Alaca Höyük
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Alaça Höyük is a village in the Çorum Province, Turkey, located 170 km east of Ankara. It is northeast of Bogazkale (Boğazköy, the ancient capital city Hattusa of the Hittite Empire) and lies on the road to Corum in modern Turkey. It is the site of an ancient town and is an archaeological site.
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[edit] Excavations
The mound (Turkish höyük) at Alaça Hüyük was the center of the flourishing autochthonous Hattian culture during the Early Bronze Age. The mound was a scene of settlement in a continuous sequence of development from the Chalcolithic Age, when earliest copper tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools; it has been continuously occupied ever since, today's settlement being a small village. The standing remains at Alaça Höyük, however, such as the "Sphinx Gate", date from the following Hittite period, in the fourteenth century BCE.
Excavations of the site started in the late 19th century and in 1907 were led by the archaeologist Theodor Makridi Bey. Royal tombs dating to the third millennium BC were discovered and a Hittite town of the second millennium BC. The impressive sphinx gate surrounded by stone reliefs marks its entrance. The town was heavily fortified with walls and towers due to the frequent raids of the Kaska people living in the mountaineous region to the north.
Excavations begun in 1935 by Remzi Oğuz Arık and Hamit Koşay have revealed considerable local wealth and achievement before the time of the Hittites, with the earliest occupation dating from the 4th millennium BC. Tombs of the 3d millennium B.C. feature metal vessels, jewelry, weapons, and pole finials of bulls, stags, and abstract forms often interpreted as solar symbols. Work at the site is now directed by Aykut Çınaroğlu.
Thirteen so-called "Royal Tombs" (EBII, ca. 2350–2150 BCE) contained the dead in fetal position facing south; they were richly adorned with gold fibulae, diadems, and belt buckles and repoussé gold-leaf figures. Many of the artefacts discovered at Alaça Hüyük, including magnificent Hattian gold and bronze objects found in the Royal Tombs, are today housed at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. Among these artifacts are rich gold and electrum standing cups and other vessels. bulls or stags on pedestals as culturally unexplained "standards" are among the most common images. The standards are cast in copper, in the form of flat circles, half-circles or squares that are in-filled with an open network of cross bars, central crosses, swastikas. The Royal Tombs "seem to belong to the end of a period, as marked by a stratum of destruction and the burning of the citadel. The culture which the tomb objects illustrate does not continue into the next historical phase, that of Kültepe" (Woolley 1961).
[edit] Dams
A dam, dating from 1240 BC, was announced to be reopened for use on September 23, 2006. The dam was ordered by King Tudhaliya IV in the name of the goddess Hepat. According to ancient Hittite tablets, a drought struck Anatolia in 1200 B.C., prompting the King to import wheat from Egypt so that his land would avoid famine. Following this, the king ordered numerous dams to be built in central Anatolia, all but one of them becoming dysfunctional over time. The one in Alacahöyük has survived because the water source is located inside the dam's reservoir.[1]
[edit] References
- Leonard Woolley, 1961. The Art of The Middle East, including Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine, (New York: Crown)ch. 6 (On-line text) A traditional view, taking Mesopotamia as central.
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