Antonio Sagona

Archaeological Investigations at Chobareti in southern Georgia, the Caucasus

Once a restricted military zone, the Akhaltsikhe-Aspindza region within the Samtskhe-Javakheti province of Georgia is now the focus of archaeological investigations. This paper brings together the main data from three years of fieldwork at the ancient site of Chobareti, situated at 1610 metres above sea level, which has so far revealed a Kura-Araxes settlement and burials, and a late Antique/Medieval stronghold.

Excavations at Sos Höyük, 1998-2000: Fifth Preliminary Report

Seven seasons of archaeological investigations at Sos Höyük, an ancient mound site near Erzurum, north-eastern Turkey, have provided us with a reliable stratigraphic sequence of the human occupation for the mountainous region. Five broad cultural periods have been tentatively distinguished to date, ranging from the Late Chalcolithic (Period VA) to the Medieval (Period I). Discoveries during 1998-2000 have enabled a reassessment of the early settlement history at Sos Höyük and the site’s inter-relations with neighbouring regions, especially TransCaucasus. Among the highlights are a Late Chalcolithic (‘Proto-Kura-Araxean’) settlement distinguished by monumental stone wall, well-preserved Middle Bronze Age buildings, and a burnt Early Iron Age room with fine examples of carbonized basketry* ANES 37 (2000) 56-127 * We wish to thank the Turkish Ministry of Culture for granting us a permit to enable this project to continue, and to various individuals and organizations who have offered EXCAVATIONS AT SOS HÖYÜK, 1998-2000 57 The seventh season of archaeological work at Sos Höyük, Erzurum, was concluded in 2000. This paper outlines on the main results of the last three seasons of excavations that were carried during 1998-2000. The nature of investigations varied over this period. In 1998, two weeks of fieldwork, focusing on the investigation of specific site formation processes, was followed by four weeks of intensive artifact analysis, whereas in the next two seasons both aspects of work were carried out simultaneously. Our broad objective over the three year period was to refine the stratigraphic sequence in order to better understand the development of this complex multi-period site. The specific objectives were to: 1. Understand the constructional history of the large monumental stone wall established soon after the site was settled. 2. Investigate the earliest phases of occupation, currently dateable to the Late Chalcolithic period, initially through an exploratory trench (1998) and subsequently by means of wider horizontal exposures. assistance in many different ways: H. E. Umut Arık, Turkish Ambassador in Canberra; H. E. Ian Forsyth, Australian Ambassador in Ankara; Deniz Özmen, Turkish Consul General in Melbourne; the various offices of the Vali of Erzurum and the Kaymakan of Pasinler; our government representatives, Ilhan Kaymaz (1998-1999) and Rahmi Asal (2000), who ensured our work progressed smoothly; Mustafa Erkmen, Director of Erzurum Museum, and his staff; Cavit Tıg, Director of Erzurum Orman Müdürlügü; staff at the Sefer and Polat hotels, Erzurum; and our conscientious driver, Israfil Öner, who, thankfully, does not believe in ‘white knuckle’ drives. Finally, we are most grateful to our excavation teams and local employees who made it all possible, and to our daughter, Amadea, who at the age of eleven and with ten field seasons to her credit has probably experienced more archaeology than she cares for. Team members are from the University of Melbourne unless otherwise stated: Antonio Sagona (1998-2000); Claudia Sagona (1998-2000); Andrew Anastasios (1998); Doug Bardsley (1998); Justin Boschetti (1999); Jana Boulet (1999); Christopher Briggs (1999); Victoria Clayton (1998); Murray Clayton, Surveyor, Melbourne (1999); Lisa Cougle (1998-1999); Manuela Daber (2000); Fahri Dikkaya, Ege Üniversitesi (1999); Bronwyn Douglas, Photographer, Cairns (1998-1999); Sebastian Elston (1999); Kerrie Grant, University of New England (19992000); Richard Heap (1998-2000); Liza Hopkins (1999); Tamaz Kiguradze, State Museum, Tbilisi, (1998-2000); Mihrican Kılıç, Conservator, Istanbul (1998-1999); Tom Komadina (1999); Ian McNiven (1998); Jennifer Newton (1998); Stephie Nikoloudis, University of Texas at Austin (1999); Elizabeth Parr (1999-2000); Joanna Richmond (1999-2000); Maurice Smith (1999); Kep Turnour, Surveyor, Melbourne (1998); Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios (1998); Three visitors joined the excavations for short periods: Giulio Palumbi, University of Rome (1999); Scott Newman (2000); Simon Connor (2000). The original illustrations were drawn by a number of people including Jana Boulet, Lisa Cougle, Meaghan Wilson and the authors; the inked drawing were produced by the authors. Bronwyn Douglas and Antonio Sagona are responsible for the photographs. To Chandra Jayasuriya we extend our thanks for her skill and patience in producing the digitzed plans. The project is funded by grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC). Radiocarbon readings with laboratory code OZD were made possible by a generous Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) AMS grant (no. 97/189R). We would like to thank staff at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) and Beta Analytic radiocarbon laboratories for their assistance with analyses. 