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Mountain peaks and rocky outcrops have long been recognized to have been crucial components of the religious beliefs of people in Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Archaeologically, however, sanctuaries that are associated with these features are much less understood. This article considers what is known about Anatolian peak sites textually and archaeologically for the second and first millennia BCE. While Late Bronze Age textual accounts of rituals and built features on peaks are abundant, archaeological data is comparatively scarce. The converse is true during the Iron Age, from which there are several archaeologically attested kinds of monuments associated with rocky outcrops and peaks, including stelae and step monuments, but a limited textual record. Assessing the evidence for continuity and innovation in peak-site usage across the two periods sheds new light on the Bronze to Iron Age transition, contributing additional nuance to what is increasingly recognized to have been a highly variable and localized phenomenon. In particular, the Iron Age peak sanctuaries of Kızıldağ and Karadağ and the associated settlement of Türkmen-Karahöyük serve as a useful case study for the ways in which Late Bronze Age precedents were consciously adapted into new forms in the Iron Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers evidence for the form and materials used in monumental Phrygian architecture in Central Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age (eighth--sixth centuries BCE) to argue for a later (sixth-century BCE) date for the Midas Monument. Examination of this monument and other rock-cut architectural facades in the Phrygian Highlands leads to the conclusion that all of the monumental facades in the Phrygian Highlands represent buildings with low, double-pitched, tiled roofs and architectural terracotta revetment tiles that should be dated to the first half of the sixth century. This conclusion has significant implications for the history of Midas City itself and the nature of Lydian rule in Central Anatolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies investigating changes in domestic architecture from the Iron Age to the Roman period in the northwestern provinces of the Roman empire have often suggested an important degree of continuity in domestic social relations, although the province of Mediterranean Gaul, Gallia Narbonensis, has been underrepresented in these studies. This article employs access analysis to compare domestic space in Mediterranean Gaul at three preconquest Iron Age settlements (ca. 500–50 BCE) and five Roman-period houses from the first–second centuries CE. This analysis suggests that many Roman houses in Gallia Narbonensis helped structure quite different forms of daily social interactions and encounters through important changes in the physical organization of domestic space. In particular, the communitarian organization of domestic space for the Iron Age settlements seems to have encouraged daily encounters within and between domestic groups through shared, communal spaces, rather than separating social units into coherent sets of rooms that in a modern setting we would consider “houses.” By contrast, in the Roman period internally organized domestic spaces emphasized specialization and internal divisions, structuring socioeconomic distinctions, and in doing so, signaled an important social rupture that contrasts with other provinces of Gaul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role of changing contexts of production in the evolution of ceramic material culture in early Greece. Rather than focusing on the aesthetics of ceramics or reading political and social change from patterns in ceramic style and consumption, we consider Early Iron Age (EIA) ceramic style in its context of production. Isolating the idiosyncratic aspects of EIA material culture and evaluating them in dialogue with the ethnographic record, we argue that dynamics of change in EIA ceramic repertoires may be best explained as the result of evolving contexts of production after the Bronze Age collapse that resulted in women having an increased and prominent role in potting and painting vessels. Likewise, stylistic changes occurring in the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE may be related to a transition back to a more complex economic structure in which ceramic style was driven by profit-seeking male potters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study of Black-on-Red sherds found in well-stratified Iron IIA contexts at Megiddo shows that the earliest examples of this ware appear in an early stage of the Late Iron IIA, radiocarbon dated to the late 10th to early ninth century B.C.E. An archaeometric analysis of 10 sherds reveals that they were manufactured in Cyprus, meaning that Black-on-Red vessels were produced on the island as early as ca. 900 B.C.E. This makes Gjerstad's theory regarding the "Levantine Phase" in the production history of this ware obsolete. It is noteworthy that Black-on-Red vessels of Type IV (dated to the eighth and early seventh centuries B.C.E. based on stylistic considerations) are present in secure contexts in levels Q-5 and Q-4 at Megiddo, radiocarbon dated to the late 10th and ninth centuries B.C.E. