilisi whereas Samtavro is in Mtskehta. Sajoge and Namgalamitsa are identified with the Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture, Samtavro gives name to the Samtavro culture, whilst Chalipiragorebi and Treli contain materials belonging to both groups. The Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori cultures are materially distinguished on the basis of burial traditions, ceramic and metal weaponry styles, each of which will now be discussed. The Late Bronze Age earthen pit burials and stone-lined graves at Samtavro contain burial assemblages which imply a lack of social stratification, typically including snapped carnelian beads, bronze pins with coiled heads and ceramics with zoomorphic handles.45 The more elaborate cromlech burial style of Lchashen-Tsitelgori graves and the varying quality and quantity of ceramics, weaponry and personal adornments included in burial assemblages imply social differentiation. Lchashen-Tsitelgori burials include ceramics with typical stamped triangle designs, inverted rims, burnishing and pierced lug handles (Fig. 3a, b, c).46 Certain LchashenTsitelgori ceramic forms, such as large cooking pots with circular incised lines running the girth of the vessel from neck to base, are reminiscent of Middle Bronze Age Trialeti ceramic forms, providing some small continuity in style from the preceding period. The Samtavro ceramics are noted for their pinched, zoomorphic handles (Fig. 3d, e, f), a stylistic feature that lasts around 1000 years between the 15th and 6th centuries BCE, indicating exceptional cultural continuity and conservatism amongst Samtavro-style potters. The majority of Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori ceramics are wheel-made and the distinctive stylistic features of stamped triangles or zoomorphic handles are included on a wide range of vessels. The metalwork of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori and Samtavro assemblages also distinguishes the two sociocultural groups and, as will be discussed, points to stylistic exchange in the middle Kura valley during the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age. Unlike the continuity of the ceramic assemblages in this period, metalwork develops rapidly, particularly in forms of weaponry such as spears, daggers and axes.47 Spearheads and daggers are especially prevalent artefacts of the Late Bronze Age and they show clear regional variation (Fig. 4a, b, c). Lchashen-Tsitelgori spearheads are cast in one piece and have raised rings around the haft, similar to Near Eastern spearhead styles. Lchashen-Tsitelgori assemblages typically include 44

 Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008.  Akhvlediani 2005, p. 263; Apakidze 1981, 1995. 46  Stamped triangles can be seen on 11-25:88-36 (excavation inventory number, stored in the Georgian National Museum collections) from the upper building horizon of Sajoge (published in Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008, Fig. 7, No. 4) and on a pot from Namgalamitsa I, burial 3A, pot 5 (also published in Bedianashvili 2007, Fig. 2, No. 27); inverted rims can be seen on 11-22: 87-6 and 11-22: 90-6 from Chalipiragorebi. Burnishing is evident on many ceramics. 47  Abramishvili 2003; Akhvlediani 2005, p. 258. 45

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a

b

c d

e

f

Fig. 3. a) Pot showing distinctive stamped triangle design (Namgalamitsa burial 3a, pot 5; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum). b) Detail of a. c) Bowl with inverted rim from Chalipiragorebi (collection reference 11-22:87-6; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum). d) Bowl from Chalipiragorebi with a zoomorphic-style handle (collection reference 11-22:90-7; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum). e) Detail of the handle of d. f) Small vessel from Treligorebi with zoomorphic-style handle (collection reference 11-1:81-50 grave 171, number 3; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum).

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a

b

c

d Fig. 4. a) A spear head with an open shaft from Chalipiragorebi (collection reference 11-22:83-17, Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum). b) A spearhead with closed haft from Treligorebi (collection reference Treligorebi grave 24, 508; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum). c) A Kakhetian-style dagger on display at the Tbilisi Archaeological Museum from grave 1 at Sakdriskhevi cemetery. d) Snapped carnelian beads and six paste beads from Treligorebi (collection reference Treligorebi grave 178, number 86; Tbilisi Archaeological Museum collections, Georgian National Museum).

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pointed daggers, known as ‘Khakhetian’ daggers for the province immediately east of Tbilisi, which likewise bear resemblance to Near Eastern styles.48 Examples of metalwork from Lchashen-Tsitelgori contexts are produced using the lost-wax technique of openwork casting, including hollow bronze blade hilts and small figurines, the first examples of this technique in the central Caucasus.49 In contrast to the Lchashen-Tsitelgori metalwork, Samtavro style spearheads have an open haft, folded to meet around the shaft, and a noticeably flared head (sometimes called ‘flame’ spears). The daggers of the Samtavro culture are typically leaf-shaped, a form that is potentially related to leaf-shaped daggers found in eastern Europe.50 Hence, the meeting of the local Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori communities in the Tbilisi region also touches upon macro-cultural interactions though indirect stylistic exchange. Bronze axe styles show less marked differences between the Lchashen-Tsitelgori and Samtavro assemblages, but symmetrical central Caucasian axes are often included in the Lchashen-Tsitelgori assemblages. Samtavro assemblages include this type of axe from the 13th century onward, together with elongated Colchian-style axes or flat axes.51 The differing and distinctive burial styles, ceramic assemblages and range of weaponry permit the identification of Lchashen-Tsitelgori communities and Samtavro communities active within the middle Kura river valley between Mtskehta and Tbilisi. The material excavated from the sites of Sajoge, Namgalamitsa, Chalipiragorebi, Treligorebi (Treli) and Samtavro, now largely housed in the Georgian National Museum collections in Tbilisi, provides evidence for distinctive local developments and cultural exchange between the two different sociocultural groups living in and around these sites. The meeting and mingling of the eastern Lchashen-Tsitelgori and the central Samtavro cultures highlights the significance of the middle Kura River valley as a location of distinctive local development and far-reaching cultural exchange in the region. The 15th–13th century settlement of Sajoge contained ceramics of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori tradition and the materials from cromlech burials of Namgalamitsa, Chalipiragorebi and Treli indicate that these sites are coeval with Sajoge and belong to the same cultural group. Despite the proximity of Samtavro to the Tbilisi plain, no material from the Samtavro assemblage has been discovered at the settlement of Sajoge.52 During the period in which the sites at Sajoge, Namgalamitsa and Chalipiragorebi were established, the cemetery at Samtavro in Mtskheta was used exclusively by people identified with the Samtavro culture. At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age the hills between Mtskheta and the Tbilisi valley appear to have formed a cultural border. This is not a fixed boundary however, as materials from Mtskehta and regions northwest began to appear somewhat later in the Tbilisi valley, which became a sphere of interaction between the Lchashen-Tsitelgori people and the Samtavro people.

48

 Akhvlediani 2005, p. 270.  Abramishvili 1999, p. 57. 50  Puturidze and Akhvlediani 2009. 51  Abramishvili 2003; Akhvlediani 2005. 52  Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008. 49

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This shift is traced in the material record of Tbilisi dating to around the 13th–12th century BCE.53 At this time, the style of burial at Treli changed from mounds and cromlechs to funerary pits with stone fill. In addition to the changing burial construction, the burial assemblages at Treli began to indicate increasing influence from the Samtavro culture, including the appearance of distinctive ceramics with zoomorphic handles, carnelian beads (Fig. 4d) and jewellery corresponding to burial goods typical of Late Bronze Age Samtavro.54 The coexistence of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori and Samtavro people in the Tbilisi region during this period is particularly evident at Chalipiragorebi, which dates to the 14th and 13th centuries BCE and is located next to Treli in Tbilisi. The Lchashen-Tsitelgori cromlech-style burial tradition was maintained at the neighbouring cemetery of Chalipiragorebi even as the influence from Samtavro increased at Treli during the 13th century. Late Bronze–Early Iron Age cemeteries of Nakulbakebi, Sapurcle, Sabatono, Sakdrisxevi and Xevdsmara also contain cromlechs from this period. Despite the division of burial construction, between cromlechs and earthen pits, cultural interaction in burial traditions is indicated in burial assemblages. Samtavro-style zoomorphic handles were incorporated onto some of the Lchashen-Tsitelgori ceramics in the Tbilisi region, including at the adjacent burial sites of Treli and Chalipiragorebi (Fig. 3d).55 Samtavro-style spearheads were included in Lchashen-Tsitelgori-type burials at Chalipiragorebi, including burials 61 and 62. Pots with applied ceramic dots and those with ‘pie-crust’ bases and incised spiral bases are found in burials at Treli and in stone circle graves at Sakdrisxevi, Namgalamitsa and Nakulbakebi, as well as at the settlement of Sajoge.56 Metallurgy has been noted as a field which changes rapidly during the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age, and bronze spears, daggers and axes reveal clear cultural differences between the Lchashen-Tsitelgori and Samtavro communities. Metalwork also appears to be a medium of cultural exchange in this region by the Early Iron Age. Iron ore is found locally in the central South Caucasus and was integrated into the assemblage of the Samtavro culture around 1200 BCE.57 Iron objects were also included in Lchashen-Tsitelgori assemblages in the Tbilisi region, such as an iron knife in Treli burial 65.58 However, iron is absent in this period from some of the richest burials in Lchashen-Tsitelgori territory to the east and south, including the eponymous sites of Tsitelgori in Kakheti and Lchashen in Armenia.

53

 Abramishvili 1978; Akhvlediani 2005; Miron and Orthmann 1995.  Miron and Orthmann 1995; Tsetskhladze 2006/07, p. 80. 55  For instance, vessels located at Chalipiragorebi (11-22: 90-7) and Treli (11-1:81-50, grave 171, number 3). Again, all inventory numbers relate to the museum collections from these sites, largely housed in the Georgian National Museum stores. 56  Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008; Bedianashvili 2007. A cauldron with applied dots from Treli (grave 24, cauldron 3) resembles examples at Sakdrisxevi (11-12: 78-14), Nakulbakebi (burial 1, pot 8) and Xevdsmara (11-18:79-109, and also Grave 38, pot 3); the pie-crust spiral base is seen on a small cup at Treli (grave 48, 72-976), also at Nakulbakebi (burial 8, pot 4), a pot from barrow 5, Namgalamitsa I (see Bedianashvili 2007, Fig. 2, No. 27) and a similar base from the upper building horizon of Sajoge (see Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008, Fig. 9, No. 1). 57  By the seventh century all weapons found in the graves of Samtavro are of iron (Abramishvili 2003, pp. 18-19). 58  Akhvlediani 2005. 54

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The Lchashen-Tsitelgori people were adept bronze smiths and were evidently aware of iron technology but exhibit a cultural preference for bronze. The occurrence of early iron pieces in the Lchashen-Tsitelgori assemblages only in the Tbilisi region, which they shared with the Samtavro people, implies cultural interaction in this valley. From around the 13th century the influence of the Samtavro culture was maintained in Mtskheta and strengthened in Tbilisi. The Lchashen-Tsitelgori presence deteriorated in the Tbilisi region at this time, coinciding with the destruction of two buildings at Sajoge, dated to 1381–1277 BCE.59 The size of the settlement at Treligorebi increased and, as the Early Iron Age progressed, the Lchashen-Tsitelgori burial ground of Chalipiragorebi underwent a change in use: a settlement containing Samtavro ceramics was established adjacent to the earlier burial ground at Chalipiragorebi, adjoining the northern section of the Treligorebi settlement.60 This gradual change in the use of the site, which took place over several centuries, together with increasing quantities of Samtavro-style materials in Tbilisi, suggests that the balance of cultural influence in the valley had altered in the Early Iron Age. The distinctive cultural interaction that can be traced in the region during the first few centuries of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age had dissipated and the region now formed part of the larger Samtavro cultural sphere. As polities formed during the later Iron Age, the Tbilisi region was a meeting point for numerous South Caucasian cultural influences, though not such a distinctive frontier as during the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age.

III. CONCLUSIONS The development and integration of new material cultural groups in the Late Bronze– Early Iron Age, particularly in the 15th to 12th centuries BCE, makes this an important period for the investigation of social boundaries in Tbilisi-Mtskheta. In the Late Bronze Age a transitional period is revealed in which the establishment of a new settlement and subsistence regime can be traced. During this time, as settlements and cemeteries are established within the valley, the Lchashen-Tsitelgori culture inhabits the Tbilisi valley and the Samtavro culture becomes established in Mtskheta. The interplay between material cultural traditions, including the integration of stylistic traits of both the Samtavro and Lchashen-Tsitelgori sociocultural groups, seen particularly in the burials of Chalipiragorebi and Treligorebi in the middle Kura River valley, indicates a landscape of interaction and cultural exchange. Here we have a boundary zone, in which sociocultural differences are expressed and the relationships between social groups and their spatial organisation can be sketched. Presently, the precise nature of these interactions can only be traced in rather coarse chronological and material terms. But recent years have seen a surge of new research in the South Caucasus, including the reinvestigation of Samtavro61 and ongoing research at Sajoge and Treligorebi. Together with the re-evaluation of existing excavation results by a cohort 59

 Abramishvili and Orthmann 2008, p. 279.  Miron and Orthmann 1995. 61  Sagona et al. 2010. 60

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of local and international researchers, this work promises to enhance dialogues on cultural interactions in the region and refine our understanding of the relationships between the different communities living in the middle Kura River region in the late second millennium. The South Caucasus is once again the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, among archaeologists attempting to differentiate the degrees of entanglement among people, objects and practices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ABRAMISHVILI, M. 1999 “Early metallurgy in Georgia,” in National Treasures of Georgia, edited by O. Z. Soltes, pp. 56–57. London: Philip Wilson. ABRAMISHVILI, M. and ORTHMANN, W. 2008 “Excavations at Sajoge, 2003: Preliminary report,” in Archaeology in Southern Caucasus: Perspectives from Georgia (Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 19), edited by A. Sagona and M. Abramishvili, pp. 277–291. Leuven: Peeters. ABRAMISHVILI, R. 1978 Tbilisi I. Tbilisi: Metsniereba. 1997 “Chronological ordering of archaeological finds of Transcaucasia,” Bulletin of the Tbilisi Archaeological Museum 1. 2003 “Towards dating the remains of the Late Bronze Age and the period of the wide adoption of Iron, discovered at the Samtavro burial ground,” Dziebani (The Journal of the Centre for Archaeological Studies. Georgian Academy of Sciences) 10 (Supplement): Problems in Caucasian Bronze-Iron Age Archaeology: 12–26. AKHVLEDIANI, N. I. 2005 “Problems of the chronology of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age sites in Eastern Georgia (Kvemo Sasireti Hoard),” Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 11(3–4): 257–295. ANTHONY, D. W., BOGUCKI, P., COMŞA, E., GIMBUTAS, M., JOVANOVIĆ, B., MALLORY, J. P. and MILISAUKAS, S. 1986 “The ‘kurgan culture’, Indo-European origins, and the domestication of the horse: A reconsideration,” Current Anthropology 27(4): 291–313. APAKIDZE, A. (ed.) 1981 Mtskheta. Tbilisi: Metsniereba. 1995 Mtskheta. Tbilisi: Metsniereba. BARBER, G. M. 1988 Elementary Statistics for Geographers. New York: Guildford. BARTH, F. 1969 “Introduction,” in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the Social Organization of Cultural Difference, edited by F. Barth, pp. 9–37. London: Allen and Unwin. BEDIANASHVILI, G. 2007 “The Namgalamitsa barrows and their cultural environment,” Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 37: 171–174. BENDER, B. 1993 Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Providence: Berg. BINFORD, L. R. 1973 “Interassemblage variability: The Mousterian and the ‘functional’ argument,” in The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory, edited by A. C. Renfrew, pp. 227–254. London: Duckworth. 1980 “Willow smoke and dogs’ tails: hunter-gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation,” American Antiquity 45: 4–20.

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BIRKETT-REES, J. 2010 “Archaeological landscapes of Central Transcaucasia: An investigation of the TbilisiMtskheta region,” Journal of Archaeology of the Turkish Academy of Sciences/Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Dergisi 13: 293–312. 2012 “Power and presence: Landscape and tenure in Middle Bronze Age central Transcaucasia,” Ancient Near Eastern Studies 49: 61–94. BOURDIEU, P. 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BULKIN, V. A., KLEJN, L. S. and LEBEDEV, G. S. 1982 “Attainments and problems of Soviet Archaeology,” World Archaeology 13(3): 272–295. CHILDE, V. G. 1929 The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1939 The Dawn of European Civilization. London: Kegan Paul. CLARKE, D. 1968 Analytical Archaeology. London: Methuen. CONKEY, M. W. 1990 “Experimenting with style in archaeology,” in The Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by M. W. Conkey and C. A. Hastorf, pp. 5–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CONKEY, M. W. and HASDORF, C. A. (eds) 1990 The Uses of Style in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CONNOR, S. E. 2011 A Promethean Legacy: Late Quaternary Vegetation History of Southern Georgia, Caucasus (Ancient Near Easter Studies Supplement 34). Leuven: Peeters. DIETLER, M. and HERBICH, I. 1998 “Habitus, techniques and style: an integrated approach to the social understanding of material culture boundaries,” in The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, edited by M. T. Stark, pp. 233–263. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. DONNAN, H. and WILSON, T. 1999 Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State. Oxford: Berg. GOGICHAISHVILI, L. K. 1990 “Vegetation and human occupation in the lowlands and foothills of eastern Georgia in the Middle Holocene,” in Man’s Role in the Shaping of the Eastern Mediterranean Landscape, edited by S. Bottema, G. Entjes-Nieborg and W. Van Zeist, pp. 265–269. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema. GOTIJE, Y. V. 1930 Zheleznyi vek v Vostochnoj Yevrope. Moscow: Gosizdat. GREEN, S. W. and PERLMAN, S. M. (eds) 1985 The Archaeology of Frontiers and Boundaries. Orlando: Academic Press. HEGMON, M. 1998 “Technology, style, and social practices: Archaeological approaches,” in The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, edited by M. T. Stark, pp. 264–279. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. HODDER, I. 1979 “Social and economic stress and material culture patterning,” American Antiquity 44: 446–454. 1990 “Style as historical quality,” in The Uses of Style in Archaeology, edited by M. W. Conkey and C. A. Hastorf, pp. 44–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011 “Human-thing entanglement: Towards an integrated archaeological perspective,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(1): 154–177. HODDER, I. and CESSFORD, C. 2004 “Daily practice and social memory at Çatalhöyük,” American Antiquity 69(1): 17–40. JANELIDZE, C. P. 1980 Paleogeografiia Gruzii v Golotsene (Holocene Palaeogeography of Georgia). Tbilisi: Metsniereba.

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JAPARIDZE, O. 1999 “From the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age in Georgia,” in National Treasures of Georgia, edited by O. Z. Soltes, pp. 62–65. London: Philip Wilson. JONES, S. 1997 The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present. London: Routledge. KLEJN, L. S. 1977 “A panorama of theoretical archaeology,” Current Anthropology 18(1): 1–42. KUFTIN, B. 1946 “Prehistoric culture sequence in Transcaucasia,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 2(3): 340–360. KVAVADZE, E. 1999 “The result of palynological studies of sediments from the cultivated layers of the later Bronze and early Iron Ages in the steppe regions of Georgia,” Acta Palaeobotanica Supplement 2: 555–559. LEFEBVRE, H. 1991 The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell. LEMONNIER, P. 1986 “The study of material culture today: Toward an anthropology of technical systems,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5: 147–186. MCKERN, W. C. 1939 “The midwestern taxonomic method as an aid to archaeological culture survey,” American Antiquity 4(3): 301–313. MIRON, A. and ORTHMANN, W. 1995 Unterwegs zum Goldenen Vlies. Saabrücken: Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. MONGAIT, A. 1961 Archaeology in the U.S.S.R. Baltimore: Penguin Books. MULLIN, D. (ed.) 2011 Places in Between: The Archaeology of Social, Cultural and Geographic Borders and Borderlands. Oxford: Oxbow. PITSKHELAURI, K. N. 1973 The Main Problems in the History of Eastern Georgian Tribes in the 15-12th Centuries BC (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Georgian Academy of Sciences. 1979 Vostochnaia Gruzia v Kontse Bronzovogo Veka (The end of the Bronze Age in eastern Georgia). Tbilisi: Metsniereba. PRESCOTT, J. R. V. 1965 The Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries. London: Hutchinson and Co. PUTURIDZE, M. and AKHVLEDIANI, N. 2009 Georgia on the Crossroads of Eurasian Civilizations: Conference Abstracts Via Egnatia: Peoples and States, November 20–23, Tbilisi, Georgia. Electronic document. https:// sanoze.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/m-puturidze-n-akhvledinieast-georgia-on-thecrossroads-of-eurasian-civilizations/. 3 March 2015. RENFREW, A. C. 1977 “Space, time and polity,” The Evolution of Social Systems 89: 112. ROBERTS, B. K. 1987 “Landscape Archaeology,” in Landscape and Culture: Geographical and Archaeological Perspectives, edited by J. M. Wagstaff, pp. 77–95. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. RUBINSON, K. and SMITH, A. T. 2003 “Introduction,” in Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond, edited by A. T. Smith and K. Rubinson, pp. 1–8. Los Angeles: The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. SACKETT, J. R. 1982 “Approaches to style in lithic archaeology,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1(1): 59–112.

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SAGONA, A., NIKOLAISHVILI, V., SAGONA, C., OGLEBY, C., PILBROW, V., BRIGGS, C., GIUNASHVILI, G. and MANJEGALADZE, G. 2010 “Bridging two continents: Renewed investigations at Samtavro, Georgia,” Journal of Archaeology of the Turkish Academy of Sciences/Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Dergisi 13: 313–338. SCHAMA, S. 1995 Landscape and Memory. London: Harper Perennial. SHANKS, M. and TILLEY, C. 1987 Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press. SHNIRELMAN, V. A. 1995 “From internationalism to nationalism: Forgotten pages of Soviet archaeology in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by P. Kohl and C. Fawcett, pp. 120–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SMITH, A. T. 1999 “The making of an Urartian landscape in southern Transcaucasia: A study of political architectonics,” American Journal of Archaeology 103(1): 45–71. 2005 “Prometheus unbound: Southern Caucasia in prehistory,” Journal of World Prehistory 19: 229–279. STARK, M. T. (ed.) 1998a The Archaeology of Social Boundaries. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1998b “Technical choices and social boundaries in material culture patterning: An introduction,” in The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, edited by M. T. Stark, pp. 1–11. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. THOMAS, J. 1993 “The politics of vision and the archaeologies of landscape,” in Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, edited by B. Bender, pp. 19–46. Providence: Berg Publishers. THOMAS, N. 1991 Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. TRIGGER, B. 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TSAGARELI, A. L. 1964 “Chetvertichnaia Sistema (Quaternary System),” in Geologiia SSSR X, Gruzinskaia SSR, edited by P. D. Gamkrelidze, pp. 332–352. Moscow: Nedra. TSETSKHLADZE, G. R. 2006/07“Ancient west and east: Mtskheta, capital of Caucasian Iberia,” Mediterranean Archaeology 19/20: 75–107. UDALTSOV, A. D. 1943 “Nachalnyi period vostochnoslavyanskogo etnogeneza,” Istoricheskii Zhurnal 11/12: 67–72. VAN HOUTUM, H. 2005 “The geopolitics of borders and boundaries,” Geopolitics 10: 672–679. WICK, L., LEMCKE, G. and STURM, M. 2003 “Evidence of Lateglacial and Holocene climatic change and human impact in Eastern Anatolia: High-resolution pollen, charcoal, isotopic and geochemical Rrecords from the laminated sediments of Lake Van, Turkey,” The Holocene 13(5): 665–675.

CULTURAL BORDERS AT THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN EDGES OF THE CENTRAL ANATOLIAN PLATEAU IN THE SECOND AND PRE-CLASSICAL FIRST MILLENNIA BCE A. Tuba ÖKSE, Rainer M. CZICHON and Mehmet Ali YILMAZ ABSTRACT During the second and pre-classical first millennia BCE, the archaeological record from the northeastern part of the Anatolian Plateau presents different patterns of settlement, political structures and external relations which often separate the central Black Sea region and the Upper Kızılırmak Basin from the Upper Euphrates Basin. During the Middle Bronze Age, the first two regions hosted city-states well integrated with the Assyrian trade network, while local material culture characterised the latter. Under the Hittites, the central Black Sea region became the Kaška territory and the Upper Kızılırmak Basin the Azzi-Hayaša frontiers, both with new fortified settlements, and Meliddu, Išuwa and Alzi vassal kingdoms shared territorial control over the Upper Euphrates Basin. After the collapse of the empire, small hamlets replaced urban and rural settlements, and handmade vessels associated with nomadic tribes appeared; they correspond to Uruatri, Muški and Nairi in the Upper Euphrates Basin, and Tabal in the Upper Kızılırmak Basin. In the Middle Iron Age, central Anatolian material culture dominated the north, but on the Black Sea coast Milesian colonies introduced goods and customs from the Aegean. At this time, the Upper Euphrates became the border of the spread of Central Anatolian vis-à-vis Urartian artefacts. Also, traces of Eurasian nomadic tribes appear, and ‘Eastern Greek’ and Persian influence become evident in the Late Iron Age.

INTRODUCTION Borders of ancient states are difficult to sketch out, since historical and archaeological data enables only a scanty comprehension. Neither can the ancient land names be localised with certainty, nor is the material culture obtained from ancient sites adequate to draw accurate extents of cultural unities. Archaeological materials may define comparative cultural extents, but the determination of political borders is a risky process. The spread of the material culture may merely define the distribution area of goods produced by a workshop. In this case, the product of each workshop should be distributed within a limited area. On the other hand, state organisation may enable a uniform production of several workshops within its domain; in such a case, the vast area over which similar products spread may correspond to state borders. Goods produced by dissimilar techniques may indicate co-habitants with varied economic circumstances or even different ways of life, such as agriculturalists and stockbreeders. Nevertheless, varying qualities among analogic material – particularly pottery – may indicate peripheral production, and the co-existence of foreign cultural components having influence on local cultures point to transition zones and borderlands. This contribution deals with the cultural and historical structure of the western borderland of the Eastern Anatolian highlands during the second and pre-classical first millennia BCE.

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Map 1. Topography and ancient lands.

The Central Anatolian plateau is geographically defined as the high plateau between Western Anatolia and the Eastern Anatolian highlands. The rough topographical structure of the region is watered mainly by the Kızılırmak River and its tributaries (see Map 1). In the northern part of the region, the north-central Anatolian Mountains run in the east–west direction (see Czichon below). The plateau to the south is encircled by the Kızılırmak curve. The plateau is higher in the upper flow of the Kızılırmak; mountain ranges to the north and south of the valley become higher in the east, combining the Eastern Anatolian mountain ranges (see Ökse below). The Tohmaçay breaks through these ranges, providing a natural route to the Upper Euphrates region. The northern part of the Central Anatolian plateau extending up to the Black Sea is handled in two separate sub-chapters, and the southern part – the Upper Kızılırmak and Upper Euphrates regions, consisting of a rugged terrain turning into a mountainous region – in another.

NORTH-CENTRAL ANATOLIA IN THE BRONZE AGE (R. M. Czichon) In contrast to present-day geography where “size, form and borders”1 of villages, cities and states can be marked precisely, the exact definition of the boundaries of ancient empires is virtually impossible. It gets more difficult the further we go back into history. Indeed, we are able to outline the shape and borders of the Hittite Empire with coloured zones and dashed lines on a map,2 but an accurate localisation of these boundaries in the open country is not possible. One reason is our fragmentary knowledge of the Hittite geography – only a few Hittite sites, rivers and mountains can be identified so far. Another reason is the difficulty of determining and confirming identities with only archaeological material at 1

 Hütteroth and Höhfeld 2002, p. 18.  Van den Hout 2013, p. 25. See also in general d’Alfonso’s chapter in this volume.

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hand.3 This is especially compelling for north-central Anatolia, where the northern border of the Hittite Empire has to be located in a region where, according to the texts, the socalled Kaška dwelt. According to the geographer Herbert Louis, “North-Central Anatolia” implies an area 600 km long and up to 200 km wide, which is covered by the north-central Anatolian mountains and is for the most part forested.4 The region is characterised by several mountain ranges stretching west–east and with long valleys and basins in between. The breakthrough valley of the Kızılırmak separates the area into a western and an eastern half. The eastern half ranges from the Yeşilırmak fan with the Tokat, Turhal and Amasya Mountains in the south until the Canik Mountains in the north, including the Kelkit-Erzincan furrow. The western half extends from the Köroğlu Mountains in the south to the coastal mountains along the Black Sea (Map 1).5 The original coastline of the Black Sea ran further north before it reached its present state during a flooding period in early Chalcolithic times, around 5600 BCE.6 Since the pioneering work done by Kılıç Kökten and Nimet and Tahsin Özgüç in the 1940s,7 which established a basis for scientific investigations, several expeditions of different disciplines have contributed to the elucidation of the history and culture of north-central Anatolia. Numerous archaeological surveys and short-term excavations8 stand in contrast to a few long-term excavations, which provide in only one case material for the second half of the second millennium BCE (Map 2). At the four mounds of İkiztepe, the 30-year-long excavations concentrated on the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age layers, so that our knowledge of the site’s Middle Bronze Age remains is quite limited.9 At Oluz Höyük, near Amasya, the Middle and Late Bronze Age layers have not been reached yet.10 Only from the site of Oymaağaç Höyük near Vezirköprü have architectural features and small finds, including around 20 cuneiform tablets from Bronze Age and Iron Age contexts, been reported.11 Fundamental geological and metallurgical research has been conducted by Wagner and Öztunalı, Hadi Özbal and Önder Bilgi et al.12 A detailed mapping of geological features in the surrounding of Oymaağaç Höyük was done by Volker von Seckendorff.13 In the same area, botanical and palaeobotanical research was carried out, the subsequent results of which are available.14 In the recent past, comprehensive work on the interpretation and re-evaluation of the philological sources from the Old Assyrian and Hittite periods has been published.15 3

 A. Ünal 2014, p. 470.  Louis 1985, p. 10. 5  Louis 1985, pp. 130–133. 6  Ballard et al. 2001, pp. 607–609, fig. 1; Hiebert 2001, p. 13. 7  Kökten 1944; Kökten et al. 1945. 8  Barjamovic 2011, pp. 70 ff.; Gerçek 2012, pp. 11–13, notes 22, 23. 9  Alkım et al. 2003, pp. 149–151. 10  Dönmez and Yurtsever-Beyazit 2013, p. 269. 11  See the homepage of the Oymaağaç Project: www.nerik.de. 12  Wagner and Öztunalı 2000, pp. 40 ff.; Özbal 2000; Önder Bilgi et al. 2004, pp. 9–30. 13  Von Seckendorff 2006, pp. 177–188. 14  Kürschner 2006, pp. 189–197 (botanical); Riehl and Marinova-Wolff 2011, pp. 206–212 (palaeobotanical). 15  Barjamovic 2011; Forlanini 2013; Gerçek 2012; Klinger 1996. 4

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In spite of this huge quantity of material evidence, we are still far from understanding the history of north-central Anatolia. As physical remains of the Neolithic period are absent, the first settlements with agriculture, food storage and animal husbandry are presumed to be from the beginning of the Chalcolithic Age.16 The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages are highlighted by the excavation results of İkiztepe, which is considered to be a centre for the arsenical-copper industry and the production of linen textiles in the Black Sea region. This status is proven by hundreds of ‘pear shaped’ loom weights,17 as well as by furnaces and casting moulds and especially metal weapons, tools and figurines, which served as grave goods.18 With high probability, the raw material in the form of ingots stemmed from the copper mines at Bakırçay south of Köprübaşı near Vezirköprü and was exchanged for textiles.19 Alongside the Chalcolithic transport route, which is still in use, several new settlements were founded, to which belong Adatepe-Tepecik (Map 2) and Oymaağaç Höyük.20 The latter is situated at the northeastern edge of the basin of Vezirköprü, close to a ford over the Kızılırmak. With the completion of the Altınkaya Dam and the flooding of the riverbanks in 1988, the river crossing is now managed downstream by ferryboats. The systematic archaeological investigation of ancient copper mines and slag heaps in the Tavşan Mountains and an intensive survey of the proposed transport route between Köprübaşı and İkiztepe are among the most urgent tasks in the near future. Another important question is the stratigraphy of the key Black Sea site İkiztepe and the dating of its

Map 2. Major Middle Bronze Age sites.