58 A. SAGONA & C. SAGONA 3. Expose the residential area contemporary with the shaft graves of the Middle Bronze Age that had been found in earlier seasons. 4. Enlarge the area in J14, investigated in 1995,1 with a view to preserving the rich carbonized organic remains of the Iron Age I period and thereby have a clearer understanding of household assemblages. Accordingly, work during the three seasons concentrated mostly on the northern side of the mound (Fig. 24) where operations were extended to the very back walls of a row of modern houses that were built into the mound in the 1980s, before our work began. In this paper results are presented from the earliest deposits (Period VA) upwards, following a periodization scheme detailed in another article,2 which also contains discussions of comparative material that are here kept to a minimum. Late Chalcolithic: Period VA (3500/3300 — 3000 Cal BC) Presently, data from trenches L17 and M17 on the northern side of the mound suggest that Sos Höyük was first settled in Late Chalcolithic (Period VA). But we know little about the earliest settlers, having reached the lowest level only in a small exploratory trench dug in Trench L17/M17 in 1998. Excavations revealed a series of burnt floors and some very large stones that superimposed a gravelly virgin soil. Finds included a twin-horned, portable hearth (Fig. 25), a type which continued to remain popular for many centuries, and a stone blade showing extensive use wear sheen along one edge (Fig. 26). A radiocarbon reading from the base of the sounding calibrated to a 2-sigma accuracy (Beta-120452: Cal BC 3500 to 3435, and 3385 to 3285, and 3245 to 3105) points to the second half of the fourth millennium BC for initial occupation at Sos Höyük. We have a better idea of architecture in the level above that is represented by a few rooms with a lime-plastered floor and mud brick walls founded directly onto the earthen surface. Only one room (M17, Locus 3780), the easternmost, sited against the rear wall of a modern house, was fitted with a hearth built into the floor; the other room (M17, Locus 3779) had three post-holes that punctured a lime plaster floor. Shortly after these earliest occupations, the character of Sos Höyük changed markedly. The inhabitants of the village felt the need to build a 1 Sagona, Erkmen, Sagona and Thomas 1996. pl VI:b, c. An overview of the project that contains a large selection of images and a brief site history may be obtained on the following website The Northeast Anatolia Archaeological Project. http://www.sfca.unimelb.edu.au/turkey/hoyukfest.swf 2 Sagona 2000; Kiguradze and Sagona (in press). EXCAVATIONS AT SOS HÖYÜK, 1998-2000 59 very large stone wall (Fig. 27). First reported in 19963, the sector of wall exposed so far is curved and solidly built of locally acquired field stones, ranging from about 25 cm to 70 cm in length. The wall measures 2.5 m across, whereas its height has been preserved, in parts, to over 1.75 m. These foundations presumably had a mud brick superstructure, though no evidence of it has survived. In 1999 a semi-circular lobe attached to the wall’s eastern face was exposed (Fig. 28). The stones used in the construction of this component are similar in size and type to those of the wall, but we cannot be certain at this stage about its date of construction relative to the wall itself. So what was the purpose of this monumental stone construction? It now seems clear that this wall did not belong to a large building, but rather it seems to constitute a spatial boundary of some sort. Without knowing the full extent of the Late Chalcolithic settlement, or the complete plan of the wall (for much of it lies in the unexcavated area at the centre of the mound), it is difficult to determine what area it originally demarcated. To judge by its location, it is unlikely that the wall served as a perimeter. Instead its purpose may have been to define space at the core of the settlement, which would imply that areas inside and outside the wall were differentiated either in terms of function, or perhaps along socio-political lines. One thing is certain namely, that the wall was destroyed at least twice. The absence of scorching rules out fire as a cause, and there is no evidence to suggest that warfare played a part in the collapse. Rather, as we suggest below, it seems likely that an earthquake caused the wall to tumble, for we must remember that Sos is located directly on the notorious north Anatolian fault line. Dwellings and floor deposits associated with the earliest building phase of the wall, before the first collapse, have been found on both sides of the stone wall. The use of stone for foundations stands in sharp contrast to earlier constructions and is more in line with the character of the wall itself. The inside settlement is evidenced by Locus 4299, in Trench L17b, a burnt plaster surface that did not contain the standard built-in hearth, but yielded another fine example of the twin-horned andiron (Fig. 29). A small deposit of phtyolith was collected for radiocarbon analysis, but it did not yield a very helpful date with a cal