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the 13th and beginning of the 12th centuries B.C.E. witnessed the demise of the great territorial states of the Bronze Age and, with them, the collapse of the extensive interregional trade networks that fueled their wealth and power. The period that follows has historically been characterized as an era of cultural devolution marked by profound social and political disruption. This report presents the preliminary results of the Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP) investigations of Iron I (ca. 12th to mid 10th century B.C.E.) contexts at Tell Tayinat, which would emerge from this putative Dark Age as Kunulua, royal capital of the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Palastin/Patina/Unqi. In contrast to the prevailing view, the results of the TAP investigations at Early Iron Age Tayinat reveal an affluent community actively interacting with a wide spectrum of regions throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The evidence from Tayinat also highlights the distinctively local, regional character of its cultural development and the need for a more nuanced treatment of the considerable regional variability evident in the eastern Mediterranean during this formative period, a treatment that recognizes the diversity of relational networks, communities, and cultural identities being forged in the generation of a new social and economic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationship between sanctuaries and the territoriality of the Iron Age polities of Cyprus. The sanctuary site of Vavla-Kapsalaes is used as a case study to test hypotheses regarding the connection between extra-urban sacred space and the formation of political and cultural identities. A combination of archaeological and geographic data is implemented in geographic information system (GIS) analyses in order to contextualize this sanctuary in its political, economic, cultural, and symbolic landscapes. Beyond the discipline of Cypriot archaeology, this contribution is of significance to Mediterranean archaeology more broadly since it deals with landscape archaeology and the application of GIS approaches to trace both site catchments and networks. In addition, use of the concepts and approaches of landscape archaeology reveals the diachronic significance of religious sites in changing political environments in the ancient Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monumental structures clad in relief-carved stone orthostats adorned cities across the fragmented political and ethnolinguistic landscape of the Iron Age Syro-Hittite kingdoms. This building practice passed down from the Hurro-Hittite Late Bronze Age evoked a collective memory of legitimate authority and was important for the construction of royal sovereignty. Differences among individual monuments suggest how Syro-Hittite rulers may have deployed monumental construction to navigate an "eventful" history by adapting it to current political exigencies. This article reevaluates the date of orthostats found in the South Gate of Zincirli, Turkey (ancient Sam'al), applying a seriation approach to the comparison of their stylistic details and iconographic themes and motifs with sculptural groups from other sites. The conclusion that the orthostats date to the early 10th century B.C.E. and are thus older than the ninth-century refoundation of the city suggests that they were recycled from an earlier Neo-Hittite site, proposed to be nearby Pancarh. The appropriation of architectural spolia in the South Gate and the emulation or imitation of older works in the Citadel Gate by the founders of a new regime reveal a dialectic between the embrace and rejection of traditional Hittite sources of authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of new excavation, remote sensing, and conservation activities at the Phrygian capital of Gordion in central Turkey. The most important discoveries were of Iron Age date and relate to Gordion s fortification system and city plan. Fieldwork focused on the southern side of the Citadel Mound, where excavation yielded a large Early Phrygian (ninth century B.C.E.) glacis or stepped terrace wall more than 2.5 m in height that supported a substantial fortification wall nearly 3 m wide. New fortifications dating to the Middle Phrygian (eighth century B.C.E.) and Late Phrygian (sixth century B.C.E.) periods were also uncovered in the same area, as was a new gateway leading into the citadel. A sondage beneath the Early Phrygian "Terrace Building Complex," or industrial quarter, produced traces of occupation during the Early Bronze Age, as well as evidence for the construction of an enormous terrace during the ninth century B.C.E. A new campaign of remote sensing clarified the street plan in Gordion's two residential districts (the Lower Town and "Outer Town"), in addition to revealing the presence of fortification walls, defensive ditches, and a large fort on the western side of the Outer Town. Conservation activities focused on the Terrace Building, the ninth-century B.C.E. pebble mosaic floor from Megaron 2, and the Early Phrygian Gate Complex, still the best-preserved citadel gate in Iron Age Asia Minor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past three decades, an Iron Age date