The Yortan Culture Within The Early Bronze Age Of Western Anatolia

Bringing together expert voices and key case studies from well-known and newly excavated sites, this book calls attention to the importance of western Anatolia as a legitimate, local context in its own right. The study of Early Bronze Age cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean has been shaped by a focus on the Levant, Europe, and Mesopotamia. Geographically, western Anatolia lies in between these regions, yet it is often overlooked because it doesn't fit neatly into existing explanatory models of Bronze Age cultural development and decline. Instead, the tendency has been to describe western Anatolia as a bridge between east and west, a place where ideas are transmitted and cultural encounters among different groups occur. This narrative has foregrounded discussions of outside innovations in the prehistory of the region while diminishing the role of local, endogenous developments and individual agency. The contributors to this book offer a counternarrative, ascribing a local impetus for change rather than a metanarrative of cultural diffusion. In doing so, they offer fresh observations about the chronology and delineation of regional cultural groups in western Anatolia; the architecture, settlement, and sociopolitical organization of the Early Bronze Age; and the local characteristics of material culture assemblages. Offering multiple authoritative studies on the archaeology of western Anatolia, this book is an essential resource for area research in western Anatolia, a key reference for comparative studies, and essential reading for college courses in the archaeology and anthropology of sociopolitical complexity, European and Mediterranean prehistory, and ancient Anatolia.

The mound of Beycesultan was excavated for six consecutive seasons 1954-9, by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara under the direction of Mr. Seton Lloyd. It is a very large mound, dominating the more fertile end of the Civril valley, through which the upper reaches of the River Menderes (Meander) wind down from their source at Dinar. In selecting this mound as the object of a long-term excavating programme in 1953, the Council of the institute were guided by two parallel lines of approach. One was a proposed attempt to investigate the location and history of the great Anatolian state called Arzawa in the Hittite period. The other was the selection of a site at which a true archaeological cross-section could be obtained of a major Bronze Age city in the heart of Western Anatolia.

Students of antiquity often see ancient Turkey as a bewildering array of cultural complexes. Ancient Turkey brings together in a coherent account the diverse and often fragmented evidence, both archaeological and textual, that forms the basis of our knowledge of the development of Anatolia from the earliest arrivals to the end of the Iron Age. Much new material has recently been excavated and unlike Greece, Mesopotamia, and its other neighbours, Turkey has been poorly served in terms of comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible discussions of its ancient past. Ancient Turkey is a much needed resource for students and scholars, providing an up-to-date account of the widespread and extensive archaeological activity in Turkey. Covering the entire span before the Classical period, fully illustrated with over 160 images and written in lively prose, this text will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the archaeology and early history of Turkey and the ancient Near East.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia is a unique blend of comprehensive overviews on archaeological, philological, linguistic, and historical issues at the forefront of Anatolian scholarship in the 21st century. Anatolia is home to early complex societies and great empires and was the destination of many migrants, visitors, and invaders. The offerings in this volume bring this reality to life as the chapters unfold nearly ten thousand years (ca. 10,000-323 BCE) of peoples, languages, and diverse cultures who lived in or traversed Anatolia over these millennia. The contributors combine descriptions of current scholarship on important discussion and debates in Anatolian studies with new and cutting edge research for future directions of study. The 54 chapters are presented in five separate sections that range in topic from chronological and geographical overviews to anthropologically-based issues of culture contact and imperial structures and from historical settings of entire millennia to crucial data from key sites across the region. The contributers to the volume represent the best scholars in the field from North America, Europe, Turkey, and Asia. The appearance of this volume offers the very latest collection of studies on the fascinating peninsula known as Anatolia.