Excavations at Sos Höyük 1994 : first preliminary report

Collaborative Australian–Turkish archaeological investigations in north-eastern Anatolia, begun in 1988 in the Bayburt province (then an ilce of Gumushane), continued for six weeks during June–July 1994 with excavations at Sos Hoyuk near Erzurum. The decision to extend the limits of the research project beyond the Bayburt plain, eastwards into the adjacent province, was based primarily on the need to address questions raised by our work in Bayburt, most notably the apparent gaps in its culture sequence. Further, we were acutely aware that in order to establish a sequence for north-east Anatolia we would need to reexamine by systematic excavations the human settlement of the Erzurum plain, long known from the early campaigns of H. Z. Kosay and his colleagues at Karaz, Guzelova and Pulur, and I. K. Koktens pioneering surveys. Our interest in the site of Sos Hoyuk was roused by material excavated during a three week campaign in the summer of 1987 by a team from Ataturk University (Erzurum) and Erzurum museum. While some of the material clearly keyed into the Bayburt sequence, much of it did not. A visit to the site revealed a dense surface scatter of artefacts, especially obsidian, and substantial stratified deposits exposed by the diggings of the local villagers. The potentialities of the site were clear. With the material excavated at Buyuktepe and collected in the Bayburt province overlapping and complementing that at Sos, we would move closer toward an understanding of cultural developments in north-east Anatolia.

Remembering Gallipoli from a Turkish perspective

The Turkish cemeteries at Gallipoli developed in a different manner from those of the Anzacs, and the ceremonies mirrored marked shifts in public opinion and the political circumstances of the time. In this chapter, we first discuss how Turkish commemoration ceremonies have evolved over the last century, after which we examine the monuments themselves. 18 MARCH NAVAL VICTORY COMMEMORATIONS AND VISITS TO THE CEMETERIES Ceremonies held during the war period The Ottoman victory at Gallipoli ( Canakkale Muzafferiyet-i Azimesi ) was acclaimed throughout the empire and beyond. Celebratory gatherings and ceremonies were held across the empire, and especially in Istanbul. Caliph-Sultan Mehmet Resat received the title Gazi (Veteran) to mark the victory, while the German Kaiser decorated the Canakkale Fortified Zone Commander, Cevat Pasha. For his part, Cevat, anxious to proclaim the heroism of the gunners in the naval victory of 18 March 1915, obtained the approval of the Ottoman Supreme Command to rename the Dardanos Battery the Hasan-Mevsuf Battery in recognition of the bravery of the gunners Hasan, Mevsuf Bey and their friends. The first commemoration of the 18 March victory in the Dardanelles was held one year on. On 12 March 1916, Nihat Pasha, commander of the Canakkale Fortified Zone, issued an order for a military ceremony to take place on the anniversary of the naval victory ‘to cherish the memory of the soldiers who fell on that date’. This military ceremony and a parade would follow a religious ceremony. The Ottoman warship Yavuz came from Istanbul for the ceremonies, which were held in the Hastane Bayiri, Anadolu Hamidiye, Dardanos Bastion and Erenkoy–Seddulbahir areas and were attended by Nihat Pasha, accompanied by Merten Pasha and Cevat Pasha. A German officer made the following statement during this first commemoration: Passing through the sloshy pastures we are heading to a silent cemetery, the final resting place of four German and three Turkish heroes in the outskirts of the Dardanos Hills. When I first saw the graves a couple of weeks ago, they were surrounded by a mysterious palisade, with uniformed German and Turkish stonemasons working with hammers and chisels behind it. Today many hands have decorated it with flowers and trees, and spring flowers have blossomed over both the German and Turkish mass graves. Both have magnificent marble grave monuments erected over them. The inscriptions tell the names and heroism of the new March soldiers.