16

 Schoop 2005.  Bilgi 2001b, p. 94, fig. 8. 18  Bilgi et al. 2004, pp. 48–71; Bilgi 2012, pp. 170–175. 19  Bilgi 2001a, pp. 33–36. 20  Czichon et al. 2006. 17

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Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age levels. According to Ulf Schoop, the oldest layer of İkiztepe II Sondage B has to be re-dated to the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth millennium BC.21 A major question for this period is the possible existence of boundaries. Big differences in style between the terracotta figurines from İkiztepe on the one hand and Alacahöyük and Oymaağaç Höyük on the other point to a division between a central north Anatolian zone and a Black Sea coastal zone.22 But one has to keep in mind that there are no available comparisons for the figurines of İkiztepe due to the lack of excavations in its vicinity. To the question of the ethnic origins of the prehistoric people in north-central Anatolia, which has been discussed in depth by philologists,23 there is no answer from the archaeological viewpoint. We are unable to decide whether the inhabitants were autochthonous or if they immigrated into this region. Another matter of discussion is the identification of İkiztepe with “Zalpa at the sea” known from Old Assyrian and Hittite sources.24 For a long time this identification has been rejected only by the excavator Önder Bilgi,25 but in recent years it has been questioned by Jörg Klinger as well. According to Klinger, Zalpa could be situated further inland,26 which would match well with Paşaşeyh Tepesi (Map 2), a site located 20 km south of İkiztepe.27 Another possible candidate is a site in the surroundings of the village of Bengü (Map 2), where Late Bronze Age remains have been reported (see below), because a Hittite Imperial period text mentions a LÚAGRIG at Zalpa.28 Nevertheless, wherever Zalpa is localised, it did not belong to the inner circle of the Old Assyrian trading posts, according to the recent investigations by Gojko Barjamovic.29 Is it possible that “Zalpa at the sea” lost its importance due to the rising imports of tin and the preference for Cypriote copper, which caused products made of arsenical copper to become obsolete? Maybe the same argument is valid for the linen production of İkiztepe, which could not compete with the sheep’s wool fabrics of higher quality imported from Babylonia. Other reasons might be changes in the transport system, which preferred heavy loaded four wheeled ox-drawn carts to donkey caravans and required well-prepared roads and bridges instead of narrow pathways, which were more suited to the rough terrain of the Pontic Mountains.30 Surprisingly, the material culture of Middle Bronze Age İkiztepe and the numerous contemporaneous sites in the north Anatolian neighbourhood discovered by archaeological surveys corresponds well with the pottery, tools and seals of Central Anatolia.31 This means 21

 Schoop 2005, pp. 307–322, Appendix 1; Muhly 2011, p. 868.  Bilgi 2001b, p. 93, fig. 5; Czichon et al. 2006, p. 169. 23  See, for example, Bryce 1999, pp. 8 ff., esp. p. 13. 24  Otten 1975, pp. 58 ff. 25  Bilgi 1998; Yurtsever 2004, p. 74. 26  Czichon et al. 2006, p. 161. 27  Dönmez and Yurtsever-Beyazit 2008, p. 110. 28  Del Monte and Tischler 1978, p. 491. For the historical geography of northern Anatolia and Zalpa in particular see most recently Corti 2017, pp. 219ff., esp. pp. 226–228. 29  Barjamovic 2011, p. 381, fig. 49. 30  Radner 2012. 31  V. Müller-Karpe 2001, p. 433, fig. 2. 22

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that for some time the north remained a part of this “prosperous and cosmopolitan society”,32 which comprised Hittite, Luwian, Hurrite and Hattic elements. How this period of interconnection with Central Anatolia, which seems quite peaceful to modern observers – aside from the struggles between Zalpa and Kaneš33 – came to an end at the beginning of the Hittite empire in the 17th century BCE is still a mystery. The Kaška, that is, “loosely affiliated tribal groups”,34 were held responsible for this profound change. Unfortunately, we can see them only through Hittite eyes. They are archaeologically invisible at the present stage of excavation techniques and of our knowledge. We have no idea about their language, their settlements and their living habits, or their material culture. For that reason, most archaeologists (the author of this paper included) are influenced by the negative Hittite propaganda that characterised the Kaška as non-sedentary people who bred pigs and wove linen. In her dissertation, “The Kashka and the Northern Frontier of Hatti,” İlgi Nebahat Gerçek has taken a new approach. For the first time since Einar von Schuler’s pioneering work on the Kaška published in 1965, all of the Kaškaen texts were reassessed and related to the available archaeological data. As a result, the insight into the Kaška altered. In accordance with Klinger, Gerçek believes that the Kaška were not an ethnic group with their own language and culture.35 In fact they were autochthonous people of the Black Sea area, who spoke the same language as the Hittites,36 who lived at the edge of the Hittites’ territory in the cities as well as in the countryside,37 and who sometimes even shared their herds with the Hittites.38 They were probably the same people, but they were not willing to pay tributes and deliver soldiers and labourers to the Hittite king. Hence they became outsiders,39 who were outlawed by the Hittites with the negatively connoted name “Kaška”. But why do we not have Late Bronze Age settlement remains in the Black Sea’s coastal areas, which were – according to survey results – densely settled in the Middle Bronze Age and earlier periods? There are only a few exceptions, in the form of ‘shaft-hole axes’ of a Late Bronze Age type found at the village of Bengü,40 which was unfortunately inundated by the Altınkaya Dam without any salvage exploration being conducted. Do we really have to hold reasons like economics and trade wars responsible for that situation? Was the employment of new markets in the Old Assyrian Period the main reason that the Hittites lost their interest in Pontic metal and textile products? Did the international Black Sea trade which has been postulated for the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age collapse?41 Were those the reasons why the coastal people left their homeland and oriented themselves to the south, in the direction of the new Hittite power centre at Hattuša and to the plains with the fertile 32

 Sagona and Zimansky 2009, p. 240.  Bryce 1999, p. 35. 34  Matthews 2004, p. 206. 35  Gerçek 2012, p. 27; Klinger 2008, p. 279. 36  Gerçek 2012, p. 56. 37  Gerçek 2012, p. 60. 38  Gerçek 2012, pp. 40, 341. 39  Gerçek 2012, p. 30. 40  Bilgi 2004, p. 95; Dengate 1978, pp. 254–257, plate III 6–8. 41  Hiebert 200, p. 12; Zimmermann 2007, p. 30. 33

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fields which were easier to cultivate than the forested Pontic Mountains, where every piece of land had to be eked out of the rocky hills? This situation could be a cause for the formation of a ‘frontier zone’ with several fortified settlements at the Devrez Çay, postulated by Roger Matthews and Claudia Glatz on the basis of their results from the Paphlagonia Survey.42 In that ‘frontier zone’ the uprooted people of the Pontus region met with the henchmen of Hattuša and struggled with them for the “bread baskets” in Paphlagonia and neighbouring Phazemonitis.43 It could also be a reason for the conquest of Nerik by the Kaškaens. The occupants of Nerik not only got the Hittite’s holy city of the weather-god under his control; he also controlled the main settlement of the plain of Vezirköprü with its 225 km2 of fertile fields (Fig. 1) and a surprisingly rich variety of vegetation caused by a comparatively mild climate.44 The localisation of Nerik at the site of Oymaağaç Höyük (Fig. 2), which is located 7 km northwest of Vezirköprü-Neoklaudiopolis (see www.sdu.dk/halys), is now widely accepted. The most important arguments for this identification are more than 20 fragments of Hittite cuneiform tablets. They mention several times the city of Nerik and the weather-god of Nerik, as well as his wife Zahšapuna and the Haharwa Mountains, which always appear in close connection to Nerik in the so-called Nerik-texts from Hattuša.45 An architectural

Fig. 1. View from the north of the Vezirköprü plain to the Tavşan Mountain (Nerik Archive).

42

 Matthews and Glatz 2009, p. 56; Matthews 2004, pp. 202–205.  Hoffner 2009, p. 91. 44  Riehl and Marinova-Wolff 2011, p. 212. 45  Klinger 2011, pp. 220–224. 43

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Fig. 2. Aerial photograph of Oymaağaç Höyük (Photo: Orhan Özgülbaş).

element of the temple of the weather-god of Nerik called “dahanga” is mentioned twice in the texts from Oymaağaç, once made of wood and once made of stone. It cannot be coincidence that this Hattic terminus, which appears only in conjunction with the temple of the weather-god of Nerik,46 was detected twice in the texts from Oymaağaç Höyük. The information in the texts is being supported by archaeological evidence. At the highest point of the 3000-year-old mound of Oymaağaç Höyük, which measures 190 × 200 m – that is, in its northeastern corner – a huge official building consisting of several building phases has been unearthed. The inventory of this building, probably the temple of the weather-god, comprises hundreds of miniature vessels, as well as horn, leg, eye and body fragments of several red polished and cream-painted bull figurines which served as symbolic animals of the weather-god.47 Preliminary analysis of the pottery indicates that the older phase of the temple belonged to the Old Hittite period, while the younger phase has to be dated to the very end of the Hittite Empire period. That fits well with the historical information about Nerik, which mentions a conquest of Nerik by the Kaška in the Old Hittite period (15th century BCE) and a restoration of Hittite rule under Hattušili III in the Imperial Age (1267–1237 BCE). Immediately east of the temple entrance is a vaulted staircase with more than 50 steps, made out of stone in the upper part and hewn out of the natural travertine rock in the lower part (Fig. 3). The stairs lead through a rock chamber and continue down to a 2.20 m-deep 46

 Haas 1994, p. 601.  Czichon 2011a, pp. 213 ff.

47

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Fig. 3. Vaulted stairs leading to spring of Nerik (Nerik Archive).

water basin, which received its water from a pipe in the rear wall. There is no doubt left that this 30 m-long impressive stone construction has to be identified with the “holy spring of Nerik” mentioned in the Hittite texts.48 Even if it is dangerous to connect ‘pots and people’, it is nevertheless tempting to associate a type of painted ware, which appears in older contexts at Oymaağaç Höyük than the painted ware of the Early Iron Age, with the Kaška.49 The identification of Nerik with Oymaağaç Höyük is currently the only fixed point of Hittite geography in north-central Anatolia. The people who controlled Nerik did also control the basin of Vezirköprü as far as the Tavşan Mountains, which have to be identified with the Haharwa Mountains.50 That means that at a time when Nerik was under the control of the Kaškaens, the Hittite territory began farther to the south, beyond the Tavşan Mountain, possibly in the plain of Merzifon. Summing up, there is good evidence to reconstruct the border line between Hittite and Kaška territory after the Old-Kingdom and up to the campaigns of Hattušili III. The border ran from the Devrez Çay in the west,51 to the Tavşan Mountains at the southern

48

 Eerbeek 2011, pp. 238–243; Mielke 2018.  Mielke in press. 50  Alparslan 2010, p. 36. 51  Matthews and Glatz 2005, p. 62. 49

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edge of the plain of Vezirköprü and continued north of Amasya until the mountains which border the Kelkit valley in the south. How this border line moved northwards after the recapture of the area by Hattušili III is far from being clear. We have only very scanty information about the event taking place at the end of the Hittite Empire in North Anatolia, despite the discovery of three tablet fragments from the latest Hittite layer of Oymaağaç Höyük which mention a certain Šuppiluliuma, who has probably to be identified with the last Hittite king Šuppiluliuma II, according to Jörg Klinger.52 In that case, Nerik stayed under Hittite control until the very end of the Hittite Empire.

NORTH-CENTRAL ANATOLIA IN THE IRON AGE (M. A. Yılmaz) Excavations and surveys operating in the central Black Sea region since the beginning of the 20th century contribute significantly to the formation of our understanding of the Iron Age scenario in the area. The Iron Age periodisation by Kealhofer and Grave, based partly on the 14C dates of Central Anatolian key sites and partly on main political events reported through written sources, are also used here for the central Black Sea region:53 Early Iron Age 1190–900 BCE, Middle Iron Age 900–600/550 BCE, Late Iron Age 600/550–330 BCE. In addition to the surveys carried out in the central Black Sea region, excavations undertaken at Akalan, Maşat Höyük, İkiztepe, Oluz Höyük and Oymaağaç Höyük provide the backbone for the definition and dating of the ceramic classes characterising the material culture of Iron Age communities. Early Iron Age After the collapse of the Hittite Empire, cuneiform texts disappear from the former core of the Hittite territory. The period of almost 400 years following the collapse, whose causes are still debated, was called a ‘Dark Age’. Excavations carried out during the last two decades in Central Anatolia have cast more light on this dark age (Map 3); from the Early Iron Age onwards, changes in material culture could be observed and characterised there. In particular, the post-Hittite levels at Büyükkaya-Boğazköy (Map 4) attest to a transition to a largely handmade production, and the gradual introduction of new shapes and typical red-painted decorations (Fig. 4).54 While contacts with the Early Iron Age ceramic assemblage from Büyükkaya are evident, for the central Black Sea region, the definition of the material culture of this period remains problematic.55 Mehmet and Nesrin Özsait, who have been carrying out surveys in the region since 1986, claim that some potsherds they found in Amasya and Samsun were similar to

52

 Klinger 2011, pp. 220, 223–224.  Kealhofer and Grave 2011, pp. 417ff. 54  Genz 2004. 55  Dönmez 2003, pp. 214 ff. 53

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Map 3. Major Late Bronze Age sites.

Map 4. Major Early Iron Age sites (after K. Matsumara 2005, Abb. 5.3-1).

the Early Iron Age sherds from Boğazköy-Büyükkaya (see Map 4).56 Red-painted decorations such as dotted triangles, hatched triangles, and chevrons and facets on the rim are seen mostly on handmade sherds.57 M. Özsait is of the opinion that these sherds may have been related to local communities within the Hittite territory, especially to the Kaška.58 Şevket 56

 Özsait and Özsait 2002a, pp. 79–95; 2002b, p. 536; Özsait 2003, p. 132.  Özsait and Özsait 2002a, plates I–VI. 58  Özsait 2003, p. 132. 57

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Dönmez argues that these sherds rather date to the last period of the Early Iron Age, according to the current archaeological findings and Özsait’s surveys in the central Black Sea region. Therefore a direct link to the Kaška seems less likely.59 Recent excavations at Vezirköprü/Oymaağaç Höyük (Map 4) have produced new evidence relevant to the definition of the central Black Sea Early Iron Age ceramic classes.60 Among the potsherds collected from the surface at Oymaağaç during the 2005 and 2007 surveys, one handmade example was decorated with dotted triangles similar to those from Boğazköy/Büyükkaya discussed above.61 At Oymaağaç, after this early, episodic find, Early Iron Age vessels were excavated from the bottom of several pits, probably used as granary storages. The architectural context of the pits is not clear. They must have belonged to houses, but up to now only a two-roomed weaving atelier and a one-roomed building nearby have come to light. A possible explanation may be provided by agricultural activities which cut off the upper parts of the pits, as well as most of the stone foundations of the Early Iron Age houses.62 The Early Iron Age vessels identify a ceramic horizon different from the one of the Hittite period. The Late Bronze Age pottery from Oymaağaç Höyük is generally wheel-made, non-burnished, self-slipped and with light brown or buff paste. On the contrary, the Early Iron Age pottery is handmade, coarse-tempered and well burnished, having a surface colour changing from light brown to black, due to usage. In addition to plain ware, a red-painted pottery is found at Oymaağaç Höyük and at several surveyed sites in north-central Anatolia. Chevron, dotted triangle and stylised tree motifs were applied in red or reddish brown on a light ground (Fig. 4: 1–3). The handmade plain ware is similar to the one found at Boğazköy/Büyükkaya, Boğazköy/Büyükkale, Çadır Höyük and Eskiyapar.63 In addition, parallels to the handmade pottery decorated with painted dotted triangles from Oymaağaç are attested at Boğazköy/Büyükkaya, Çadır Höyük, and Eskiyapar,64 as well as at a large number of surveyed sites (Fig. 4: 4–5).65 Recent excavations at Amasya/Oluz Höyük (Map 4) provide further information on the last portion of the Early Iron Age. Painted pottery similar to that found at Kilise Tepe and dated to the end of Early Iron Age and the beginning of the Middle Iron Age was collected in 2009 in trench B beneath the Early Iron Age Level 6.66

59

 Dönmez 2010a, p. 146.  Czichon 2010, p. 21, res. 10; 2013, p. 309. 61  Yılmaz 2014, p. 69 ff. 62  Czichon 2011b, pp. 198 ff.; Yılmaz 2015, p. 61. 63  Genz 2004, tables 19: 7, 9; 27: 10; 34: 9; 35: 6 (Boğazköy/Büyükkaya); Genz 2003b, p. 117, figs 2: 1, 4, 5, 7; 3: 3, 4, 6, 7 (Boğazköy/Büyükkale); Genz 2001b, p. 167, fig. 1: 7–8 (Çadır Höyük); Bayburtluoğlu 1979, p. 301, res. 2 (Eskiyapar). 64  Genz 2001a, p. 2; 2004, tables 27: 2; 34: 9 (Boğazköy/Büyükkaya); Ross 2010, fig. 5b (Çadır Höyük); Bayburtluoğlu 1979, p. 174, res. 6b–7 (Eskiyapar). 65  Özsait and Özsait 2002a, fig. 2: 8, plates II/4, III/3, 4, 6; 2002b, res. 1/6, 7, plates 1/1, 2, 3, 4, 7. 66  Dönmez 2010b, p. 292. 60

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Fig. 4. Early Iron Age pottery from north-central Anatolia. 1–3: Samsun/Oymaağaç Höyük (Yılmaz 2015); 4: Amasya/Oymaağaç Kalebaşı (Özsait and Özsait 2002, Pl. V/5); 5: Küçük Küllük (Özsait and Özsait 2002, Pl. II/1); 6: Eskiyapar (Bayburtluoğlu 1979, res. 6b); 7: Çadır Höyük (Genz 2001, fig. 1/7-9); 8: Böğazköy/Büyükkaya (Genz 2001a, p. 2); 9: Böğazköy/Büyükkale (Genz 2003, Abb. 2/3–7).

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Middle Iron Age The transition from the Early Iron Age to the Middle Iron Age in Central Anatolia is marked by settlements, gradual growth of settlement dimensions and complexity: good examples are Boğazköy/Büyükkale II and Yassıhöyük/Gordion.67 For ceramic production, Central Anatolian settlements that were characterised by handmade production in the Early Iron Age (almost all except Kaman-Kalehöyük) rapidly move back to the use of the wheel. Two different pottery regions – western and eastern – are distinguished in Central Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age.68 Grey wares, epitomised in examples from Gordion, represent the western regional production and have been traditionally associated with the area of influence of the Phrygian kingdom. In the eastern region, these grey wares are rarely represented. Summers defines the eastern border of the Phrygian Kingdom according to the grey wares, based on data provided by Ian Todd’s surveys in Kırşehir, Nevşehir and Niğde.69 Grey wares are represented by only a few sherds at Kaman Kalehöyük (Map 5). As the morphology of these sherds does not match with other pottery at Kaman Kalehöyük, it is hypothesised that these exceptional pieces of the grey ware are imported goods.70 East of the Kızılırmak curve, the main ceramic production is represented primarily by dark brown on light slip pottery characterised by silhouette style, concentric circles, strand motif, stylised tree and various geometric motifs, known as ‘Alişar IV’ ware.71

Map 5. Major Middle and Late Iron Age sites.

67  For Boğazköy/Büyükkale II, see Genz 2011, p. 336; for a general overview of Yassıhöyük/Gordion, see Kealhofer et al. 2009, p. 296. 68  Genz 2011, pp. 346, 349; Kealhofer and Grave 2011, p. 420. 69  Summers 1994, p. 247, and pp. 241 ff. 70  Matsumura 2001, p. 105. 71  Von der Osten 1937, pp. 350 ff.

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Alişar IV pottery has been documented at Maşat Höyük,72 Bolus-Aktepe (see Map 5, Fig. 5: 8),73 and Artova/Kayapınarı Höyük (see Map 5).74 On the other hand, this pottery is still unknown in the coastal and middle parts of the central Black Sea region, though many Middle Iron Age settlements have been registered during surveys. Ş. Dönmez reports a plain pottery composing grey and dark brown wares;75 moreover, a monochrome mattepainted pottery with concentric circles, chevrons, horizontal and vertical decorative strips and diverse geometric patterns dominates in this sub-region (see Fig. 5 and Map 5). Unlike the Middle Iron Age cities uncovered in Gordion, Alişar and Boğazköy, some settlements of north-central Anatolia in the Middle Iron Age are not fortified. Middle Iron Age architecture has been unearthed during excavations at Maşat Höyük (Map 5).76 T. Özgüç provides two interpretations of this observation: either the absence of a wall is evidence of the city’s decreasing importance or the defensive walls were located on the outskirts of the mound.77 Currently, excavations are being undertaken at two Middle Iron Age settlements in north-central Anatolia: Amasya/Oluz Höyük and Vezirköprü/Oymaağaç Höyük. Levels 6–5 in Oluz Höyük are dated to the Middle Iron Age (eighth century BCE) according to the pottery.78 In the excavations and geophysical surveys carried out up to now, no fortification wall has been discovered;79 likewise, the data on the architecture is limited, with the exception of a rectangular structure from Level 6 in trench B. The pottery obtained from these contexts resembles both that from Alişar IV (Fig. 5: 7),80 and that representing Classical Phrygian culture.81 Data related to Middle Iron Age architecture in Oymaağaç Höyük are also scanty, and the findings are obtained from pits. Among the vessels, no sherds of Alişar IV pottery have been observed yet. As no Middle Iron Age contexts have yet been defined, the pottery has been dated by comparisons. The matte-dark brown painted ware on buff, light brown or yellowish red surface, registered already at Oluz Höyük, Boğazköy/Büyükkale and Boğazköy/ Büyükkaya is also common at Oymaağaç Höyük. The most common motifs are concentric circles, festoons and horizontal strips (see Fig. 5: 2–5). Incised and impressed pottery of typical Iron Age forms, similar to those in Gordion (see Fig. 5: 1, 6),82 appears also at Oymaağaç Höyük, though it is so far unknown in the central Black Sea region during the Middle Iron Age. This pottery is represented also in Boğazköy by a limited number of sherds decorated with impressed rosette and concentric circles.83 At the end of this period, Kerkenes Dağ was established as a new Phrygian capital, towards the end of the seventh 72

 Özgüç 1982, plates 69: 4, 70: 1–11, table 71: 1–7, plate 79: 1a-c-2.  Özgüç 1978, plate 73: 1–3. 74  Durbin 1971, p. 108, fig. 6: 36. 75  Dönmez 2005a, p. 481, Lev.2/3=Res.11, Lev.4/5=Res.23, Lev.1/6-7=Res.7-8, Lev.2/2 = Res.10, Lev.4/2 = Res.20; 2010a, p. 147. 76  Özgüç 1982, pp. 19–22. 77  Özgüç 1982, p. 19. 78  Dönmez 2010b, p. 292; 2012, p. 158. 79  Dönmez 2013a, p. 177. 80  Dönmez 2010b, p. 292. 81  Dönmez 2010c, Çiz.19-Res.78 a-b; Çiz.20-Res.79. 82  Sams 1994, plates 153: 405, 1010; 154: 372; 157: 1021; 154: 249; 156: 1014. 83  Genz 2004, table 50: 8. 73

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Fig. 5. Middle Iron Age pottery from north-central Anatolia. 1–6: Samsun/Oymaağaç Höyük (Yılmaz 2015); 7: Amasya/Oluz Höyük (Dönmez 2010c, res. 109); 8: Bolus/Aktepe (Özgüç 1978, Lev./Pl. 73/3); 9–10: Böğazköy/Büyükkaya (Genz 2004, Taf. 59.6–7); Maşat Höyük (Özgüç 1982, Şek./Fig. 140).

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century BCE, and was inhabited for a short period of time, though it was the largest settlement in Central Anatolia.84 The fortified palace area bears a columned hall, and multiroomed and megaron-planned structures.85 Much archaeological evidence is an indicator of Phrygian culture at Kerkenes. Summers explains this cultural effect in terms of large-scale migration movement.86 Nevertheless, traces of nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes – the ‘Eurasian HorseRidding Nomads’87 – appear in the central Black Sea region. The Near Eastern cuneiform sources record these tribes from the eighth century BCE onwards.88 Remains of ‘Cimmerians’ or ‘Scythians’ found at Amasya-İmirler, Oluz Höyük and Maşat Höyük,89 however, are still a chronological problem even today. The findings obtained from Amasya/İmirler are dated according to the early Scythian or pre-Scythian complexes in the northern Black Sea region, southern Russia and the Siberian steppes.90 Hellmuth carried out analogic studies on this material, generally dated back to the beginning of the seventh century BCE in Anatolia, and suggested the date of the primary existence of Eurasian nomads in Anatolia to be around the turn of the ninth–eighth century BCE.91 Late Iron Age Excavations carried out at Gordion, Boğazköy and Pazarlı provide data on Late Iron Age urban organisation in Central Anatolia. Gordion reached its widest extent in the YHSS 5 phase, Boğazköy/Büyükkale was fortified in I c-a (674–547 BCE) and multiple roomed large structures were established.92 The fortified settlement at Pazarlı has characteristic architecture with a high proportion of terracotta plaques.93 Distinctive changes appear in pottery. Vessels continued to be shaped on potters’ wheels, but polished and/or red-slipped vessels, sometimes bearing polychrome decorations on white panels, replaced the mattepainted pottery of the Middle Iron Age.94 Motifs of various animals, mythological creatures and monsters, and human figures, as well as rich plant ornaments, were common in this period. Moreover, in west-central Anatolia, Eastern Greek influences emerged. The Late Iron Age of the central Black Sea region, represented primarily by evidence from excavations at Akalan, İkiztepe, Maşat Höyük, Oluz Höyük and Oymaağaç Höyük, is identical with Central Anatolia, especially the northern part of Kızılırmak (see Map 5).

84

 Summers 2013, p. 46; 2018.  Summers et al. 2004, pp. 7–41. 86  Summers 2018, pp. 104–113. 87  Dönmez 2011, pp. 129, 135. 88  Hellmuth 2008, p. 103. 89  Ünal 1982 (Amasya-İmirler); Dönmez 2011, p. 130 (Oluz Höyük); Özgüç 1982, p. 66 (Maşat Höyük). 90  Hellmuth 2008, p. 105. 91  Hellmuth 2008, p. 107. 92  Voigt et al. 1997, pp. 4–9, Voigt and Young 1999, pp. 209 ff. (Gordion); Bossert 2000, p. 164, Genz 2011, p. 341 (Boğazköy/Büyükkale). 93  Åkerström 1978, plate 88; Koşay 1941, pp. 3–7. 94  Genz 2001, p. 161; 2011, p. 349; Kealhofer and Grave 2011, p. 421. 85

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The architectural terracotta plaques and pottery in Akalan (Map 5) – a fortress excavated by Theodor Macridy in 1906 – are quite significant in terms of interregional relations.95 Similar plaques are found in the Midas City, Gordion and Pazarlı (Map 5), as well as Lâdik/Köyiçi Tepesi (Map 5) – a surveyed site in the central Black Sea region.96 But the date of terracotta plaques in the northern region are later than from west of the Halys. These architectural terracotta customs reached Akalan and Ladik/Köyiçi Tepesi in the early period of Persian domination.97 The painted pottery of Akalan reflects the Late Iron Age tradition with reddish brown, brown or black paint on a white surface. The ‘Eastern Greek Wild-Goat Style’, attested at Akalan,98 supposes interregional trade contacts. The coastal settlement at İkiztepe (Map 5) reveals no architectural remains dating to the Late Iron Age;99 nevertheless, two tombs and an oven, associated with the same painted pottery known from Akalan have been uncovered.100 The vessels are decorated with horizontal strips, triangles, equilateral quadrangles and wheel motifs in reddish brown, brown and black paint.101 The excavations at Maşat Höyük revealed an unfortified Late Iron Age settlement consisting of rectangular houses with small rooms in Levels III–II,102 bearing a pottery repertoire parallel to other Central Anatolian sites (Fig. 6: 7). The pottery of the late phase (Levels II–I) consists of polychrome painted motifs on beige or white panels. Persian diagnostic types appear toward the end of Level II and continue in Level I,103 though local elements also survive.104 In Oluz Höyük, Levels 2A, 2B, 3, 4A and 4B are dated to the Late Iron Age.105 According to pottery and small finds, it is suggested that Level 4 dates to the early Late Iron Age (600–500 BCE) urban settlement with Phrygian cultural influence in the Land of Kaška. The increase in plant and figured decorations, as well as geometric designs, on the pottery occurring in Level 3 have been interpreted as signs of new cultural interactions.106 The building complex uncovered in Level 2 is considered to be a palace or a mansion reached via a monumental street.107 The pottery in that level includes inter alia a Persian type of bowls and pottery with brown and black paint on white panel (Fig. 6: 5–6).108 A painted rhyton in the form of a bull’s head, recovered in Level 2A, suggests continuity of the Achaemenid influence in this region.109 On the other hand, the painted pottery of Levels 2B 95

 Cummer 1976, p. 31.  Åkerström 1966, pp. 133 ff., table 68 (Midas City); pp. 136 ff., tables 69–86 (Gordion); pp. 161 ff., tables 87–96 (Pazarlı); Dönmez 2005b, plates 5–9 (Lâdik/Köyiçi Tepesi). 97  Summers 2006, p. 686. 98  Cummer 1976, figs 1–3. 99  Bilgi 1999, picture 11, Çiz. 2B, 5-6. 100  Bilgi 1999, p. 27. 101  Bilgi 1999, p. 31. 102  Özgüç 1982, p. 21. 103  Özgüç 1982, pp. 49–52. 104  Özgüç 1982, p. 22. 105  Dönmez 2013a, p. 176. 106  Dönmez 2012, p. 158. 107  Dönmez 2013a, p. 177. 108  Dönmez 2012, p. 162. 109  Dönmez 2012, p. 163. 96

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Fig. 6. Late Iron Age pottery from north-central Anatolia. 1–4. Samsun/Oymaağaç Höyük (Yılmaz 2015); 5. Amasya/Oluz Höyük (Dönmez 2010c, Çiz.6); 6. Amasya/Oluz Höyük (Dönmez and Dönmez 2009, Çiz. 2-3); 7. Maşat Höyük (Özgüç 1982, Şek.-Fig. 129); 8. Boğazköy /North West Slope (Genz 2007, Fig. 6/2).

