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Digital technologies have been at the heart of fieldwork at the Kaymakçı Archaeological Project (KAP) since its beginning in 2014. All data on this excavation are born-digital, from textual, photographic, and videographic descriptions of contexts and objects in a database and excavation journals to 2D plans and profiles as well as 3D volumetric recording of contexts. The integration of structure from motion (SfM) modeling and its various products has had an especially strong impact on how project participants interact with the archaeological record during and after excavation. While this technology opens up many new possibilities for data recording, analysis, and presentation, it can also present challenges when the requirements of the recording system come into conflict with an archaeologist’s training and experience. Here, we consider the benefits and costs of KAP’s volumetric recording system. We explore the ways that recording protocols for image-based modeling change how archaeologists see and manage excavation areas and how the products of this recording system are revolutionizing our interaction with the (digital) archaeological record. We also share some preliminary plans for how we intend to expand this work in the future.

3D data captured from archaeological excavations are frequently left to speak for themselves. 3D models of objects are uploaded to online viewing platforms, the tops or bottoms of surfaces are visualised in 2.5D, or both are reduced to 2D representations. Representations of excavation units, in particular, often remain incompletely processed as raw surface outputs, unable to be considered individual entities that represent the individual, volumetric units of excavation. Visualisations of such surfaces, whether as point clouds or meshes, are commonly viewed as an end result in and of themselves, when they could be considered the beginning of a fully volumetric way of recording and understanding the 3D archaeological record. In describing the creation of an archaeologically focused recording routine and a 3D-focused data processing workflow, this article provides the means to fill the void between excavation-unit surfaces, thereby producing an individual volumetric entity that corresponds to each excavation unit. Drawing on datasets from the Kaymakçı Archaeological Project (KAP) in western Turkey, the article shows the potential for programmatic creation of volumetric contextual units from 2D point cloud datasets, opening a world of possibilities and challenges for the development of a truly 3D archaeological practice.

This article explores a little-known archive of historical aerial photographs curated by the General Directorate of Mapping of the Republic of Türkiye's Ministry of Defense and discusses the historical context of their production by US Navy aerial photography squadrons in the 1950s. While the images themselves enable a technical analysis of the method of their collection, contemporary military manuals, domain-specific magazines and newsletters, and eyewitness accounts of how similar photographs were captured fill out the contexts of their production for cartographic purposes, with information about the aircraft involved, their cameras and camera configurations, and mission characteristics. Continuing sections situate the aerial surveys within the framework of US-led initiatives in mapping NATO territories following World War II. As one example of what must have been many special mapping agreements made between NATO countries at this time, the US cartographic surveys over Türkiye discussed here are an expression of postwar realignments of global power, put to the purposes of containment-based security preparations and infrastructure development, and neatly intertwining American military and commercial interests early in the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Ottoman lakes and wetlands from the perspective of management and conservation is an emerging field. Scholars have explored Ottoman strategies for managing agricultural and extractive landscapes, yet detailed investigation of socio-political responses to dynamic wetlands, particularly during periods of drastic climate shifts, requires deeper investigation. Our research on wetlands and lakes moves from the purview of waqfs (pious foundations) to the emergence of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By examining the shifting perspectives of institutional authority and community responses to it from the early modern period to the nineteenth century, we discuss the complexities of wetland management in the Marmara Lake Basin within the sancak of Saruhan (contemporary Manisa) in western Anatolia. We argue that intimate knowledge of this specific ecosystem played a critical role in mitigating attempts at reclamation and land grabbing and ultimately in developing legal structures of and policies for Ottoman conservation strategies. We situate our discussion within the paradigm of environing made possible by detailed longue-durée archival narratives; these micro-histories afford a dynamic perspective into non-linear responses to ecological and political changes and provide a local lens into the scalar impacts of human agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceramics are one of the commonest sources of archaeological information, yet their abundance often confounds documentation and analysis. This article presents a new method of documenting and analyzing ceramics that includes laser-aided profile measurement to capture ceramic shape and other information quickly and accurately, resulting in digital outputs suitable for both publication and morphometric analysis. Linked software and database solutions enable unsupervised machine learning to cluster shapes based on similarity, eventually assisting typological analysis. Following an overview of current practices in ceramic recording and both standard and computational shape classification analyses, the new approach is discussed in full as a documentary and analytical tool. A case study from the Middle and Late Bronze Age site of Kaymakçı in western Anatolia demonstrates the benefits of the recording method and helps show that a combination of automated and manual shape clustering techniques currently remains the best practice in ceramic shape classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microtopographic mapping has a long history in archaeology and has gained prominence recently owing to the proliferation of digital technologies. With such proliferation, it becomes necessary to compare and contrast different approaches based on a common set of criteria. This article compares the implementation and efficiency of two methods of mapping microtopography – ground-based Real-Time Kinematic Global Navigation Satellite System (RTK GNSS) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Photogrammetry (UAVP) survey – assessing the pros and cons of each, including those related to data quality. ‘Off-the-shelf’ solutions for methods were used to create the comparative dataset of microtopographic maps of six Middle and Late Bronze Age sites over the course of four seasons between 2007 and 2013 in the study area of the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey in western Turkey. Comparison of results demonstrate that the methods are similar with respect to ease of implementation, cost efficiency, and the (in)significance of data defects, while, unsurprisingly, UAVP survey can be greater than one order of magnitude more labor efficient than RTK GNSS survey and over two orders of magnitude more detailed as measured by data density. The accuracy of both methods is high, within typical error budgets for site-level mapping, and comparable to other recent digital mapping approaches. Accordingly, the results suggest that, given site suitability, UAVP is the more labor and cost-efficient method in the long run, with significant data quality benefits.

