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Nig˘ de arrived buff-colored handmade pitchers with rising spouts, handled jars, and bowls painted with designs executed in a purplish paint.

Whereas buff Syrian wares, including Syrian bottles and spiral-burnished wheelmade jars, occasionally red banded, show eastern connections, red and black streak-burnish containers point to Cyprus. Pivotal for comparative chronology and testimony to long-distance contact is the occurrence of a Cilician reserved slip jug among the grave goods in mastaba G 1233 at Giza, dated to early Dynasty IV. But it was during the Early Bronze Age III that trade connections were most vigorous. During this period Cilicia’s attention was sharply drawn to western Anatolia, though it never cut its ties with Syria (Amuq J), as a range of elegant goblets and bottles reflect. Connections with the west extended as far as Troy, whose presence in Cilicia is attested by two-handled depas, tankards, red slipped platters, and others forms we have already encountered.135

Metallurgy and its impact

Turkey is well endowed in metals and ores, so it is not surprising that it played a leading role in the development of pyrometallurgy. Its mountainous terrain is literally studded with metalliferous sites, including copper, iron, lead, silver, and gold, especially in the northern and eastern regions (Figure 5.25). Of these, copper, silver, and gold can occur in the native state. Throughout antiquity this beneficence positioned Anatolia well for trade, both local and long distance, but it also attracted the attention of its neighbors who coveted these resources. Combined with human ingenuity, this richness in ores also enabled the ancient Anatolian smiths, known for their technical sophistication and artistry, to play a leading role in metallurgy.

Much has been said about the Early Bronze Age Kestel Mine and the nearby mining village at Göltepe since the discovery was announced in the late 1980s.136 Taking the later Middle Bronze Age texts of the Assyrian Trading colony period as a model, most assumed that tin was imported into Anatolia, even in the prehistoric period. Gradually, however, the majority of researchers have been persuaded by the arguments of Aslıhan Yener and her colleagues, who have provided a considerable amount of compelling evidence. But for some, nagging doubts remain. The primary concern is the relatively small amount of tin recovered from the Kestel Mine today, and the conspicuous absence of tin slag deposits at the complex. Another is the apparent paradox of prehistoric miners investing a large amount effort to extract tin from low-grade, iron-rich tin ore to supply a fledging tin-bronze industry in Anatolia. Despite these qualms, the archaeological evidence and accompanying scientific analyses provide a persuasive argument that tin ore was mined and processed on a grand scale throughout the Early Bronze Age. Radiocarbon readings indicate that Kestel was worked over various periods from about 3240 to 2200 BC, with the period of greatest activity during the second half of the third millennium, after which the mine ceased operations.

The Kestel-Göltepe complex is vast. The mine itself comprises a network of eight galleries

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Figure 5.25 Location of the main sites in Turkey that have yielded evidence of ancient metallurgy (adapted from Wagner and Öztunalı 2000)

(Chambers I–VIII), extending in various directions (Figures 5.26 and 5.27). Some 4500 cubic meters of ore were extracted, often through precariously narrow tunnels, using fire—to create tension in the physical matrix—and large ground stone hammers to shatter the ore. The rich tinbearing haematite ore is either gray or burgundy in color, but has a distinctive sparkle that distinguishes it from other ores. Even if the ore mined in antiquity were low grade, containing only 1% of tin like some the nodules found in the excavations, the size of the galleries point to the production of some 115 tons of tin. But it is likely that prehistoric miners at Kestel were taking out a richer grade ore, with a tin content possibly as high as 2%.137 No less impressive is the evidence from Göltepe, the processing site established on a hilltop 2 km from the mine. Its industrial purpose is obvious. Over one ton of ceramic furnaces and crucibles covered with a tin-rich residue were recovered. Storage jars laden with ground ore, nodules waiting to be processed, hearths, and an arsenal of stone crushers reinforce the specific function of the workshops. Göltepe was also a habitation site. The miners lived here in pit houses, measuring 4–6 m in diameter, cut into the bedrock and finished with a wattle and daub superstructure. Despite the grime the workshops no doubt produced, the inhabitants of Göltepe did not neglect their houses, repeatedly plastering their walls and decorating them with geometric relief patterns.

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Figure 5.27 Kestel Mine, Early Bronze Age galleries (Photo: courtesy Aslıhan Yener)

One point should not escape us, namely the consumption of fuel that is required for mining, which must have impacted heavily on the surrounding forests.