for reoccupation of areas surrounding the Palace of Nestor on the Epano Englianos Ridge has become well attested, but the extent and nature of this reoccupation has remained unclear. My reexamination of the Main Building stratigraphy using data recorded in the excavation notebooks has helped define the extent of reoccupation by providing evidence for two phases of temporary reuse. The first phase of reuse, which dates between the final destruction and the early 10th century B.C.E., occurred inside small areas of the Main Building that had not yet collapsed. The second phase occurred on top of and around the Main Building ruins and has a terminus post quern of the early 10th century B.C.E. My reanalysis confirms a more complex site history than originally recognized and bears tremendous implications for looting and other disturbances to the remains.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The island of Cyprus is well known for its abundance of masks, which have been the subject of focused studies as well as broader investigations on Phoenician and Punic masks. Yet, there is no comprehensive and diachronic overview of this important corpus contextualized within its Cypriot setting. This article reevaluates the evidence for masking rituals in Late Bronze and Iron Age Cyprus through close analysis of archaeological contexts and use patterns to reconstruct masked performances. The evidence underscores the long tradition of masking on the island and reveals use patterns that allow a partial reconstruction of the social significance of masking ceremonies. At the end of the Bronze Age through the era of the autonomous city-kingdoms, masks likely functioned as symbolic objects used in constructing social identities and can be associated with restricted groups practicing rituals at key sanctuaries. Masking rituals flourished within the autonomous city-kingdoms and dramatically ended with the incorporation of Cyprus into the Ptolemaic kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence for three definitive cases of scalping have been identified among the corpus of human skeletal remains excavated from the Iron Age south Siberian cemetery of Aymyrlyg in Tuva. The osteological evidence for scalping that is apparent in these individuals is presented here, as are the results of a recent reexamination of a previously known south Siberian case from the royal burial in Kurgan 2 at Pazyryk. These four Iron Age Siberian cases of scalping are important in part because they support the literary references pertaining to the practice contained in Herodotus's Histories, written in the fifth century B.C. Osteological evidence for scalping in prehistoric Old World contexts, including cases previously reported only in German and Russian publications, is also reviewed.

This article investigates the changes in foodways and cooking practices-especially in regard to the ceramic cooking assemblages-among the Celtic-speaking peoples of ancient Mediterranean France following the Roman conquest at the end of the second century B.C.E. I specifically examine the region of modern Languedoc-Roussillon using the ceramic data from the indigenous oppida of Lattara (modern Lattes), Castels à Nages, and Ambrussum, covering a period from the beginning of the third century B.C.E. through the first century C.E. I suggest that prior to the Roman conquest, during Iron Age II, there were few differences in cooking practices among the different blocks of houses at these sites. Although food was used for practices of social and political differentiation, these differences were probably manifested and articulated generally through differences in the quantity, rather than the quality, of the food. After the Roman conquest, however, particularly at the urban centers in the region, a new "high" cuisine emerged, one characterized by differences in taste and the quality of food among different social groups. These transformations were in turn likely related to important sociopolitical changes occurring in the region as local society became increasingly integrated with larger Roman colonial society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the summer of 2009, the ancient site of Gabii has been the focus of excavations conducted by the University of Michigan. Stratigraphic investigations near the urban core are revealing the complex sequence of occupation in this Latin city, which emerged in the Early Iron Age. The spatial distribution of intramural burials of the Orientalizing and Archaic periods shows that the settlement was initially organized in separate habitation clusters. The city was provided with monumental fortifications by the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E., but its layout was radically modified in the fifth century B.C.E., and a uniform orthogonal plan was imposed across the entire site. Three domestic structures dating to the Middle Republican period have been identified in two of the city blocks. Significant modifications of this sector of Gabii are attested from the first century B.C.E. Excavation data confirm that the city began to decline dramatically at this time. Areas in the upper part of the site were taken up for industrial activities or transformed into burial grounds and were finally abandoned in the Late Imperial period. These preliminary