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In the Neolithic megasite at Çatalhöyük families lived side by side in conjoined dwellings, like a pueblo. It can be assumed that people were always in and out of each others' houses – in this case via the roof. Social mechanisms were needed to make all this run smoothly, and in a tour-de-force of botanical, faunal and spatial analysis the authors show how it worked. Families stored their own produce of grain, fruit, nuts and condiments in special bins deep inside the house, but displayed the heads and horns of aurochs near the entrance. While the latter had a religious overtone they also remembered feasts, episodes of sharing that mitigated the provocations of a full larder.

Simple marks on pottery are known in both the archaeological and ethnographic records of various societies, and numerous functions have been proposed for these so-called pot marks. Conventionally, Late Bronze Age Anatolian prefiring pot marks have been identified as signs of the Luwian hieroglyphic script and have been thought to convey information related to the volume or origin of the vessel, the quality of the vessel or its contents, the storage location of the vessel, or the sociopolitical context of its use. A more recent hypothesis proposes that these marks, rather than conveying specific messages beyond the production process, served as devices to record individual effort in a centralized economic system as part of a Hittite strategy of imperial integration. In this article, I revisit the question of the function and significance of Late Bronze Age Anatolian pot marks. I take a contextual archaeological approach to the published corpus, as well as a broad comparative perspective. The results of this analysis demonstrate clear regional differences in contemporary traditions that are indicative of different communities of practice rather than a centrally homogenized production organization. A cross-cultural investigation of relative pot mark frequencies, moreover, suggests a link between marking frequency and the scale of production.

Abstract The vast territorial extent of the Achaemenid Empire is often assumed to have impeded connectivity and communication within the empire. This paper challenges the validity of this assumption. Two factors in particular favor this conclusion—the presence of an extensive road network and the high communication speed in the empire, made possible by the pirradazish service. Together, they demonstrate the enormous potential for movement and interaction throughout the empire.

This work defines a clear set of monumental criteria for examining an inscription’s monumental appearance, including the appearance of the text (e.g., its arrangement on the monument, the use of decorations, variations in letter size, and, in the case of bilingual inscriptions, the presentation of two different languages) and its relationship to the monumental context (in its architectural setting and the urban context). The criteria are applied in a case study at Ephesos that is divided into two sections. The first section considers a series of three monuments at the Tetragonos Agora that date between ca. 3 B.C.E. and 130 C.E. The second applies the criteria to a broader range of material in a series of projects from two different contexts. The methodology demonstrates how an assessment of epigraphic monumentality can provide complementary information to that provided by the standard format of published inscriptions and how this information is applicable to a broader range of scholars.

Archaeological study of ancient agriculture in the eastern Mediterranean has traditionally focused on what crops were farmed, at what sites, during which periods. Questions about why farmers adopted specific agricultural strategies, however, have been left to historical analysis. Such an approach divorces the study of the actual residues of farming from the cultural and social environments that contextualize the decision-making processes of farmers. Rich new archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data sets from the Mediterranean, however, offer an opportunity to reconstruct agricultural and land-use strategies and to study diachronic changes in those practices in relation to contemporary changes in political economy. This article uses the case study of the urban site of Gordion in central Anatolia to illustrate new techniques for reconstructing agricultural decision making from archaeological data and to contextualize diachronic changes in agriculture within their social and economic framework. I argue that several aspects of political economy—namely, taxation, long-distance trade, and settlement patterns—are primary factors in the adoption of specific agricultural strategies at Gordion and beyond. I conclude that states with direct control of agricultural production are more likely to adopt environmentally unsustainable land-use practices than those in which farmers have considerable autonomy. The methods and broader implications developed here have great relevance for the study of agriculture and rural economy at other sites in the Mediterranean and Near East and in other areas of the ancient world.

A large mosaic pavement excavated in 2007 at ancient Daphne, a suburb of Antioch-on-the-Orontes, includes four figured panels representing scenes from comedies by Menander. Inscribed with the name of the play and the number of the act, the panels depictPerikeiromene, act 1;Philadelphoi, act 1;Synaristosai, act 1; andTheophoroumene, act 3. This article integrates archaeological, iconographical, and literary approaches in order to evaluate the contribution of the mosaics to our knowledge of Menander’s plays, ancient comic illustration, and the rich cultural life of imperial Antioch.

