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Kültepe and other sites of this period have also produced a large body of figurative art (Figure 6.12), much of it in the form of clay attachments to vessels, or vessels themselves formed in the shape of animals. Small, very stylized figurines were also made of lead in molds. There are a few figurines in more exotic materials, like ivory (Figure 6.12: 2), which itself indicates longdistance trade. Acemhöyük has also produced ivories, some of which show stylistic attributes such as large curls in the hair falling over the shoulders, which will reappear in Hittite art in subsequent periods (Figure 6.12: 3).
INDO-EUROPEANS IN ANATOLIA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HITTITES
The language of the Old Assyrian texts is a dialect of Akkadian, which belongs to the larger Semitic family that dominates the Near East south of the Taurus Mountains, and most of people who are mentioned in connection with the trade have Semitic names, as one would expect. However, names of Anatolian natives are sometimes mentioned and because these provide the earliest evidence we have for reconstructing the linguistic makeup of the plateau, they are of great interest. They are a very diverse group. In a pioneering study that is admittedly somewhat dated, Paul Garelli examined the 600 non-Semitic names that were known to him and concluded that about two-thirds of these could be satisfactorily explained, although there were many ambiguities. The greatest number, not quite a majority, were Hittite, with much smaller numbers of those that could be understood as Luwian. Some belonged to the unaffiliated Hurrian language, but these individuals appear to have come from the south, and if the Hurrians had a homeland on the plateau, it was in eastern rather than central Anatolia. Another unaffiliated language is one we call Hattic or Hattian, which gave its name to the land of Hatti before the Hittites came into prominence. Garelli was puzzled that so few names of this type were repre- sented—fewer than 40, and some of these may actually have belonged to Hittites—suggesting that perhaps the language had already died out. Other names in the tablets may be nicknames or shortened forms which cannot be affiliated with anything from the information we have.36
On the basis of their personal names, it would appear that the majority of the population at Kültepe spoke an Indo-European language of the Anatolian family. This is a crucial fact for both earlier and later Anatolian history, and involves a digression into one of the key battlefields of historical linguistics. When the great Indo-European language family was defined in the late 18th and 19th centuries AD, the starting point was the recognition that Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were all descended from some common ancestor. Soon the Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Iranian, and other families were recognized as descendants of this proto-Indo-European progenitor as the fundamental principles of historical linguistics were worked out. The search for the time and placed of origin of this ancestral language was undertaken by analyzing words common to many of its descendants. For example, many Indo-European languages share a common word for snow, but they do not have a common word for ocean. This pretty well rules out a tropical island for the homeland.
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When the Hittite language was deciphered in 1917 and recognized to be Indo-European, ancient Anatolia became an area of keen interest in historical linguistics. It was immediately recognized that there were two other closely related languages in the archives of the Hittites— Luwian and Palaic—and that Lydian and Lycian were members of this Anatolian family that survived into the first millennium. Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic were the oldest written IndoEuropean languages and the relationship of this family to the other descendants of proto-Indo- European was not particularly close. The presence of this group also posed a question for archaeologists and historians: If the proto-Indo-European homeland was somewhere in Europe or Russia, when and how did the Indo-Europeans come to Anatolia?
We still do not have an answer to this question, but archaeologists no longer look for destruction levels to identify with the Hittite invasion. Let us start from the period of the Assyrian trading colonies and work backward. We know that speakers of this Anatolian group of IndoEuropean languages were in the country from the appearance of their proper names. This evidence is generally not sufficient to distinguish Hittites from Luwians, but it is assumed that these languages had already begun to separate themselves from each other. By the time that we have readable texts, toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age, there is a clear geographic distribution of the Palaic language in the northwest center of the Plateau, Hittite in the center, and Luwian in southern and western Anatolia. In any case, the fact that the Anatolian speakers were only one of many different groups suggested to many that they were recent arrivals.