results document how ancient cities in the region developed and decayed; the findings have also provided the basis for further research on-site in 2012-2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2008 and 2011, the joint American-Armenian project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies (Project ArAGATS) conducted archaeological excavations at the Iron Age settlement of Tsaghkahovit in central-western Armenia. This work built on research begun in 2005 to closely examine the materiality of social and political life in a rural settlement of the Achaemenid Persian empire (ca. 550-330 B.C.E.). Intensive investigations at Tsaghkahovit have revealed the remains of a community clearly enmeshed in select sociopolitical institutions of the empire yet one also committed to reproducing and revising the contours of everyday life on the Armenian highlands on its own terms. The site thus invites consideration of the quotidian material and spatial practices of imperial subjects who both sustained and attenuated the viability of Achaemenid sovereignty in the Armenian satrapy. This article reports on recent excavations and offers preliminary interpretations of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of political complexity in the Caucasus has emerged as a significant research question in Near Eastern archaeology. Until recently, archaeological developments in Azerbaijan have been left out of this discussion. Two seasons of survey and excavation undertaken by the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania at the Iron Age site of Oğlanqala in the Naxçıvan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan have begun to clarify the local origins of an Iron Age polity and its relationship to major Near Eastern empires, including Urartu, Achaemenid Persia, and Parthia. Situated in the northern half of the fertile Şәrur Plain, Oğlanqala was in a position to control a pass through the Dәrәlәyәz Mountains as well as the agricultural land of the plain. Indeed, in the Iron Age, the Şәrur Plain was a complex landscape dominated by Oğlanqala but including at least six other fortresses and many cemeteries. The 2008 survey revealed that Oğlanqala was founded in the Early Iron Age and has extensive Middle and Late Iron Age material. Excavations in 2008 and 2009 in the citadel and domestic buildings uncovered architectural and ceramic differences from contemporaneous Urartian, Achaemenid, and classical sites, while also revealing evidence for interaction among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The site of Pantalica in eastern Sicily is renowned for thousands of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age rock-cut chamber tombs, which honeycomb the steep slopes of an imposing promontory. Despite the excavations of Orsi between 1895 and 1910 and recent inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, however, the site is not well documented by modern standards and until now has lacked an adequate Site plan. This article describes new survey work that sheds light on the number and distribution of monuments in relation to topographic features. The author also discusses the absence of prehistoric dwellings and challenges traditional views by suggesting that the so-called medieval villages, or nonfunerary rock-cut chambers, have prehistoric origins and provide an indication of the whereabouts of the original residential areas. Field survey has permitted a better understanding of the site in the context of later Sicilian prehistory and has shown the potential for new investigations of rock-cut tombs and dwellings, which constitute one of the most striking archaeological monuments in Sicily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anderitum reveals some of the complex changes that occurred in Gaul at the very end of the first century B.C.E. and beginning of the first century C.E. Excavation of this site moves the discussion of Romanization, which is normally confined to the elite culture of Gaul, to the largely rural lower class by documenting that people changed their building techniques, ceramic preferences, and social habits through the first and second centuries. By the end of the second century, the town was depopulated, possibly because of an overambitious urbanization project by the Romans. After a period of revitalization, the town declined in late antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. Examination of Arideritum adds texture to the fabric of political, social, and economic life of central France from the Augustan period to the Early Middle Ages and contributes new evidence to the continuing discussion of Romanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient cultural encounters in the Mediterranean were conditioned by everything from barter and exchange through migration and military engagement to colonization and conquest. Within the Mediterranean, island relations with overseas polities were also affected by factors such as insularity and connectivity. In this study, we reconsider earlier interpretations of cultural and social interactions on Cyprus at the end of the Late Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age, between ca. 1200 and 1000 B.C.E. Examining a wide range of material evidence (pottery, metalwork, ivory, architecture, coroplastic