At the beginning of the second settlement a change that we can define as a ‘breaking point’ takes place in Trojan indigenous cultural development. Behind this change must lie, to a great extent, the intensification of Troy's cultural and economic relations with the interior of Anatolia and beyond (north Syria and Mesopotamia). This change is archaeologically most evident in the pottery; the potter's wheel is introduced to Troy IIb along with new forms and wares. For a long time it has been widely accepted that the wheel – in use in north Syria and Cilicia since the Late Chalcolithic period – became known in the interior of western Anatolia only after its appearance at Troy, and there has been a general consensus that the potter's wheel and other Mesopotamian influences reached Troy through maritime trade from Cilicia westward and northward along the Anatolian coastline. The author, on the other hand, as early as the mid 1980s, had begun to defend the thesis that Trojan-Cilician relations were established over inland western Anatolia, rather than by sea. Here again he deals with the subject, now strengthened by new evidence that continues to come to light from recent investigations and excavations within western Anatolia – most especially that from Küllüoba, where excavation has been continuing under the author's auspices since 1996. The author now goes one step further to define this overland route between Cilicia and the north Aegean as the ‘Great Caravan Route’. II.Yerleşmenin başlarında, Troya'nın yerel kültürel gelişiminde ‘kırılma noktası’ olarak nitelendirebileceğimiz bir değişim gerçekleşir. Bu değişimin gerisinde, esas itibariyle Troya'nın ilk defa yoğun bir şekilde Anadolu içleri ve gerisindeki bölgelerle (Kuzey Suriye ve Mezopotamya) kültürel ve ticari ilişkiler kurması yatmış olmalıdır. Bu değişiklik özellikle çanak çömlekte izlenir ve buna paralel olarak Troya'da (IIb katı) çömlekçi çarkı da ilk defa kullanılmaya başlanır. Çarkın iç Batı ve Orta Anadolu'da Troya'dakinden daha sonra ortaya çıktığı kabul edildiğinden; Kilikya bölgesinde ve Kuzey Suriye'de Geç Kalkolitik'ten beri kullanıldığının bilinmesinden dolayı, Mezopotamya etkilerinin Kilikya üzerinden Akdeniz ve Ege sahilleri boyunca, Troya'ya ulaşmiş olabileceği fikri hemen hemen herkes tarafından kabul görmekteydi. Yazar ise 1980'li yılların ortalarında, söz konusu ilişkilerin, deniz yolundan ziyade, iç Batı Anadolu üzerinden kurulmuş olabileceği tezini ortaya atmış ve bunu günümüze kadar da savunagelmiştir. İşte Yazar, son senelerde Batı Anadolu'da yapılan kazı ve araştırmalar ve özellikle kendisinin başkanlığında 1996 yılından beri kazılmakta olan Küllüoba kazıları sonucunda ele edilen bazı yeni somut verilerle, konuyu burada tekrar ele almaktadır ve bir adım daha ileri giderek, Troya-Kilikya ilişkilerinin gerçekleştiğini düşündüğü bu kara ulaşım yolunu ‘Büyük Kervan Yolu’ olarak tanımlamaktadır.

Pagan and mythological statuary still functioned in the Late Roman city. Studies on this kind of imagery all too often focus on only one aspect or one type of action, frequently assuming that destruction was the preferred way of dealing with conflicted images. To understand the status of statues in an age when the Christian faith was steadily conquering the Roman world, an overview based on various kinds of evidence ranging from production and conscious preservation to violent destruction is necessary. This article brings this data together for the cities of Asia Minor to enhance the general picture.

The Umm el-Marra Project is investigating the genesis and early history of societal complexity at a “second-tier” center of western Syria, focusing on the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age occupations. In 2006 and 2008, important results were achieved for all three periods. Excavation of the Early Bronze Age elite mortuary complex on the acropolis supplies new data supporting the interpretation that the complex served to inscribe elite ideologies on the landscape in its invocation of social memory and ancestral figures. Evidence of a hiatus of several centuries after the Early Bronze occupation provides new information on the urban “collapse” of the era. Monumental and defensive architecture and the remains of ritual behavior reveal the character of urban regeneration in the period of Amorite dynasties in the Middle Bronze Age. Finally, the Late Bronze Age Mittani occupation furnishes data on the site’s incorporation into a large international empire. Additional figures can be found under this article’s abstract onAJA Online.

An extensive stone quarry dating to the Hittite Empire period in the Late Bronze Age is located at Karakız Kasabası in the province of Yozgat, north-central Anatolia. In addition to numerous traces of stone quarrying, several exceptional unfinished pieces were found at the site, including two bases—each sculpted from a single block and comprising a pedestal supported by a pair of lions—a large drum, and a large basin. These unique pieces are described and illustrated, followed by a discussion of their probable date and cultural context. The only associated finds are fragments of stone hammers. No second-millennium settlement has been located in the region, and there is no good clue as to the intended destination of the quarried building stone and sculpted pieces. Additional figures can be found under this article’s abstract onAJA Online.