The Middle and Late Bronze Ages of western Anatolia (modern Turkey) remains poorly understood in comparison with its Mycenaean and Hittite neighbours, especially in agricultural economies and land use. Kaymakçı is the largest Middle and Late Bronze Age citadel excavated to date in western Anatolia and new archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data from the site presented here shed new light on regional agricultural economies and land use. Agricultural practices at Kaymakçı focused on barley and bitter vetch farming and pig, caprine, and cattle husbandry within a diverse and extensive economic system that made substantial use of wild plants and animals for food, technology, and fuel. Goats and pigs were managed primarily for meat, while sheep and cattle were managed to produce a range of secondary products. Wood charcoal analysis reconstructs both deciduous and evergreen oak woodlands, which also dominate the contemporary landscape. In regional perspective, Kaymakçı is most similar to the northern Aegean agricultural tradition, but with elements of Anatolian practices as well, representing a hybrid position between the Aegean and Anatolian worlds as seen in other lines of archaeological evidence from the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution presents the results of a pilot study of earthen materials excavated at the Middle to Late Bronze Age site of Kaymakçı, located in western Anatolia. It argues that systematic collection and analysis of fragmentary and difficult-to-identify earthen materials is challenging, yet crucial. These materials inform on activities of which traces are preserved in the archaeological record but which have been largely under-researched. Flourishing studies on earthen findings foreground architectural materials, such as mudbrick, and well-preserved features and objects. However, earthen objects and architectural features were utilized more widely than in building architecture and only a small portion of excavated sites has good preservation. We, therefore, present the different categories of earthen materials discovered at Kaymakçı, specifically architecture, installations, and portable items. Our work demonstrates that by incorporating new knowledge of archaeological remains at the site and re-studying the earthen assemblage it is possible to gain a better understanding of the morphological, functional, and social aspects of this dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article modifies an old archaeological adage-'excavation is destruction'-to demonstrate how advances in archaeological practice suggest a new iteration: 'excavation is digitization.' Digitization, in a fully digital paradigm, refers to practices that leverage advances in onsite, image-based modeling and volumetric recording, integrated databases, and data sharing. Such practices were implemented in 2014 during the inaugural season of the Kaymakçı Archaeological Project (KAP) in western Turkey. The KAP recording system, developed from inception before excavation as a digital workflow, increases accuracy and efficiency as well as simplicity and consistency. The system also encourages both practical and conceptual advances in archaeological practice. These involve benefits associated with thinking volumetrically, rather than in two dimensions, and a connectivity that allows for group decision-making regardless of group location. Additionally, it is hoped that the system's use of almost entirely 'off-the-shelf' solutions will encourage its adoption or at least its imitation by other projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both western Turkey and the Levant, archaeology has a long history, with the rise in interest and discovery beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While many have focused on the history of excavations in both of these areas, we approach historical analyses from a different perspective. Utilizing the voices of local actors, this article aims to understand the social reactions of local communities to the increasingly prominent role of people practicing archaeology — archaeologists, diplomats, explorers — through the lens of the antiquities trade over the last two centuries. Interlacing examples from Lydia and the Levant, we provide an overview of archaeological praxis and then offer the positions of the participants, gathered from archival and published materials as well as more recent interviews, conversations, and correspondences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic analysis of bulk bone collagen from faunal remains from the Bronze Age site of Kaymakçı in western Anatolia. We use the isotopic values in conjunction with zooarchaeological data and contextual archaeological information to examine human-environment interactions; in particular, animal management and husbandry. Middle and Late Bronze Age agricultural systems in western and central Anatolia remain poorly understood, and this research aims to contribute to rectifying this research gap. We obtained stable isotopic values from both wild and domestic species, including deer, hare, birds, catfish, dogs, pigs, caprids and cattle. The δ13C values range from −22.0‰ to −16.9‰ and the δ15N values range from 2.3‰ to 10.3‰. For cattle, the δ13C values suggest that some specimens were subject to different management strategies, likely related to feeding or herding patterns or even the movement of animals in and around the region through some exchange mechanism. There appears to be no fixed location or strategy for the management of caprids and, furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the herding/management areas of some caprids overlapped with those of wild animals such as deer and hare. Variation in δ15N values for pigs may indicate that whilst some animals in the sampled assemblage were free-roaming, others were penned. For the pigs and some other herbivorous domesticated species variation in δ15N values may also point to the exploitation of the wetland areas around Lake Marmara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]