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(425–300 BCE) and 2A (300–200 BCE) exhibits close similarities to various settlements of the Kızılırmak region.110 The Late Iron Age pottery of Oymaağaç Höyük was uncovered in pits like those dated to the earlier phases of the Iron Age. The pottery resembles the material unearthed in the Late Iron Age layers at Akalan, İkiztepe, Oluz Höyük and Maşat Höyük, as well as other Central Anatolian sites. The vessels were thrown on a fast wheel, and the surface is occasionally polished. The colour of the paste, tempered with fine or medium sand and a low amount of straw, ranges from light brown to dark brown. Common forms are bowls, pots, craters, trefoil jugs and spouted pitchers. The painted decorations consist of hatched triangles on white surface as well as concentric circles and festoons known from Late Iron Age sites of Central Anatolia (Fig. 6: 1–3). Geometric patterns are occasionally accompanied by animal and human figures. At Oymaağaç Höyük, only one sherd of the ‘Eastern Greek-Wild Goat Style’, similar to the finds at Akalan, has been observed; furthermore, ‘Achaemenid Bowls’ belonging to the plain pottery have been found (Fig. 6: 4). Interpretation Archaeological remains of the Iron Ages from the central Black Sea region show that, unlike in the Late Bronze Age, in this period a cultural homogeneity, as much as it can be inferred based on material culture, was developed between this region and the Central Anatolian plateau. The mountains running west–east were no more the borderline that characterised the Late Bronze Age. For the Early Iron Age, Hermann Genz mentions three different ceramic zones for Central Anatolia.111 The western sub-region is represented by the handmade, dark-surfaced and incised pottery from the Early Iron Age levels of Gordion/Yassıhöyük.112 The southern sub-region is characterised by the wheel-made, bichrome or monochrome painted pottery from Kaman-Kalehöyük IId 1–3,113 similar to that found in Porsuk Zeyve Höyük, level IV. The northern sub-region constitutes the northern part of the Central Anatolian plateau, including the central Black Sea region. The Early Iron Age pottery of this sub-region is attested at Boğazköy/Büyükkaya, Yozgat/Çadır Höyük and Eskiyapar,114 as well as Amasya, Merzifon, Vezirköprü and Lâdik (see Map 4). This northern zone extends to the central Black Sea region. The Early Iron Age material culture of this region has only been found in settlements with Late Bronze Age levels, thus hinting at continuity of the previous occupation (no new foundations). The forms of the Early Iron Age vessels resemble the Hittite (Late Bronze Age) forms such as flat plates and long-necked jugs. I would suggest that, following the collapse of the Hittite Empire, the same populations seem to have occupied the region, and the handmade pottery replacing 110

 Dönmez 2012, p. 162.  Genz 2003a, p. 185; 2004, p. 225; Matsumura 2005, fig. 5.3–1. 112  Voigt and Henrickson 2000, pp. 327 ff. 113  Dupré 1983; Matsumura 2005, p. 511; 2008, p. 42. 114  Genz 2000a, p. 36; 2004, p. 15, Seeher 2000a, pp. 373–374, figs 21, 22 (Boğazköy/Büyükkaya); Genz 2001b, p. 159, Gorny 2006, p. 37, Gorny et al. 2002, p. 119, Ross 2010, pp. 68–71 (Yozgat/Çadır Höyük); Bayburtluoğlu 1979, pl. 174, res. 6 b-7 (Eskiyapar). 111

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the wheel-made vessels indicates a decrease in economic and political power, rather than a cultural change. Contrary to the wheel-made mass-produced pottery of the Late Bronze Age, the handmade pottery seems to have been produced in domestic ateliers in the Early Iron Age. Jürgen Seeher suggests that if there were newcomers after the collapse of the Hittite Empire, they had already inhabited the region in the Late Bronze Age, and that these people were already familiar with Hittite vessel forms; on the other hand, Early Iron Age burnished pottery also exhibits local characteristics.115 Kurt Bittel and Ekrem Akugal have suggested that no connection exists between Hittite and Early Iron Age pottery.116 However, as we have seen above, Early Iron Age vessels with Hittite characteristics seem to have continued for a short period in Büyükkaya. H. Genz and J. Seeher consider the Early Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age pottery traditions the origin of the Early Iron Age and Middle Iron Age pottery in Boğazköy/Büyükkaya;117 in their view, the early pottery traditions had been maintained in the rural areas during the Hittite empire. Otherwise, the movement of the Kaška from the central Black Sea region to inner parts of the Central Anatolian plateau after the collapse of the Hittite Empire was connected to the diffusion of the new red-painted handmade pottery.118 The question of the origin of the painted pottery appearing in the Early Iron Age will be further researched with the excavations at Oluz Höyük and Oymaağaç Höyük. In particular, studies on Late Bronze Age painted pottery by Mielke119 will provide a connection to earlier periods in north-central Anatolia. After the tenth century BCE, architecture and material culture with recurrent features appear within the Kızılırmak curve, as observed in Boğazköy/Büyükkaya and Büyükkale II b-a, in Kaman-Kalehöyük IIc, Alişar IVcM and Çadır Höyük Va. This cultural unity is interpreted as a sign of political homogeneity in the region, not connected with the Phrygians.120 Alişar IV painted ware characterises the Middle Iron Age of Central Anatolia, especially the region in the Kızılırmak curve. However, the terminus post quem of Alişar IV painted pottery is controversial. This pottery appears in situ in the destruction level of Gordion. According to current dendrochronological analysis, the Destruction level (YHSS 6A) is dated to 826–808 BCE.121 According to recent chronology studies, the Alişar IV painted pottery seems to have appeared towards the end of Level IId1 at Kaman-Kalehöyük.122 These results are very important for the beginning and life span of Alişar IV painted pottery, which now seems to be dated back to at least the ninth century BCE. The painted pottery is represented by a large repertoire in Maşat Höyük and Oluz Höyük, indicating a continuous settlement in the central Black Sea region during the Middle Iron Age (see Map 5). 115

 Seeher 2010, p. 226.  Akurgal 1955, pp. 25 ff.; Bittel 1942, pp. 109 ff. 117  Genz 2004, pp. 41–42; Seeher 1999, p. 331; 2000b, p. 22. 118  Genz 2004, p. 44. 119  Mielke in press. 120  Bahar and Koçak 2004, p. 26; Bossert 2000, p. 174; Dönmez 2010a, p. 160; Genz 2000b, p. 111; 2004, pp. 44 ff.; Seeher 2000b, p. 22. 121  Manning and Kromer 2011, p. 148. 122  Matsumura and Omori 2010, p. 444. 116

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Assyrian cuneiform texts record the name Kašku; however, the localisation of this land and people is still not precise.123 For the central Black Sea region, the relation between Kašku and a specific material culture or a specific region have been discussed. Kašku/Kaški, recorded by Tiglatpileser III, is localised by V. Sevin to Divriği and Kangal;124 however, based on similarities between Kaška and Kašku, Ş. Dönmez places the Land of Kašku around Çorum, Amasya and Samsun.125 K. Matsumura suggested that the production of Alişar IV pottery spread from Kašku, that is, from the north,126 supporting Sevin’s reconstruction. However, the suggestion becomes unacceptable in Dönmez’s localisation, since the Alişar IV pottery is a rarity in the north. Recently G. Summers has in fact suggested that Alişar IV original production area may have been South Cappadocia, thus completely opposing Matsumura’s interpretation.127 The similarities in the pottery of the eastern, southern and northern sections of Central Anatolia manifest strong interactions with each other. Unfortunately we are not able to connect the local kingdoms and chiefdoms in this area, such as Tabal, Muški and Kašku, with these pottery traditions. Judging from the excavations at Yassıhöyük/Gordion and the Assyrian sources, the Phrygian Kingdom may have reached its apogee towards the end of the eighth century BCE; in this time, it produced a western archaeological influence on the material culture of Central Anatolian settlements, not necessarily corresponding to political domination (see Rose, this volume). The Phrygian cultural influences are visible at Oluz Höyük and Maşat Höyük,128 but they are not the only new exogeneous influence in the assemblages of the sites of the central Black Sea region. Milesians established colonies on the Black Sea coast from the seventh century BCE onwards, and the East-Greek influence became more evident in the whole region. However, the local character, especially the painted decoration on white or beige panels, did not disappear. From the second half of the sixth century BCE onwards, a strong Persian influence appears in the main area of the central Black Sea region. According to its architectural structures and small finds, it has been suggested that Oluz Höyük was a regional centre or sub-satrapal unit (perhaps Persian City Kritalla) with inhabitants of Persian origin.129 Achaemenid bowls uncovered from Oymaağaç Höyük – not far from Oluz Höyük – may also reflect Persian political dominance in the region, ending with the arrival of Alexander the Great in 330 BCE; however, Persian cultural influences might have continued for a while (see Map 5). Consequently, even though the central Black Sea region exhibits local cultural traits during the Iron Ages, strong links are always visible, mainly with northcentral Anatolia, and during the Middle Iron Age, with the whole of Central Anatolia.

123

 Sevin 1991, pp. 96–97; 1998, p. 173; Yakar 2007, p. 66.  Sevin 1998, p. 188. 125  Dönmez 2010a, p. 146. 126  Matsumurua 2005, p. 566; Özgüç 1978, p. 39. 127  Summers 2013. 128  Dönmez 2010b, p. 212; Özgüç 1982, pp. 49 ff. 129  Dönmez 2013b, p. 112. 124

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THE UPPER KIZILIRMAK REGION AND BEYOND (A. T. Ökse) The western border of the eastern Anatolian highlands is a zone of steep and broken topography formed by mountain zones providing access to the Central Anatolian plateau and the northern Mesopotamian lowlands through chains of small plains formed by the upper courses of Kızılırmak and Euphrates Rivers and their tributaries (see Map 1). The Çamlıbel, Yıldız, Akdağ, Çeltek and Kösedağ mountain ranges bordering the region from the north are rich in copper, silver, lead and zinc, exploited since the third millennium BCE.130 Between these mountains, a series of small plains formed by the Çekerek, Yıldızeli and Yıldızırmak rivers create a natural route connecting the north-central plateau to the Upper Kızılırmak valley; the river can be crossed on horseback at several points not far from the junction of the Kızılırmak and the Yıldızırmak. The route runs further to the south, passing through the passages of the lower ranges of İncebel and Şamadağ. These ranges separate the Kızılırmak valley from the row of small plains to the south – the Şarkışla, Kayadibi and Ulaş plains. These plains form a favourable route connecting the south-central plateau to the eastern highlands. The northern extensions of the Divriği-Kangal-Gürün iron ore-bearing strata – the Sekidede, Kulmaç, Tecer, Gürlevik and Yılanlı Dağ zone – separate these plains from the Upper Euphrates region. Nevertheless, this range provides access to the Upper Euphrates region through mountain passages (Cücükşar Pass). The region is bordered by the eastern and southeastern Taurus ranges. The routes leading to the Upper Euphrates region follow the Tohma Çay in order to reach the western part of the Malatya plain, and the Kangal Çay and Kuruçay valleys in order to reach the Altınova plain on the Murat River. The Euphrates valley provides access both to the northern highlands and to the northern Mesopotamian piedmont. Both regions became cultural contact zones between different civilisations and the natural routes have been used effectively since the third millennium BCE.131 In this period, the Upper Kızılırmak region was a transition zone between the central plateau and eastern highlands,132 whereas the Upper Euphrates region was a culturalmix zone of Early Transcaucasia and Northern Mesopotamia.133 Middle Bronze Age During the Middle Bronze Age, feudal kingdoms governed Central Anatolia. Throughout the 19th–18th centuries BCE, Old Assyrian merchants operated international trade by means of colonies in the lower cities of major centres subordinated by the karum of Kaneš. Assyrians came to solemn agreements with their kings for securing the trade, depending mainly on importing lead and textiles while exporting silver, gold and copper.134 130

 De Jesus 1980, pp. 253–254, 275; Kaptan 1995, pp. 191–195.  Ökse 2007. 132  Ökse 2006a. 133  See Palumbi 2012 and Fangipane, this volume. 134  Barjamovic 2008, pp. 88–93; Dercksen 1996, pp. 10–14, 254; 2002, pp. 35–37; Larsen 1967; 1976, pp. 370 ff; Michel 2011, pp. 319–325; Nashef 1987; Oguchi 1999; Veenhof 1995, pp. 865–866. See also Barjamovic, this volume. 131

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Similar to the situation in the Upper Kızılırmak,135 a few sherds of the Cappadocian painted ware are attested in later Early Bronze Age contexts prior to Arslantepe V, in Norşun Tepe V and Korucutepe (Map 2);136 however, the material culture in the Middle Bronze Age is local, providing continuity from the previous period.137 A limited number of imported vessels demonstrate a weak relation to other cultures; painted vessels from Eastern Anatolia are observed in the eastern part of the region, and Central Anatolian red burnished vessels in the Malatya plain.138 Arslantepe VA (2000–1750 BCE) is a fortified settlement with city gates in the Middle Bronze Age I,139 İmikuşağı 12-13 is a fortified site with a public building in the Middle Bronze Age II.140 Further fortified sites were discovered at İmamoğlu, Norşun Tepe and Korucutepe. The material culture of these sites reflects strong Mesopotamian influences, including the painted Habur pottery.141 The characteristic wheel-made red slipped pottery of Central Anatolia is represented neither in Arslantepe IV,142 nor in other sites in the area of the Keban and Karakaya dams. Thus, no Assyrian trade colonies seem to have been established in the Upper Euphrates region; however, according to sporadic potsherds originating from Central Anatolia, a trade route seems to have passed through the region. Following the collapse of the Assyrian trade colonies, feudal entities lost their significance and the Hittites established a central power in the Kızılırmak region in the 16th century BCE, becoming an empire within ca. two centuries.143 The fire destruction attested at the end of the Colony Period,144 and the text describing the attacks of Anitta, the King of Kuššarʼ,145 reflect the change of power in favour of the Hittites. Most of the settlements in the Upper Kızılırmak region were abandoned and new fortified settlements were established at protruding plateau edges on strategic foothills facing plains. Gerdekkaya and Kalkankaya face the Yıldızeli plain, Harabe near Kayalıpınar is situated at a convenient point to cross the river on horseback, Eşmebaşı Kalesi and Kahvepınar on important mountain passes controlling the connection to the south (see Map 2). Early Hittite texts record the military campaigns of Hattušili I and Muršili I to Maldiya and Išuwa (see Map 1).146 The archaeological evidence supporting Hittite influence in the 17th–16th centuries BCE at Arslantepe VB (1750–1600 BCE) mainly consists of pottery parallel to that in Central Anatolian centres.147 A fortified frontier settlement with a public building uncovered at İmikuşağı, located to the east of the junction of the Tohmaçay and the Euphrates River is interpreted as a border site;

135

 Ökse 2006a.  Di Nocera 1993, p. 427. 137  Laneri and Schwartz 2011, pp. 344–346. 138  Şerifoğlu 2007, pp. 111–112. 139  Alvaro 2012, p. 352; Di Nocera 1993, pp. 417, 430, 433. 140  Sevin 1995, p. 8. 141  Konyar 2006, p. 336; Sevin 1988, p. 383. 142  Puglisi and Meriggi 1964, fig. 4. 143  Bryce 1999; Forlanini 1992. 144  Larsen 1976, pp. 83 ff.; Özgüç 1986. 145  Steiner 1989. 146  De Martino 2012. 147  Manuelli 2012, pp. 363–364. 136

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levels 11–19 are dated to the Early Hittite and 8–7 to the Empire period.148 The Early Hittite site with multi-roomed structures encompassed by monumental defence walls includes Early Hittite pottery with a somehow local character; however, the pottery of Level 10 shows more similarity to Central Anatolian vessels. The typical jar forms of the Hittite pottery decorated with thick red bands and zigzags demonstrate the existence of the Hittites in the region. The defence wall at Korucutepe (1650 Cal. BCE), the fortified site at İmikuşağı XIII-XII (1700–1500 BCE), Tepecik 3b-3a, Norşun Tepe V and Arslantepe VB suffered fire,149 possibly associated with the Hittite-Hurrian struggle under Hattušili I (1565–1540 BCE).150 As reported in his annals, Hattušili I crosses the River Puruna (Euphrates) after defeating the coalition of Halap and Haššuwa, and crosses the River Mala, probably an upper tributary of the Euphrates River, following his campaign to Hahha.151 Late Bronze Age The Hittite Empire seems to give importance to the routes connecting the central plateau to the Malatya plain. The route from Kuşaklı, passing through the Cücükşar Pass on the way to Uzunyayla is controlled by middle-sized fortified sites at Şevket Tepesi located to the north, and Kel Osman Ağılı and Aşağı Kalaca located to the south of the passage (see Map 3).152 The fortified settlement at Havuzköy on the basalt plateau of Karaseki Düzü on Tohmaçay (see Map 3) is a further point on the way to Meliddu. Through this route, iron might have been transported to Kizzuwatna from the mines between Sivas and Malatya.153 These sites might well have defended the routes along which goods were transported and troops dispatched. The fortified settlements at Kızılcakışla Kalesi, Sur Tepesi and Toprakkale (see Map 3), located on the route connecting the southern central plateau with the eastern highlands are founded ca. 20–35 km apart from each other;154 a one-day horse ride between secure stopovers. Large metropolises could hardly be founded in this region because of the relief; however, a three-tiered settlement hierarchy with modest dimensions has been established.155 The intramural settlement area of the large sites at Kalkankaya, Kayalıpınar and Kuşaklı (see Map 3) are 18–26 ha; these sites also have adjoining lower cities. Each large site accompanied by one medium (7–10 ha) and one small-sized (1–2 ha) settlement constitutes three territorial units, resembling local administrative divisions. Kayalıpınar is suggested to be the city of Samuha located on the Maraššantiya (Kızılırmak) River.156 In a monumental building, Hittite and Hurrian cuneiform tablets from the Middle 148

 Konyar 2006; Sevin 1995, pp. 7–8.  Bier 1978, p. 53; Van Loon 1971, p. 51 (Korucutepe); Sevin 1997, p. 307 (İmikuşağı); Esin 1972, pp. 46–47; 1974, p. 113 (Tepecik); Hauptmann 1972, pp. 87 ff., 92 (Norşun Tepe); Palmieri 1970, p. 203 (Arslantepe). 150  Bier 1978, p. 53; Van Loon and Güterbock 1969, p. 124. 151  Yiğit 1995, pp. 242–243. 152  Ökse 2000; 2001, pp. 503–505; 2007; 2014. 153  Maxwell-Hyslop 1974, pp. 139 ff.; Muhly et al. 1985. 154  Ökse 2000, 2001. 155  Ökse 2000, p. 106, fig. 14; 2006b, fig. 3. 156  Barjamovic 2011, pp. 152–153; A. Müller-Karpe 2000; Yiğit 1998. 149

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Hittite period came to light, such as a relief depicting a goddess from the 15th–14th centuries BCE.157 Some seal impressions found in the building carry the name of Great Queen Tawananna and prince Kantuzzili. The fortified city at Kuşaklı is founded in the 16th century, and destroyed twice by fire, once in the 14th century and again in ca. 1200 BCE.158 The site is identified as the Hittite provincial centre Sarissa in the “Upper Land”.159 A small cuneiform archive discovered in the monumental building on the acropolis records the celebrations for the spring festival, carried out with the participation of the emperor himself, who moved from Šarišša to the Huwaši sanctuary of the Storm God – the spring sanctuary of Šuppitaššu – on the Kulmaç mountains.160 A similar spring sanctuary on the Şamadağ indicates the religious importance of the region for the Hittites (see Map 3). The mass-produced standard pottery161 collected from these sites belongs to Hittite workshops. The Mycenaean pottery found in Kuşaklı162 indicates that the region was not disconnected from the international trade network during the Hittite period. The bullae and tablets found at Kuşaklı, a golden seal-ring carrying the hieroglyphic name of cupbearer Muw(ya)ata found at Yarhisar in Kangal district, and a bead-seal carrying the hieroglyphic name Armana dating to the Middle Hittite Period manifest the existence of highranked Hittite officials in the region.163 Elaborate metal artefacts also show the region to be without any doubt a part of the Hittite land. The bronze figure of a Warrior-God found at Dövlek in the Şarkışla district is dated to the 16th–15th centuries BCE.164 Several metal weapons, bits, inscribed bowls and a ceremonial axe known as the “Şarkışla Hoard”,165 and lugged axes preserved in the Sivas Museum are dated to the 14th–13th centuries BCE.166 A shaft-hole axe with four blunt spikes on the butt is a characteristic form in Anatolia and Western Iran during the last centuries of the second millennium BCE.167 The region probably corresponds to the region named the “Upper Land” of the Hittites, adjacent to the “barbarian tribes” of the eastern highlands.168 Tudhaliya III reports the looting of the “Upper Land” by Azzi, making Samuha his frontier. The “Upper Land” came under Hittite control during the reign of Šuppiluliuma I (1350–1320 BCE) who attacked Azzi-Hayaša and defeated its king Hukkana near Kummaha. The “Upper Land” was once more conquered for a short time by the Azzi, and then moved under the control/ dominance of Kaška tribes. After a conquest of Hayaša, Muršili II (1318–1290 BCE) appointed Arma-Tarhunda as governor to the “Upper Land”. During the reign of Muwattali 157

 Müller-Karpe and Müller-Karpe 2013b, pp. 282–287.  Müller-Karpe and Müller-Karpe 2013a, pp. 220–225. 159  Otten and Rüster 1997, pp. 265–268; Wilhelm 1997, p. 9. 160  Ökse 2011, pp. 227–228. 161  Schoop 2011. 162  Ökse 2006b. 163  Wilhelm 1995 (Kuşaklı); Ökse et al. 1993 (Yarhisar); Herbordt and Alkan 2000, p. 90 (Armana). 164  Özgüç 1949. 165  Bittel 1975, p. 301; 1976, p. 19. 166  Ökse and Toy 1993, pp. 143–146. 167  Ökse and Toy 1993. 168  Bryce 1986, pp. 87–98; Del Monte and Tischler 1978, p. 293; Forlanini 1992; Garstang and Gurney 1959, map 1; Götze 1980, p. 117; Gurney 2003, pp. 121, 123; Murat 1998; Yakar 1992. 158

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(1305–1282 BCE), his younger brother and later Great King Hattušili (Hattušili III, 1267–1240 BCE), was governor of the “Upper Land”. Hittite Great king Tudhalia IV (1240–1220 BCE) further records the Azzi-Hayaša as enemy. These people are supposed to have established a tribal confederation, according to the descriptions given in historical documents;169 however, no archaeological attributes pointing to the material culture of these tribes have so far been determined. These people were most probably the autochthonous population living in the highlands outside the eastern border of the Hittite territory and the northern boundary of the Upper Euphrates region. Meanwhile, the Upper Euphrates region appears to have been occupied by semiindependent local kingdoms under the Hittite supremacy. The land of Armatana is located in the Malatya plain (Malitia), İšuwa to the east of of the Upper Euphrates and Tegaramma in the Upper Tohma Çay region (Map 1).170 The mass-produced pottery attested in Arslantepe IV (1400–1200 BCE),171 Tepecik 2, Norşun Tepe III, Korucutepe I-J, İmikuşağı 8-7 and Pirot IV172 indicates a strong settled Hittite existence on the eastern border of the Hittite state.173 Arslantepe appears to have been a military base already under the rule of Šuppiluliuma I (1344–1322 BCE) and the fortified settlement at Korucutepe is interpreted as a frontier garrison of the Hittites within the land of Išuwa. The Late Bronze Age assemblage of phase I-J versus Hittite Periods 1-4 demonstrates the evolution of the Hittite city at Korucutepe.174 Phase I (or Hittite 1-2) containing orange and red burnished, slipped and smoothed vessels parallel to Central Anatolia is dated to the Late Bronze Age I (1600– 1400 BCE). Phase J (or Hittite 3-4) demonstrates a more dominant Hittite power in Late Bronze Age II (1400–1200 BCE), according to the local mass-produced drab ware and orange wheel-marked pottery parallel to Hittite imperial sites on the Central Plateau.175 A corbelled stone postern tunnel unearthed in this phase is parallel to those at Hattuša, indicating strong influences of the Hittite culture in the borderland. According to the prologue of the treaty of Šuppiluliuma I with Šattiwaza, the Hittite king crossed the Euphrates in order to attack Išuwa;176 the king sacked also Tegaramma during this campaign. Under Hattušili III and Tudhalia IV, the region was a buffer zone between the Hittite Empire and the Middle Assyrian kingdom. In consequence of Mitannian attacks on Hittite territory starting from Išuwa during the reign of Tudhalia IV (1410–1380 BCE), Šuppiluliuma occupied the lands of Išuwa and Alzi.177 The cylinder seal impressions found at Korucutepe belong to Ari-Šarruma and Ehli-Šarruma – Hurrian names probably belonging to the kings of Išuwa.178 Ari-Šarruma is recorded in a treaty of Tudhaliya IV with Ulmi-Tešup as witness,179 and Ehli-Šarruma informed the Hittite king 169

 Yakar 2000, pp. 430–432.  Yakar 2000, p. 430. 171  Alvaro 2012, pp. 354–357; Manuelli 2012, pp. 361, 364–367. 172  Yakar 2000, p. 425. 173  Klengel 1968, pp. 63 ff.; 1976, pp. 85 ff. 174  Van Loon 1978, p. 6, table 1 (Phase I-J); Umurtak 1996, p. 2 (Hittite Periods 1-4). 175  Griffin 1980, pp. 23 ff.; Umurtak 1996. 176  Köroğlu 1996, p. 64 n. 109; Yiğit 1995, pp. 244–245. 177  Köroğlu 1996. 178  Güterbock 1973, pp. 137–140; Ertem 1990, p. 578. 179  Yiğit 1995, p. 245. 170

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about the contacts of the kings of Mitanni and Assyria;180 moreover, according to the text Mita of Pahhuwa, Hittites controlled the region further during the reign of Arnuwanda III.181 Early Iron Age It is frequently suggested that the collapse of the Hittite Empire was associated with the cool and arid climatic conditions of the Near East in the last two centuries of the second millennium BCE.182 The negative effects of the climatic change might have hindered the Hittites from maintaining authority over the whole land.183 This era involved political and social changes in a wide region extending from the Aegean to the Near East. Several settlements were abandoned, small sites with simple architectural elements replaced urban and rural settlements, and vessels began to be produced by hand. In addition, the urban settlements in the Upper Kızılırmak region were abandoned or shrank to villages and new small rural settlements appeared on plateau edges (see Map 4).184 The pottery revealed at these sites resembles that used in Central Anatolia in 1100–900 BCE (see M. A. Yılmaz above), determining the connection of the region with the central plateau further in the Post-Hittite period. Nevertheless, the inscription found in the vicinity of Gemerek has palaeographic and orthographic similarities with the Malatya group.185 Later on, by the ninth century, the south-central plateau including the Upper Kızılırmak region was named by the Assyrians the Land of Tabal, the westernmost Late Hittite land in the neighbourhood of Milid/Melidia (mod. Malatya) and Tilgarimmu (mod. Gürün),186 according to hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions.187 Concerning the collapse of the Hittite Empire, the western part of the Upper and Middle Euphrates regions seems to have remained untouched; nevertheless, eastern Anatolian tribes seem to emerge in the eastern regions.188 Kuzi-Teššup of Carchemish controlled the Middle Euphrates region, including Milid.189 In the western part of the Upper Euphrates region, Late Hittite sites appear just at the south of the Kulmaç-Tecer zone. At the fortified site at Havuzköy, established on the basalt plateau of Karaseki Düzü in the upper course of the Tohma Çay, a pair of gate lions carved in the traditional style likely date to the eighth century BCE.190 The early phase of the settlement is dated to the tenth–ninth and the later phase to the eighth–seventh centuries BCE. Another fortified site located in the upper course of the Çaltı Su – Gözecik – bears an incomplete basalt gate lion carved 180

 Klengel 1968, p. 71.  Klengel 1968, p. 74; 1976, pp. 74, 85–87. 182  Kuzucuoğlu 2015; Kuzucuoğlu et al. 2011, pp. 183, 185; Neumann and Parpola 1987. 183  Hoffner 1992, p. 51; Kuniholm 1990, pp. 653–654; Liverani 1987, pp. 69–70; Sürenhagen 1996, pp. 287–290 n. 13–16; Yakar 1992, pp. 508 ff.; 1993, pp. 3 ff. 184  Ökse 1999. 185  Weeden 2010, p. 43. 186  Orthmann 1971, pp. 217–218. 187  Hawkins 1995, p. 65; 2000, X 1–52; Kurt 2010, pp. 129, 131–132; Özgüç 1971, p. 7; Yiğit 2000, p. 187. 188  Yakar 2000, p. 434. 189  Hawkins 1974, pp. 69–77, table 1; 1994, pp. 92–93; Matthiae 1962, pp. 15 ff. 190  Boehmer 1967, pp. 132–141. 181

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in the traditional style dating to the tenth–eighth centuries BCE,191 indicating a local workshop to the north of Milid. Further Late Hittite works from this part of the region are the Luwian inscriptions and stela dated to ca. 1200–1000 BCE found in Gürün, Kötükale, Darende and İspekçür,192 and the fragment of a sculpture from Bulgurkale.193 The Assyrian king Tiglat-Pileser I (1115–1077 BCE) received tribute from Milid and moved ahead to the borders of the region which will later be called Tabal; meanwhile, he attacked Pakhuwa (probably modern Divriği) and Til-Garimmu (probably ancient Gaurania, modern Gürün) in the Tohma Çay region. The kingdom of Milid (Meliddu, Malitija or Maldiya194) occupies the lower course of Tohma Çay; the central settlement at Arslantepe III is inhabited in 1200–700 BCE.195 The monumental buildings of the royal palace of the Late Hittite kingdom overlie the imperial site. The style and the scenes of the stone reliefs carved at the city gate of Malatya support a dating of the new, post-Hittite level between the 12th and the beginning of the 11th century BCE196 In the Tohma Çay region and on the Malatya plain, in highlands including the eastern part of the Upper Euphrates region, small sites with simple architecture replaced former settlements.197 The settlements at Korucutepe K, Norşun Tepe, Tepecik 2a1-2 and Keban/Değirmentepe198 provide handmade, low-fired domestic vessels of eastern Anatolian origin.199 In earlier levels, the Late Bronze wares seem to have been still in use as the new tradition emerged, a gradual replacement of the drab ware by the handmade pottery. The simple architectural elements and pottery reflect a mobile way of life.200 Moreover, the distribution of a handmade painted pottery from the central plateau to the Upper Euphrates,201 and even to the Upper Tigris regions202 determine an interregional mobility. The data obtained from Assyrian records support the idea of the existence of seminomadic tribes in the eastern highlands, including the upper courses of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Salmanasar I (1274–1245 BCE) defeated eight lands and 51 cities of Uruatri, his son Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 BCE) defeated 43 kings and conquered the land of Alzi, and Tiglat-Pileser I (1115–1077 BCE) fought with 23, 40 and 60 kings of Nairi,203 defeated five kings of the Muški tribes in Kadmuhi/Kummuh,204 and conquered Enzi –

191

 Engin 2010.  Gelb 1939, pp. 14, 29, plate 39; Hawkins 1998, pp. 70–71; 2000, pp. 283, 287–305; Orthmann 1971, pp. 116–118. 193  Von der Osten 1929, p. 59, figs 62–63. 194  Bryce 1986, p. 98, fig. 1; Garstang 1943, pp. 47 ff.; Garstang and Gurney 1959, map 1; Yakar 1993, p. 5, fig. 1. 195  Liverani 2012; Orthmann 1971, pp. 205–209; Puglisi and Meriggi 1964, pp. 31–32, plate LV 2. 196  Hawkins 1994, p. 92; 2002a, pp. 57, 411; 2002b, pp. 265, 270, 506, 509; Orthmann 1971, pp. 91–98, 140–142; Manuelli and Mori 2016. 197  Sagona 1999, pp. 153–157. 198  Winn 1978, pp. 155–178 (Korucutepe); Bartl 1994, p. 476; Hauptmann 1969/70, p. 58 (Norşun Tepe); Esin 1982, plate 67 (Tepecik); Duru 1979, p. 14 (Keban/Değirmentepe). 199  Bartl 1994, 2001; Erdem 2012. 200  Bartl 1994, pp. 479, 516; 1995, p. 209; Ökse and Görmüş 2009. 201  Parzinger 1996. 202  Karg 2001, pp. 657, 676–680; Ökse and Görmüş 2014. 203  Grayson 1987, Text A.0.78.1, A.0.78.24; 1991, Text A.0.87.1 lines 71–84, 96–101. 204  Bartl 1993, p. 205; 2001, p. 384; Sevin 1991, p. 97. 192