Despite the abundance of ore-bearing sites, not all were utilized in antiquity. Over 30 prehistoric copper mining and smelting sites have been located in Anatolia.138 Archaeological evidence associated with an ancient working, includes open pit mines (often reworked), burnt or discolored clay linked with furnaces, and metallurgical debris. The by-product of metalworking often comprises a scatter of ore fragments, charcoal, crucible debris, tuyeres, mining tools such as hammers and picks, and waste dumps in the form of slag heaps. Although Anatolia has deposits of native copper, exploited as early as the eighth millennium BC to fashion jewellery and simple tools, this form is quite rare. Instead, the bulk of copper used in antiquity was released by smelting more common ores that contain other impurities. The most conspicuous ores by virtue of their color are malachite (green) and azurite (blue).

Gold was obtained from mine (primary) and placer (secondary) deposits. Primary gold deposits occur in few areas: One is located in the Menderes Massif, in the Izmir province, while the second group is associated with quartz veins, commonly known as reef gold, also situated in western Anatolia. In both cases, the gold can be found in association with other metals such as silver, copper, and lead. Gold from placer deposits is commonly known as alluvial or native gold. Present-day alluvial deposits in western Anatolia have too low a content to be exploited, but in antiquity the sands of the Pactolus River (Sart Çay), near Sardis, famous for their gold dust were certainly worked. Native gold poses no problems to the goldsmith. A soft metal, it was shaped into jewellery from an early period without any modification.

Silver is found either as silver glance (the sulfides) and horn silver (the chlorides), or in silverbearing ores of lead, copper, and other metals, including electrum, an alloy of gold and silver.

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Native silver is rare and quite pure, and even though it occurs in the vicinity of ore deposits, it is difficult to detect because it is located well below the surface. Anatolia has many silver mines, especially in the north-central region, where the Gümüs¸hane area has the richest deposits in the country. These were most likely exploited by the Hittites, whereas Kaz Dag˘ ı and Ulu Dag˘ ı in the northwest supplied the Trojan silversmiths centuries earlier.

Despite the welter of publications that inform us of precocious technological achievements, the social circumstances surrounding ancient metallurgy in Anatolia have yet to be explored fully. The notion that metalworking must be considered part of the broad range of human behavior, especially magic and ritual, is a relatively new one,139 with many archaeometallurgists preferring the view that: “The composition of the materials can give far more unambiguous information on the technology of the process which produced them than on the society that made and used them.”140 This technological view, which assumes that early metalsmiths were engaged in a rational path of discovery and experimentation, stems from Childe’s influential ideas on the developmental stages of metallurgy.141 Following his Marxist convictions, Childe stressed the importance of the industrial use of metals in cultural evolution, and adhered to the view that metallurgy was a “science,” free of superstition and magic.

The process of metallurgy from mining to metalworking involves three broad stages—pro- curement of raw material, production of metalwork (hammering, melting, smelting, and casting), and the use of the items. In pre-industrial agrarian communities, mining was for the most part a seasonal and often short-term activity that was scheduled around the agricultural activities that always took primacy.142 This was likely the case in Anatolia too. Beyond functional aspects, we should be aware that many cultures, from Siberia to Indonesia, saw the process of metallurgy as a confrontation with powers not of this world.143 The positive, human response to this experience, as indeed with any confrontation with the numinous, was embodied in religious ritual—a combination of thought (myths) and action (cult)—focused on pyrotechnology. Given the difficulty of explaining the numinous, social and natural experiences are often used as metaphors as a way of communicating the mysterious processes. A mineral ore, for instance, is perceived by many cultures as a seed that gestates within the belly of an earth mother, in a constant state of metamorphosis, and eventually “procreating” into a metal.144 Smelting too is ascribed a role, and is often viewed as the catalyst that transforms the embryonic ores into metals within the furnace (uterus). The sacredness of metalworking is also often associated with the concepts of purity and cleanliness, which are enforced through a variety of ritual behavior.145

Anatolian communities made significant advances in metallurgy in the Chalcolithic period, which are arguably among the most innovative anywhere in the world.146 From the earliest appearance of copper metallurgy at Çayönü, metalworkers carried the technology forward through several stages beyond the initial hammering and annealing. Copper was now melted and cast, which meant that temperatures over 1981.4°F (1083°C) were reached. Once this barrier was overcome, smelting, the extraction of mineral ores from their matrix, was easily achieved, requiring only slightly higher temperatures. This process of experimentation soon led

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to another first, namely fledgling attempts to produce polymetallic substances by alloying copper with another metal.

