Roadmap: Relief map of Turkey prepared by Arda Arcasoy, METU Dept. of Geological Engineering, using TNTMips.

REGIONAL STUDIES

The construction of a great city on a virgin site must have had a very significant impact on the local environment. Clearing of the mountain-top itself, cutting of nearby timber for building and other purposes, and the introduction of new agricultural practices in the near vicinity would each have had a strong impact on the ecology through deforestation, erosion and changes in hydrology. Destruction and abandonment of the city would perhaps have brought about some reversal.
In order to document and assess the level and speed of these aspects of human impact on the environment a program of environmental and geomorphological studies is being undertaken by Catherine Kuzucuoğlu and Mehmet Ekmekçi. This involves the geophysical sectioning of surrounding valleys and drilling into local sediments to obtain cores. Study of the cores will reveal a regional history of environmental change that it will then be possible to relate to patterns of human exploitation of the landscape.

Location Map

CONCLUSIONS

State of the art survey techniques are providing a unique understanding of this major Iron Age city through the recovery of a remarkably detailed plan. Imaging techniques allow for graphic visual display and permit the formulation of testable hypotheses that will shed light on the urban dynamics. Of the three major components two, balloon photography and GPS mapping, are now complete. Geomagnetic survey will require two further seasons of intensive work. The results should be of extreme interest to students of the Ancient Near East.
Clearance of a portion of the defences is revealing a city gate that turns out to be far more substantially preserved than had been anticipated. The gate, already visually impressive, will be enhanced by clearance of the passage and chamber and through a program of limited conservation that will afford protection and enhance the safety of visitors. The discovery that the east end of "Palace Complex" underwent a major remodelling has added a new dimension, as has the realisation that, in spite of its exceptional size and the grandeur of some of the freestanding structures at its east end, the complex as a whole appears closely to resemble other large urban blocks within the city. Sparse finds from limited areas of excavation extend the previously known taste for exotic trappings of ivory and gold and have provided a valuable corpus of pottery vessels from a secure context. If the charcoal beams have sufficient annual growth rings, the question of the date and, therefore, of the identification of the site, will no doubt be resolved.
Regional landscape studies will provide a wider setting within which cultural choice and still other consequences of dramatic human intervention can be assessed.

Geoffrey Summers
e-mail: summers@metu.edu.tr
Department of Political Science and Public Administration,
and
Françoise Summers
e-mail: fsummers@metu.edu.tr
Department of Architecture,
Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06351, Turkey.
Tel/Fax: 90 312 210 1485

David Stronach
Tel: 1 510 642 7794 Fax:1 510 643 8430
Department of Near Eastern Studies,
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1940, USA.

Musa Özcan
Tel/ Fax: 90 354 212 2773
Yozgat Müze Müdürü, Yozgat, Turkey.