GIS TRANSPORTION STUDIES

Computer simulation software is used for planning and understanding transportation systems and land use in modern cities. Over the past two years Scott Branting has been working on applying similar simulations of ancient pedestrian traffic to a reconstruction of the street network at Kerkenes Dağ (Fig. 23). These innovative simulations will, for the first time ever, allow us to analyze the form of the ancient street network and thereby learn how people in the past would have moved around within ancient cities. Additionally, they can reveal which streets were probably main streets that saw a great deal of traffic of people, animals and carts, and which streets were small back streets and alleys that saw very little traffic. They can also yield important clues as to how the ancient population might have made use of particular areas, compounds or buildings within the city.

During the 2004 season we put these computer transportation simulations of the street network at Kerkenes Dağ to the test by excavating three test trenches (TT) across three different streets. Each trench was laid out across the full width of a space between two different urban blocks where it was thought that a street had existed. TT23 (Fig. 17 and 18) was located across a street for which computer simulations predicted low amounts of traffic, TT24 (Fig. 19) examined a street with a middle range amount of simulated traffic, while TT25 was cut through the street with the highest amount of simulated traffic volumes.

In each trench any evidence for an actual street surface was recorded and samples of the surface itself together with the layers above and below it were taken for micromorphological anaylsis (Fig. 20) in an attempt to pioneer completely new ways to analyze transportation across ancient roadways. These samples were then sent to Dr. Charles French at the Charles McBurney Laboratory for Geoarchaeology at Cambridge University in England for further analysis.

The analysis at Cambridge lived up to expectations with good correlations between the results of the computer simulations and a number of analytical techniques on the soil samples themselves. The transportation test trenches excavated in 2004 have, then, revealed several important pieces of information concerning the design and use of the street network within this ancient city.

Firstly, we now know that well-preserved portions of unpaved streets exist under the modern ground surface at Kerkenes Dağ. Secondly, we have learnt a great deal more about the structure and composition of these streets. Thirdly, we know that on at least some of these streets we can expect to find in situ deposits of refuse from adjacent urban blocks. Fourthly, we have seen the first evidence that boundary walls of some urban blocks were not constructed at the time of the foundation of the city, suggesting that the allocation of urban space may have been somewhat gradual. And fifthly, we know that the practice of paving streets with stone pavement, such as was found in the palace entrance area, was not the normal practice for street surfacing within the city. Rather, a great number of the streets were probably unpaved. Further information about these streets will be gained when the results of the micromophological analysis is complete.

This preliminary sampling of the streets at Kerkenes Dağ is only a beginning in the development of a new suite of archaeological transportation analysis techniques. With further work on the street network at Kerkenes Dağ in the years to come we should be able to turn these promising early results into entirely new ways in which to analyze transportation and the use of space within ancient cities, towns and regions.