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a part of land Išuwa.205 Hence, the handmade pottery is associated with the Muški206 or the Nairi, probably inhabiting the Upper Euphrates region.207 Middle Iron Age The territories of Milid and Tabal seem to have been important for attaining the iron ore strata of Divriği and Deveci from the second millennium BCE.208 The records of the Assyrian king Salmanassar III (858–824 BCE) define the land of Tabal as a confederation of canton states of several kings.209 According to several inscriptions, after Salmanesar’s raid the region was exposed to Urartian raids during the late ninth–eighth centuries BCE.210 From the time of Tiglatpileser III (744–727 BCE) until Sargon II (721–705 BCE) a growing hegemony of the Assyrians is visible, punctuated by rebellions and heavy Assyrian responses; Sargon II devastated the region, then organised it as provinces.211 Sargon II reports the establishment of a series of fortified sites in the land of Kammanu.212 The long wall along the peaks of the Kulmaç zone – the “Anatolian Wall” – is supposed to have been built by the Assyrian king (Map 5).213 In the Upper Kızılırmak region, the Middle Iron Age is marked by a great number of medium and small-sized settlements, mostly established on protruding plateau edges controlling the valleys (see Map 5).214 Nearly one-third of the settlements seem to have been hidden on plateau slopes facing narrow valleys, indicating self-defence. In addition, the huge fortified settlement of Kerkenesdağ is interpreted as an indicator of the unrest in the eastern part of the central plateau.215 The wheel-made standard light-brown monochrome and painted pottery of the central plateau216 is widespread in the Upper Kızılırmak region.217 The silhouette style and the geometric style of the central plateau, dating to the ninth–seventh centuries BCE, and the simplified painted decoration and decoration on cream panels, dating to the seventh–sixth centuries BCE218 are common also in the eastern edge of Central Anatolia.219 In addition,

205

 Köroğlu 1996, p. 69.  Sevin 1991, pp. 88, 96; Yakar 2000, p. 429. 207  Guarducci 2011, pp. 17–28. 208  Grayson 1998, pp. 132–133; Hawkins 1998, pp. 66–68; 2000, pp. 283–284; 2002a, pp. 59, 412; Muhly et al. 1985, pp. 67–84. 209  Cameron 1950; d’Alfonso 2012; Kurt 2010, pp. 128–129; Luckenbill 1968, I 588; Yiğit 2000, p. 186. 210  Barnett 1987, p. 51; Çilingiroğlu 1984, p. 17; Hawkins 2000, p. 427; Köroğlu 1996, pp. 63, 75–76; Yıldırım 1994, p. 288. 211  Hawkins and Postgate 1988; Kurt 2010, pp. 130–132; Luckenbill 1927, p. 8; 1968, I 802; Macqueen 1999, pp. 172–173; Mellink 2008, p. 622; Sevin 1997, p. 126; Wäfler 1983, p. 183; Yiğit 2000, n. 41; Postgate 1973. See also Zimansky, this volume. 212  Orthmann 1971, p. 23. 213  A. Müller-Karpe 1998, pp. 109–112, figs 12–13; Weeden 2010, p. 56, n. 108. 214  Ökse 1999. 215  Kealhofer and Grave 2011, pp. 435–436. 216  Kealhofer and Grave 2011, pp. 420–421, fig. 18.2. 217  Ökse 1999. 218  Özgüç 1971, pp. 14 ff., 85 ff. 219  Ökse 1995, 1999. 206

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the grey ware of the Phrygian highlands220 is the second common pottery type produced in the northern part of the Upper Kızılırmak region; however, it is relatively scant in the southern part.221 At Arslantepe III, the royal centre of the Late Hittite kingdom of Milid, pottery from the pillared buildings dating to the beginning of the ninth century BCE bear coarser finished fabrics resembling those of the previous level, 222 indicating continuity of pottery production.223 A similar monochrome pottery was used in small rural sites located on the Upper course of the Euphrates River from the ninth century BCE.224 According to radiocarbon analyses, the oldest burned level is dated to the ninth century BCE, and according to the inscriptions of King Sulumeli – coeval of Tiglatpileser III – the style I group of reliefs are dated to the eighth century BCE.225 The Late Hittite Kings seem to have established small military posts on the Euphrates River from the ninth to the middle of the eighth centuries BCE, such as the small site at İmikuşağı 6 with a double fortification;226 the handmade pottery used in this settlement indicates an inhabitancy by local people. Unlike Central Anatolia, the handmade pottery was produced in the region subsequently in the eighth–seventh centuries BCE, indicating continuity of the marginal economies under the state organisation. Similarly, the handmade pottery was further used in the eastern highlands under Urartian rule, and in the southern piedmont under the Neo-Assyrian domination. 227 Central Anatolian wares appear as imported goods at these sites. The phases of both Central Anatolian painted ware228 and grey ware229 are represented by only a handful of sherds in the Upper Euphrates region, determining a trade route leading from the central plateau to the Upper Mesopotamian piedmont through the Upper Kızılırmak region.230 A few vessels of the characteristic Urartian red slipped ware appearing in Arslantepe II and in the Upper Euphrates region,231 and Late Assyrian standard pottery represented by small vessels, fine ware and glazed sherds found at the small rural sites232 verify the data provided by historical records. A Phoenician amphora and a trefoil jug imitating the painted decoration of Cypro-Phoenician pottery attested at İmamoğlu Höyük233 indicate trade contacts and cultural interactions of the Upper Euphrates region with the Eastern Mediterranean as well. 220

 Genz 2005; Özgüç 1971, pp. 28, 72 ff.  Ökse 1988, p. 114; 1992, pp. 45, 61, fig. 104. 222  Manuelli 2012, pp. 367–369; Pecorella 1975, pp. 35, 45. 223  Manuelli 2012, pp. 369–372; Pecorella 1975, pp. 35–40. 224  Hauptmann 1969/70, pp. 67 ff.; Ökse 1988, pp. 50–80, 242; 1992, pp. 47–48; Sevin 1995, pp. 47–55. 225  Orthmann 1971, pp. 99–100, 209 ff., n. 49. 226  Sevin 1995, pp. 19–32. 227  Erdem 2012 (Urartian); Guarducci 2011, pp. 17–28; Ökse and Görmüş 2014 (Neo-Assyrian). 228  Ökse 1988, pp. 81–101; 1992, pp. 44–45; Özgüç and Özgüç 1949, pp. 14 ff.; Pecorella 1975. 229  Hrouda 1962, p. 102, plates 62, 197; Ökse 1988, p. 97, fig. 639; 1992, pp. 45–46; Woolley 1939, plate XIIb. 230  Ökse 2007. 231  Manuelli 2012, pp. 369–372 (Arslantepe); Hauptmann 1969/70, fig. 23; Ökse 1988, pp. 109–113; 1992, p. 45 (Upper Euphrates). 232  Hauptmann 1969/70, pp. 71 ff., fig. 21; Ökse 1988, pp. 117–124; 1992, p. 47. 233  Ökse 1992, pp. 44, 46–47. 221

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Discussion During the second and first millennia, the settlement pattern, urban organisation and material culture of the Upper Kızılırmak region is almost identical with that of Central Anatolia. During the Assyrian colony period (Middle Bronze Age I) the material culture seen in the Upper Euphrates demonstrates a local horizon, with only few imported vessels from Central and Eastern Anatolia. Thus, the connection between both regions within the study area is almost limited to trade relations during the first three centuries of the second millennium BCE. Though the interactions of both regions seem to have been minimal in this period, Central Anatolian affiliation flourished in the Early Hittite period (Middle Bronze Age II). In this phase both the Upper Kızılırmak and the Upper Euphrates regions seem to have come under Hittite control and Hittite cultural domination became increasingly visible at each stage. In the Upper Kızılırmak region the Late Bronze Age is characterised by fortified Hittite cities established at strategically important points, planning for security of the “Upper Land”, frequently sacked by the Azzi-Hayaša, probably living in the eastern and northern highlands. The structure and typology of the mass-produced standard Hittite pottery demonstrates strong relations of the region with the central plateau. The Malatya and Altınova plains show again the development of local cultural features. On the other hand, major settlements established in the Upper Euphrates region point to the importance of the Hittite presence also in this borderland; however, the vessels also show local components, probably arising from a local workshop tradition. Thus, the region seems to have been a periphery of the Hittite Empire. The collapse of the Hittite Empire seems to have hit the Upper Kızılırmak region hard. All Hittite cities suffered fire damage and were abandoned throughout the central plateau, including the eastern borderland; on their ruins appear small simple sites bearing handmade vessels. During the transition from the Bronze to Iron Ages, a sharp cultural change is visible both in the Upper Kızılırmak and in the Upper Euphrates region. While the Upper Kızılırmak is characterised by the spread of a diagnostic red painted handmade ware as we have seen for north-central Anatolia and the central Black Sea region, only a scarce occurrence of this ware is attested in Central Anatolia and the Upper Euphrates, and even in the Upper Tigris regions, possibly indicating a mobile way of life for the people using the handmade pottery. On the other hand, following the end of the empire, Late Hittite kingdoms emerge here, indicating a gapless existence of the Hittite rule, though seminomadic tribes from the highlands are also housed here. The Late Hittite sites established up to the Kulmaç-Tecer zone in the north comprise the Upper Euphrates region; however, no similar material culture is attested in the land of Tabal in the south-central plateau, probably covering the Upper Kızılırmak region. The Middle Iron Age is marked by the characteristic monochrome painted pottery of the central plateau, and the monochrome pottery of the region occupied by Late Hittite Kingdoms234 is found in the Upper Euphrates. Nevertheless, both sporadic examples of Central Anatolian vessels found in the Upper and Middle Euphrates regions and the Urartian and 234

 Ökse 1988, pp. 62–67, 78–79.

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Neo-Assyrian vessels in the Upper Euphrates point to the existence of trade relations. These imported goods demonstrate the character of the region as the boundary of central and eastern Anatolia, and northern Mesopotamia in the Iron Age. On the other hand, no eastern imports have been found in the Upper Kızılırmak region so far, indicating a compact cultural package for the central plateau. The spiked arrowheads of “Scythian Types” appear both in the Kelkit valley and in the Upper Euphrates region,235 and East Greek (or western Anatolian) influences already occur in the Upper Kızılırmak region in the sixth century BCE.236 The Late Iron Age is difficult to define, since the communities seem mainly to have produced their traditional vessels and utensils down to a much later period, under the supremacy of the Median and Persian Empires. Thus, the material culture of the later period can hardly be differentiated from the one of the seventh–sixth centuries BCE. To sum up, the cultural development of the Upper Kızılırmak region is in many aspects identical with that of the Central Anatolian plateau. On the other hand, the bordering Upper Euphrates region shows the characteristics of a transition zone between Central Anatolian civilisations and highland cultures.

CONCLUSIONS The cultural and historical structure of the western border of the Eastern Anatolian highlands comprise the north-central Anatolian plateau extending up to the Black Sea, the Upper Kızılırmak and the Upper Euphrates regions. Archaeological materials obtained from the central Black Sea and the Upper Kızılırmak regions present identical properties with the Central Anatolian plateau. On the contrary, the Upper Euphrates region shows a local material culture cooperating with Central and Eastern Anatolian cultures in varying proportions, indicating a cultural buffer zone with commercial relations. The Middle Bronze Age material culture of the Central and Northern Anatolian plateau, including the Upper Kızılırmak region, is homogenous. These regions are densely settled, representing a somehow hierarchical settlement system composed of city-states corresponding with political components of the Assyrian trade network. On the contrary, the material culture of the Upper Euphrates demonstrates a local horizon with a few imported vessels from Central and Eastern Anatolia, demonstrating minimal interactions with neighbouring regions. Central Anatolian affiliations flourished in the Early Hittite period, demonstrating the Hittite domination that became increasingly visible at each stage. It can be suggested that the archaeologically invisible Kaška tribes were non-sedentary people, as recorded in the Hittite texts. The Middle Black Sea region provides evidence for reconstructing a borderline between the Hittite and Kaška territories in the Late Bronze Age. The mass-produced Hittite pottery and several small finds in the Upper Kızılırmak and Upper Euphrates regions demonstrate the Hittite presence in this borderland. The fortified sites established in both regions may have secured the “Upper Land” against the threats of the Azzi-Hayaša, probably the autochthone semi-sedentary inhabitants of the eastern and northern highlands. 235 236

 Ökse 1994, V. Ünal 1982 (Kelkit valley); Hauptmann 1983 (Upper Euphrates).  Ökse 1995, pp. 247–249.

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The cultural homogeneity of the central Black Sea and the Upper Kızılırmak regions with Central Anatolia continues into the Iron Age. In the central Black Sea region continuity from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Ages may be supposed by the spread of handmade pottery which would exist in rural areas already during the Hittite empire; this pottery increases throughout sub-periods, indicating the decrease of control by a political power. After the disintegration of the Hittite empire, nearly all Hittite cities were abandoned in the central plateau, including the Upper Kızılırmak region, and small rural sites bearing handmade vessels emerged. The spread of a diagnostic red painted handmade ware scarcely attested from Central Anatolia to the Upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris regions possibly indicates mobile groups’ movements throughout the borderlands. On the other hand, the Hittite political presence is replaced by the local Hittite kingdoms; Tabal in the Upper Kızılırmak, and Milid and İšuwa in the Upper Euphrates regions. The Middle Iron Age is represented by a dense settlement pattern bearing the characteristic monochrome painted pottery in the Central Anatolian plateau, indicating the existence of political homogeneity from the ninth century BCE onwards. Sporadic examples of these vessels as well as the Urartian, Neo-Assyrian and Levantine vessels found in the Upper Euphrates region point to the existence of commercial activities. The Late Iron Age ceramics in Central Anatolia are characterised by painted decoration on white panels and bichrome painted vessels. From the second half of the sixth century BCE onwards, a strong Persian influence appears in the central Black Sea region, and the “Triangle Ware” of Western Iran and Eastern Anatolia spreads to Southeast Anatolia. In the Upper Euphrates, traditional vessels and utensils continued to be produced under the Median and Persian supremacy. Although the cultural picture of the whole Kızılırmak region is identical, the bordering Upper Euphrates region shows the characteristics of a transition zone between Central Anatolian and eastern highland cultures throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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PALUMBI, G. 2012 “Bridging the frontiers: Pastoral groups in the Upper Euphrates region in the early third millennium BC,” Origini 34: 261–278. PARZINGER, H. 1995 “Bemalte Keramik aus Boğazköy-Hattusa und die frühe Eisenzeit im westlichen Ostanatolien,” in Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Vorderasiens, Festschrift für Rainer Michael Boehmer, edited by U. Finkbeiner, R. Dittmann and H. Hauptmann, pp. 527–536. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. PECORELLA, P. E. 1975 Malatya III: Rapporto preliminare delle campagne 1963-1968: II livello eteo imperiale e quelli neoetei (Orientis Antiqui Collectio 12). Rome: Centro per le antichità e la storia dell’arte del Vicino Oriente. POSTGATE, J. N. 1973 “Assyrian texts and fragments,” Iraq 35: 13–36. PUGLISI, S. M. and MERIGGI, P. 1964 Malatya I, Rapporto preliminare delle campagne 1961 e 1962 (Orientis Antiqui Collectio 3). Rome: Centro per le antichità e la storia dell’arte del Vicino Oriente. RADNER, K. 2012 Review of A Historical Geography of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period, by G. Barjamovic. American Journal of Archaeology 116. doi: 10.3764/ajaonline1164. Radner. RIEHL, S. and MARINOVA-WOLFF, E. 2011 “Archäobotanischer Vorbericht zu den eisenzeitlichen Gruben in Oymaağaç,” in “Archäologische Forschungen am Oymaağaç Höyük / Nerik (?) in den Jahren 2007-2010,” by R. M. Czichon, J. Klinger, P. Breuer, J. Eerbeck, S. Fox, E. MarinovaWolff, H. Marquardt, H. Von der Osten-Woldenburg, S. Reichmuth, S. Riehl and T. Johannsen, Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 143: 169–250. ROSS, J. 2010 “Çadır Höyük: The upper south slope 2006–2009,” Anatolica 36: 67–87. SAGONA, A. 1999 “The Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in northeast Anatolia: A view from Sos Höyük,” Anatolian Studies 49: 153–157. SAGONA, A. and ZIMANSKY, P. 2009 Ancient Turkey. London: Routledge. SAMS, G. K. 1994 The Early Phrygian Pottery, The Gordion Excavations, 1950-1973, Final Reports, Volume IV, Text and Illustrations. Philadelphia: University Museum. SCHOOP, U. 2005 Das anatolische Chalkolithikum: eine chronologische Untersuchung zur vorbronzezeitlichen Kultursequenz im nördlichen Zentralanatolien und den angrenzenden Gebieten. Remshalden: Bernhard Albert Greiner. 2011 “Hittite pottery: A summary,” in Insights into Hittite History and Archaeology (Colloquia Antiqua 2), edited by D. P. Mielke and H. Genz, pp. 241–273. Leuven: Peeters. SEEHER, J. 1999 “Die Ausgrabungen in Boğazköy-Hattuşa 1998 und ein neuer topographischer Plan des Stadtgelandes,” Archaeologischer Anzeiger: 317–344. 2000a “Die Ausgrabungen in Boğazköy-Hattuša 1999,” Archäologischer Anzeiger: 355– 376. 2000b “Hattuşa/Boğazköy’ün Yerleşim Tarihine Yeni Katkılar: Büyükkaya Kazılarına Toplu Bir Bakış,” TÜBA-AR 3: 15–34. 2010 “After the empire: Observations on the Early Iron Age in Central Anatolia,” in Ipamati Kistamati Pari Tumatimis: Luwian and Hittite Studies Presented to J. David Hawkins, on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, edited by I. Singer, pp. 220–229. Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.

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ŞERIFOĞLU, T. E. 2007 “The Malatya-Elazığ region during the Middle Bronze Age: A re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence,” Anatolian Studies 57: 101–114. SEVIN, V. 1988 “İmikuşağı Kazılarının Işığında Habur Seramiğinin Kuzey Yayılımı,” in XXXIVème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, edited by H. Erkanal, V. Donbaz and A. Uğuryol, pp. 383–391. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. 1991 “The Early Iron Age in the Elazıǧ Region and the problem of the Mushkians,” Anatolian Studies 41: 87–97. 1995 İmikuşağı I (6.-1. Yapı Katları) (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları 6/47). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. 1997 Anadolu Arkeolojisi, Başlangıcından Persler’e Kadar. Istanbul: Der Yayınları. 1998 “MÖ I. Binyıl: Demir Çağı, Krallığın Koruyucuları,” in Kapadokya, edited by M. Sözen, pp. 170–193. Istanbul: Ayhan Şahenk Vakfı. STEINER, G. 1989 “Kültepe-Kanis und der Anitta-Text,” in Anatolia and the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honor of Tahsin Özgüç, edited by K. Emre, pp. 471–480. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. SUMMERS, G. D. 1994 “Grey Ware and the eastern limits of Phrygia,” in Anatolian Iron Ages 3: The Proceedings of the Third Anatolian Iron Ages Colloquium held at Van, 6-12 August 1990, edited by A. Çilingiroğlu and D. H. French, pp. 241–252. Ankara: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. 2006 “Architectural terracottas in Greater Phrygia: Problems of chronology and distribution,” in Hayat Erkanal’a armağan: Kültürlerin Yansıması/Studies in Honor Hayat Erkanal: Cultural Reflections, edited by A. Erkanal-Öktü, E. Özgen, S. Günel et al., pp. 684–688. Istanbul: Homer Yayınları. 2013 “East of the Halys: Thoughts on settlement patterns and historical geography in the late 2nd millennium and first half of the first millennium B.C,” in L’Anatolie des peuples, des cités et des cultures (IIe millénaire av. J.-C. – Ve siècle ap. J.-C.), Colloque international de Besançon - 26-27 novembre 2010, edited by H. Bru and G. Labarre, pp. 41–51. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. 2018 “Phrygians east of the red river: Phrygianisation, migration and desertion,” Anatolian Studies 68: 99–118. SUMMERS, G. D., SUMMERS, F. and BRANTING, S. 2004 “Megarons and associated structure at Kerkenes Dağ: An interim report,” Anatolia Antiqua 12: 7–41. SÜRENHAGEN, D. 1996 “Politischer Niedergang und kulturelles Nachleben des hethitischen Großreiches im Lichte neuer Forschung,” in Vom Halys zum Euphrat. Thomas Beran zu Ehren, mit Beiträgen von Freunden und Schülern (Altertumskunde des vorderen Orients 7), edited by U. Magen and M. Rashad, pp. 283–293. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. UMURTAK, G. 1996 Korucutepe II, 1973-1975 Dönemi Kazılarında Bulunmuş Olan Hitit Çanak Çömleği. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. ÜNAL, A. 2014 “Fraudulent premises of Anatolian historiography and Early Hittite involvement in and direct control of Cilicia – Kizzuwatna,” in Anadolu Kültürlerine bir Bakış: Armağan Erkanal’a Armağan / Some observations on Anatolian cultures: compiled in honor of Armağan Erkanal, edited by N. Çınardalı-Karaaslan et al., pp. 469–501. Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yayınları. ÜNAL, V. 1982 “Zwei Gräber Eurasischer Reiternomaden im Nördlichen Zentralanatolien,” Beiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Archäologie 4: 65–81.

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VAN DEN HOUT, T. 2013 “Hitit Krallığı ve İmparatorluğu’nun Kısa Tarihi / A short history of the Hittite kingdom and empire,” in Hititler: Bir Anadolu İmparatorluğu / Hittites: An Anatolian Empire, edited by M. Doğan-Alparslan and M. Alparslan, pp. 22–48. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık. VAN LOON, M. N. 1971 “Korucutepe Kazısı, 1969,” in Keban Projesi 1969 Çalışmaları, pp. 47–70. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. 1978 “Architecture and stratigraphy,” in Koructepe 2, edited by M. N. Van Loon, pp. 3–45. Amsterdam: North-Holland. VAN LOON, M. and GÜTERBOCK, H. G. 1969 “The excavations at Korucutepe near Elazığ,” Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi 18(2): 123–128. VEENHOF, K. R. 1995 “Kanesh: An Assyrian colony in Anatolia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East 1, edited by J. M. Sasson, pp. 859–871. New York: Blackwell. VOIGT, M. M. and HENRICKSON, R. C. 2000 “The Early Iron Age at Gordion: The evidence from the Yassıhöyük stratigraphic sequence,” in The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment, edited by E. D. Oren, pp. 327–360. Philadelphia: The University Museum. VOIGT, M. M. and YOUNG, T. C. JR. 1999 “From Phrygian capital to Achaemenid entrepot: Middle and Late Phrygian Gordion,” Iranica Antiqua 34: 192–241. VOIGT, M. M., DEVRIES, K., HENRICKSON, R. C., LAWALL, M., MARSH, B., GÜRSAN-SALZMAN, A. and YOUNG, T.C. JR. 1997 “Fieldwork at Gordion: 1993-1995,” Anatolica 23: 1–59. VON DER OSTEN, H. H. 1929 Explorations in Hittite Asia Minor, 1927-1928 (Oriental Institute Communications 6). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1937 The Alishar Hüyük Seasons of 1930-32, Part III (Oriental Institute Publications 30; Researches in Anatolia 9). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. VON SECKENDORFF, V. 2006 “Geologische Kartierung der Umgebung von Oymaağaç,” in “Interdisziplinäre Geländebegehung im Gebiet von Oymaağaç-Vezirköprü/Provinz Samsun,” by R. M. Czichon, M. Flender, J. Klinger, H. Kürschner and V. von Seckendorff, Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 138: 157–197. WÄFLER, M. 1983 “Zu Status und Lage von Tabāl,” Orientalia 52: 181–193. WAGNER, G. A. and ÖZTUNALI, O. 2000 “Prähistorische Kupferquellen in Türkei,” in Anatolian Metal I, edited by Ü. Yalçın, pp. 31–69. Bochum: Deutsches Bergbau-Museum. WEEDEN, M. 2010 “Tuwati and Easusarma: Imitating the behaviour of Assyria,” Iraq 72: 39–61. WILHELM, G. 1995 “Die Tontafelfunde der 2. Ausgrabungskampagne 1994 in Kuşaklı,” Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 127: 37–42. 1997 Kuşaklı-Sarissa 1.1: Keilschrifttexte aus Gebäude A. Rahden: Marie Leidorf. WINN, M. M. 1978 “The Early Iron Age pottery,” in Korucutepe 3, edited by M. Van Loon, pp. 155–175. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co. WOOLLEY, C. L. 1939 “The Iron Age graves of Carchemish,” Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 26: 11–37.

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YILDIRIM, R. 1994 “Urartu’nun Batı Bölgesi,” in XI. Türk Tarih Kongresi: Ankara, 5-9 Eylül 1990: kongreye sunulan bildiriler I/1, pp. 287–294. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. YILMAZ, M. A. 2012 “Contributions to the Early Iron Age problem in the central Black Sea region in light of Vezirköprü/Oymaağaç Höyük ceramics,” TÜBA-AR 15: 69–78. 2015 Vezirköprü/Oymaağaç Höyük Demir Çağı Seramikleri. Unpublished PhD diss. Erzurum: Atatürk University. YURTSEVER, A. 2004 MÖ 2. Binyılı Orta Karadeniz Bölgesi Çanak Çömleği (İkiztepe Kazıları Işığında). Unpublished Master’s diss. Istanbul University. ZIMMERMANN, T. 2007 “Anatolia and the Balkans, once again: Ring-shaped idols from Western Asia and a critical reassessment of some ‘Early Bronze Age’ items from Ikıztepe, Turkey,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26: 25–33.

PART V:

TOWARDS SUPRA-REGIONAL POLITICAL ENTITIES: ANATOLIA AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS DURING THE 1ST MILLENNIUM BCE

TROY AND PHRYGIA DURING THE IRON AGE C. Brian ROSE ABSTRACT An examination of Iron Age Troy and Gordion yields a multi-faceted portrait of the Troad and Phrygia, while clarifying their interaction with settlements in both Anatolia and the Aegean. Both the Troad and Phrygia were very much border areas, although the configuration of their borders and the powers with which they interacted were very different. Iron Age settlements within and south of the Troad are usually attributed to Aeolian colonists who journeyed from mainland Greece across the Aegean. Nevertheless, it is now clear that no one area played a dominant role in colonising northwest Asia Minor, nor is such a widespread colonisation supported by the archaeological record. The migration accounts that were so aggressively promoted in antiquity can be attributed to post-Persian War political propaganda. Phrygia, with its capital of Gordion, was just as much a transitional area between east and west as Troy had been, ultimately encompassing nearly half of the area once occupied by the Hittite empire. In the course of the eighth century, the Phrygian king Midas constructed a realm that interacted with Assyria, Tabal, the Neo-Hittite city-states, Urartu, Lydia, and Greece, all of which left their mark on his capital city.

I have had the good fortune to co-direct excavations at two Anatolian sites, Troy and Gordion, during the last 25 years (Fig. 1).1 Each site was administered from a well-fortified citadel with an equally well-protected residential district or Lower Town, and each appears to have received settlers from southeastern Europe during the Early Iron Age, probably the twelfth century BCE. The two sites experienced their greatest prosperity during different periods, however: for Troy, it was the Late Bronze Age, when it served as a vassal state of the Hittites; for Gordion it was the Iron Age, especially between the tenth and seventh centuries, when it served as the capital of a state that interacted extensively with the Assyrians, the small kingdoms in Tabal (Cappadocia), and Greece. Consequently, an examination of these two sites offers us a multi-faceted portrait of the Iron Age in the Troad and Phrygia, as well as their interaction with settlements in both Anatolia and the Aegean. Both are very much border areas, although the configuration of those borders and the powers with which they interacted were very different.

TROY, THE TROJAN WARS,

AND THE

AEOLIAN MIGRATION

Troy lies at one of the easiest crossing points between continental Europe and Asia, and at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which linked the Aegean with the Marmara and Black 1

 I would like to thank Lorenzo d’Alfonso and Karen Rubinson for having organised this conference, and G. Kenneth Sams and Gareth Darbyshire for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Fig. 1. Map of Asia Minor and the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age, prepared by Gabriel Pizzorno and Ardeth Anderson (after Rose 2014, pl. 10).

Seas (Figs. 2 and 3).2 As a consequence, the site of Troy and the entire coast of western Asia Minor were continually defined by an interface of powers that would later be called East and West, which, in turn, led to continual armed conflicts that spanned a period of over three millennia. The earliest of these appears to have occurred during the 14th and 13th centuries BCE between the Hittites and the Ahhiyawans/Achaeans, both of whom claimed authority over parts of the western coast of Anatolia. Similar types of conflict would continue during the Persian Wars, the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, and the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, among many others.3 Our knowledge of Troy during the Late Bronze Age has been limited by our inability to discover evidence of writing of Troy VI/VII date, but recent restructuring in Hittite geography has enabled us to confirm that “Wilusa” is the Hittite designation for Troy and its environs. Moreover, the references to Wilusa in the tablets discovered at Boğazköy demonstrate that it was a vassal state of the Hittite empire during most of the 14th and 13th centuries, functioning, in fact, as the northwest border of that kingdom.4 A tablet dating to ca. 1275 BCE records a treaty between the Hittite king Muwatalli II and Alaksandu, ruler of Wilusa, wherein they pledge their mutual allegiance, and Muwatalli hails the long history of strong and peaceful relations between them.5

2

 For an overview of the geography, which includes the latest results from core sampling, see Kraft et al. 2003 and Rose 2014, pp. 9–10. 3  Korfmann 1995; Niemeier 1999; Rose 2014. 4  Hawkins 1998a; Latacz and Starke 2006; Rose 2014, pp. 26–36. 5  Beckman et al. 2011, pp. 101–122; Hoffner 2009, pp. 296–313, no. 101.

TROY AND PHRYGIA DURING THE IRON AGE

Fig. 2. Aerial view of the Citadel Mound and the Lower City (after Rose 2014, pl. 6).

Fig. 3. Colour phase plan of the citadel mound, prepared by Elizabeth Riorden for the Troy Excavation Project (after Rose 2014, pl. 8).

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Fig. 4. Bronze bi-convex seal of 13th c. BCE date. Troy Archaeological Museum (after Rose 2014, fig. 1.16).

What is striking, however, is that without the existence of those tablets one would have no idea of the political links between Troy and the Hittites. There is often the expectation that such an alliance would have left traces in the archaeological record, but no Hittite pottery has been recovered from the site, nor is there any discernible Hittite influence in Trojan architecture. The only two potential candidates for such contact are a bronze seal incised with Luwian hieroglyphic script (Fig. 4)6 and a bronze statuette,7 although Luwian was used throughout western Anatolia during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the statuette bears only a relatively faint resemblance to its Hittite counterparts. We are on equally shaky ground in terms of Troy’s interaction with Mycenaean Greece. Mycenaean pottery enters the ceramic assemblages of Troy during the first half of the 16th century BCE, but represents only a very small percentage of the vessels in circulation – roughly 1 per cent. The percentages rise considerably during the later 14th century, but even then they account for only 3 to 5 per cent of the total assemblages. Unfortunately, we are still not in a position to separate genuine Mycenaean imports from local imitation, even with neutron activation analysis, since the chemical configuration of clays in both Troy and the Argolid are similar.8 That there was armed conflict at Troy at the beginning of the 12th century is clear even though the cast of characters in that conflict is not. The texts from Boğazköy dating to the 13th century that refer to Troy/Wilusa describe a series of Hittite–Ahhiyawan/Achaean conflicts that disrupted habitation along the west coast of Anatolia, including Troy, but there is also a record of internal dissension toward the end of the 13th century that resulted 6  Hawkins and Easton 1996. Hawkins dates the seal to the 13th century BCE, although it was found in a context datable to the second half of the 12th century, probably VIIb2. 7  Mellink and Strahan 1998. 8  Rose 2014, p. 26.