The Chalcolithic was very much the age of copper. In the fourth millennium BC copper was smelted from oxide and sulphide ores, often containing arsenic as an impurity. Whether arsenical coppers, common in the Late Chalcolithic and earlier part of the Early Bronze Age, should be regarded as deliberate attempts to mix metals, is a point of debate. Contrariwise, the metallurgical potential of tin, as a natural alloy in the manufacture of tin bronzes, was very much understood by metalworkers of the Early Bronze Age II.

Evidence for mining and the metallurgical process itself is sparse for the Chalcolithic. While native copper could be easily collected, copper ores had to be separated from their parent rock. To do this effectively would have required the use of fire, which would have weakened the rock matrix. Relatively heavy hammers made from hard, riverine stones, usually with a meridional groove around the waist to aid hafting would then have been used to crush the matrix into coarse lumps. Other tools made of antler, bone, and wood were probably also part of the miner’s toolkit, although few have survived. This process of carefully sorting out the mineral by hand picking or washing is known as beneficiation. The earliest attempts at smelting have left few tangible remains, owing to the simple technology that would have been used. There were no true furnaces—requisite temperatures were achieved using simple hearths and blowpipes, a process that would have left little or no slag.

Early Chalcolithic metal items are few in number. Mostly copper beads, awls, and pins from Hacılar and Mersin XXII–XXI, these objects are technologically little different from their Neolithic counterparts in being beaten from nodules of native metal. Up to this point, metallurgy was very much focused on trinkets. Major breakthroughs, however, were achieved around the beginning of the fifth millennium BC. In the Middle Chalcolithic settlement at Mersin (Levels XVII–XVI), metalworkers began to cast tools—chisels and axes mostly—by pouring molten copper into open moulds.147 Chemical characterization of this Mersin assemblage indicates further experimentation shown by the smelting of minerals ores. While some tools are arsenical copper, others can be classed as crude tin-bronzes. Even lead, which does not exist as a native metal, was mixed with copper in one case. By the middle fifth millennium (Mersin XVI–XIV), the range and quantity of objects, now containing equal proportions of tin and arsenic, reflect the increasing confidence of the smiths.148

During the Late Chalcolithic period, the focus of metallurgical activity shifted to the Upper Euphrates basin, around Malatya and Elazıg˘ , where there is very good evidence for the smelting of polymetallic oxide and sulphide ores. Analysis of residue slag, crucibles, and lumps of ore found at Tülintepe, Tepecik, and Nors¸untepe (in the Altınova Plain), and at Deg˘ irmentepe (near Malatya) suggests the widespread use of arsenical copper during the first half of the fourth millennium BC. Only a few copper items have survived from these centuries—spiral rings, an awl and a hook from Nors¸untepe—but they too confirm arsenic as the predominant constituent after copper. Generally, arsenic comprised about 2–2.5% of the content, with other minor additives including lead, zinc antimony, and nickel.

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Metallurgy was well advanced at Arslantepe by this stage with good evidence for the smelting of polymetallic oxide and sulphide ores.149 Nine swords (Figure 5.8: 2), the earliest swords so far documented in the world, 12 spearheads and a quadruple spiral plaque were found in a cult context in one of the Arslantepe rooms assigned to Period V. The varying amounts of arsenic in these items, the highest being found in the swords (3.25–5.8%), are a strong argument for the deliberate addition of an arsenic mineral, possibly realgar. Some of the swords bear an inlaid silver design on the hilt. A triangular pattern was excised and filled with silver, suggesting knowledge of the relatively sophisticated technique of cupellation, whereby silver is extracted from lead sulphide ores. Silver jewellery found in tombs at Korucutepe is a further indication that the metal was in use in the late fourth millennium BC. The Black Sea is another region with

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evidence for advanced metallurgy. At Ikiztepe a range of arsenical copper objects bears typological and chemical similarities with those from Arslantepe.150 Here, too, the high arsenic content appears to indicate deliberate and controlled alloying. The central and western regions of Anatolia are metallurgically less advanced than in the eastern provinces during this period, and have a limited range of items.

A unifying thread within the diversity of Early Bronze Age cultural developments is the influence of innovative metal technologies, especially in the third and final phase of this period, when even pottery imitated metallic vessels through their highly burnished surfaces and angular shapes. Anatolian smiths made full use of their land’s extensive mineral and polymetallic ore resources. Bronze was not the only metal that was worked. Ceremonial artefacts and jewellery of silver, gold, and electrum were already produced by the late fourth millennium BC. By the Early Bronze Age III they dramatically increase in number and display a high level of craft skills suggestive of specialization and different metallurgical workshops. Metal inlay, casting in closed moulds (lost wax), hammering and repoussé, soldering, granulation, and filigree were among the techniques used. Concentrations of wealth such as those found at Troy, Alaca Höyük, and Horoztepe (Figure 5.28) are remarkable and also provide insights into social structures, representing as they do the worldly possessions of elite groups. Moreover, this demand for metals had economic implications, fuelling the growing commercial networks that traded both the mineral ores and the finished luxury items.