Boundary and divide: The antiquity of the Dardanelles

‘All history has passed through the Hellespont, from the expedition of the Argonauts and the Trojan war down to the recent Great War.’ X iminez , A sia M inor in R uins , p. 91. So the Spanish traveller and author Saturnino Ximenez observed in 1925 – writing amid turbulent times in the region. The Hellespont, as he calls it, is the ancient Greek name for the passage of water that is now usually known in English as the ‘Dardanelles’ and in Turkish as ‘Canakkale Bogazi’. There can be few more important passages of water (plate 1.1). It both connects and divides. It connects the Mediterranean and Black Seas – ultimately linking Eurasia and the Caucasus in the north and east with Spain and North Africa in the west. And it separates Europe from Asia, and has therefore featured throughout time as a kind of natural border of ethnic difference. The Greek writers of antiquity saw the Persian crossing of the Hellespont into Europe in 480 BCE as a kind of breaking of natural law, and some of their narratives about it were constructed to make this point. These days, the passage from Asia to Europe, or vice versa, is rather more seamless. Canakkale and Eceabat are a kind of ‘twin towns’ on either side of the strait – places that become quite well known to visitors to the Gallipoli battlefields. Modern Turkey embraces its identity both within Europe and within Asia, and this dual profile has tended to dominate its recent history. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DARDANELLES IN ANTIQUITY For many people today the Gallipoli Peninsula is inextricably associated with one event: the attempt by the European Allies in 1915 to push through the heavily mined straits of the Dardanelles to support Russia. Of the campaigns fought in that battle, which took the lives of more than 125 000 Turkish and Allied soldiers, three are deeply embedded in the psyche of the contemporary nation states of Turkey, Australia and New Zealand: 18 March, when the Ottoman fortresses and batteries successfully fought off the second attempt by the British Royal Navy and the French Navy to break through the Straits; 25 April, the dawn landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), which launched the land offensive; and 10 August, when the Ottoman forces drove the Allied soldiers back down the slopes of Chunuk Bair, thus effectively thwarting their August offensive.

Anzac Battlefield: Battlefield archaeology: Gallipoli

Whether set in remote antiquity or the modern world, battles and battlefields are generally perceived as the purview of military historians. Although broad themes such as the causes of war form a crucial element of military history, specific campaigns have often been investigated from the perspectives of strategy, logistics, tactics and manoeuvres of opposing armies. These mechanical and operational categories continue to attract attention, to be sure, but over the last quarter century or so the study of armed conflict has seen a significant shift of emphasis. Interdisciplinary approaches to an anthropological archaeology of modern conflict have developed, in which the study of human nature under the duress of battle – why soldiers behave the way they do and how their behaviour relates to their physical environment – is now considered of prime importance. Archaeological approaches and analyses have found an important role to play in these investigations, through the archaeologists’ attention to the physical record of human activity. Research concentrates on identifying the material remains of battlefields in which people not only fought and died but also lived for days, weeks or months at a time, building kitchens, sleeping quarters, medical posts, supply depots and all those related features that make up the landscape of warfare behind the front lines. Using material culture to understand the way people behaved during battles is the contribution archaeology makes to the study of battlefields and conflict more generally. This emphasis on the materiality of war, especially modern technological conflict like the First World War, is a relatively new advance. Accordingly, objects of war are not necessarily viewed as functional items but as possessing their own ‘social lives’, whose biographies have yet to be written fully. Likewise the contested and tragic landscapes of destruction are multilayered places of commemoration and pilgrimage, as well as tourist attractions and sites that require heritage management. This broad anthropological approach, sometimes called ‘agency theory’, owing to the explicit emphasis it places on the human agent, has emerged as a powerful tool in the rapidly expanding discipline of battlefield archaeology, or, to use the more inclusive term, conflict archaeology. The underlying principle is that each military site, whether the scene of a protracted campaign or a brief encounter, has a distinct ‘fingerprint’, which was formed by the pressures of war, changing technology and the cultural backgrounds of the combatants.

The ANZAC [Arıburnu] Battlefield: New Perspectives and Methodologies in History and Archaeology

Despite the centrality that the Gallipoli Peninsula and the 1915 campaign have in the psyche of many Australians, the battlefield itself has not been physically studied in great detail. This paper reports on the first season of archaeological fieldwork conducted in 2010 in the ANZAC battlefield. Innovative methodologies were used by new national and disciplinary collaborations and new systems combining landscape archaeology and digital analysis with historical data. It argues such collaborations can deepen our understandings of the experience of 1915, as we approach this key centenary.