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in the expulsion of Troy’s king, a man named Walmu.9 In other words, there is evidence for conflict caused by internal and external agents at Troy toward the end of the Bronze Age, and we are therefore not yet in a position to identify the ethnicity of the combatants, who were responsible for the largest of the destruction levels, ca. 1190 BCE/Troy VIIa. Following the conflict, the population of the settlement appears to have decreased dramatically (VIIb1), as did its prosperity, and this would not begin to change until ca. 1130 BCE, when a group of immigrants from the Balkans established residency at Troy, having probably crossed from Europe to Asia via the Dardanelles (VIIb2). It looks as if the collapse of the Hittite Empire ca. 1200/1190 BCE prompted the opening of a commercial corridor from southeastern Europe to central Anatolia, thereby facilitating contact between Thrace and Troy.10 The handmade burnished wares that now begin to appear in Troy’s ceramic assemblages are one of the indications of this demographic change, as is the inclusion of orthostats in buildings on and around the citadel mound.11 The VIIb2 phase ended with a destruction (ca. 1050 BCE), and judging by the tumbled stones covering nearly all of the occupation areas, there may have been an earthquake.12 Most of the houses of this phase had been abandoned and cleared out before the destruction, and we have been unable to determine exactly where the survivors subsequently lived. Indeed, reconstructing occupation at Troy during the entire first half of the first millennium BCE has never been easy, primarily because sealed strata dating to the Iron Age and Archaic period are preserved in only a few areas of the site. Troy’s centre of habitation during this period was almost certainly the citadel, but all pre-Hellenistic levels were cleared away during the construction of a monumental sanctuary to Athena in the third century BCE, so there is no way to be certain. The only areas where substantial deposits dating to ca. 1000–500 BCE have been found are in the northern part of the West Sanctuary, and in a network of terraces on the south side of the mound (sector D9), neither of which was extensively excavated until the 1990s.13 Since the excavations conducted in the late 19th century and the 1930s had yielded no clear archaeological evidence for continuous habitation between the Bronze and Iron Ages, it was assumed that there must have been a long hiatus in habitation following the end of the Bronze Age. Carl Blegen argued that the hiatus extended for nearly 400 years (ca. 1100– 700 BCE), ending only with the beginning of the Archaic period, and this has long remained a dominant viewpoint in scholarship.14 It was this assumption of a division between Bronze Age and post-Bronze Age habitation, in fact, that led to the partnership between the Universities of Tübingen and Cincinnati in 1988, at the beginning of the Troy excavations: Cincinnati assumed responsibility for the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine layers, while

9

 Beckman et al. 2011, pp. 123–133; Hoffner 2009, pp. 313–321, no. 102; Niemeier 1999, 2002; Rose 2014, pp. 33–35. 10  Aydingün and Aydingün 2013; Henrickson and Voigt 1998; Sams 1992, p. 59; Yakar 2003, p. 16. 11  Becks and Pieniazek-Sikora 2006; Pieniazek-Sikora 2003. 12  Aslan 2002, pp. 83–84; 2009; Basedow 2009; Lenz et al. 1998, p. 210, n. 46; Mountjoy 1999, pp. 333– 334. 13  Aslan 2019; Rose 2014, pp. 44–53. 14  Basedow 2009; Blegen et al. 1958, pp. 147–148.

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Tübingen intended to excavate and analyse the Bronze Age strata, with the “hiatus” supplying the dividing line. By 1993, however, extensive excavation on the south and southwest sides of the citadel mound had demonstrated the unlikelihood of a long hiatus in habitation at Troy during the Iron Age, and it began to look as if the site had never been abandoned prior to ca. 500 CE. The pottery in the newly excavated deposits showed that Aegean commercial networks were still operating in the Troad during the tenth, ninth, and eighth centuries BCE, and Troy was clearly actively involved in those networks.15 There appears to have been a Protogeometric settlement at Troy with functional kilns that were producing a specialised type of pottery, painted neck-handled amphoras that were probably intended for wine or oil (Fig. 5). Nor was this settlement an isolated one within the north Aegean: neck-handled amphoras similar to those produced at Troy have been discovered at Torone in Macedonia,16 as well as at Lemnos17 and Clazomenae.18 An unexpected by-product of these new discoveries was that we found ourselves in a better position to assess long-held theories of a widespread Greek colonisation of the Troad during the Iron Age, usually referred to as the “Aeolian Migration”.19 There is no uniformity in the ancient sources that deal with the Aeolian Migration, but the narratives generally focus on colonists from mainland Greece who crossed the Aegean after the Trojan War and founded settlements throughout northwestern Asia Minor, including the Troad, Lesbos, and Tenedos.20 One of the fullest accounts of the migration is provided by Strabo, who proposed that Greek immigrants departed from Aulis in Boeotia, like the forces of Agamemnon, and proceeded to Thrace, under Orestes’ son Penthilus; then to Daskyleion, under his grandson Archelaus or Echelas; and finally to the Troad and Lesbos, under his great-grandson Gras.21 As one can easily see from Strabo’s summary, the royal family of Mycenae, and especially Orestes, play a particularly prominent role in these narratives.22 This feature of early Greek history has become widely accepted, and the presence of Protogeometric sherds in Troy’s Iron Age levels had, in fact, been cited as evidence in support of the migration, and more specifically, tied to the subjugation of Troy by the new Greek settlers.23 If we consider the ancient literary accounts of the migration in conjunction with the newly discovered archaeological evidence, however, the situation becomes much clearer. There were undeniable commercial and political links between both sides of the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age, as a re-examination of the Hittite “Ahhiyawa” texts has shown, and Miletus probably functioned as a Mycenaean colony in the 13th century BCE.24

15

 Aslan 2019.  Papadopoulos 2005, p. 576. 17  Danile 2011, pp. 78–84. 18  Aslan 2002, pp. 83–84, 90–92; Aytaçlar 2004, pp. 22–24; Catling 1998, pp. 153–166. 19  Catling 1998; Lenz et al. 1998; Rose 2008. 20  Bérard 1959; Blegen et al. 1958, pp. 147–148, 248–249; Cook 1973, pp. 360–363; Tenger 1999, pp. 121–126; Vanschoonwinkel 1991, pp. 405–421. 21  Strabo 9.2.3, 5; 13.1.1–4; 13.2.1; 13.3.2–3; 13.3.5. 22  Leaf 1923, pp. 43–45. 23  Hertel 1991, 1992, 2007, pp. 117–120. 24  Niemeier 2002, 2006. 16

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Fig. 5. Protogeometric amphora from the West Sanctuary. Troy Archaeological Museum (after Rose 2014, fig. 2.1).

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This was the period in which western Asia Minor developed into a peripheral region contested by forces associated with both the Hittites and the Aegean.25 There was also substantial interaction with Thrace, as indicated by the twelfth century BCE deposits at Troy, which probably led to the influx of Thracian immigrants into Asia Minor ca. 1130 BCE. A trading network involving Troy and Thessaly also appears to have developed during the Iron Age, and by the seventh century BCE, Lesbos had established a claim to at least a part of the Troad.26 At no time during the early first millennium BCE, however, do we have evidence at Troy for attacks, for the arrival of a new population group, or for any substantive change in ceramic production, other than the appearance of the locally produced, painted neck amphoras. The ceramic assemblages, in fact, remained remarkably consistent, with very few imports until the sixth century BCE, when Greek begins to appear in inscriptions. If we examine the ancient literary accounts of the Migration in conjunction with the archaeological evidence from the Troad, there are several points of correspondence. The accounts, taken as a whole, stress the roles played in the migrations by Mycenae, Locris, Euboea, Thessaly, Thrace, and Lesbos. The archaeological record at Troy demonstrates that all of these regions interacted commercially and/or politically with western Asia Minor at various points during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, which probably explains why so many different groups were featured in the migration accounts. Nevertheless, it is clear that no one area played a dominant role in colonising Aeolis, nor is such a widespread colonisation supported by the material record. It does seem certain, however, that such stories acquired considerable momentum following the Persian Wars, when the promotion of these migration accounts was politically expedient for both Greece and Asia Minor.27 Mainland Greek cities fortified their allegedly ancestral connection to western Asia Minor, while the cities of western Asia Minor strengthened their political ties to the principal opponents of the Persians, who still controlled most of this area from their provincial capital at Daskyleion. In short, the Aeolian Migration appears to have been largely a by-product of post-Persian War propaganda, and, at least in part, an attempt to co-opt the Homeric heritage that had been tied to the Troad. Troy and Aeolis still functioned as border or transitional areas, but the crossing of that border by Greeks appears to have been very different from what the Classical historians would have us believe. Throughout the Iron Age and Archaic period, there would, of course, have been centuries of interaction between Greek-speaking communities and the native settlements of Asia Minor in which trade, intermarriage, and territorial conflict played a part; but the culture in most of the western Asia Minor cities would have been a continually changing blend of Luwian, Lydian, Phrygian, and Greek. In other words, the process by which Troy and the Troad became Greek probably involved the gradual adoption of a new identity by the local inhabitants, rather than the arrival of a new wave of immigrants to the site. 25

 Beckman et al. 2011; Niemeier 2002; Rose 2014, pp. 28–33.  Rose 2014, pp. 52–53. 27  Sakellariou (1958, 1990, pp. 133–149) proposed that much of the account of the Ionian migration should be viewed as Athenian propaganda following the Persian wars. 26

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Fig. 6. Plan of the Terrace House with apsidal altar, prepared by Pavol Hnila for the Troy Excavation Project (after Rose 2014, fig. 2.2).

What has also become clear is that Troy had already been identified as the site of the battles described by Homer in the Iliad. The late ninth or early eighth century witnessed the construction in the West Sanctuary of a cult building with apsidal altar and interior and exterior benches, which may have served as a heroon to the Homeric heroes (Fig. 6).28 Shortly thereafter, the ruined settlement mounds that surrounded Troy were identified as the tombs of the Homeric heroes, and subsequently highlighted as such to visiting tourists. It is this evolving Homeric identity at Troy, in fact, that proved so attractive to the citystates of Greece, and their attempt to co-opt it for their own political purposes served as one of the driving forces behind the development of the migration accounts.29 THE ARCHAEOLOGY

OF

GORDION

In many respects, Phrygia was just as much a transitional area between east and west as Troy had been, ultimately encompassing nearly half of the area once occupied by the Hittite empire, although its borders are still difficult to fix and they clearly shifted considerably between the ninth and sixth centuries BCE (Fig. 7).30 Phrygia’s capital city of Gordion 28

 Rose 2014, pp. 46–52.  Cook 1973, pp. 159–165; Dörpfeld 1902, pp. 538–548; Luce 2003; Rose and Körpe 2015. 30  Rose 2017, p. 136; Sivas and Sivas 2012, p. 13. 29

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Fig. 7. Map of Anatolia and the Near East in the Early and Middle Phrygian period (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

lies 65 km southwest of Ankara and was built along the Sangarios River, the third longest in Turkey, which empties into the Black Sea. Measuring nearly 450 × 300 m (13 ha), Gordion’s citadel mound was approximately four times the size of the mound of Troy, and comprises at least nine settlements spanning a period of over three millennia (Figs. 8 and 9). Although Gordion was first settled in the Early Bronze Age, the site received a new wave of immigrants from southeastern Europe in the later twelfth century BCE, as at Troy, and it is these settlers who would eventually be labeled as Phrygians in the Greek literary tradition.31 It is not unlikely, in fact, that the new Thracian arrivals at Troy moved into Asia via the Dardanelles, while those who travelled to Gordion crossed at the Bosphorus. New handmade wares appear at both sites at roughly the same time, and there are enough similarities in shape, colouration, and technology to suggest that the migrants were tied to the same cultural traditions of Thrace.32 The new Phrygian migrants were not prodigious builders from what we can tell, so for the next 250 years Gordion appears to have been not much more than a village. And then suddenly, in the second quarter of the ninth century BCE, everything changed.33 The large mound with scattered buildings was transformed into an imposing citadel, in which spacious megarons with double pitched roofs occupied a series of walled courts devoted to

31

 DeVries 1990, pp. 371–372, 390–391; Henrickson and Voigt 1998, p. 101; 2000, p. 46; Sams 1988, 1994, pp. 8–9; Vassileva 2005; Wittke 2004, pp. 260–270, 275–282. 32  Aydingün and Aydingün 2013, pp. 65–78. Handmade pottery occurs also at Daskyleion (BakırAkbaşoğlu 1997, p. 231) and Kaman-Kalehöyük (Matsumura 2001; Mellink 1992, p. 130). For the handmade pottery from Gordion, see Sams 1994, p. 19–29. 33  For the date of the new construction program, now bolstered by new radiocarbon dates, see Kealhofer et al. 2019.

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Fig. 8. Aerial view of Gordion’s citadel. The circle indicates the location of the 2013-14 trench that yielded the glacis on the Western Mound (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

administration and industry, all of which were protected by massive fortifications.34 New mortuary customs were introduced as well, with monumental tumuli covering wooden tomb chambers that held bronze cauldrons and bowls associated with elite feasting. The labour force required for such a transition must have been enormous, as timber, stone, and clay were secured and transported to the citadel, while new carpenters, masons, and metalworkers were identified and trained. The impetus for this radical transformation is unclear, but it certainly looks as if a new power broker had entered the region, one that was capable of quickly mobilising labour and resources for a building campaign unlike anything that Gordion had experienced before. We currently perceive Gordion’s citadel mound as having contained a unified settlement across the upper surface, but prior to the Hellenistic period, the mound was probably significantly smaller, with an administrative and industrial quarter at the east (the “Eastern Mound”), a likely domestic quarter at the west (the “Western Mound”), and an open area, possibly a street, that separated them (Figs. 9 and 10). Virtually all of the monumental buildings on the Eastern Mound were first constructed between ca. 850 and 800 BCE, in the Early Phrygian period, and surrounded by a high defensive wall with a monumental 34

 Voigt 2013, pp. 186–194; Rose 2017, pp. 137–142.

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Fig. 9. Colour phase plan of Gordion, prepared by Gareth Darbyshire and Gabriel Pizzorno. The grey rectangle indicates the location of the 2013-14 trench that yielded the glacis on the Western Mound (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

gateway over 10 m high.35 During the Middle Phrygian period (ca. 800–540 BCE), two walled residential districts of equal size (ca. 45 ha), commonly referred to as the Lower and Outer Towns, were probably added at the north, south, and west of the citadel. The zone of industrial activity on the Eastern Mound, usually referred to as the “Terrace Building”, actually consists of two parallel, eight-roomed buildings that flanked a central court 23 m wide (Figs. 9, 10, and 12). With a length of over 100 m, these buildings are among the longest known in ancient Anatolia, second only to those in the Hittite capital at Hattuša. At Gordion the equipment used there for textile production and food processing in the ninth century was discovered still in situ, with some rooms containing between 500 and 600 loom weights.36 To the east of this area was an elite quarter with at least two walled courts containing a series of megarons, several of which were decorated with polychromatic pebble mosaics, tapestries with geometric decoration, and wooden furniture with inlaid ivory plaques (Figs. 9 and 10).37 It is difficult to get a sense of the enormity of 35

 For recent overviews of the site, see Kealhofer 2005; Rose 2012; Rose and Darbyshire 2011; Şentürk and Sivas 2007; Sivas and Sivas 2012; for Gordion during the Bronze Age, see Gunter 1991. 36  Burke 2005, p. 71, figs. 6–2; DeVries 1990, pp. 385–386. 37  For the mosaics see Salzmann 1982, pp. 4, 6–8, 78, 93–94, nos. 46–56 and Young 1965; for the Terrace Building, see DeVries 1980, p. 40; 1990, pp. 385–386; for the ivories, see Sheftel 1974 and Young 1962,

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Fig. 10. Plan of the citadel’s Eastern Mound in the Early Phrygian period (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

these megarons from the site plans or the remaining foundations, but the façade of the largest one, Megaron 3, would have been approximately the same size as the rock-cut monument at Midas City, ca. 17 m high (Fig. 13). The roofing systems of the megarons are particularly noteworthy: the ceiling of Megaron 2 featured beams over 11 m in length with no internal supports, which is, as far as we know, a more daring feat of engineering than one would have found in roughly contemporary Assyrian palaces, including the throne room of Assurnasirpal II.38

pp. 166–167. The topographical configuration of the citadel mound’s western side is unknown since excavation there has not yet reached Early Phrygian levels. 38  Liebhart 1988.

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At the end of the ninth century BCE, Gordion’s ruling authority decided to endow the city with an even more commanding presence by raising the level of the citadel mound 4–5 m higher. This entailed the complete burial of the Early Phrygian citadel, the buildings of which had been standing, for the most part, not more than 50 years.39 Such a radical recreation of an entire city is unprecedented in the ancient world, and it should probably be viewed as an attempt by Gordion to compete with the increasing splendour of the Neo-Hittite citadels in North Syria with which they now interacted.40 Such an extensive refashioning would undeniably have made the settlement look far more imposing, but it would have involved the excavation and movement of over half a million cubic metres of clay, which abundantly illustrates how extensive Gordion’s labour force must have been in the later ninth century. The conflagration that swept through the citadel at the end of the ninth century could easily have been related to this massive construction effort, and it is noteworthy that it yielded no casualties as far as we can determine.41 The newly elevated citadel, which marks the beginning of the Middle Phrygian period, featured a citadel plan almost identical to that of its predecessor, as well as a stepped glacis or terrace wall that appears to have surrounded both the Eastern and Western Mounds.42 Such a glacis had been used in the Early Phrygian citadel as well, but the new one was faced in key areas with sections of different coloured stones, apparently from several different quarries. Such a manipulation of coloured stone in architecture is also reminiscent of the alternating limestone and basalt orthostat reliefs at Carchemish during the same general period, although there are no Iron Age Anatolian predecessors for the stepped form of the glacis. The increase in the citadel’s height occurred in tandem with the construction of equally monumental fortifications in the Lower Town that featured mudbrick walls at least 4 m high on stone foundations 3.5 m thick, with a defensive ditch set in front of them, and three multi-storied forts incorporated into the circuit at north and southeast (Fig. 11).43 It looks as if the clay that was quarried for the foundations of these outer fortifications was subsequently used to raise the level of the citadel, since both deposits have the same trace elements.44 In other words, we appear to have evidence for a single building program with at least two mutually beneficial components. Another fortified residential district of equal size (the “Outer Town”) lay at the west of the Lower Town and appears to be Middle Phrygian in date as well, which means that the area under protection at Gordion during the eighth century would have reached over 100 hectares. Both Lower and Outer Towns were bordered by defensive ditches (Fig. 11), as were a relatively large number of settlements in Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine (Troy, Carchemish, Qatna, Ebla, Kadesh, Hazor, Lachish, Askelon), among others.45 39

 Voigt 2012; Kealhofer et al. 2019.  Gilibert 2011; Harrison 2013. 41  For the date of the conflagration, see Rose and Darbyshire 2011. 42  Rose 2012, p. 9; 2015; 2017, pp. 166–168. 43  Rose 2017, p. 146. 44  Voigt and Young 1999, p. 203, n. 6; Marsh and Jones 2014, pp. 191–192. 45  Rose 2012, pp. 9–12; Sams and Voigt 2009; for Troy, see Rose 2014, pp. 21–22; for other Near Eastern examples, see Bunimovitz 1992; Finkelstein 1992. 40

TROY AND PHRYGIA DURING THE IRON AGE

Fig. 11. Reconstruction by Ben Marsh of the fortification system of Gordion during the Middle Phrygian period (eighth–sixth c. BCE) (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

Fig. 12. The Terrace Building at Gordion, looking northwest. Photo by GGH (Gordion Project, Penn Museum, 13-GGH-5948).

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Fig. 13. The rock-cut heroon at Midas City. Photo by author.

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One can understand this massive building campaign only by viewing it against the backdrop of an almost equally energetic campaign of city foundations and citadel constructions in eastern Anatolia (Urartu, under Argishti I), in the northern Levant (Zincirli/Sam’al), and in Assyria (Nimrud under Assurnasirpal II). Moreover, in light of the number of ambassadors and tribute bearers who must have been continually traveling among Phrygia, Tabal, Urartu, and Assyria during the ninth and eighth centuries, it seems likely that information regarding new urban additions or transformations would have been widely circulated. Each new construction would have highlighted the need for increasingly sophisticated defenses in the other areas. An increasing number of monumental tumuli now began to surround the citadel of Gordion. The largest of these was Tumulus MM (Midas Mound),46 which was almost certainly constructed by Midas for his father, and it would stand as the largest tumulus in Asia Minor until Croesus constructed a tomb for his own father Alyattes at Sardis around 560 BCE (Figs. 11 and 14).47 During the ninth, eighth, and early seventh centuries, such fields of monumental tumuli for the local elite were highly unusual in Asia Minor. Gordion was the only major city with such a distinctive funerary custom, and this would remain the case until the tumulus format was adopted by the Lydians in the later seventh century.48 In other words, the tumuli formed part of a distinctive landscape of power that signalled the city’s wealth as well as the size of its labour force. The source of this tradition is unclear: burial mounds were used during the Bronze Age in southeastern Europe, which is the region from which the Phrygians came. That migration had, however, occurred in the later twelfth century BCE and the earliest of Gordion’s excavated tumuli (Tumulus W) did not appear before 850 BCE, so there may have been an

Fig. 14. Tumulus MM (Midas Mound) and the Gordion Museum (Gordion Project, Penn Museum).

46

 Liebhart 2010, 2012; Liebhart and Brixhe 2009; Liebhart et al. 2015; Simpson 2010; Young et al. 1981. 47  For the Lydian tumuli see Mellink 1993, p. 163; Ratté 1993, p. 5; 2011, p. 54; Roosevelt 2009, pp. 122–126, 144–145. Alyattes would have seen the tumuli of Phrygia while pursuing the Cimmerians across Anatolia. The Midas Mound tumulus is 53 m high, while that of Alyattes is 69 m. It seems likely that Croesus was consciously attempting to produce the highest tumulus in Anatolia, just as Midas had done. 48  Baughan 2013, pp. 88–93, 262–265; Dusinberre 2013, pp. 19–24, 141–151.

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interim period of nearly three centuries.49 Tumulus W was constructed at the same time as the Early Phrygian citadel gate, the plan of which appears to have been changed midway through construction so that its walls were directly aligned with the tumulus. One can only assume that the decedent in Tumulus W was regarded as a ruler of singular importance, a man whose career was so illustrious that it could prompt the reorientation of the citadel’s principal entrance, thereby fostering a potent interaction of architecture and memory.50 The construction of Tumulus MM in 740 BCE is usually regarded as the accession date of Midas, who appears to have reigned for approximately four decades, until the beginning of the seventh century.51 This was a period of unusual prosperity for Gordion and one in which the Phrygian kingdom grew to its largest size as it interfaced continually with Assyria, Tabal, and Urartu, as well as Ionia and mainland Greece. Toward the end of the seventh century, perhaps early in the reign of Alyattes, Gordion moved within the control of Lydia, which lasted until the attack of the Persians in the 540s. Thereafter, in the Late Phrygian period (ca. 540–330 BCE), the site was administered by the Achaemenids, and only the citadel walls served as a means of defense since the outer fortifications and their forts had been destroyed.

RECONSTRUCTING

THE

KINGDOM OF PHRYGIA

We cannot rely on the inscriptions from Gordion to augment the archaeological discoveries that have just been presented, nor to clarify the historical development of the kingdom to which it was tied.52 Although several inscriptions have been found on and around the citadel mound, and even, more recently, within Tumulus MM, Phrygian inscriptions tend to be short and historical commentary is avoided. To amplify the historical context, one needs to turn to the Assyrian and Greek literary and epigraphic sources, and, to a much lesser extent, the inscriptions from Tabal, Urartu, and Midas City.53 The most valuable information derives from the annals of the Assyrian kings, since these provide contemporary reports of key historical events, even if from an Assyrian viewpoint. The majority of the references pertain to Midas (or “Mita” in Akkadian), who was named as ruler of the Mushki – the term “Phrygian” was never used.54 The first reference to the Mushki occurs during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1078 BCE), who records that 49

 Ratté 2011, p. 54; Sams 1988; Vassileva 2005. For the latest chronology of Gordion’s tumuli, see Sams and Voigt 2011, p. 166, fig. 7.10. The new tumulus chronology chart was compiled by Gareth Darbyshire. 50  Liebhart et al. 2015. 51  Ballard 2012; Berndt-Ersöz 2008; DeVries 2008; DeVries and Rose 2012; Hawkins 1994; Mellink 1992, pp. 622–634; Roller 1983, 1984; Sams 1995. 52  The inscriptions have been collected in Brixhe and Lejeune 1984, pp. 73–214; Brixhe 2002, 2004b; see also Liebhart-Brixhe 2009. 53  For the Assyrian sources, see Fales and Postgate 1992; Lie 1929; Luckenbill 1927; Parpola 1987; Sagg 1958 and Starr 1990. The Luwian inscriptions from the Neo-Hittite states appear in Hawkins 2000. Both the Assyrian and Greek sources for Gordion’s history have been treated in DeVries 2011. For the texts referring to the legendary aspects of Midas, see Roller 1983, 1984. 54  These are summarised in Hawkins 1994. For the Mushki, in general, see Kossian 1997; Mellink 1965; and Wittke 2004.

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he fought 20,000 of them and mentions five of their kings.55 The next references date to the ninth century, to the reigns of Tukulti-Ninurta II (888–884 BCE) and Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE), with the latter boasting that the Mushki paid tribute to him in the form of bronze, cattle, sheep, and wine.56 All of these references to the Mushki deal with the Upper Tigris region, in the vicinity of Elazığ, Diyabakır, and Batman, and there is no evidence that the Phrygians living in and around Gordion were connected in any way with the Mushki at this time.57 This situation would change at some point in the later ninth or eighth century, although there are no references to Mushki in the Assyrian annals between the reigns of Assurnasirpal II and Sargon II (859–722 BCE), so we have no way of knowing who or what prompted the changes. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that this was the time in which Gordion’s citadel first acquired monumental form, and that sense of monumentality would have increased dramatically only a few decades later when the citadel was raised 4–5 m higher.58 At the same time, the kingdom of Urartu was steadily expanding, which may have prompted a move of the Mushki toward the west, into an area that the Phrygians already controlled. By this point there was probably extensive contact between Gordion and the Neo-Hittite or North Syrian kingdoms to the southeast, such as Carchemish and Zincirli (Fig. 7). Such contact is abundantly attested by the objects recovered from Gordion’s destruction level of 800 BCE, such as ivory horse trappings and plaques, which we should probably regard as components of gift exchange among the ruling elite.59 Moreover, by the late ninth century, interaction between Gordion and the Phoenicians had enabled the Phrygians to develop an alphabetic script far more accessible than the other Anatolian scripts that utilised cuneiform or hieroglyphs.60 Those who were travelling between Gordion and North Syria/Phoenicia would have passed through Tabal, more or less coeval with the later region of Cappadocia, which was comprised of a series of small independent kingdoms that numbered between 20 and 24 during the time of Shalmaneser III (859–824 BCE) (Fig. 7).61 The Taurus Mountains would have constituted Tabal’s border at the southeast, Melid/Malatya at the east, and Phrygia at the north and west. In light of the number of powerful states with which Tabal interacted, it is not surprising that it was a locus of continual conflict, and Sargon II reportedly lost his life in battle here. It was during the eighth century BCE that the number of armed conflicts in central and eastern Anatolia rose significantly, as new alliances among Phrygia, Urartu, Assyria, and Tabal were continually forged and broken.62 Malatya came under Urartian hegemony during the first half of the eighth century,63 and there are contemporary references to the conquest 55

 Luckenbill 1926, no. 221; Mellink 1965, pp. 318–319; Wittke 2004, pp. 32–34, 2.1.3.  Luckenbill 1926, nos. 413, 442; Mellink 1965, p. 319; Wittke 2004, pp. 38–39. 57  Sevin 1988. 58  Kealhofer et al. 2019. 59  Gilibert 2011; Rose 2012, pp. 5, 18, n. 1.8; Sams 2011, pp. 60–66; Simpson 2012. 60  Brixhe 2004a; Mellink 1993; Papadopoulos 2016. 61  Aro 1998; d’Alfonso 2012; Hawkins 2000, pp. 425–433. 62  Grayson 1991, pp. 71–102; Hawkins 1982; Mellink 1991, pp. 622–642. 63  Hawkins 1998b. 56

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of both Urartu and Mushki on the gate lions set up at Til Barsip by the Assyrian general Shamshi-ilu, which suggests rebellion against Assyria’s control of the area.64 By 740 BCE, Midas had assumed the Phrygian throne, and his dominion included that of the Mushki according to the annals of Sargon II.65 Consequently, it looks as if Phrygia and Mushki may have coalesced into a kingdom that approached the Euphrates River at the east, beyond which lay Urartu. This would also fit well with subsequent references suggesting that Mushki lay close enough to Urartu that the latter could easily seize the former as forced labourers.66 The southern bend of the Kızılırmak (Halys), which lay adjacent to Tabal, would have marked its southern border, and, not surprisingly, Mushki (= Meschech) and Tabal are linked together in the Book of Ezekiel.67 The southeast border of the kingdom must, however, have been considerably north of Malatya, at least prior to the reign of Midas. This was a kingdom over which Assyria and Urartu were continually in conflict, and there are no references to Mushki interference there in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III or Shalmaneser V.68 The western line of control is more difficult to establish. There was a colossal rock-cut monument dedicated to Midas as wanax and lawagetas at Midas City, nearly 170 km west of Gordion.69 The monument appears to be a relief reproduction of an actual megaron such as those that dominated the citadel of Gordion, with a width and height of nearly 17 m. The suggested carving dates range from the eighth to the sixth century BCE, but the monument was almost certainly produced during the period when Midas was on the throne. The title of wanax appears in Homer’s Iliad, first written down in the late eighth century BCE, but kings were subsequently referred to as basileus, which suggests an earlier rather than a later date. Moreover, the creation of a monument as ambitious as this one would likely have formed part of a system of gift exchange, wherein the labour expended on the monument would have been intended to trigger the conferral of a gift, whether tangible or intangible, that was nearly as magnanimous. During the depressed years of the seventh century BCE, a benefaction from the Phrygian capital to Midas City would probably not have been possible, nor would the essential workmen and materials necessarily have been available. It is similarly difficult to imagine a dedication to Midas during the early years of the sixth century – Alyattes and Croesus would be more likely candidates for a monument dating to that period, when one would expect the use of basileus rather than wanax or lawagetas. The monument can most safely be assigned to a date in the late eighth century BCE, when Midas ruled a kingdom that was stronger and more prosperous than it would ever be again.70 64

 Wittke 2004, pp. 44–45.  Luckenbill 1927, nos. 8, 16, 18, 25, 42, 43, 55, 71, 80, 92, 99, 118, 214; Parpola 1987, pp. 4–7, no. 1; Wittke 2004, pp. 3–6, 14–15, 48, 50, 52, 54, 106–130, 157, 196. 66  Mellink (1965) provides a lucid summary of the process. For the Urartian seizure of Phrygians, see Çilingiroğlu and Salvini 2001, pp. 19–20; Salvini 2001, p. 261. 67  Ezekiel 27:13, 32:26, 38:2, 39:1; d’Alfonso 2012, pp. 184–185. 68  Hawkins 1998b. 69  Berndt-Ersöz 2006a, pp. 126–131, 142, 177. 70  For the dating and significance of the Midas Monument, see Rose forthcoming. 65

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Ninety kilometers to the north, the site of Dorylaion, near modern Eskişehir, clearly functioned as a Phrygian settlement during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.71 It is not unlikely that Phrygian control extended even further to the west, based on the Phrygian inscriptions and artefacts recently uncovered at the site of Daskyleion, near the southern shore of the Propontis.72 In other words, the length of the Phrygian kingdom during the reign of Midas may have reached at least 900 km, and probably closer to 1200 km. There is no definitive evidence that Troy was included in the Phrygian kingdom, although it is noteworthy that Troy and Phrygia were occasionally linked in legend: Priam’s wife, Hecuba, was Phrygian; the Phrygians were allies of the Trojans in the Iliad; and Ilus, son of Dardanus, participated in a wrestling match hosted by the king of Phrygia.73 Phrygian influence in Lycia is also readily apparent. At the site of Bayındır in central Lycia, near the village of Elmalı, there are nearly 100 tumuli, but two of them were built in a distinctively Phrygian style toward the end of the eighth century.74 The wooden tomb chambers were surrounded by rubble packing, and several of the grave goods bear Phrygian inscriptions that are paralleled at Gordion. These are fully Phrygian burials, and surely indicate a Phrygian element in the population of central Lycia. Midas’ marriage to the daughter of the king of Kyme, of which we are informed by Aristotle and Pollux,75 is especially interesting and very much in keeping with his strategic vision, at least insofar as we can reconstruct it from the Assyrian annals. Such a political alliance provided access to a key Aegean port, which was probably the one that was used when Midas sent his wood and ivory throne as a dedication to Apollo at Delphi – the first foreign king, as Herodotus notes, to have done so.76 The “western” component of Midas, as it were, would also have been apparent on the façade of the Midas City heroon, where he was referred to as wanax and lavagetas, king and military commander, both of which are attested in Linear B.77 Aside from Priam in the Iliad, Midas was the only Anatolian king to have received the wanax title, as far as we know.78 The bulk of Midas’s attention was devoted to the areas that lay to the south of his kingdom, especially Tabal and North Syria, which would lead to increased conflict with the Assyrians, especially between 718 and 709 BCE. At some point in his reign, Midas captured three forts in Que, a Cilician kingdom in the vicinity of Adana and therefore in proximity to the Mediterranean, the kingdoms of North Syria, and the Cilician Gates, which passed through the Taurus Mountains and connected the Anatolian plateau to the Cilician plain

71  Berndt 2002; for Midas City, see Berndt-Ersoz 2006; Brixhe and Tüfekçi Sivas 2004, 2010; Tüfekçi Sivas 2005, 2008. 72  Bakır 1995, 1997; Bakır and Gusmani 1991; Gusmani and Polat 1999; Neumann 1997. For a possible Phrygian inscription from Parion, even further to the west, see Brixhe and Keleş 2011. 73  Strabo 12.8.3. 74  Börker-Klahn 2003; Özgen and Öztürk 1996, p. 27; Varinlioğlu 1992. Sare (2010) has argued eloquently for a redating of the tomb to the late seventh century, but if the artefacts are viewed as an assemblage, they suggest a date closer to ca. 700 BCE. 75  Pollux 9.8.3; Aristotle fr. 611, 37. 76  Herodotus 1.14; DeVries and Rose 2012. 77  Brixhe and Lejeune 1984, pp. 6–9; Cassola 1997, p. 146; Munn 2006, p. 77. 78  Yamagata 1997.