The Treasures of Troy were discovered by Heinrich Schliemann between 1872 and 1890 at Hissarlık Höyük and catalogued by Hubert Schmidt in 1902, after Schliemann’s death. Schmidt identified 19 groups (Treasures A–S), comprising over 10,000 objects, if even the smallest items such as beads are counted individually.151 According to Donald Easton, who has managed to determine the archaeological contexts of the treasures, they probably comprise 21 collections, spread across several periods.152 The most spectacular is “Priam’s Treasure” (Treasure A) discovered in Troy II. Circumstances after the Second World War saw 13 collections moved in 1945 from Berlin to the Pushkin Museum of Art in Moscow, where they remained inaccessible until 1994.

Jewellery from Troy includes diadems, earrings (basket shaped and lunate), hair rings, bracelets, torques, pins, pendants, and a range of beads. Among the most famous items are two

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Figure 5.28 Main metal artefact types from Early Bronze Age central Anatolia: 1, 4–7, 14 Horoztepe. 2, 3, 8–13, 15, 16 Alaca Höyük (adapted from Müller-Karpe 1974)

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diadems in the form of narrow bands with vertical chains, 90 on a large diadem and 64 on a small one, covered with leaf-shaped scales and ending in a pendant. Longer chains frame both sides of each diadem. The pendants, individually cut from sheet gold, are either “idol shaped,” or lance-shaped. Whether the diadems were designed to decorate a cult statue, or mounted on a textile or leather headdress is unclear. In western Anatolia, similar diadems with repoussé ornamentation have been found among the grave goods at Alaca Höyük, Kücükhöyük, and Demircihüyük-Sarıket.153 A band diadem with convex dotted decoration was also among the assemblage of the elite tomb at Arslantepe VIB, which belonged to a different (Trans-Caucasian) tradition. Basket-shaped earrings decorated with rows of granulations sometimes have pendants, and their weight has led some to suggest that they may have been attached to the hair.

The hands of different craftsmen can be seen in the method of manufacture of these earrings. Those from Treasure A, for instance, have bodies made of separate vertical wires soldered together, technically superior to the Treasures F and J earrings that are cast as solid plates and vertically incised to imitate wires. Stylistically similar earrings have been found at Poliochni and Eskiyapar, which also produced comparable examples of the Troy lobed hair rings, the most numerous category among the treasures. Beads, too, are plentiful and come in a variety of forms—flat discs, barrel shaped, and segmented to mention a few—and are made from gold, silver, bronze, carnelian, and amber. Much discussion has focused on quadruple spiral beads, represented by a large example in Treasure D, and at several other third millennium sites across Anatolia and the Near East, including the Royal Tombs at Ur.154 These types of bead are also found in second millennium context. Their origin is disputed with both western Anatolia and northern Iran suggested as the source.155 Among the pins, two with complex heads from Treasure O are quite extraordinary. One consists of a plate decorated with double-spiral filigree motifs and a row of six miniature vessels, which may date to late Troy II or even Troy III, and is a more elaborate version of a similar pin from Poliochni. The other comprises a flattened cylinder decorated with a central convex dot and filigree petals. Although numbering only two and seemingly insignificant, the amber beads from Treasure L assume importance as evidence of some contact with the Baltic amber network that travelled along the river valleys such as the Danube, and also as the earliest evidence of amber use in Anatolia.156

We have already made reference to the Alaca Höyük metalwork and its connections with Chernykh’s Circumpontic “metallurgical province.” The tombs and their contents will be discussed later, but reference should be made here to the quantity and range of sumptuous burial goods made from metal (gold, silver, copper alloy, and iron), bone, clay, and stone. Standards with stags, bulls, or open-worked geometric forms, are among the most striking objects (Figure 5.28).157 In terms of jewellery, we should note the ability of the craftsmen to combine gold and silver with precious stones (carnelian, jade, and rock crystal), a technique especially favored for pins, and at the same time the conspicuous absence of filigree and granulation, obvious both at Troy and later on in Caucasus. Like the material from Troy, there is quite a repertoire of beads. Diadems are in the form of a plain gold band, ornamented with punctate design. Unique to Alaca Höyük, however, is a diadem composed of four rows of open work from Tomb H. Worth

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