Anatolian Bronze Age Cultures

TheEarly Bronze Age is the period when a series of changes took place in bothWestern Anatolia and mainland Greece. These include craft specialization, the intensification of inter- regional trade, the construction of special purpose buildings and the increase in settlement size.These innovations have generally been accepted as the hallmarks of complex society on both sides of the Aegean Sea. Special purpose buildings, which differ from ordinary houses by their sizes, locations and construction, are frequently thought to be elite residences, and they are the subject matter of this article. By surveying temporal and spatial
changes in these buildings on both sides of the Aegean, we can begin to define their meanings in a wider social setting.

Kültepe, the ancient city of Kanesh, is defined as one of the most important urban centers in the ancient Near
East. The lower town, surrounding the mound measures up to two and a half kilometers in diameter, and must
have provided enough space for fifty to sixty thousand people to live and do business during the Asssyrian Trading
Colony period. After the final phase of this Bronze Age occupation, Kültepe remained unsettled for about
eight hundred years, which includes the time of the Hittite Kingdom and Empire. It is obvious from the written
documentation found at Kültepe that individuals bearing Hittite and Luwian names lived in the city during
the Colony period. Moreover, based on the examples discovered at Kültepe that the Hittite artistic style has
its roots in the Colony period. However the excavations carried out at the site did not reveal any architectural
remains attesting to their presence after the formation of the Hittite state. Consequently a question arises, why
and how the life at this rich trading post did end? Why did not the Hittites settled in this site?
The weakened relations Mesopotamia and Syria after the collapse of the trading system were undoubtedly
a major reason for Kanesh loosing its importance as an urban center. However, on the other hand that the natural
disasters or changes directly affecting the region of Kültepe, such as the apparent ponding of the Sarımsaklı
Basin might have been an even more important factor.

Archaeological excavations have been ongoing at Seyitömer Höyük, province of Kütahya, Turkey, at intervals since 1990. The stratigraphy shows five layers: (I) Roman, (II) Hellenistic, (III) Achaemenid, (IV) Middle Bronze Age, (V) Early Bronze Age III. It has been determined that the layer dated to the Early Bronze Age III has four stages: A, B, C, D. In this article, 4 lead jewelry moulds from the Phase C layer are presented. The moulds show negatives of lead figurines, earrings, seals, pendants and various objects. By referring to the places where the jewelry moulds were found, they are compared with moulds with similar motives dated to the same period and with analogues of the objects that can be cast with these moulds. Based on these examples, Seyitömer Höyük’s commercial activities with Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Greece are clarified.

This dissertation was never published (finished by Nicholas Bayne in 1963), and remained so until A. Schachner and D. Hertel who, many years later in the 1990s, took an interest in the early work of Bayne when they where analyzing the Bronze and Iron Age of Northwestern Anatolia. The scope
of the enquiry of Bayne covers the Anatolian Grey Ware from the second millennium to the end of the archaic Greek period, geographically limited to the region of Northwestern Anatolia. The chief objective of his study was the relation of that pottery to early Greek settlements in the area.

Bayne’s early documentation of such Bronze and Early Iron Age potteries, as the Early Iron Age Aeolian-Grey Ware –nowadays stored in less than accessible depots– and the pottery from Alt-Smyrna (Bayraklı; around Izmir), was of enough interest that Schachner and Hertel felt it merited wider dissemination.

Öz
Hititçe çivi yazılı metinlerde yaz mevsiminin var olup olmadığı belirsizdir. Ancak bazı tarihçiler yazın gerçekleştirilen tarımsal faaliyetler için kullanılan BURU 14 kelimesinin aynı zamanda yaz mevsimi için de kullanıldığını iddia etmişlerdir. Bu makalenin amacı Hitit takviminde ayların sıralanışını açıklayarak söz konusu öneriyi desteklemek ve yaz mevsiminin başlangıç ve bitiş tarihlerine ilişkin tespitler yapmaktır. Ayrıca Anadolu'daki geleneksel halk takvimlerinde kullanılan terminoloji ile yaz mevsimine ilişkin Hititçe metinlerde kullanılan kelimeler arasındaki benzerliklere dikkat çekmektir. Zira Anadolu halk takvimlerinde hasat zamanı olarak adlandırılan dönem Hitit takviminde benzer bir isimle anılıyor ve yaz mevsiminin başlangıç ve bitiş tarihlerini gösteriyor olabilir. Anahtar Kelime: Hitit, çivi yazılı metinler, yaz mevsimi, BURU 14 , Anadolu, halk takvimi

Abstract There is an uncertainty about the naming or presence of summer season in Hittite cuneiform texts. However, some scholars claimed that certain agricultural activities in summer written as BURU 14 in Hittite cuneiform texts indicate the summer period. The purpose of this article is to support this argument by explaining the sequence of the months in the Hittite calendar and to make determinations about the start and end dates of the summer season. It is also to draw attention to the similarities between the terminology used for the summer in traditional calendars in Anatolia and the words used for the summer period in the Hittite cuneiform texts. The period called harvest time in Anatolian traditional calendars may be referred to by a similar name in the Hittite calendar and it may indicate the beginning and end dates of the summer season.

From the bull and deer paintings of Çatalhöyü k houses to the lion and vulture carvings of Göbeklitepe pillars, Neolithic Anatolia has given us a glimpse of the variety of roles animals play in human imagination and in daily human life: in imagery, in symbolism, in stories and rituals. In cases where there is a lack of detailed imagery, conventional interpretations have focused on animals exclusively as resources for survival. This approach limits our understanding of the relationships humans had with their natural and material world. Compared to the Neolithic, the Anatolian Bronze Age is poor in terms of representations of animals, however extramural cemeteries in this period have yielded a great variety of animal remains, both disarticulated and complete. By considering the different ways in which animals were interred in mortuary context, this paper aims to analyze the human-animal interaction beyond subsistence and economy.