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Geoffrey & Françoise
Summers |
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The area in which the site lies was selected because of its strategic inter-regional position in the centre of Anatolia, controlling major routes and dominating the northern Cappadocian plain. Specific reasons for the choice were surely its natural defensible properties and abundant perennial fresh water. No other site in the neighbourhood offered such twin advantages. Clearly, the city was founded by a power in need of a strongly defensible base from which to exercise interregional control. The city was burnt relatively soon, perhaps little more than a generation, after its foundation and, apart perhaps from the establishment of a fortification on the high peak, thereafter abandoned. Failure to continue as an urban centre partly reflects the exposed position, and consequently long, harsh winters, and undoubtedly results from a major change in the geopolitical situation which caused the region to revert to the relative backwater that it had been previously and which it remained until recently. The choice of the site displays an extraordinary vision. The line of the defences (Fig.1), the position of the public buildings, a sophisticated water management system, an extramural temple of impressive proportions (Summers et al. 1996, 226-33), urban blocks and system of intramural communications were all laid out as part of a single operation. This comprehensive planning implies the existence of an urban concept, and the remains represent an "ideal city", a city containing all essential elements in carefully considered juxtaposition. Thus the city has an important place in the development of imperial cities, falling between earlier Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Hittite cities and the later foundations of Alexander the Great and his Successors. Many of the features are, so far, without parallel (such as the absence of an acropolis or internal defensive walls). In this context, it is worth noting that nothing is known of the urban infrastructure of Middle Iron Age cities elsewhere on the Anatolian Plateau, although the exceptional Neo-Hittite site on the Göllü Dağ (Schirmer 1993) provides, whatever its function, astounding evidence for the conceptualisation and execution of centrally organised and regimented planning on a high mountain-top in, presumably, the late eighth century B.C. Little is known about Lydian Sardis, nothing concrete about the Median capital Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). Sinop, by this time a flourishing Greek colony, and other mid-sixth century cities of the Greek world have so far withheld most of their secrets. In sum, it has been conclusively shown that the city on the Kerkenes Dağ was a new imperial Middle Iron Age foundation, a city founded to meet the needs of an alien regime and a city that was soon destroyed and thereafter abandoned. Substantial progress has been made in defining urban zones; e. g., areas of public buildings, a military complex, high status residential blocks and less spacious complexes. A relationship has been identified between areas containing higher status structures, proximity to springs and lower exposure to prevailing wind. Ongoing spatial analysis and micromorphological study of excavated surfaces will increase our understanding of the function of particular types of structure. The architectural forms, most notably columned halls and the extramural temple, appear to indicate the imposition of a foreign architectural tradition from the east (Summers 1997).
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