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(Fig. 7).79 When Midas seized these forts is unclear, but the annals of Sargon II indicate that they had been in his possession for a lengthy period. Situated between Phrygia and Que was the land of Tabal, with which Midas needed to maintain good relations in order to access the aforementioned forts, and Tabal now became the principal agent in a tug-of-war between Phrygia and Assyria. There is an abundance of evidence indicating Midas’s outreach to the Tabalian kings, and a political/cultural relationship between Phrygia and Tabal may have already been in place in the ninth century.80 At the site of Tyana, a basalt stele with a Phrygian inscription was erected by Midas himself, although whether it was an historical document or a dedication to one or more gods cannot be determined.81 The king of Tyana at that time, a man named Warpalawas who was an ally of Midas, was depicted on a large (4.2 m high) rock-cut relief at the site of İvriz, roughly 80 km southwest of Tyana, in a group that included the storm god Tarhunzas (Fig. 15). The king was shown wearing an apparently Phrygian belt and fibula, and the elaborate geometric decoration covering his tunic is reminiscent of the geometric patterns in Gordion’s mosaics and textiles. All are probably gifts from Midas.82 Early in the reign of Sargon II, Midas had begun to craft alliances with the kings of Tabal against Assyria, to which Tabal had been paying tribute at least since the reign of Shalmaneser III. This began with a king of Sinuhtu named Kiakki (718 BCE), and continued with Ambaris of Bit-Burutash and Kurti of Atuna (713 BCE). But these new political alliances extended far beyond Tabal: Midas reportedly schemed against Assyria with Pisiri, king of Carchemish, in 717 BCE, and convinced Tarhunazi, king of Malatya, to switch his support from Assyria to Phrygia in 712 BCE.83 The fact that the Malatyan king was willing to shift his allegiance to Midas attests to both the power and propinquity of the Phrygian kingdom at this time. Each of these power plays provoked Assyrian attacks, after which most of the rebellious kings were deported to Assyria, but they presented the Assyrians with a continual series of challenges along their northwestern border for nearly a decade, as Midas attempted to create a kingdom that may have stretched from western Anatolia to the Euphrates. We have no idea of the size and scope of Midas’s army, nor are there contemporary battle reliefs at Gordion or in any of the other Phrygian centres that depict the soldiers’ armour and equipment; but a sense of their power probably appears in the pages of the Iliad, which was first written down during the period in which Midas occupied the Phrygian throne:84 Iliad 3.184–189: I journeyed to the land of Phrygia, rich in vines, and there I saw in multitudes the Phrygian warriors, masters of glancing horses … encamped along the banks of the Sangarius.

79

 Luckenbill 1927, nos. 16, 18; Wittke 2004, p. 48.  I thank Lorenzo d’Alfonso for his advice on this subject. His redating of carved orthostats in Tabal to the ninth century will appear in d’Alfonso 2020. 81  Brixhe and Lejeune 1984, pp. 264–266, no. T-2b; Varinlioğlu 1992. 82  Mellink 1979; for comparable motifs at Gordion, see Bellinger 1962; Ellis 1981; Young 1965. 83  Luckenbill 1927, no. 7, 8, 25, 26, 55, 60, 118, 137, 138, 214; Wittke 2004, pp. 107–109, 125–128. 84  Burke 2007. 80

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Fig. 15. Rock-cut relief at Ivriz of King Warpalawas facing the storm god Tarhunzas (Gordion Archaeological Project).

This description can only refer to the Phrygian army during the later eighth century BCE; no such army existed at Gordion during the Bronze Age, nor, for that matter, did Phrygia itself. Midas’ political strategy shifted abruptly in 709 BCE, when he intercepted an antiAssyrian embassy from Que that was en route to Urartu via Phrygia. The report of their

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capture, preserved in a letter of Sargon II, again points to the proximity of Phrygia and Urartu, and even though there is no definitive evidence of a direct alliance between them, it does indicate that their political relations were sufficiently strong that the embassy assumed a safe passage from one to the other.85 All of the Que rebels were turned over to the Assyrians, thereby prompting an extremely pleased Sargon to release his Phrygian hostages and authorise the appointment of an Assyrian ambassador to Gordion.86 There were probably several reasons for Midas’s shift in policy: all of his attempted alliances folded in the face of Assyrian aggression, while Sargon succeeded in taking back the forts in Que, after which the Assyrian governor there began successfully launching a series of attacks against Phrygian cities.87 Meanwhile, Sargon established a series of forts along the borders of both Phrygia and Urartu to prevent such seizures from happening again.88 The arrival of the Cimmerians in Anatolia may also have been a factor, although judging by the Assyrian annals, their sphere of interest, at least ca. 700 BCE, lay in Urartu and along the northern borders of Assyria, not in Phrygia.89 Reconstructing the state of affairs in Gordion and the Phrygian kingdom following the death of Midas is not an easy task. For several years in the 670s, during the reign of Esarhaddon, the Cimmerians and Phrygians were actually allies and jointly attacked Malatya, while the Mushki living in the vicinity of Urartu were seized for corvée labour.90 During the following decade, Mugallu, king of Malatya, may have extended his rule into Tabal and eventually paid tribute to the Assyrians, probably due to fear of a Cimmerian attack.91 But otherwise, the sources are silent on the Mushki, as is the archaeology of Gordion itself. Indeed, between ca. 700 and 640 BCE, no new tumuli appear to have been constructed, nor can any new buildings on or around the citadel be dated to this period, although there is no reason to assume a hiatus in habitation. Within the last quarter of the seventh century, probably during the reign of Alyattes, Gordion came under Lydian control; and the fields of tumuli that had once defined Phrygia alone were now employed as symbols of status in Lydian Sardis, with the tumulus of Alyattes standing as the largest burial mound in Asia Minor, 15 m higher than the one that had been built by Midas.92 A Lydian presence can also be detected in the assemblages of Küçük Höyük, the fort at the southeast corner of Gordion’s outer fortifications, while terracotta roof tiles similar to those of Lydia began to be used on the buildings in the citadel.93 85

 Parpola 1987, no. 1.  Saggs 1958, p. 202. This rapprochement would have involved gift exchange and there is some evidence for it from Assyria. A Phrygian tribute bearer with a distinctive fibula appears in one of the reliefs of Sargon II at Nineveh (Parpola 1987, p. 5, fig. 2), and two Mushki garments are listed in one of the inventories from Nineveh, although it postdates Sargon’s reign (Fales and Postgate 1992, no. 126). 87  Luckenbill 1927, no. 42. 88  Luckenbill 1927, no. 27; Wittke 2004, pp. 51, 124. 89  Berndt-Ersoz 2008; Ivantchik 1993. 90  Berndt-Ersöz 2008, pp. 22–23; Ivantchik 1993, pp. 68–69; Starr 1990, p. 4, no. 1. Even the Urartians hired Cimmerian mercenaries during the reign of Esarhaddon as a succession of political connections were quickly formulated and dissolved (Hawkins 1982, p. 427; Starr 1990, p. 22, no. 18). 91  Hawkins 2000, p. 428. 92   Herodotus 1.28; Cahill 2010; Gürtekin-Demir 2014; Mellink 1991, p. 648; Roosevelt 2009, pp. 25–26. A hoard of Lydian electrum coins dating to the late seventh or early sixth century BCE was discovered on Gordion’s citadel (Bellinger 1968). 93  Glendinning 2005; Young 1958, p. 141. 86

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It is at this time that we witness the creation of a new Phrygian city at Kerkenes, near Yozgat, nearly 300 km to the east of Gordion (Fig. 7).94 The most startling feature of this settlement is that there is no gradual urban development; it appears to have been constructed ex novo in the last quarter of the seventh century BCE as a city of 271 ha, nearly three times the size of Gordion, with a fortification circuit of 7 km. This is as striking a development as the equally sudden construction of Gordion’s Early Phrygian citadel in the second quarter of the ninth century. The inscriptions uncovered at Kerkenes are Phrygian, as is the style of the figural decoration and much of the pottery, while several of the buildings in the palatial complex feature the same megaron plan that was employed at Gordion. There is also a stone glacis, as at Gordion, although it is battered rather than stepped. One difference, however, is the figural stone sculpture that decorated the citadel of Kerkenes. One of the statues is life-size and freestanding, probably depicting a ruler or cult figure; the other is a smaller relief featuring facing figures with human bodies and griffin heads, clearly influenced by the sculptural traditions of North Syria.95 The excavators of Kerkenes have identified it as the site of Pteria that was reportedly destroyed by Croesus in the 540s BCE, but whether or not one accepts that identification, it seems indisputable that life in the city ended around the middle of the sixth century, and so Kerkenes was in operation for no more than ca. 70 years. What motivated the creation of such a monumental settlement, almost like a fully-grown Athena from the head of Zeus? There is still no consensus regarding the answer, but it is worth noting that the foundation date of Kerkenes coincided with a period of extraordinary change in and around Anatolia. The Assyrian realm collapsed, as did that of Urartu and the Cimmerians, while the Lydians quickly assembled an expansive kingdom in the resulting power vacuum, assuming control over Gordion as well.96 All of these changes occurred within a relatively short period of time, so one would expect significant shifts in population across Anatolia. It is not surprising that a major new settlement like Kerkenes would have been established during a period of such momentous change, and the founders will likely have already been familiar with this area and with the mechanics of building a monumental citadel. They clearly knew how to utilise a large number of settlers and slaves who could accomplish such a formidable task in what seems to have been an unusually short period of time. The material culture of Kerkenes is admittedly similar in many respects to that of Gordion, and it lay in an area that was likely under Phrygian control during the eighth and early seventh century, but there is insufficient evidence to suggest that Kerkenes was the product of a massive exodus from Gordion in the wake of Lydian expansion, and the presence of figural sculpture at Kerkenes could be taken as an argument against it. The larger picture, then, is difficult to discern. There is no evidence of an antagonistic relationship between Phrygians and Lydians that would have prompted a massive exodus, and tumuli at Gordion continued to be constructed regularly during the period of Lydian control, ending only in the early period of Persian hegemony. Nevertheless, there is a clearly 94

 Brixhe and Summers 2006; Summers and Summers 2012, 2013, 2018; see also, Rollinger 2003b.  Draycott and Summers 2008. A crudely carved limestone head, half life-size, was discovered near the citadel gate of Gordion, but probably dates to the second half of the sixth century BCE (Young 1968, pp. 233– 234). 96  Mellink 1991, pp. 647–451; Rollinger 2003a, 2003b. 95

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discernible movement of Phrygians within Anatolia during the late seventh century, and the political reconfiguration of Anatolia at that time was surely one of the motivating factors. I have tried in this section to provide a sketch of the extent of Phrygian presence in Asia Minor between the ninth and seventh century BCE. At least by the ninth century, Gordion had acquired the appearance of a royal capital whose kingdom would reach the apex of its power in the second half of the eighth century, when Midas was on the throne. The extant literary and archaeological sources, viewed together, present Midas as a ruler who reached out to both Greece and Tabal/North Syria while promoting the cult of Matar as a bonding agent that could unify a wide variety of diverse communities.97 The actual borders of that kingdom can still not be established with certainty: in the absence of specific written evidence, it is difficult to discern whether the relevant material culture is indicative of Phrygianisation or of actual control by Phrygia.98 Here too we need to keep in mind the situation at Troy in the early 13th century BCE: nothing discovered within or around the citadel would indicate that Troy was a Hittite vassal state, even though the Alaksandu tablet from Hattuša reveals that this was in fact the case.99

CONCLUDING REMARKS With the Persian conquests in the 540s BCE, both Troy and Gordion were joined together in the new empire, although they lay in different satrapies – Troy fell into Hellespontine Phrygia, controlled by Daskyleion, while Gordion was controlled by Kelainai within Greater Phrygia. From the inception of the Persian empire through the beginning of the fifth century, the two cities appear to have enjoyed relative prosperity. Both Persians and Greeks made offerings at Troy since the site had learned how to market itself as an unusual amalgamation of East and West, and Gordion seems to have thrived as a regional administrative centre, judging by the newly constructed Mosaic Building on the southern side of the citadel.100 Clusters of monumental tumuli now began to encompass the Troad, as had earlier been the case with Lycia and Lydia, although they still remained as one of the defining features of Phrygia.101 In the book of Ezekiel, compiled in the early sixth century, there are occasional references to the Phrygians, invoked as Meschech, a version of Mushki, and their tombs and metalwork continued to be mentioned.102 Meanwhile, the legendary history tied to Troy and Gordion lured Alexander to both sites in 334/3 BCE, where his severing of the Gordian Knot secured for him the title of master of Asia, thereby complementing his actions at Troy, where he cast himself as a second Achilles.103

97

 Rose forthcoming.  van Dongen 2014. 99  Latacz 2004, pp. 76–78, 103–110. 100  Lawall 2002; Voigt and Young 1999. 101  Rose and Körpe 2015. 102  Ezekiel 27:13, 32:26. 103  Roller 1984; Rose 2014, pp. 156–157. 98

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The liminal location of both sites, in fact, can be discerned as late as the 20th century in terms of the armed conflicts that occurred there between the forces of continental Europe and Asia: the Battle of Gallipoli, across the Dardanelles from Troy, in 1915, and the Battle of the Sakarya River, not far from Gordion, in 1921. What really separated the two sites in popular imagination – both in antiquity and thereafter – is the Homeric tradition. The Trojan War had been presented as a war between East and West that was nevertheless configured so that the story would appeal to both sides, which meant that the site received an unusual amount of attention and support regardless of who controlled the area. Phrygia was also not without its share of legends, most of which circulated around Midas, such as his ass ears or Golden Touch, but they were insufficient to command a similarly high level of interest in the site during the period after Alexander’s visit. For the historian, however, the archaeology of these two cities, when viewed together, provides an unusually nuanced perspective on the politics of Anatolia during the Bronze and Iron Ages, with each supplying the evidence to fill in the blanks that exist at the other, and demonstrating how the borderland states of Wilusa and Phrygia continually managed to negotiate a nearly constant series of shifts in commercial networks, political control, and the urban manifestations of power.

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HARRISON, T. P. 2013 “Landscapes of power: Neo-Hittite citadels in comparative perspective,” in Cities and Citadels in Turkey: From the Iron Age to the Seljuks, edited by S. Redford and N. Ergin, pp. 97–114. Leuven: Peeters. HAWKINS, J. D. 1982 “The Neo-Hittite States in Syria and Anatolia,” in The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 3, pt. 1, Prehistory of the Balkans and the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries B.C., 2nd ed., pp. 372–441. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998a “Tarkasnawa King of Mira: ‘Tarkondemos’, Boğazköy Sealings and Karabel,” Anatolian Studies 48: 1–31. 1998b “Hittites and Assyrians at Melid (Malatya),” in 34ème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, 6-10/VII/1987, edited by H. Erkanal , V. Donbaz, and A. Urguroğlu, pp. 63–77. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi. 1994 “Mita,” Reallexicon der Assyriologie 8: 271–273. 2000 Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Vol. 1. Inscriptions of the Iron Age. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. HAWKINS, J. D., and EASTON, D. F. 1996 “A hieroglyphic seal from Troia,” Studia Troica 6: 111–118. HENRICKSON, R. and VOIGT, M. 1998 “The Early Iron Age at Gordion: The evidence from the Yassihoyuk stratigraphic sequence,” in Thracians and Phrygians: Problems of Parallelism. Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Archaeology, History and Ancient Languages of Thrace and Phrygia, Ankara, 3–4 June 1995, edited by N. Tuna, Z. Aktüre and M. Lynch, pp. 79–106. Ankara: Middle East Technical University. HERTEL, D. 1991 “Schliemanns These vom Fortleben Troias in den ‘Dark Ages’ im Lichte neuer Forschungsergebnisse,” Studia Troica 1: 131–144. 1992 “Zum Problem der Historizität der Sage vom Trojanischen Krieg: Kämpfe in der Frühphase der äolischen Kolonisation Nordwestkleinasiens als historisches Substrat der Tradition,” in Heinrich Schliemann: Grundlagen und Ergebnisse moderner Archäologie 100 Jahre nach Schliemanns Tod, edited by J. Herrmann, pp. 177–181. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2007 “Die aiolische Siedlungsraum (Aiolis) am Übergang von der Bronze-zur Eisenzeit,” in Frühes Ionien: Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Panionien Symposium, edited by J. Cobet, pp. 97–122. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. HOFFNER, H. A. 2009 Letters from the Hittite Kingdom. Atlanta: Scholars Press. IVANTCHIK, A. 1993 Les Cimmériens au Proche-Orient. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. KEALHOFER, L. (ed.) 2005 The Archaeology of Midas and the Phrygians. Recent Work at Gordion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. KEALHOFER, L., GRAVE, P. and VOIGT, M. M. 2019 “Dating Gordion: The timing and tempo of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age political transformation,” Radiocarbon 61(2): 1–20. KORFMANN, M. 1995 “Troia: A residential and trading city at the Dardanelles,” in Politeia: Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 5th International Aegean Conference / 5e Rencontre égéenne internationale. University of Heidelberg, Archäologisches Institut, 10–13 April 1994, edited by R. Laffineur and W.-D. Niemeier, pp. 173–183. Liège; Austin: Université de Liège; University of Texas at Austin.

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BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES Paul ZIMANSKY ABSTRACT The frontiers of Urartu’s political control and the spatial distribution of the state’s material culture are best known along the southern and eastern borders of its kingdom where epigraphic sources narrating the confrontation with the Assyrian Empire are rich and widely studied. However, scattered texts and regional variations in the pattern of archaeological remains suggest that fortresses, subordinate centres, and avenues of communication may have been configured differently along other frontiers. This contribution will review the models of the Urartian frontier in general and assess them in the light of new evidence. At issue is whether a single model of frontiers can be applied to the whole kingdom of Biainili, or whether quite different factors were at work in different geographical areas. The configuration of the state’s boundaries has important implications for understanding the way in which the state exercised its authority in the kingdom as a whole.

Compared to the other polities and cultural spheres treated in this volume, Urartu would appear to offer a window of clarity and sharp definition to a discussion of frontiers and boundaries. A remarkably distinctive archaeological assemblage materialises with the emergence of the state Biainili, to use the native term for the kingdom of Van.1 In the last decades of the ninth century and the first quarter of the eighth century BCE this physical imprint spread in lockstep with conquests documented by the cuneiform record. The boundaries of the state marked out by this assemblage were not only geographical, they were also temporal. When the kingdom disappeared in the latter part of the seventh century BCE, these archaeological hallmarks vanished with it, at least in the heartland of the old imperium. Correlation of material evidence and political control is not, of course, to be naively assumed. On the contrary, most states – and empires in particular – have porous boundaries and exhibit various degrees of cultural diversity within the geographical matrix of their claimed suzerainty. What makes Biainili exceptional in this regard is that the assemblage we use to track it is manifestly propagated by the state itself. Take the inscriptions, for example. Biainili introduced writing to the area, borrowing its cuneiform script from the Assyrians. All known cuneiform for this period in eastern Anatolia was generated by the state, either in the form of monumental inscriptions composed in the name of the reigning king, or as administrative documents of royal bureaucracies in government-created and maintained fortress complexes. Although hieroglyphs appear on a broad range of seals, whenever there 1

 We favour this term despite its comparative obscurity because it is more precise than the Assyrian Urarṭu, which has shifting referents, both geographical and political, over a much longer period of time. Some of the confusion that permeates the literature on state formation in Urartu, for example, would dissipate if these nuances were clearly distinguished. In calling our subject Biainili, we are emphasising the focus on one particular political entity in its historical setting, not general patterns of statecraft that apply to the whole region.

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is a cuneiform legend, the names it conveys are royal.2 The fortresses themselves are planned by architects as conceptual units rather than emerging through agglutination, and their creation often explicitly mandated, in whole or in part, by royal edict. There is a specific type of temple, called a susi in associated dedicatory inscriptions, that appears only in Urartian fortresses. The pottery, metalwork, and objects d’art that we call Urartian are all part of an assemblage associated with these fortresses and thus artefacts that were created in a military or court environment. Like the materials associated with the imperial workshops of the Inca Empire, they may not have been adopted by every stratum of society at all times, but they indisputably constitute a state assemblage and demonstrate the reach of Biainili’s government. Despite this comparative clarity, the boundaries of the Urartian state have received little scholarly consideration as such. My own published views on the subject are now decades old and were developed with a focus on the segment of the frontier than now lies in Iran.3 New surveys, particularly in Armenia and Azerbaijan, have added to the picture, and vastly improved satellite images along with GIS tools now help to refine the picture for all of Biainili’s frontiers. In this contribution, I will review the evidence for my previous model, for which the textual evidence remains more or less unchanged, and then address its applicability to the other boundaries of the state. The essential finding of my effort is that neither this, nor any other single configuration, explains how boundaries were established for the whole kingdom. It is to be emphasised that my primary concern is specifically with political boundaries and state control – not with the more general issue of frontiers, the broader areas in which the authority and cultural sway of a dominant power dissipate gradually over distance and environmental conditions.4 One cannot, of course, treat one without consideration of the other. Biainili was, like all states, a process in time. As I will explain below, there is reason to believe that the core of the state did indeed have a perceived boundary, at least at the end of the eighth century, and if one seeks a functional understanding of the organisation of the state, it is to be sought within that boundary. But there was also an Urartian frontier, into which Urartian authority penetrated to varying degrees at different times, subject to the dynamics of conquest and integration. This is much harder to define, but a penumbra of greying political and cultural shades may better characterise most of Urartu’s frontiers than a boundary line.

2  There is a class of seals showing a sacred tree and cuneiform legends naming individuals with the title aṣuli. Although the function and significance this office is unknown, the names of the people so designated appear to be royal. They are the same as those used by several kings, for example Sarduri and Rusa, and they include patronymics, for example Rusa Rusahi. Non-royal individuals known from tablets are not named in this way. 3  Zimansky 1990, 1995. 4  Parker (2002, pp. 373–375) distinguishes “borders” and “frontiers” as opposite poles within the general concept of “boundaries”, the former being more static and restrictive and the latter more porous and fluid. We have endeavoured to adhere to this terminology here. LÚ

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IN SARGONIC EYES The direct textual testimony on Biainili’s boundaries comes almost exclusively from the era of one particular Assyrian king, Sargon II (722–705 BCE). The narration of his eighth campaign, preserved for us on a clay tablet purporting to be a letter of the god Assur and composed either in 714 BCE or the following year, is particularly explicit.5 On this military excursion, Sargon marched into the Zagros Mountains to campaign against the lands of Andia and Zikirtu. The Urartian king came out of Biainili to challenge him, and the two armies met on Mt. Uauš. Sargon was victorious and offensive opposition to him subsequently evaporated. The letter reports that the Urartian king fled, apparently first from his camp and army, and later – exactly how much later we are not told – from his capital at Tušpa (Assyrian Turušpa), which Sargon does not seem to have approached. Sargon stopped his campaign against Andia and Zirkirtu, and turned to attack Urartu itself. This is where Biainili’s borders are defined in precise terms, although our application of these to specific places remains a matter of controversy.6 There are two key geographical concepts in Sargon’s account, embedded in the Akkadian terms miṣru and nagû. The former correlates well with our concept of a border, applying to the perimeter of the Urartian state as a whole. The nagû, on the other hand, is a territorial building block out of which the state is composed. It is a contiguous area, seen essentially as a province, and while it does have frontiers of its own, these are vaguely described rather than delineated. The nagû does not have a miṣru in Sargon’s text, at least not explicitly. A miṣru, in its basic meaning, is essentially a line, and can be used to define the legal boundary of something, be it a field or a country. It is related to the verb maṣāru, which in the D stem means to “delineate” [territory] or “limit” [time]. Dictionary definitions of miṣru include “border”, “boundary”, “boundary mark”, “band”, and “dividing line” [on a figurine]. A river, for example, may be a miṣru.7 Secondarily it can mean “territory” or “region,” but this is not how Sargon uses it in narrating the course of his eighth campaign. The letter mentions a miṣru only twice. Sargon enters Urartu from Mannean territory by passing a fortress that stands at the “head” of the border of Urartu: I set forth from Uishdish [Uišdiš] and arrived at Ushqaia [Uškaja], a great fortress which is the frontier post [lit. head of boundary (reš miṣri ša KURUrarṭi)] of Urartu, which bars entry into the lands of Zaranda like a gate and keeps back my messengers, and which, on Mount Malla’u, a mountain of evergreens, sticks up sharp as a needle over the flatland of Subi, lending it an uncanny glamor.8

5

 Thureau-Dangin 1912. For a relatively recent English translation, see Foster 2005.  The most recent full discussion of the geography of the eighth campaign is found in Maniori 2010. Also helpful is Muscarella and Elliyoun 2012. 7  CAD M, Part 2, p. 114. 8  Foster 2005, p. 800. The configuration of lands at the border is a little confusing, but the text is clear enough on what is Urartu and what is not. Zaranda is the Urartian nagû, and Sargon enters it from Uišdiš, which is a Mannean territory, which Rusa/Ursa has annexed. Subi, which Uškaja overlooks as well, is a Mannean territory, as the next line explains when it says that Urartian horse trainers call it Mannean and don’t go there. Some scholars have read this to mean that Subi was where the horses were captured, but it is hard to see how the text supports this. 6

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At the other end of the Urartian segment of his campaign, just before he and his armies depart in their various ways to return home, Sargon attacks a fortress that he locates at the “foot of the border of Urartu” (šepit miṣri ša KURUrarṭi). This is qualified with ša patti 9 KUR Na’iri, and Luckenbill translates the phrase as “the lower border of Urartu and on the Nairî-frontier”.10 Foster reads: “on the lower frontier of the land of Urartu, bordering on the Nairi-lands”.11 Since Sargon moves in a single direction through Urartu, without doubling back, the “head” and “foot” in these instances suggest the upper and lower boundary of the kingdom, or a march through Urartu from top to bottom, so to speak. The second term, nagû, is usually translated “district” or “region”.12 The Assyrian account names and defines five of these in Urartu, which Sargon and his army pass through in sequence. Usually a fortress guards the approach to a nagû and some geographical feature like a mountain or a river separates it from the next nagû along the route of march. In these provinces one or more primary fortresses or fortified cities are mentioned by name, each surrounded by scores of “settlements in the vicinity” (ālāni ša limēti). The latter are too inconsequential to be found in the archaeological record, but the former have left their mark on the landscape. For each ova, or expanse of alluvial land, there are one or two major concentrations of population both today, and apparently in much of the past, although the locations shift over time. No logical system of administration would ignore these natural divisions of the terrain. The hierarchy and placement of Urartian sites, when seen in the light of Sargon’s description, leaves little doubt that they defined the nagê. The mountainous areas between them were probably of secondary economic or political concern to a state that was focused on the administration of agricultural productivity. The pattern fits very well with what can be seen in satellite images and archaeological surveys of the area around Lake Urmia, where at least part of the campaign took place. My own proposal for the itinerary is presented in Fig. 1, and similar views have been offered by others. A second group of proposals favours a route that lies mostly to the south of Lake Urmia and concludes with a march northward along the Lake’s western shore. Sargon’s letter makes clear that the penultimate Urartian nagû that he traversed was beside a “sea” (ina ahi A.AB.BA), and the suggestion that this was Lake Van rather than Urmia, originally proposed by Thureau-Dangin,13 no longer commands support.14 In any modern interpretation, therefore, one can see the Assyrian army passing through defined units of territory that 9  In pattu, v. pāṭṭu (CAD P, pp. 305–310) is yet another Akkadian word for boundary, border, or district. Its meanings clearly overlap with miṣru, and it also can have the connotations of a line. In Neo-Assyrian contexts, it most often appears with the meaning of “border district”, for example with multiple areas (nagê) belonging to a single pattu. Nairi, which was not a single place but a region, would fall into this category. 10  Luckenbill 1927, p. 92. 11  Foster 2005, p. 806. 12  A secondary meaning, according to the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD N, Part 1, p. 123) is “island”. My own understanding of the Urartian state as a terrestrial archipelago (Zimansky 1985, p. 9; 1990, p. 12) was originally inspired by this notion, but even metaphorically the translation is not entirely compelling. The passage on which it is based is line 139 of the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where Utnapishtim surveys the seascape as the deluge recedes. Compare the translations of Andrew George (1999, p. 93): “I scanned the horizons, the edge of the Ocean, in fourteen places there arose an island [nagû]”, and Kovacs (1989, p. 101): “I looked around for coastlines in the expanse of the sea and at twelve leagues there emerged a region (of land)”. 13  Thureau-Dangin 1912, pp. ii–xx. 14  Pace Foster 2005, p. 805, n. 3.

BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES

Fig. 1. Author’s reconstruction of geography of Sargon’s eighth campaign, correlating nagê with agricultural areas visible in Google Earth image.

325

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can hardly be other than these ovalar, or bounded areas of cultivation, now under the sovereignty of Iran.15 What makes a nagû “Urartian” in Sargon’s eyes? In a passage immediately preceding the one quoted above which describes Uškaja and the miṣru at the head of Urartu, Sargon’s army approached Urartu through the land of Uišdiš. This, he claims, was a Mannean nagû that Rusa had taken away and added to his own territory. Only after passing through it did he come to the fortress and mountain that defined the head of the frontier of Urartu, mentioned above. That a district could be under the control of the Urartian king, but lie outside of Urartu suggests that there was something more to the concept of a land of Urartu than mere political control. Moreover, the letter explains that the Urartians call the neighboring land of Subî, which their fortress Uškaja also overlooks, Mannean. It is interesting that Sargon’s account notes this, without committing itself to its own view of whether Subî was Urartian or not. Thus the basic model of Biainili’s boundaries that comes from this text is that a border delimited the nagê that constituted the core of the kingdom. It seems a reasonable hypothesis that a nagû was truly Urartian when dominated by its Biainili’s administrative language and state assemblage – fortress building, royal cult, and distinctive palace assemblage. Beyond this were nagê and areas that the Urartian king might or might not control, but they were “other” in the sense that they were not called Urartian. In northwest Iran there are five quite obvious pockets of alluvium in which Urartian fortresses and other aspects of the state assemblage prevail; beyond and to the south and east of them there is very little material evidence of the Urartian state. The texts and the archaeology align well in defining this administrative boundary of Biainili. This model, however, cannot be applied unconditionally to other parts of Biainili. Even in Assyrian records that are roughly contemporary with Sargon’s letter, alternative modes of Urartian frontier interaction are in evidence, and raise questions about how Biainili’s miṣru might have been perceived in terms of material culture and administrative control, or whether it even existed in those places. Currently, some of these areas are themselves active “frontiers” of archaeological research, for which new findings are just beginning to appear, and so the treatment of them below is inevitably of a superficial and preliminary character. Overall they suggest a much less clear division between Biainili and the lands around it.

THE SOUTHERN MARCHES The territories controlled by the kings of Biainili and Assyria do not seem to have directly adjoined each other at any point, despite the relatively short distance, 240 km as the crow flies, separating their capitals. This is because a singularly rugged chain of mountains, which even today are scarcely passable in the best of weather, lay between them (Fig. 2). In these 15  Those who regard the mostly likely route as lying entirely to the south and west of Lake Urmia, most recently Marriott and Radner (2015, p. 139), downplay or ignore the premise that the Urartian frontier might have a material correlation with the archaeological assemblage customarily designated Urartian, since all but the very end of their itineraries lie outside of the area in which it is found.

BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES

327

Fig. 2. Locations of buffer states on Urartu’s southern marches, following Radner 2012.

mountains, there are no plains of the sort that the Urartians might fortify and govern as they did the northern and eastern shores of Lake Van or the western side of Lake Urmia. Instead a series of small kingdoms formed buffer states in isolated valleys. At least two of them, and perhaps all, had been important cult centres of Hurro-Urartian deities for hundreds of years before the state of Biainili came into existence. Karen Radner has characterised these as lying “between a rock and a hard place” in her historical treatment of Šubria, Kummu, Ukku, and Muṣaṣir.16 In this unenviable position, they were subject to military intervention, but apparently not direct control, from both sides. This, in Parker’s terminology, is clearly a frontier, not a border.17 The peculiar position of these principalities is most vividly illustrated by the case of Muṣaṣir, which can be more precisely located than the others thanks to Urartian/Akkadian bilingual inscriptions. One of these, the Topzawa Stele (CTU A 10-5) was discovered in the narrow valley in which the modern villages of Sidekan and Mudjesir are located. This, presumably, is the setting of the famous temple of the god Haldi sacked by Sargon at the end of his eighth campaign. From Urartu, this valley is approached from the Kelishin Pass, on the opposite side of which two more bilinguals were found with duplicates of the Assyrian version and slight modifications of the Urartian text of Topzawa. These inscriptions deal with the historical figure of Urzana, king of Muṣaṣir, who is mentioned both in the records of Sargon’s eighth campaign and letters found at Nimrud contemporary with it. Although the entire text is not preserved, the narrative mentions that Rusa, son of Sarduri, campaigned against Urzana, who had closed the doors of the temple to him and turned to Assyia. After Rusa defeated Urzana, he restored him to kingship. From the other side of 16  Radner (2012, p. 243) allows that there may be several others, including Hubuškia, but does not discuss them because of uncertainties about their location. 17  Parker 2002, pp. 373–375.

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the frontier, a letter from this same Urzana to the palace herald in Assyria illustrates the ambiguous position of Muṣaṣir in the political world of the time. It is worth quoting in full: A [tab]let of Urzana to the pa[lace] herald. Good health to y[ou]! As to [wh]at you wrote to me: Is the king of Urarṭu on his way (there) with assembled troops? Where is he staying?—the governor of Waisi18 and the governor next to the Ukkean have come and are doing service in the temple. They say: “The king is on his way; he is staying in Waisi, and further governors are coming to Muṣaṣir to do service.” As to what you wrote to me: “Nobody may take part in the service without the king’s permission”—when the king of Assyria came here, could I hold him back? What he did he did. So how could I hold back this one!19

Muṣaṣir, called Ardini in Urartian, certainly had very close ties to Biainili throughout its history. The Kelishin bilingual, which stood in the pass between Uajais (Waisi) in Biainili and Muṣaṣir from the reign of Išpuini until a decade ago, speaks of Urartian coronation rituals performed there. Haldi was adopted as the head of Urartu’s pantheon in the time of the same king. Yet it is clear that Biainili had no more sovereignty over Muṣaṣir than Sargon did. Urzana can be seen trying to thread his way between the two empires, informing Sargon’s staff of the Urartian king’s movements, and hosting Urartian governors and the Urartian king himself. In the end, he seems to have fallen victim to both Sargon and Rusa. Where does the Urartian state assemblage stand with relation to Muṣaṣir? Much attention has been given to the depiction of the Haldi temple, a drawing of a now-lost relief excavated at Khorsabad in the 19th century.20 Some have argued that the building, with its relatively low height, is of a unique, non-Urartian type, but Çilingiroǧlu has made a strong case that the building and many of its adornments correspond closely to the susi and associated materials he excavated at Ayanis.21 Moreover, both Urartian and Assyrian texts make clear that Urartian objects were donated to the temple, so it is not surprising to find materials that we would consider Urartian in the temple context. However, other aspects of the archaeology of this area do not look particularly Urartian. Certainly the most distinctive types of fortress pottery are missing, as are the characteristic architectural techniques of Urartian fortress building. This area is poorly explored and negative evidence means little. With new archaeological projects under way, we may soon have more a more definitive answer to how extensively the state assemblage of Urartu permeated Muṣaṣir. In any case, the special religious ties of Biainili’s monarchy to this location may well make it a rather exceptional place. The political boundary between Biainili and Muṣaṣir is clearly marked by the Kelishin Pass and the bilingual stele that stood in it – a border monument if ever there was one. Things are less clear with the other buffer states sandwiched between the Van Basin and Assyria. Ukku, which Karen Radner would locate in Hakkâri province, was clearly buffeted by the same forces of Assyrian and Urartian interference as Muṣaṣir. Although it is not 18

 This is the same site as Uajais, from which Sargon left Urartu, sending his army home by one route while he himself led a small contingent over the mountains to attack Muṣaṣir by another. The site is spelled Uayais in Fig. 1. 19  Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990, no. 147. 20  The original drawing was published by Botta in 1849. Modern reproductions abound, for example, Çilingiroǧlu 2012, p. 300; Radner 2012, p. 252; Seidl 2004, p. 127. 21  Çilingiroǧlu 2012, pp. 300–305.

BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES

329

mentioned, at least by this name, in Urartian sources, the Neo-Assyrian espionage reports show its ruler playing the same sort of double game that Urzana did, at times supplying the Assyrian king with information, and at others apparently acting in league with Urartu.22 Interestingly, the Urartian governor who was “opposite” the Ukkeans was named Kaqqadanu, probably the same individual who appears in another letter as Urartu’s turtanu, or chief general.23 If Radner is correct about the location, the nearest major area in which the Urartian state assemblage would prevail would be the southeastern shore of Lake Van and the Gurpınar ova, which would be a quite appropriate seat for an individual of such importance, both near the southern boundary of Biainili, but also not far from the capital at Van. Kumme was celebrated as the site of an ancient and important shrine to the HurroUrartian storm god Tešub/Teišeba and was thus one of the more important sanctuaries in the Near East in the second and early first millennia BCE.24 It had more or less continuous contact with both Assyria and Urartu throughout the eighth century, and could be approached, albeit not without difficulty, from both regions. At times it appears to have been in Urartian possession. Minua claims to have conquered it as part of his western excursions. Tiglath-Pileser III, in reasserting Assyrian power at mid-century, attacked two of its cities, claiming they were Urartian. In the time of Sargon, the Assyrian agent Aššur-reṣuwa operated out of Kumme, keeping watch on the Biainili frontier.25 Šubria, a name which is customarily regarded as cognate with classical Sophene, lay west of Kumme in the area of the headwaters of the Tigris. It was conspicuously a place of refuge for people fleeing both Assyria and Urartu, entertaining envoys from both sides and passing intelligence about each to its rival.26 The most famous fugitives of the early seventh century were the sons and assassins of Sennacherib. The Bible (Isaiah 37:38; 2 Kings 19:37) says they escaped to the land of Ararat, i.e. Urartu, but modern Assyriologists see Šubria’s hand in this somewhere, either as a way station in their flight or as a final destination.27 Esarhaddon put an end to the kingdom’s long-maintained independence in 673 BCE by invading and rounding up both Assyrians and Urartians there, but not before he had asked the sun god about what the Urartian king might do: Will Ursa (=Rusa), king of Urartu, whom they call Yaya [. . .] whom they call king of KUR. Pa-[i-ni-li], strive and plan? Will he . . . together with his army or with the Cimmerians or any of his allies take the road from where they are (now) to wage war, kill, plunder and loot and come to Šubria, either to URU.Pu-ú-mu or the URU.Kul-im-me-ri or to (any other of) the fortresses of Šubria? Will they kill what there is to kill, plunder what there is to plunder and loot what there is to loot? Of the fortresses of Šubria, will they annex a few or many and turn them into their own?28

22

 Radner 2012, pp. 258–259.  Lanfranchi and Parpola 1990, nos. 86 and 87. 24  Radner 2012, p. 256. 25  Radner 2015, pp. 72–74. 26  Dezsö 2006, pp. 33–36. 27  Dezsö 2006, pp. 36–37; Radner 2012, pp. 262–263. 28  Radner 2012, p. 263. 23

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330

In the aftermath of his invasion he returned the Urartian fugitives to the Urartian king Rusa (son of Argišti) and composed a letter to the god Assur not unlike the one narrating Sargon’s eighth campaign. The long-standing Šubrian policy of resisting extraditions, which surely placed it in great danger from both empires, has been explained as grounded in the status of the area, and particularly the sources of the Tigris, as a Hurrian cult centre. In any case, this is an area into which both the Assyrians and Urartians exerted their influence as far as they could, but Biainili clearly never administered. Esarhaddon’s inquiry, however, clearly sees a possibility that Rusa might seize a few Šubrian fortresses and make them his own. Thus the frontier between Biainili and Assyria was essentially a mountainous zone in which neither power exercised dominance for most of the time they were in confrontation. The small kingdoms that played off these rivals did so on the basis of their religious authority and strategic insignificance. There was no limes or clearly delineated miṣru here.

FINGERS

TO THE

WEST

Although the prevailing perception is that Biainili’s western frontier, at least in so far as it is represented on maps in popular publications, lay roughly along the southward flowing Fırat in the vicinity of Malatya, there is actually very little evidence of Urartian administration of the countryside west of the plain of Erzurum or indeed much beyond the Lake Van basin. Archaeologically, this frontier looks very different from the one Biainili established in the east. Communications with the more central parts of the kingdom were channelled along the Fırat and Murat valleys, which do not break the landscape up into pockets of alluvium in the same way as the volcanic terrain closer to Lakes Van, Sevan and Urmia. There are no major Urartian fortresses or administrative centres, with the possible exception of Altıntepe, which we will treat below (Fig. 3). Inscriptions demonstrate that Urartian armies marched along the Murat, and even offer a kind of definition of the frontier. The most important of these, however, record military campaigns, not building activities or other forms of territorial development and exploitation. The Palu inscription (CTU A 5-5) commemorates a campaign of Minua to the west, which extracted tribute from Malatya. A stele of the same king, not in situ but probably from the same area, records the installation of a governor in the area (CTU A 5-8). This is the only instance in which an Urartian text gives the name of a governor, and one suspects that he may have enjoyed more independence from the monarchy than the individuals who have this title in Sargonic espionage reports. The Habibuşaǧı rock inscription (CTU A 9-4), which has the distinction of being the westernmost Urartian text surviving in situ (albeit now under water), was written about half a century later. It also records collecting tribute from Malatya as well as more distant campaigning across the Euphrates. Later texts indicating royal interest in the area are almost non-existent. For all his later building activity, Rusa son of Argišti left only one inscription in the west, carved into two sides of a rock niche in association with an open air cultic site (CTU A 12-6). Other evidence for Biainili’s presence in this area is equally sparse. The Keban area, now flooded, shows some Urartian influence

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331

Fig. 3. Western Urartu.

in the ceramics at Norşuntepe,29 but little else of the state assemblage, perhaps because the Iron Age exposures there were so small. There are a fair number of open-air cultic sites with rock carvings of a type that can be associated with locations in the centre of Biainili, but these do not necessarily correlate with the influence of the Urartian leadership in the way that susi temples do. In the Fırat Valley, the westernmost Urartian site is at Altıntepe, 13 km southeast of the centre of Erzincan. Here the presence of the standard state assemblage is marked, but there are caveats that prevent us from assuming that it was a frontier post of Biainili. There are no formal royal display inscriptions at the site itself. Hieroglyphic inscriptions on pithoi give units of liquid measure in the Urartian units of aqarqi, ṭerusi, and liš, but the hieroglyphs themselves are Luwian, not Urartian. There is a susi temple of classic Urartian form on the citadel, which is where one would expect to find it on an Urartian site, but it is bears no inscription, unlike the majority of those found at more central Urartian sites. The small finds and pottery were not published in any detail by the excavator, so it is difficult to establish how Urartian they are. Most perplexing are the tombs that were constructed in the side of the hill on which the citadel stood. These speak for the existence of local leadership, but how it relates to the state of Biainili is unclear. Are those buried here people whom Assyrian records would class as Urartian governors, or allies in some other sense? Tomb III contained two fragments of a bronze plate, one bearing the name Argišti and one bearing the patronymic Rusahini.30 If they refer to the same individual, this would be Argišti II, who was active at end of the eighth century and beginning of the seventh. The presence of 29

 Hauptmann 1969/70, pp. 67–72.  Andre-Salvini and Salvini 2002, p. 58; Seidl 2004, p. 40; CTU B 11-5.

30

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332

an inscribed object in a local tomb can do no more than suggest some degree political or cultural allegiance to Biainili in the same sense that the temple does. Proof of political control from Van is lacking. Built tombs like these are otherwise unknown in Urartu, although rock-cut tombs are found at several Urartian sites, for example, Sangar (Iran), Kayalidere, and Werachram. In these cases, the pattern seems to be only one per site, and is thus suggestive of some sort of local elite status that is not definitively associated with a frontier. It would seem that Urartu’s cultural influence projected much farther along the Fırat and Murat valleys than Biainili’s administrative control. Altıntepe might have been a kind of buffer state, whose leadership adopted Urartian religious practice but maintained a measure of political independence. The governor whom Minua claimed to have installed near Palu (CTU A 5-8) may well have been in the same position. In this context, it may be futile to look for a miṣru of the kind described by Sargon in his eighth campaign. What loot the kings of Biainili secured in the westward ventures beyond the Euphrates came from the occasional raid and tribute paid under immediate threat, rather than systematic exploitation of resources in the area. The vicinity of Malatya, on the other side of the Euphrates, was clearly of another cultural and political domain. In short, there may have been a gradient from Urartian direct control toward hegemony as one moved westward along the Murat and Fırat Valleys. While Altıntepe at one extreme and Malatya at the other, appear to represent different poles on this spectrum, fashions in material culture need not reflect how power was actually exercised. The essential point is that these locations do not display evidence of direct Urartian administration. We are very much in the dark about the northwestern frontier of Urartu because little documentation, textual or archaeological, survives from that area. There is no indication that Biainili extended into the Pontic Mountains or had any interaction with the Black Sea, although further research may alter this. ETIUNI,

THE

SEVAN BASIN,

AND THE

NORTH

In the last two decades, the problem of Urartu’s boundaries north of the Araxes River has received considerable archaeological attention. The pattern that is emerging is one of incomplete conquest, in which Biainili created or adapted some pre-existing fortified sites to its purposes, while others seem to have coexisted and display continuity in local assemblages.31 Adam Smith summarises the extent of Urartian interaction and material transformation in the southern Caucasus as follows: The campaigns of the Urartian kings succeeded in subduing local polities and confederacies in the Ararat Plain and the Lake Sevan region, but do not appear to have penetrated any farther north than the southern limits of the Shirak Plain (and the unique outpost on the north hill at Horom) nor to have incorporated territories east of the Ararat Plain in the mountainous areas of Nahkichevan (Azerbaijan) and Zangezur (Armenia). In much of southern Caucasia then, the arrival of Argishti may not have marked a major social or political transformation and the archaeology of the region, in large measure, reflects the continuation of a LchashenMetsamor material substrate even within the citadels of the Urartian regime.32 31

 Ristvet et al. 2012, p. 356.  Smith 2005, p. 268.

32

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333

The land that the Urartians designated Etiuni spread northward from the plain of Ararat and hosted a multiplicity of more or less independent political formations in the eighth century.33 Urartians provide our only documentary sources for this area, which was well out of the range of Assyrian concerns and devoid of native texts. These indicate an early interest in this area, followed by almost a century of campaigns. An inscription (CTU A 3-8) inscribed on a cliff on Ilandağ in Nakhichevan, shows that the Araxes had been crossed as early as the joint rule of Išpuini and Minua. But this and commemorations of conquest speak for a lesser level of territorial control than building inscriptions and administrative documents, and, if anything, are testimony to Biainili’s insecurity here. Lasting annexation and administration of territory north of the Araxes appears to have truly begun in the reign of Argišti I, who constructed a major Urartian centre at Erebuni, the precursor of modern Erevan. The northern shore of the Sevan basin was brought into the state in the same campaigns. Raffaele Biscione and his colleagues have conducted a detailed survey of the southern side of Lake Sevan and investigated the question of Urartian control in some detail.34 Display inscriptions at Adamkhan (CTU A 9-6) and Tsovak (CTU A 9-7), show that Sarduri II actively campaigned in the southern Sevan area in mid-eighth century, and Biainili’s hold on the area was consolidated under Rusa, son of Sarduri.35 Thereafter, the frontiers of the state moved eastward. It is apparent that when the Urartians arrived here, they encountered societies that were already fortified, and to a certain extent state organised. Arguments have been advanced that some of the polities in question were chiefdoms, which one would have to infer from the Urartian practice of designating some by the personal names of their leaders, but at least one state tied to a fixed toponym seems to have been present.36 Pre-Urartian fortified sites seem to have clustered at higher elevations, and Biscione suggests that these define multiple separate political entities of some complexity along the southern shore of the lake.37 The archaeological impact of Biainili’s arrival is defined by what Biscione calls the Van-Tushpa complex (that is, the Biainili state assemblage), as opposed to the native Etiuni pottery, following the lead of Armenian scholars who have long recognised the simultaneous use of different assemblages in their research in this territory.38 While the Urartians took over some of the earlier sites and modified them to suit their purposes, they left most of the others alone. Biscione notes that here, as in Azerbaijan, the Urartians were not interested in the higher elevations, where earlier fortifications had clustered and, while lacking direct proof, he suggests it is likely these continued to be occupied. He summarises this interaction as follows: We can infer that Urartian policy towards the subjected populations of the Southern Sevan Basin was that of controlling closely the coastal road, the gold mine of Sotk, the Masrik plain and the road to the Selim pass and leaving the other areas alone. Local population outside the zones of immediate interest continued undisturbed in its Etiuni culture … with some Urartian influences, like the Urartian-type grave of Sangar.39 33

 Salvini 2002, pp. 37–39.  Biscione 2002. 35  Andre-Salvini and Salvini 2002, pp. 45–59. 36  Hmayakyan 2002, p. 181. 37  Biscione 2002, p. 361. 38  Biscione 2002, p. 363. 39  Biscione 2002, p. 364. 34

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This idea of mixed lines of authority and the complexity of Biainili’s boundaries are most intriguingly suggested by recent work in the Şərur Plain, where the Arpaçay, flowing into the Araxes from the north, creates precisely the kind of alluvial expanse that the Urartians chose to exploit in northwestern Iran. While the Araxes, until recently, appeared as a convenient line on modern maps as a rough boundary for the limit of Biainili’s reach downstream from this point, it has always been clear that it was no border line. The site of Werachram (Verachram), which lies on the south side of the river facing the Şərur Plain, shows all the hallmarks of Biainili’s control points. It was described by Wolfram Kleiss as typically Urartian with fortification walls buttressed at regular intervals, Urartian pottery, and even the ruins of what looks like a susi temple.40 The site was perfectly positioned to control movement along the Araxes, and perhaps across it as well. Kleiss suggested that a projection from the lower town’s fortifications and stone constructions aligned with it might be placements for a bridge.41 Whatever the validity of the Vergilian epithet “pontem indignatus Araxes”,42 the land on Werachram’s side of the river could hardly have supported an administrative centre. If this is an Urartian nagû of Biainili, however, it is one in which the state assemblage is not predominant. At the northern end of the plain, still within sight of Werachram, is a larger citadel, Oǧlanqala, where Lauren Ristvet and her colleagues have established that there was contemporary occupation.43 The site was fortified long before the Urartians arrived on the scene, and although a few typically Urartian artefacts were found there, the local assemblage predominates. Emily Hammer’s identification of a wall combining this site into a single major settlement system with nearby Qizqala 1 and suggestion that this complex may also have controlled a route between the Araxes and Lake Sevan via the Selim Pass,44 reinforce the idea that this site would be no minor impediment to Biainili’s control of this area, if it in fact remained independent. One would hardly expect a boundary to marking the perimeter of Urartian control to pass through an area so important for communications between the centre of the kingdom and Lake Sevan. The excavators of Oǧlanqala consider the possibility that this site remained the capital of an independent polity, and if so regard it likely that “the political landscape of the Iron Age Caucasus [must be seen as] a collection of separate polities rather than a uniform staging ground for imperial power”.45 They can neither prove nor disprove that Urartu eventually conquered the site and included it in its empire. In any event, their conclusion is irrefutable: It is certainly possible that this fortress was conquered by Urartu and briefly incorporated into its empire; however, we have as yet no evidence for this. In that case, the preponderance of local features at Oğlanqala indicates that Urartu’s integration policies along its borders were more fluid than usually believed, as evidence from Horom and Tsovinar already indicates.46 40

 Kleiss 1974, pp. 84–93.  Kleiss 1974, p. 84. 42  Aeneid 8.728. 43  Ristvet et al. 2012. 44  Hammer 2014, pp. 767–769, 770. 45  Ristvet et al. 2012, p. 357; and see Gopnik, this volume. 46  Ristvet et al. 2012, p. 357. 41

BIAINILI’S BOUNDARIES

Date

Urartian Kings

850 BC Aramu

Assyrian Kings

335 Events

Asurnasirpal II (883–859) Shalmaneser III (858–824) Founding of capital at Van

Sarduri (I), son of Lutipri Išpuini, son of Sarduri 800

Minua, son of Išpuini

750

Argišti (I), son of Minua Sarduri (II), son of Argišti

Shamshi-Adad V (823–811) Assyrian decline Urartian campaigns in Iran Expansion of Urartu in north Founding of Erebuni Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727) Assyrian revival and Urartian defeat in Syria Sargon II (721–705)

Rusa, son of Sarduri Sargon’s 8th Campaign (714) Kimmerian invasion Argisti (II), son of Rusa Sennacherib (704–681)

700 Rusa, son of Argišti

Esarhaddon (680–669)

Massive Urartian building program

(a Rusa) 650

Assurbanipal (668–627) (a Sarduri)

600

Last reference to an Urartian king (ca. 639) Fall of Nineveh (612) End of Assyrian Empire Medes in control of Eastern Anatolia

Table 1. Sequence of Urartian kings. The framework of Urartian chronology is established by synchronisms with Assyrian kings. For the latter part of the sequence the now uncertain position of Rusa, son of Erimena, who probably ruled before Rusa son of Argishti, makes numbering the kings problematic.

CONCLUSIONS It is unlikely that the rulers of Biainili ever entertained a consistent or static view of the geographic limits of their power. The dynamic of territorial acquisition as the state grew in the late ninth and first half of the eighth centuries, while only imprecisely marked out by Urartian display inscriptions, is clear enough in the spread of a well-defined artefactual assemblage. By the end of the end of the eighth century, when external documentation provided by the Assyrians becomes quite specific, the core territory appears to have stabilised to include the Van Basin, the Plain of Ararat, and Iranian Azerbaijan west of Lake Urmia from the Araxes to the Ushnu-Solduz Plain. In these places large Urartian fortresses

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dominated each agricultural area, the avenues between them were secured by small fortified enclaves, and the population was dispersed in smaller settlements that remain archaeologically uninvestigated, if not invisible. Sargon’s eighth campaign narrative presents a detailed portrait of this archipelago of state-supervised agricultural areas in a sea of undeveloped mountainous terrain, bounded by some sort of perimeter of recognised legitimacy. Biainili managed its extended domains in other ways elsewhere. On their mountainous southern frontiers, where there were no plains to dominate and no important arteries to control, Biainili left a manipulated sovereignty in the hands of small buffer states which had no capacity for offensive action. Something like this may also have prevailed in the west, where there is little evidence for centrally directed Urartian administrative activity after the conquests of the early eighth century, but no evidence for hostile control either. Biainili’s reach to the north and northeast of its core area shows the most dynamism in the latter part of the kingdom’s history. While the Sevan Basin came under its control, it is clear that the kingdom allowed subordinate polities to continue in some fashion there, and east of that, it would appear that the Urartians were content to establish enclaves, but not true administrative centres. In Azerbaijan there seems to have been a yet more complex arrangement of sharing power with others along the boundaries of Biainili. The broad alluvial area of the Arpaçay may have been controlled from more than one administrative centre simultaneously: one culturally Urartian in the sense of being a creation of the state of Biainili and another, built beforehand and thriving with an apparent cultural independence. The fluidity of imperial boundaries is thus as evident in Biainili as it is in other ancient empires, despite the comparative clarity the imperial assemblage associated with its leadership. BIBLIOGRAPHY ANDRÉ-SALVINI, B. and SALVINI, M. 2002 “The bilingual stele of Rusa I from Movana (West Azerbaijan, Iran),” Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 44(1): 5–66. BISCIONE, R. 2002 “The Iron Age settlement pattern: Pre-Urartian and Urartian periods,” in The NorthEastern Frontier Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin. Vol. 1. The Southern Shores (Documenta Asiana 7), edited by R. Biscione, S. Hmayakyan and N. Parmegiani, pp. 351–370. Rome: CNR-Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente. ÇILINGIROǦLU, A. 2012 “Urartian temples,” in Biainili-Urartu: The Proceedings of the Symposium Held in Munich 12–14 October 2007 (Acta Iranica 51), edited by S. Kroll, C. Gruber, U. Hellwag, M. Roaf and P. Zimansky, pp. 295–307. Leuven: Peeters. DEZSÖ, T. 2006 “Šubria and the Assyrian Empire,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 46: 33–38. FOSTER, B. 2005 Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed. Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press.

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GEORGE, A. 1999 The Epic of Gilgamesh. London: Penguin. HAMMER, E. 2014 “Highland fortress-polities and their settlement systems in the southern Caucasus,” Antiquity 88: 757–774. HAUPTMANN, H. 1969/70“Norşuntepe: Historische Geographie und Ergebnisse der Grabungen 1968/69,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 19/20: 21–78. HMAYAKYAN, S. 2002 “The Urartians on the southern coast of Lake Sevan,” in The North-Eastern Frontier Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin. Vol. 1. The Southern Shores (Documenta Asiana 7), edited by R. Biscione, S. Hmayakyan and N. Parmegiani, pp. 277–300. Rome: CNR-Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente. KLEISS, W. 1974 “Planaufnahmen urartäischer Burgen und Neufunde urartäischer Anlagen in IranischAzerbaijan im Jahre 1973,” Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 7: 79–106. KOVACS, M. 1989 The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. LANFRANCHI, G. B. and PARPOLA, S. 1990 The Correspondence of Sargon II. Pt. 2, Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces (State Archives of Assyria 5). Helsinki University Press. LUCKENBILL, D. D. 1927 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. Vol. 2. Historical Records of Assyria from Sargon to the End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MANIORI, F. 2010 “Le campagne assire contro l’Urartu del 715 e 714 a.C.,” Studi Micenei ed EgeoAnatolici 52: 177–251. MARRIOTT, J. and RADNER, K. 2015 “Sustaining the Assyrian army among friends and enemies in 714 BCE,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 67: 127–143. MUSCARELLA, O. W. and ELLIYOUN, S. (eds) 2012 The Eighth Campaign of Sargon II: Historical, Geographical, Literary, and Ideological Aspects. Translated by O. W. Muscarella and S. Elliyoun. Philadelphia: Hasanlu Translation Project. PARKER, B. 2002 “At the edge of empire: Conceptualizing Assyria’s Anatolian frontier ca. 700 BC,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21: 371–395. RADNER, K. 2012 “Between a rock and a hard place: Muṣaṣir, Kumme, Ukku and Šubria – The buffer states between Assyria and Urartu,” in Biainili-Urartu: The Proceedings of the Symposium Held in Munich 12–14 October 2007 (Acta Iranica 51), edited by S. Kroll, C. Gruber, U. Hellwag, M. Roaf and P. Zimansky, pp. 243–264. Leuven: Peeters. 2015 Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. RISTVET, L., GOPNIK, H., BAKHSHALIYEV, V., LAU, H., ASHUROV, S. and BRYANT, R. 2012 “On the edge of empire: 2008 and 2009 Excavations at Oǧlanqala, Azerbaijan,” American Journal of Archaeology 116(2): 321–362. SALVINI, M. 2002 “Historical geography of the Sevan region in the Urartian period,” in The NorthEastern Frontier Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin. Vol. 1. The Southern Shores (Documenta Asiana 7), edited by R. Biscione, S. Hmayakyan and N. Parmegiani, pp. 37–60. Rome: CNR-Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente.