The Bronze Age-Iron Age transition in northeast Anatolia: a view from Sos Höyük

The ancient settlement of Sos Hoyuk, situated east of Erzurum, is providing a significant stratigraphic sequence of human occupation from the Late Chalcolithic to the Medieval period. This sequence includes the transition from the end of the Bronze Age into the first centuries of the Iron Age, a period which is surrounded by difficult but intriguing historical questions. At the mound of Sos Hoyuk evidence for this transition is starting to emerge from a relatively small operation on the northern slope, midway down the mound, in trenches M15 and L16. The stratigraphic record at Sos Hoyuk together with a large range of radiocarbon readings taken from samples collected over four seasons of excavation indicate that the site was occupied throughout the late fourth/third millennium BC and intermittently in the second millennium. The earliest centuries of the second millennium BC are best defined by storage pits, wattle and daub dwellings and burials that conform generally to a tradition initially documented by Kuftin in his excavations of the Trialeti kurgan burials near Tbilisi, Georgia (Kuftin 1941; Miron, Orthmann 1995: 79–94).

Recording the battlefield: First steps

Two of the most important sources for understanding what the Anzac battlefield looked like shortly after the campaign are the maps produced by the Turkish cartographer Mehmet Şevki Pasha and the material collected in 1919 by the Australian Historical Mission and the Australian War Records Section. Şevki Pashas detailed maps, produced in the immediate aftermath of the Allied evacuation of December 1915, are an invaluable source, allowing for detailed comparison between the recently deserted Turkish and Allied trenches and what has survived today. Indeed, without these maps, verifying the modern recording of the old trench positions would be much more difficult. The diaries, sketches, maps, drawings and photographs produced by the Australian Historical Mission in 1919 created a large collection still to be fully exploited in modern interpretations of the battlefield landscape. In the JHAS encounter with the modern terrain of ‘old Anzac’, it was important to understand something of the workings of these first efforts to document that landscape. It became evident, for example, that Şevki Pasha had not recorded everything. There were surviving trench lines that he, and his aides, either did not consider worth mapping or were unable to record in the time they had available. Similarly, it was well outside the remit of the Australian Historical Mission to make detailed note of trench lines and other key positions. That said, the Turkish maps and the Missions collections could well be valuable starting points for further archaeological and historical investigation of the battlefield features surviving at Gallipoli today. They would certainly, if used imaginatively, enhance efforts at modern site interpretation. AUSTRALIAN HISTORICAL MISSION, FEBRUARY–MARCH 1919 Charles Bean spent virtually the whole of the 1915 campaign at Gallipoli as Australias official war correspondent. On Saturday 15 February 1919, now the nations official historian, he returned to Anzac: ‘… my heart bounded … the place seemed to have been abandoned only yesterday.’ Bean observed that the eastern slopes of Second Ridge were still crowded with the excavated terraces where the Ottoman soldiers had lived; saw that a maze of trenches still led up to the front line on the Lone Pine plateau; and experienced again, as he went along Second Ridge, how close to each other the Ottoman and Anzac trenches had been.

Anzac Gallipoli Archaeological Database

The Anzac Gallipoli Archaeological Database is a unique and detailed record of the information recovered during the JHAS field project. Its value is the documentation of archaeological contexts, thereby enabling features and artefacts to be studied in association. During the project, information was collated and managed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) and research database that includes searchable attributes about each feature and artefact. One outcome of the JHAS has been to make this database available to other researchers and the general public as a web-based, digital archive – the Anzac Gallipoli Archaeological Database (AGAD; ) – which is comprehensive in its content. It is an important and complementary resource for this book, as many of the features and artefacts that could not be included or illustrated in the text can be found online in AGAD. AGAD occupies a unique space among the increasing number of digital archaeological gazetteers, archives and catalogues on web-based platforms that are being constructed as an effective way of making primary data available to a wide audience. With more than 2000 records precisely documented in the field, it aims to assist the study of the First World War through its emphasis on landscape and artefacts. The database is organised around the features and artefacts documented in the GIS, rather than specific sites or locations. The feature entries are of the various types used during the JHAS surveys (see table A.1). Each feature is given a unique Feature ID (and artefacts have an additional catalogue ‘Artefact Number’). Moreover, each feature has a record that displays data attributes, including a description, dimensions, chronological period, location and find-spot information, survey date, associated features, artefact type, material type, preservation rating and between one and three images, such as photographs and maps. Artefacts form a major portion of the archive, as they are the largest group of features recorded, and a separate set of artefact types is identified in the data set. It includes information documented in both Turkish and Anzac-held areas of the battlefield, providing an insight into the battlefield from perspectives on both sides of the conflict. Feature types have been categorised from observations in the field. Eleven feature types are c. 1915 battlefield features (artefacts, boats, six types of earthworks, graves, roads, structures).