art), we revisit notions (the "colonization narrative") of a major migration of Aegean peoples to Cyprus during that time. We argue that the material culture of l2th-11th-century B.C.E. Cyprus reflects an amalgamation of Cypriot, Aegean, and even Levantine trends and, along with new mortuary traditions, may be seen as representative of a new elite identity emerging on Cyprus at this time. Neither colonists nor conquerors, these newcomers to Cyprus—alongside indigenous Cypriots—established new social identities as a result of cultural encounters and mixings here defined as aspects of hybridization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to show that the interpretation of the complex cultural and political configurations of Iron Age Cyprus rests on a 1,000-year long macrohistoric overview that focuses on continua rather than breaks. It maintains that the first-millennium B.C.E. kingdoms operated on very much the same decentralized politicoeconomic system as Late Cypriot polities in the 13th and 12th centuries. It argues that the long-term dynamics of this Late Cypriot model were actively and successfully promoted in the Archaic and Classical periods by preponderantly Greek central authorities. It is mostly Greek-named basileis (kings) that are found closely associated with the fundamental continua—the Cypriot script, the regional settlement hierarchy pattern, cult practice, and an economy based on trading metals—to the end of the fourth century B.C.E. This article argues that Greek-speaking people had become a constituent part of the sociopolitical structure of the island by the last centuries of the second millennium as a result of a migration episode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cooking pot à la stéatite first appears at sites along the Syrian coast in the 12th century. Until recently, these cooking pots were considered an essentially Iron I coastal phenomenon with a few isolated appearances inland. New research indicates that these cooking pots can actually be tracked throughout Iron I and II as they penetrated inland Syria by way of the Orontes River, ultimately to become one of the dominant cooking pot forms of the later Iron Age. Both technological and stylistic elements of even the earliest variants show a strong relationship with Cypriot cooking wares; moreover, its distribution is largely consistent with the distribution of locally produced Mycenaean-style pottery in Syria. This study explores the Aegean relationships of the cooking pot à la stéatite and addresses the question of the Sea Peoples and Cypriot immigrants in Iron Age Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the incipient institutions of the Russian empire, the Soviet Union produced the largest school of classical archaeology beyond the Euro-American academy. This article presents the intellectual history of classical ar- chaeology in one part of this vast Russo-Soviet sphere, the South Caucasus. Although sharing a common historical framework with the discipline as practiced in the West, classical archaeology in the South Caucasus was founded and developed on rather different grounds. This paper probes the beginnings, and subsequent institutionaliza- tion, of antichnaia arkheologiia, or "ancient" archaeology, from the 19th century until the present, providing a re- gional account in the decades before World War II, fol- lowed by a more focused analysis of developments in the Republic of Armenia in the subsequent decades. The purpose of this historical anthropology of the discipline is twofold: to detail the workings of an archaeological tracli- tion in a part of the world that, since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, increasingly has become an area of interest to V~'estern scholars; and to denormalize our own disciplin- aiy culture antI consider what (if any) lessons might be learned from a classical tradition alternative to the one in which Western scholars have been enculturated.* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an analysis of various aspects relat- ing to the changes in cooking vessels during the Iron Age in Philistia and the southern Levant, with particular em- phasis on the morphology, manufacturing technology, and regional distribution of cookingjugs. We have combined archaeological data and petrographic analyses to evaluate the technological aspects of these vessels. It is argued that cookingjugs, while first appearing in Philistia, subsequent- ly spread to other regions and cultures. The relationship of this process of dissemination to other factors, such as economic and social changes in the southern Levant, is discussed, and it is argued that the possible incorporation of Philistine cooking practices into the neighboring Iron Age cultures may have implications for understanding the multifaceted, ifat times ambiguous, relationships between the Philistines and their neighbors.* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a newsletter with information on archaeological trends in Turkey during 2004-2005. Highlights of excavation projects from 2004-2005 are presented including Kaletepe Deresi in Cappadocia, Göbekli Tepe and the Hittite city at Kusakli. Detailed accounts of excavations are prepared under the period headings such as Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman.