Not long ago, a completely different solution to this problem was proposed by Colin Renfrew, whose field of expertise is European and Aegean prehistory. He sought to tie the diffusion of Indo-Europeans to the spread of agriculture.37 This is an attractive hypothesis for many reasons. It would, for example, explain the absence of pre-Indo-European place names in Europe. Normally names of locations are very conservative and remain in use long after the languages they come from have passed from the scene, as with the survival of many Native American place names in the eastern United States. We know that Europe was certainly inhabited before the Indo-Europeans arrived, but if this was by pre-agricultural peoples, much less numerous and not as intensively tied to specific places than the larger and sedentary populations inherent in an agricultural economy, it would explain why their languages are not reflected on the modern map.38
If agriculture and Indo-Europeans go together, then Indo-Europeans had been in Anatolia for a very long time before the Assyrians got there. They would no longer need to be brought in through the Caucasus Mountains or Thrace, because they were already there. For the archaeologist, this is a very attractive thesis, but for historical linguists, who date the spread of Indo-European much later, the idea is heresy. It remains a matter of controversy.
In any case, the native population of central Anatolia with whom the Assyrians conducted their business was a linguistically mixed group. Indeed, central Anatolia was to remain an area of linguistic turbulence throughout most of its history. Some languages of the period we have been discussing soon went out of use, such as the unaffiliated language known as Hattian, which gave name to the region from which the Indo-European Hittites were to exercise their later
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dominance. While it is inappropriate to call the native Anatolians of the trading colony period Hittites collectively, the culture that we call Hittite in the next chapter cannot be understood without reference to Kanesh and the sites with which it interacted in the Middle Bronze Age.
MIDDLE BRONZE AGE ANATOLIA BEYOND THE HORIZONS OF LITERACY
As one moves westward from Acemhöyük across the Anatolian plateau one leaves the area in which the Assyrians were directly involved in trade and thus the light of written documentation. The characteristics of the world we have been describing in central Anatolia do not otherwise vanish suddenly but rather transform gradually.
One major site, whose archaeological potential has only partially been realized is Karahöyük Konya, located 8 km south of Konya. Here too there was a massive palace, which is not dissimilar to the adminstrative structures at Acemhöyük. No karum has been located, but a large number of seal impressions has been recovered from the site. These are dominated by stamp seals, and stylistically look a little different from those found further east.39 The pottery is roughly the same as at Karum Kanesh Ib and Acemhöyük, but again with some local variations. It has been suggested that perhaps this site was destroyed a little later than the others, and this rather than geography alone might account for some of the differences.
Further west, in the upper Meander Valley, lies Beycesultan, at site which has provided a long and important stratigraphic sequence for earlier periods in this part of Turkey. British excavators were originally attracted to it by the prospect that this might be the capital of the kingdom of Arzawa, an erstwhile rival of the Hittite in the mid-second millennium and a place known from the Amarna letters to harbor literacy. The search for Arzawa and tablets of the Late Bronze Age proved futile,40 but an important Middle Bronze Age edifice, the “Burnt Palace” was discovered (Figure 6.9: 2). In the eyes of some, this structure, which is only partially preserved, offered parallels with the Minoan palaces of Crete, and was perhaps their inspiration, although now that we know more about Anatolian palaces of the era this view is less convincing.41 There are no seals or seal impressions from Beycesultan, and the pottery is sufficiently different from Kültepe that it no longer makes any sense to discuss it in terms like Karum II and Karum Ib. Seton Llyod and James Mellaart have summed up the ceramic evidence as follows: “One cannot fail to notice the predominant local character of the Beycesultan pottery and that of South-west Anatolia in general. Developing on a late Early Bronze Age base with here and there an echo from the Kültepe region it remained staunchly West Anatolian.”42 Indeed, things are different enough that the dating of this palace is problematic and its excavators suggesting that perhaps the conflagration here was as late as the beginning of the Hittite Old Kingdom,43 beyond the time frame of the Middle Bronze Age. Generally, however, one must agree with the with the excavators of Beycesultan that regional developments emerged independently in various parts of Anatolia in this period, and despite this there is a broad underlying unity in pottery of the Anatolian plateau overall.44
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