During eleven years of excavation, from 1984 to 1994, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology recovered some twenty tons of cargo, shipboard objects, and personal possessions from the shipwreck discovered at Uluburun, near Kas in southern Turkey.  One of the most important Bronze Age finds ever uncovered, the ship and its contents have contributed significantly to our understanding of many aspects of the Mediterranean Bronze Age including ship construction and trade; chronology and international relations; Homeric studies and metrology.  In the last eight years, the research team has concentrated on full-time conservation, study, and sampling for analysis.  Professor Pulak will review recent research on the Uluburun shipwreck and its contents.

Professor Christopher Ratté, Classics and Fine Arts, New York University

Archaeology in Turkey:  The Future of the Past

Professor Ratté, co-director of excavations at Aphrodisias, Turkey, will survey the current archaeological activities in Turkey. He will discuss the relationship between archaeological research and public policy, development and tourism, and look at some of the challenges that archaeologists in Turkey are facing today, sharing specific examples from excavations at Aphrodisias and Zeugma, Turkey.

Professor Jodi Magness, Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, in the Departments of Classics and Art History at Tufts University

We know that Jewish communities were established in Asia Minor by the Hellenistic period (the period following the conquest of Alexander the Great).  The fact that Paul preached in synagogues throughout Asia Minor attests to the existence of numerous Jewish communities in the first century AD.  In this slide-illustrated lecture, we review the literary, epigraphic (inscriptional), and archaeological evidence for the ancient Jewish communities of Asia Minor, including the spectacular synagogue building at Sardis.

Professor Walter Denny, Professor of Art History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Ottoman Turkish patrons and architects were acutely aware of the importance of tradition in public buildings.  While Ottoman architecture is justly famed for the bold innovations exhibited by its great practitioners, there is also an element of historicism in Ottoman building that views the past not as a canon to be slavishly imitated, but rather as a series of structural and aesthetic challenges.  Professor Denny will examine the ways in which Ottoman patrons and architects confronted, challenged, and quoted the past in their public buildings.   

     April 2001

King Midas is renowned for his 'golden touch,' but not a single scrap of the precious metal was found in what is believed to be his tomb at Gordion (Turkey).   Rivaling the value of gold, however, were hundreds of intricately wrought bronze vessels and elaborately inlaid wooden furniture.  Remarkably, the 'left-overs' of a final banquet had also been preserved inside food vessels and the "most comprehensive Iron Age drinking set" ever discovered.  The artifacts and organic samples, recovered during the 1957 excavation of the tomb by the University Museum expedition, reveal their secrets when probed by modern archaeological and chemical techniques. 

Dr. Scott Redford, Professor, Georgetown University, and Director of The McGhee Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies in Alanya, Turkey

Since 1992, Professor Marie-Henriette Gates of Bilkent University has been excavating at the site of Kinet Hoyuk in southern Turkey. The last settlement level at Kinet dates to the late thirteenth century, the time at the end of the Crusades when Marco Polo disembarked at nearby Ayas to begin his history-making trip to China and back.  Dr. Redford will discuss the conditions in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean that made it a center of international commerce at that time.

Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, Robert H. Dyson Assistant Professor and Assistant Curator, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum

Dr. Hiebert speaks about recent discoveries, both on land and underwater, of the interdisciplinary expedition based at Sinop, Turkey;.  he shares exciting new information about the surprising richness of the archaeological landscape and an ancient beach 500 feet beneath the present sea. 

Dr. Naomi F. Miller, Senior Research Scientist, University of Pennsylvania Museum

Gordion has long been known as the home of the Phrygian King Midas and the place where Alexander the Great reputedly cut the Gordion knot.  University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeologists have been digging there for decades to uncover the unwritten story of those who lived there from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period.  Archaeological plant remains and modern botanical studies are beginning to give us a picture of the landscape to which all these people belonged.  They have also provided the inspiration for an archaeological and botanical conservation project in the area.

Professor Richard Chambers, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Chicago

At the end of the pre-Christian era, the Persian east and Hellenic west had both merged with the local culture of Anatolia to produce a kind of artistic and religious synthesis.  Nowhere was this more apparent than in the small, little-known Commagene Kingdom situated on the borderland between the Hellenistic Seleucid empire and the Iranian Parthian Empire.  With the gradual dissolution of the Seleucid state and the eastward expansion of the Roman Empire early in the 1st century B.C., the Commagene Kingdom served as a Roman buffer against Parthian attacks until 72 A.D. when Vespasian incorporated it into Roman Asia.

Commagene might have remained only a brief footnote in world history but for the spectacular tumulus and sanctuary of King Antiochus I on Nemrut Dagi, the 7,000 foot peak dominating the region.  Although Ekrem Akurgal (in Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey from Prehistoric Times until the End of the Roman Empire, Istanbul 1973) calls it "the most remarkable ancient site in turkey ... the most striking archaeological site in Turkey, "the monuments on Nemrut Dagi stood abandoned and apparently forgotten for almost 2000 years until rediscovered in the 1880s.   Significant archaeological investigation of the site was undertaken in the 1950s, but there is much still to be done.  Today gigantic dams being built on the rivers nearby will submerge some of the ancient monuments in the vicinity, but the awesome tomb-sanctuary of Antiochus on Mount Nemrut will survive as a reminder of his kingdom's brief moment of grandeur and one of the major tourist attractions of modern Turkey. 

Dr. Robert Ousterhout, Chair, Architectural History and Director of Preservation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

One of the most visited and least understood regions of the Byzantine world, Cappadocia in central Turkey preserves hundreds of churches, monasteries, and settlement, carved into its picturesque volcanic landscape. In spite of the wealth of surviving physical evidence including more than 700 churches (and at least one third with frescoes), there are no written records preserved from the region, and almost no references to Cappadocia in Byzantine texts. Accordingly a mythology has developed about the region that is embellished with each retelling. Most settlements are interpreted as monasteries, carved by monks fleeing persecution during the Dark Ages of Byzantium. However, my recent comprehensive survey of the settlement at Çanli Kilise near Aksaray suggests that the reality was less romantic. The settlement, which may be dated to the 10th -11th centuries, was more likely a farming community and not a monastery. Rather than diminishing the importance of Cappadocia, this conclusion means that the region may be an untapped resource for the study of domestic architecture, settlement patterns, and town planning--for which physical evidence has almost completely vanished from the major centers of Byzantium.

Dr. Paul Zimansky, Department of Archaeology, Boston University

New Light and Shadow: On the End of the Kingdom of Urartu

Learn about the Ayanis Project on the web at: http://edebiyat.ege.edu.tr/arc/proto/ayanis.html

The Department of Anthropology and the Hagop Kevorkian Center of New York University, the New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, and the American Research Institute in Turkey jointly sponsored a lecture by Dr. Gil Stein, Professor of Anthropology, Northwestern University

Hacinebi in southeastern Turkey has great importance as an early example of the interest and influence of Mesopotamia in the resources and territory of Anatolia to the north. Hacinebi's strategic location and accessible remains make it an exciting case study of fourth millennium colonial relationships.