Exploration of an Early Iron Age burial tumulus at Lofkënd in Albania offered a unique opportunity to examine the formative period immediately preceding the founding of Greek colonies on the coast and how such a prominent burial place functioned in relation to a particular group, or groups, of people in Illyria. We anticipated that the investigation of a major burial site predating both the colonial foundations and the majority of the so-called protourban centers in the region would lead to a better understanding of the processes that contributed to the rise of urbanism in Illyria. This report presents a preliminary account of the 2004 and 2005 excavation seasons, during which time more than 60 burials were cleared. Mortuary customs are discussed and a brief account of a DNA study is presented. Various finds from the fill of the tumulus and a soil analysis provide important new evidence on tumulus formation. We review the chronology of the site and present the preliminary results of a fully textured three-dimensional model of the mound and its tombs. Comparison with sites to the north and south, particularly in Epirus, may have far-reaching implications for Early Iron Age Albania and Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 B.C.) in southern Caucasia marked the first appearance of a radically altered regional sociopolitical tradition founded upon newly empowered elites sequestered in fortified citadels. The archaeology of the era indicates a significant break from the preceding Middle Bronze Age, when large burial mounds and a dearth of settlement sites have long suggested the prevalence of pastoral nomadism and mobile sociopolitical institutions. The patterns of social order and institutional formation that developed in the Late Bronze Age appear to have endured well into the Iron Age, exerting a profound impact upon later historical empires, such as Urartu. The investigations of Project ArAGATS are examining the rise of complex societies in Caucasia by detailing the nature of social organization and the apparatus of political authority that constituted this emergent tradition. Having completed an archaeological survey of the Tsakahovit Plain region in 2000, we initiated phase II of our investigations in 2002 with intensive excavations at Tsakahovit and Gegharot fortresses, two settlement sites with well-preserved strata from three major archaeological periods: the Kura-Araxes III phase of the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age, and the Yervandid period of the mid first millennium B.C. (sixth-third centuries B.C.). The Early Bronze Age settlement at Gegharot is notable not only for its unexpected large size, good preservation, and terraced construction, but also for the illumination it promises to shed on the terminal era of the Kura-Araxes horizon. With the discovery of stratigraphically superimposed Late Bronze Age and Yervandid occupations at Tsakahovit, continuing research at the site promises to shed light on both the initial emergence of sociopolitical complexity in southern Caucasia and the reconfiguration of local practices in the aftermath of the Urartian imperial collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the stages of archaeological development in Turkey. Stone age; Bronze age; Iron age.

Crete has long been noted for the survival of Bronze Age or 'Minoan' traditions into the historical period. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to the specific ways in which these traditions were transmitted. Recent research and fieldwork has greatly expanded our knowledge of Crete after the Bronze Age, especially in the ensuing Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-700 B.C.). While elsewhere this period can still qualify as a 'Dark Age,' in Crete it is distinguished by a rich body of material from settlement, funerary, and religious contexts. With this material it is possible to explore in more detail the different mechanisms, processes, and attitudes involved in the preservation of Bronze Age traditions on the island. This paper will discuss some of the changes in appreciation and utilization of the Bronze Age past that occurred during the course of the Early Iron Age in Crete. As with other regions of the Greek world at this time, Crete witnessed a revival of interest in that particular past. The manner in which this was expressed, however, differed markedly from other regions. Early Iron Age Crete, for example, is known for its lack of hero cults. Instead, emphasis seems to have been on cult activities at the ruins of palatial structures. As will be demonstrated, the installation of these cults betrays a conscious and active appropriation of the past by leading groups in Cretan society, also providing important instruments for the articulation of an aristocratic elite.