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The combination of geophysical survey and test excavations opens up possibilities for understanding many aspects of the city on a scale rarely achieved in the archaeology of the 1 990s. The proximity of remains to the modem ground surface, the destruction by fire and the short life of the city make it feasible to conduct fUrther significant research within realistic budgetary constraints. The 1996 test excavations have confirmed that the city had a short life, perhaps less than a generation, and that it was destroyed by an intense fire. There is only a single level although there are a complicated number of building phases within it. The city appears to have been a continuous building site for as long as it existed. There were aristocratic residences, imperial stables and other structures that imply a fUlly developed and thriving city. Analysis of the survey data and the geophysical plots is continuing in the light of the more precise information afforded by excavation and the details expected from micromorphology. Our current thinking on the development of the defences has been outlined above, progress is being made in understanding the far more complex internal dynamics of the city but more information will be needed in order to realise the lull potential of the site, and to define its place in the development of urban planning in the formative period when eastern and western empires met in the centre of Anatolia. Although no concrete proof was found, e.g. writing, the identification of the city with the Pteria of Herodotus and its status as a royal Median capital seems ever more likely.
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