Essays on Ancient Anatolia.

• Author: Beckman, Gary
• Position: Review

Essays on Ancient Anatolia. Edited by PRINCE TAKAHITO MIKASA. Bulletin of the Middle East Culture Center in Japan, vol. 11. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 1999. Pp. viii + 244, photos, illus. DM 128.

This is the final number in the series of the Bulletin of the Middle East Culture Center in Japan, which will be succeeded by the publication of the newly established Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology in Turkey (p. viii). The contributions in this volume, chiefly by Japanese and Turkish scholars, are overwhelmingly archaeological in nature.

A central concern here is Kaman-Kalehoyuk, a site just within the bend of the Kizil Irmak southeast of Ankara. S. Omura delivers a preliminary report on the eleventh season of excavations conducted there by the Middle East Culture Center in Japan in 1996 (pp. 51-91), when primarily Old Assyrian and Old Hittite levels were explored.

4. Yoshida publishes several seal impressions found at the site (pp. 183-97). Particularly intriguing is a rather large sealing inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs within its broad circular border as well as in its central field. Three of the still-unintelligible groupings of signs from the exterior ring each appear alone as the central motif in impressions of other seals from Kaman-Kalehoyuk. Since this is the position where the personal name of the seal owner is normally to be found, it appears that the bigger seal had been shared by a collegium of officials, a practice to my knowledge never before attested in Hittite glyptic.

   Finally, A. Mochizuki's analysis of obsidian objects from Kaman-Kalehoyuk by means of X-ray fluorescence (pp. 227-44) reveals that all came from sources within the triangle formed by the modern towns of Nevsehir, Aksaray, and Nigde (p. 233).

   As in most collections of Anatolian archaeology, material from the Old Assyrian merchant settlements is well represented: Syrian flasks recovered in the ruins of karum Kanesh are studied by K. Emre (pp. 39-50), while F. Kulakoglu discusses theriomorphic decorative elements on pottery from the same site (pp. 149-65). A faunal analysis by J. Nicola and C. Glew of bones excavated in level III at Acemhoyuk (pp. 93-148) (1) concludes the contributions on the karum period.

   The dean of Turkish archaeologists, T. Ozguc, presents a group of Old Hittite cultic ceramics from Eskiyapar (pp. 1-22), demonstrating their clear descent from forms current in the Assyrian "colonies." (2) In a second contribution (pp. 23-38) he...