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338 2008 2012

Corpus dei Testi Urartei (Documenta Asiana 7). Vols. 1–3. Rome: CNR-Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente. Corpus dei Testi Urartei (Documenta Asiana 7). Vol. 4. Rome: CNR-Istituto di studi sulle civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente.

SEIDL, U. 2004 Bronzekunst Urartus. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. SMITH, A. T. 2005 “Prometheus unbound: Southern Caucasia in prehistory,” Journal of World Prehistory 19: 229–279. THUREAU-DANGIN, F. 1912 Une relation de la huitième campagne de Sargon (714 av. J.-C.) (Textes Cunéiformes du Louvre 3). Paris: Geuthner. ZIMANSKY, P. 1985 Ecology and Empire: The structure of the Urartian State (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 41). Chicago: Oriental Institute. 1990 “Urartian geography and Sargon’s eighth campaign,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49: 1–21. 1995 “The Urartian frontier as an archaeological problem,” in Neo-Assyrian Geography (Quaderni di Geografia Storica 5), edited by M. Liverani, pp. 171–180. Rome: Università di Roma La Sapienza.

IN THE NICK: SPACE AND TIME IN THE BORDERLANDS OF OĞLANQALA Hilary GOPNIK

nick, n. III: A precise moment or location (OED) For to these, there is annexed a clock-keeper, a grave person, as Time himself, who is to see that they all keep time to a nick. —Ben Jonson Pan’s Anniversary

ABSTRACT This chapter examines the relationship between time and space in the ancient world, with specific reference to the site of Oğlanqala, Naxçivan. It argues that the construction of cultural borders is as dependent on claiming identity through time as across space. The elite who built the fortified structures of Oğlanqala Periods IV and III negotiated their identity in terms of the surrounding Urartian and Seleucid empires but were probably never fully subsumed by either. The material culture of Oğlanqala seems to lie between worlds, with clear links to surrounding states, but with an overall assemblage that expresses a unique local identity. This chapter argues that part of this hybridity lies in an attempt to extend borders of power through time in this contested space. The builders of the Period IV citadel may have been specifically pushing back on the Urartian kings’ claim to temporal domination by allying themselves with former local expressions of power. The would-be builders of the unfinished Period III citadel – who tied their palace into both the Period IV and Achaemenid material culture traditions – may have been seeking to establish their own, ultimately failed, claim on posterity.

Recent scholarship on borders and boundaries has taken on a wide variety of new perspectives that stretch the notion of borders well beyond the fixed demarcation of national territories.1 Spatial borders can be fixed, fluid, constructed, porous, or non-contiguous and can both reflect and create a range of political, social, ethnic, religious, or cultural identities. Borders are ultimately social and political constructions; they necessarily imply a power relationship by which passage through and around them is controlled.2 Although border studies have focused on spatially defined borders, there is increasing acknowledgement that conceptual boundaries can function as effectively to inhibit or define the relationship between groups of people.3 Boundaries of political identity,4 religion, and gender are constructed to divide and coalesce groups of people.

1

 Newman 2011.  Newman 2003. 3  Bickham-Mendez and Naples 2005. 4  Rohlinger et al. 2005. 2

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Contemporary physics and a long literary and philosophical tradition have acknowledged the fundamental connection between time and space, but the impact of temporality on the construction of borders has been largely ignored. I will argue in this paper that the idea of an interweaving between time and space extends to the ancient world, and that the physical remains of the built environment found in the archaeological record can be understood in terms of this relationship. Specifically, I will use the multi-period remains at the site of Oğlanqala in Naxçivan, Azerbaijan to explore the relationship between space and time and the construction of borders.

TIME

AND

SPACE IN

THE

ANCIENT WORLD

The classical philosophical tradition, from the pre-Socratics through Augustine of Hippo debated the nature of time, but inevitably concluded that whether it was real or constructed, circular or linear, time could be discussed in terms of movement through space, even if it wasn’t necessarily defined by that movement.5 The argument is summarised in Augustine’s Confessions Book 11, in which he comes to the realisation that time cannot be measured except in relation to space: But if we were able to observe the point in space where and from which the body, which is moved, comes and the point to which it is moved; or if we can observe its parts moving as in a wheel, we can say how long the movement of the body took or the movement of its parts from this place to that. Since, therefore, the motion of a body is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes is another thing, we cannot see which of these two is to be called time.6

Although in the following passage Augustine admits that time is essentially unknowable by humans: And again I confess to thee, O Lord, that I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have already spoken of time a long time, and that “very long” is not long except when measured by the duration of time. How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is? Or, is it possible that I do not know how I can express what I do know? Alas for me! I do not even know the extent of my own ignorance.7

Augustine finally comes to the conclusion that time must be understood as a distension of past, present and future at one and the same time and by doing so he prefigures phenomenologist philosopher Edmund Husserl (1964) and his struggle with the same essential question.8

5

 Clark 1944; Sambursky and Pines 1971.  Augustine, Confessions 11.24. 7  Augustine, Confessions 11.25. 8  Larrabee 1989. 6

IN THE NICK: SPACE AND TIME IN THE BORDERLANDS OF OĞLANQALA

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Where linear time assumes a succession of sequential points, our experience of time instead necessarily incorporates a constant awareness of past and future in any single present moment. We couldn’t walk down the street without trusting that our previous footstep happened and that the current footstep will be followed by another. Husserl’s account concerns an individual’s perception of time, but the basic structure of his argument has been extended by such theorists as Ricoeur, Carr, and Lucas to social perceptions of time as created through social memory, historical narrative, and social constructions about the future.9 This same struggle with understanding the coexistence of past, present, and future and their relation to lived space was present in the ancient Near East. The ancient Near Eastern conception of time and space is much less explicitly stated in the written record than is the classical tradition, but it is nonetheless possible to find traces of the same concern for reconciling multiple temporal and spatial experiences.10 In Mesopotamia space and time were closely linked not just metaphorically but in terms of the theoretical understanding of the universe. By the second millennium BCE, the essential relationship between space and time was fixed in a measurement system centred around the dana (Akkadian beru), a unit of both time (about two hours or the time it takes to travel one dana unit of distance) and space (about 10.8 km or the distance that could be travelled in one dana unit of time).11 It appears likely that the dana originated to measure one stage in a walking march either by time or by distance. It then became standardised as one twelfth of a full cycle of a day and night (two hours). By the mid-first millennium BCE the dana was instituted as an astronomical measure of the distance and time of solar rotation as well, and thus became an essential part of the late-first millennium Babylonian astronomical charts that would become the basis for a fixed calendar.12 As in many ancient, and modern, cultures, it is possible to detect multiple concepts of time in greater Mesopotamia.13 These operated simultaneously in different cultural contexts, sometimes intersecting, merging, or conflicting with each other, and often transforming over generations. Mesopotamian mythological time can be interpreted as cyclical as it relied on the seasonal and cyclical cycles for reference, but at the same time historical chronicles promoted a notion of linear time with years and months that could be counted, recorded, and referred back to.14 While there was a strong belief in fate (šimtu), implying a fixed, predetermined universe, divination rituals make it clear that the future could be manipulated and even the past could be reworked or at least reinterpreted.15 However – from Gilgamesh’s anxiety about mortality being resolved by a return to the walls of Uruk to the Assyrian narrative reliefs’ use of the movement through space to render movement through time – a continual theme in Mesopotamian thought explored how control over the spatial world, especially over the built environment, was intricately connected to control over time.

9

 Ricoeur 1988; Carr 1991; Lucas 2005.  Katz 2013; Robson 2004. 11  Brown 2000. 12  Brown 2000. 13  Hadji and Souvatzi 2014; Murphy 2013; Pankenier 2004. 14  von Dassow 2012. 15  Koch 2013. 10

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TEMPORALITY IN ARCHAEOLOGY Archaeologists have essentially followed two separate though related directions in exploring temporality. The first concerns the nature of archaeological explanation and centres on the archaeological record.16 The unique property of an archaeological site as a palimpsest of material culture in a specific location over time creates a complex timeline with multiple temporalities and time scales.17 Archaeology has traditionally flattened that multi-temporality by dividing the past into discrete linear units (for example, the Late Bronze Age, Oğlanqala Period III) while generally acknowledging that the boundaries between these units are constructed in the present and that they are not necessarily correlated to ways of dividing time in the past. The site of Oğlanqala, for example, can be divided into four phases spanning some 2800 years but levelling, reuse, pitting, and finally excavation creates a material manifestation of this past that is wholly rooted in multiple presents. “Archaeology, in dealing with the material world, does not encounter what was; it deals with what becomes of what was, and what was ostensibly is always becoming.”18 Although analytically useful, the archaeological creation of temporal boundaries is not necessarily a representation of either the temporality of the site as excavated or of the experience of the geographic space of the site by its occupants.19 Most of the theoretical research about temporality in archaeology has focussed on the non-linearity of time and its repercussions on narrative explanation; the emphasis has been on the structure of temporality both in the ancient world and in modern readings of it rather than on the use of time as a cultural strategy. The definition of basic units of analysis (structure, process, and event among others) has been used to try to reconcile the multiple time scales accounted for by archaeological and historical data.20 Chronological boundaries in this framework are seen as artificially created by analysts to deal with the identification of chronological time21 or as multi-dimensional and variable within a feature, site, or region, reflecting the multi-temporality of archaeological deposition.22 The second direction for archaeological research on temporality has centred on social memory. The past 20 years have seen the concept of social memory rise to the forefront of theoretical discussions of time and space in history and archaeology.23 Memory studies have become so dominant in the field of history that in a critique of the concept Klein speaks of a “memory industry”.24 The work of Pierre Nora was influential in identifying materiality as a key factor in individuals and groups creating identity through time by looking to the past for affirmation and cohesion,25 and this materiality was key to valorising the role of 16

 Holdaway and Wandsnider 2008.  Bailey 1987; Bintliff 1991; Lucas 2005. 18  Witmore 2013, p. 139. 19  Harding 2005; Murray 1999; Olivier 1999; Zubrow 2010. 20  Bolender 2010; Lucas 2008. 21  Chapman 2014; Lucas 2005. 22  Aldred and Lucas 2010; Olivier 1999; Zubrow 2010. 23  Hadji and Souvatzi 2014; Mills and Walker 2008; Olick and Robbins 1998; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003. 24  Klein 2000. 25  Nora 1984. 17

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343

archaeology in memory studies. The role of place in memory studies was also an important link to archaeology with its emphasis on site-specific analyses, although here the theoretical relationship between time and space was not as central as was the material endurance of place. The concept of social memory is used by Ricoeur as a way to reconcile historical narrative with the personal experience of time as outlined by Husserl (1964),26 but in general theorists who write about social memory are less concerned with the structure of temporality than with the role of the past in creating, reinforcing, negotiating and reshaping identity. In historical studies, social memory associated with oral accounts has been viewed as a critical alternative to the formal written history of people in power,27 but in archaeology this dichotomy has been less central to the field,28 mainly because its adoption in the study of the ancient world has fewer modern political repercussions than the Holocaust dominated memory studies of history and sociology. The main thrust of social memory studies in archaeology has been examining the use of the material past in the past to construct and negotiate identity. While texts have been used as supplementary evidence in some studies, it is the polysemic material world that has been the strength of the archaeological applications of memory studies. In the discipline of history, memory has been seen very much as a locus for non-elite interaction with the past, but archaeologists have opened the field of inquiry up to a variety of social groups and individual actors: “Authors view the construction of the past in the past as an active process that involved picking and choosing, remembering and forgetting.”29 While the relationship between memory and place has been key to the archaeological approach to memory, the tendency in these studies has been to look at how spatio-temporal borders are transcended rather than maintained. The main critique of social memory research has been its failure to locate specific mechanisms for the transmission of cultural traditions from generation to generation.30 In most social memory theory: “Memory is not these series of recalled mental images, but a synonym for cultural storage of the past: it is the reproduction of the past in the present, this accumulated past which acts on us and makes us act… At the same time the term stands in for remembrance of past events and experiences and a ‘past’ transmitted and stored (like in a computer, without meaning or remembering).”31 In this way “memory” becomes more or less synonymous with cultural reproduction. This creates a situation that allows researchers to speak of “memory” where there are no actual mental or even cultural images of the past except insofar as they exist as objects in the present. The use of spolia or the reoccupation of sites that had previously been settled in a distant unremembered past32 can be examples of this kind of memory storage without content. The objects or abandoned architecture can

26

 Ricoeur 1988.  Laqueur 2000. 28  Olivier 2013. 29  Davis 2007, p. 233. 30  Berliner 2005; Klein 2000. 31  Berliner 2005, p. 201. 32  Khatchadourian 2007. 27

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be used effectively to represent the passage of time by reference to “a” past, without any knowledge of the specifics of “this” past. If the concept of social memory does not fully capture what is at stake in social uses of the past, by drawing in the other string of theoretical studies of temporality in archaeology we can create a more complete model. I suggest that an ontological concern with temporality itself is in play when groups use the past to construct a present. If, as argued by Husserl, human perception of the space of our present moment always involves an incorporation of the past moment and anticipation of the future, then establishing that duration is a critical part of control over both the spatial and temporal worlds. Adam Smith proposes that the Early Dynastic Sumerian King List recasts “the essentially spatial problems posed by the geopolitical organisation of authority as problems of temporal succession… The physical delineation of territory, the management of interpolity ties, and the production of new geopolitical alignments are ontologically redefined as problems of history’s ‘emplotment’.”33. I suggest that this interplay between territory and time is a fundamental way that societies construct a vision of their place in the world.

TEMPORAL BORDERS

AT

OĞLANQALA

The site of Oğlanqala is located in Naxçivan, Azerbaijan, on a natural hill some 130 m high just off the Arpacay river at a natural pass into the mountains to its northeast (Fig. 1). Oğlanqala is quintessentially a border site lying close to the Araxes River that often formed a natural border of territorial control. Throughout its occupation, the inhabitants of Oğlanqala participated in, resisted and negotiated with the powers that surrounded them including Urartu, Achaemenid Persia, Seleucids, Media Atropatene, Armenia, and Rome. There are three main periods of occupation at the site, in addition to some early 20thcentury battlefield remains that form Period I: Period IV dating to the eighth–seventh centuries BCE, Period III dating to the fourth–third centuries BCE, and Period II dating to the first century BCE to the first century CE.34 Oğlanqala Period IV Oğlanqala Period IV consists of a citadel/fortress that dates to the eighth–seventh centuries BCE and that seems to be culturally related to Biainili/Urartu. A series of radiocarbon dates sampled from good contexts at the base of Period IV walls indicate that the construction of the site cannot have occurred much before 800 BCE. The entire upper portion of the citadel is encircled by at least two lines of fortification walls and the partial remains of further walls down the hill. We have so far only excavated the highest part of the hill on which stood a palace or administrative centre. Much of

33

 Smith 2003, p. 114.  Ristvet et al. 2012.

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Fig. 1. Map of Transcaucasia with Urartian and Hellenistic sites. Created by author.

the period IV palace was demolished or reconstructed during Period III but we can get a general outline of a large courtyard with subsidiary rooms. The dates of this citadel-fortress fall squarely within the period that Biainili/Urartu dominated this general area, but the material remains do not match the imperial assemblage of the Urartian state. The Oğlanqala ceramic assemblage includes a few sherds of finely polished red wares (so-called Urartian palace ware) suggesting that there may have been some importation of Urartian types, but on the whole the ceramics at the site are locally made with only general shape parallels to Urartian ceramics. There was clearly close contact and trade with a number of other sites at some distance, as petrographic analysis has demonstrated in three mottled brown-slip sherds with fabric that is from three different non-local sources.35 One of the most common locally produced ware is that used for the giant in-ground storage jars, sometimes inscribed, that are also well known from Urartian sites. The moulding on the Oğlanqala jars is unique, however. Instead of the rope-like design that masks the shoulder-to-body join of most large Urartian storage jars, the Oğlanqala jars are decorated with wedge-shaped moulding that, as I have argued elsewhere,36 seems to be designed to draw attention to the cuneiform that recorded their contents. Such a loud and insistent advertisement of administrative skill doesn’t seem to fit a well-established imperial administrative system. 35

 Fishman 2017.  Ristvet et al. 2012.

36

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Perhaps most significantly, in spite of the fact that there is no evidence for Early Iron Age occupation of the citadel area, one feature of the ceramic assemblage is the persistence of grey wares that resemble the grey wares of the Early Iron Age found in survey and excavation in the surrounding region (although some of the most distinctive aspects of that assemblage such as false spouts, censers, and grooved decoration are completely absent from Oğlanqala). Like the brown wares, some of these grey-ware sherds appear to have been produced at some distance from the site.37 It is the treatment of the natural and built environments, however, that most distinguishes Oğlanqala from imperial Urartian sites. Adam Smith has used the building inscriptions of Urartian kings as evidence for their use of the built environment to establish political legitimacy.38 As demonstrated in this stele of the seventh century BCE Urartian king Rusa II, found as spoila in the Byzantine cathedral at Zvartnots in Armenia, the Urartian kings boast of manipulating the natural environment and creating imperial building projects out of the empty natural world: To Haldi, his lord, Rusa, son of Argišti, erected this stela. By the power of Haldi, Rusa, son of Argišti, says: the valley of the country of Kublini was empty; nothing was there. When Haldi commanded me, I planted this vineyard (as well as) planting fields and orchards where there were none. I built new settlements here. I diverted a canal called Umeshini from the river Ildarunia in this same valley of Rusa. If the water decreases (?), a kid must be sacrificed to Haldi, a sheep must be sacrificed to Haldi, a sheep to the god of the storm, and a sheep to the god of the sun… (I am) Rusa, son of Argišti, powerful king, great king, king of the countries, king of Biainili, king of kings, ruler of the city of Tušpa. Rusa, son of Argišti, says: whoever destroys this inscription, whoever damages it, whoever removes it from its place, whoever throws it on the ground, whoever says to another: “I accomplished (all this),” whoever obliterates (my) name (and) inserts their own, whether he is an Urartian or stranger, let Haldi, the god of the storm, the god of the sun, (all) the gods allow neither him nor (his) name, nor (his) family, nor (his) descendants to remain on the earth.39

Smith argues that this insistence on establishing themselves as pioneer builders in a previously barren world – in spite of the clear and present presence of earlier fortresses throughout the region – was an attempt by the Urartian leaders of a bureaucratic routinised state to distance themselves from the charismatic leaders of the Late Bronze/Early Iron age.40 He invokes this as a case of deliberate “forgetting” or effacing of the social memory of the previous order. While this theoretical appeal to the role of social memory (or forgetting) is a convincing read of the Urartian building inscriptions, I would suggest that there is more going on here. If we include the curse formula in consideration of Rusa’s statement about the novelty of his built environment – and these curse formulas are routinely ignored in the discussion of these inscriptions – we see that along with his claim to spatial dominance is a plea for the very historical continuity which he seeks to bypass in his own political constructions of the 37

 Fishman 2017.  Smith 2000, 2003, 2012. 39  Salvini 2008, CTU A 12-8 (Stele of Zvartnots, Rusa II). 40  Smith 2012. 38

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past. Here as in almost every discussion of geography, territory, or space in the ancient world, the spatial world can only be fully understood and described in terms of time. Curse formulas had an immensely long and widespread history in the Ancient Near East.41 From the Stele of the Vultures to the adê-agreements of Esarhaddon, the threat of divine punishment was used to seal treaties and conclude contracts. Curse statements most frequently appear, however, in the context of more permanent markers of place. Even when, like some of the Babylonian kudurrus, they are set up in public spaces and not in the territory or field being discussed, these display maledictions usually mark out boundaries or define units of control.42 Most importantly, they almost always form the ending to a narrative sequence that refers to a past event (victory, gift, royal endowment, construction), the present (establishment of the inscription) and future (the cursed future actor). I would argue that, like the Sumerian King List, these curse formulas transform statements that ostensibly refer to a static universe into a narrative and thereby lend them the authority of history-telling. Rusa’s inscription states: there was nothing; I built things; these things will last into the future. In an expanding state such as Urartu, creating a place in time had to go hand in hand with establishing spatial dominance. In this context, the tabula rasa of the Urartian king’s landscape creates a kind of “axial moment” that ties the lived experience of the past, present, and future into a fixed chronometric temporality43 of “before Rusa” and “after Rusa”. This same insistence on the Urartian’s king domination and control of the natural and temporal world is reflected in the archaeological record of Urartian royal building projects by their use of finely finished ashlar stone masonry and the deliberate levelling of the topography of the site to build regularly buttressed fortification walls.44 At Oğlanqala Period IV, however, construction techniques seem to resist this tendency to control and manipulate natural forms. Both the outer fortification walls and the inner place walls at Oğlanqala during this period are built using cyclopean construction of very large (up to 2 m wide) roughly finished blocks, rather than the finely finished ashlars that are normally used for palace and temple walls at imperial Urartian sites (Fig. 2). Roughly finished blocks do occur at the latter sites but when they are used at all, it is almost exclusively for outer fortification walls. At Oğlanqala, on the other hand, the architecture clings to the natural topography as buttressing is used only to circumnavigate the ridges of the natural hill (Fig. 3). In fact the builders of Oğlanqala seem to have deliberately exploited and mirrored the natural topography of the site rather than trying to modify it. The striated limestone of the hill of the site forms naturally into wall-like ridges that – from the valley or neighbouring peaks – are difficult or impossible to distinguish from the cyclopean walls of the built environment. As anyone who has tried to climb the steeper slopes of the hill can attest, these limestone ridges not only very effectively create the illusion of multiple sets of walls, but also make it physically difficult to approach the citadel. Perhaps more importantly, they clearly create a 41

 Kitz 2014.  Buccellati 1996; Slanski 2000. 43  Ricoeur 1988. 44  Harmanşah 2009. 42

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Fig. 2. Oğlanqala Period IV western wall. Photo by author.

Fig. 3. Oğlanqala Period IV topographic plan with northern wall. Plan by Robert C. Bryant, Naxçivan Archaeological Project, used by permission.

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close visual bond between the built and natural environments, in direct contradistinction to Urartian imperial architectonics. This approach to the built and natural environments is shared by other non-imperial sites of the period45 as well as by Early Iron Age fortresses.46 Oğlanqala is clearly Middle Iron Age in date, and in much of its cultural connections, but the builders of this fortress seem to have been associating themselves with the earlier aesthetic of the Early Iron Age fortress system. This is not to say that they were retaining the political organisation of independent polities of the Early Iron Age (although they may have been doing that too), but that the Urartian attitude toward history, which negated everything that came before them, was not shared by the local power at Oğlanqala. I would argue that their persistent use of older ceramic and architectural forms might have served as a deliberate foil to the imperial Urartian claims over space and time. In this border area where a tenuous independence from direct imperial control must have been under constant threat and/or negotiation, it may have been particularly salient to extend their temporal border into the past beyond that claimed by the Urartian state. In this case, the archaeological periodisation that defines the Early to Middle Iron Age transition captures the Urartian construction of temporal borders but is not shared by at least some of the surrounding polities. The core/periphery interaction that saw Urartu directly subsuming some neighbouring polities while allowing (or at least reluctantly accepting) the relative independence of others like Oğlanqala created borders that were, at least in part, defined temporally as well as spatially. My point here is not merely that styles can persist longer in certain regions, which is a mainstay of archaeological method, but that just as we increasingly consider how material culture works to actively maintain or dissolve spatial borders, we should also consider how people’s vision of temporality is reflected, maintained, and promoted by their material culture. Oğlanqala Period III The manipulation of spatio-temporal borders can be seen even more clearly in the remains of Period III at Oğlanqala. After the abandonment of the Period IV fortress, Oğlanqala was unoccupied for a period of at least 250 years. The area around Oğlanqala at this time was part of the upper satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire,47 and we have evidence from several sites in the Sharur Valley of an Achaemenid presence there. But with the Pax Persica, Oğlanqala lost its strategic importance and was deserted. When the Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander, one of the few areas that the Macedonian Empire didn’t simply acquire as part of the Persian Empire was the region around the Araxes River. Here Alexander allowed the local Persian governors of what were to become Armenia and Media Atropatene, if not complete independence, at least to keep their position as vassals rather than appointing a Greek governor over them.48 After Alexander’s 45

 Koroglu 2012.  Biscione 2003, 2009. 47  Khatchadourian 2012, 2013. 48  Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993. 46

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death, his conquests were divided by his successors and after much wrangling Seleucus could claim the bulk of the Near East and much of Asia. But the area around the Araxes remained under at least the nominal control of local rulers. The exact borders of these regions, however, are very uncertain. Strabo tells us that the Araxes forms the boundary between Armenia and Atropatene,49 but it isn’t clear if it forms the north-south border or east-west border or a bit of both. It is also unclear how much Strabo was influenced by the fact that by this time the Araxes River had already become a powerful metaphor in Roman culture for the geographic and temporal order of the world; at about the same time, Virgil wrote his famous hindsight as foresight description of the mythical shield of Aeneas bearing a depiction of Augustus’s conquests:50 And here the tam’d Euphrates humbly glides, And there the Rhine submits her swelling tides, And proud Araxes, whom no bridge could bind; The Danes’ unconquer’d offspring march behind, And Morini, the last of humankind. These figures, on the shield divinely wrought, By Vulcan labour’d, and by Venus brought, With joy and wonder fill the hero’s thought. Unknown the names, he yet admires the grace, And bears aloft the fame and fortune of his race.51

The importance of Araxes as a border may well have been more poetic than actual, but even more importantly in this context, Virgil can play with temporality in this way because his audience acknowledges that Roman imperial history forms the structure around which all time and space (the rivers in this case) can be understood.52 Radiocarbon dates from secure contexts establish the construction phase of Period III (and there is only a construction phase) between 400 and 200 BCE, that is, either during the late Achaemenid or early Hellenistic periods. At some point during this period, a retaining wall was built along the west side of the old Period IV courtyard at Oğlanqala and the remnants of the mud-brick walls of the then much decayed Iron Age fortress were ploughed up against this wall to form a sloping and uneven surface. Lying on top of this debris were scattered a variety of limestone column elements, including 20 column drums, 16 of which were more or less intact upon excavation, 4 bases, and 2 plinths. None of these architectural components was finished. The drums still included the lifting bosses that would have been removed once the columns were put in place, and the plinths and bases were only roughly shaped out. It is completely clear that Oğlanqala III was a construction site that was abandoned before the project was completed.

 Strabo, Geography XI.13.  The passage inspired W. H. Auden’s poem Secondary Epic which begins “No, Virgil, no: Not even the first of the Romans can learn; His Roman history in the future tense; Not even to serve your political turn; Hindsight as foresight makes no sense (Auden 1967). 51  Virgil, Aeneid 8.718–731 (trans. Dryden). 52  Perkell 2002. 49 50

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From the stone column drums and the partially carved Hellenistic attic bases that were found near them, we can reconstruct two tapering Hellenistic stone columns, with the exception of the capitals, which were probably not yet brought to the site. Two additional much smaller column bases are the main enigma of Oğlanqala Period III. As these came up in excavation, I at first thought we were in the familiar territory of an Achaemenid bellshaped base. Bell-shaped bases are well known from Achaemenid Persian sites such as Susa and Persepolis and were also found in Transcaucasia where they were seen as evidence for an Achaemenid presence.53 Few survive into well-dated Hellenistic contexts. But the bases at Oğlanqala are different. The unfinished portion above the bell can only be sensibly reconstructed as the double torus of a Hellenistic attic base; these bases are the duck-billed platypus of the Caucasus with an Achaemenid base with a Hellenistic torus (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Oğlanqala Period III hybrid column bases, a: as excavated b: as reconstructed. Created by author.

53

 Babaev et al. 2007; Knauss 2006.

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Fig. 5. Oğlanqala Period III Period IV wall with Period III rebuilding outlined in red. Photo by author.

Although the builders began their project by levelling any extant mud-brick walls of the Oğlanqala Period IV palace, they reused some of the larger Period IV stone walls and rebuilt the superstructure of others, retaining the original stone foundations. Most strikingly they preserved the large Period IV cyclopean stones of the main entrance into the building but rebuilt the corner of it with fine ashlar blocks with drafted margins. During this renovation, the builders went to the trouble of reworking one of the Period IV blocks to match the drafted margins of the renovated corner (Fig. 5). Half of a swallow-tail clamp receptacle had also been carved into one of the new ashlars, although the site was abandoned before its twin could be finished or the clamp installed. The stylistic comparanda for these unfinished column pieces, including large stone columns and attic bases, are to eastern Hellenistic sites such as Ai Khanoum.54 This suggests that the most likely time for this construction project was during the struggle for power after the death of Alexander. I have argued elsewhere55 that whoever started this project was seizing control of the (at this point) mythic associations of the ruins of the Urartian period fortress, alluding to the power of the Achaemenid state in the bell shaped columns, and at the same time aligning themselves with the emerging power of the Hellenistic world with the stone columns on attic bases. The stylistic hybridity that characterises Hellenistic culture in the east is mirrored here,56 although this particular stylistic mélange is not seen elsewhere. The nature of Hellenistic hybridity is complex and variable, but in Oğlanqala III it is a reflection of an elite bid to power – ultimately a failing bid – which sought to include all possible allegiances in its visual message. 54

 Bernard 1973.  Gopnik 2016. 56  Langin-Hooper 2013; Mairs 2013. 55

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The reuse of the Urartian period ruins – which had been almost without exception ignored or even avoided in the intervening Achaemenid period – also occurred at a variety of Hellenistic/Armenian sites in the region including Armavir and Artashat,57 and can be seen as part of a widespread pattern of Hellenistic claims on the past.58 Although the Urartian ruins punctuated the landscape, it is fairly clear that there was no residual oral memory or transmitted textual record of any details of the Urartian state of half a century earlier. Khatchadourian suggests, however, that the materiality of the monuments themselves was the locus of social memory to be interpreted and manipulated in a variety of ways by different actors: “For the elite groups who established the capital cities of Armavir and Artashat amidst Urartian ruins, these ruins were meaningful in ways we can only conjecture, perhaps as sites of a stable and long-term authority with the demonstrable ability to harness considerable human resources.”59 This unprecedented focus on continuities in the built environment may also be understood, however, as part of an evolving attitude toward historical temporality. The early Hellenistic period in the east saw an intense interest in the study of time. In Babylon and Uruk, astronomers, building on the scholarship of the previous 500 years, developed unprecedented accuracy in predicting recurring celestial phenomena and regularised the relationship between solar and lunar calendars, culminating in the establishment for the first time of a fixed system for dating with the Seleucid Era.60 At the same time Greek philosophers and historians were exploring the temporality of history, and the notion of the inevitability of the succession of empires was made concrete with the stark ruins of Persepolis serving as a memento mori for Greek historians. By building in the ruins of past power, Hellenistic elites may have been attempting to flatten the temporal borders that divide the historical framework of time and thereby transcend this inevitable decay. I think it can be argued that this program was as much a matter of looking to the future as of cultivating the past. By renovating the eighth-century BCE palace, the would-be power brokers of the third-century BCE Oğlanqala were attempting to carve a place for themselves within the spatio-temporal structure of Transcaucasia. The irony of course is that it is only 2200 years later with the excavation and virtual reconstruction of this palace-thatwas-never-built that the actors who commissioned it can finally take their place in history. BIBLIOGRAPHY ALDRED, O. and LUCAS, G. 2010 “Events, temporalities and landscapes in Iceland,” in Eventful Archaeologies, edited by D. J. Bolender, pp. 189–198. Albany: State University of New York. AUDEN, W. H. 1967 Collected Shorter Poems, 1927–1957. New York: Random House. AUGUSTINE 1955 Confessions and Enchiridion. Translated by A. C. Outler. London: SCM Press.

57

 Khatchadourian 2007.  Baker 2013. 59  Khatchadourian 2007, p. 70. 60  Robson 2004. 58

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