The ASOR Charles Harris Project Grant enabled us to expand our area coverage in Polatlı Landscape Archaeology and Survey Project (PLAS), resulting in the documentation of 19 new sites in the 2023 season.

PLAS is a regional survey that explores the city of Polatlı in the province of Ankara in central Anatolia. We employ a combination of regional and site-based survey techniques to locate sites, to understand their landscape context, to construct their site biographies, and to study their material culture through a sample surface collection. While survey work is inherently diachronic, our dominant focus has always been on the Bronze and Iron Ages to be able to understand the changes this region experienced under Hittite imperialism by focusing on before, during, and after the reach of the Hittite Empire to this region.

The major research objective for PLAS is to trace the imperial strategies of the Hittite Empire along its under-investigated western border. Our survey area neighbors the eastern bank of the Sakarya River. The scarce mentions of this significant river in Hittite texts paint a picture of liminality and suggest that crossing this river towards the west meant leaving the Hittite core region. While Polatlı is home to the long-term excavations at the Phrygian capital Gordion—a freshly minted UNESCO World Heritage site—regional work in this area has been scarce, and rarely targeted the Bronze Age past.

Our work since 2019 revealed a dense Early Bronze Age occupation in the region. Access to, and control of, metal ores and metalworking technologies seem to be a driving force for this settlement surge, as demonstrated by metal slags and vessels related to metalworking that were yielded from our third millennium BCE sites. Polatlı seems to have suffered from the catastrophic end of the Early Bronze Age that is visible elsewhere in Anatolia, as one third of these sites do not continue into the Middle Bronze Age. The Middle Bronze Age landscape is, however, still one of continuity, as every site occupied in the early second millennium BCE was also occupied in the Early Bronze Age. The full impact of the Hittite Empire is felt in the Late Bronze Age, manifested with three new foundations that exhibit close ties to the core region of the empire to the east in terms of their material assemblage. Following the end of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age of the region looks much different, as it is no longer on the borderlands of an empire but is the center of the Phrygian kingdom.

The Charles Harris Grant enabled us to substantially increase our coverage in 2023. Polatlı is a large city, and having one home base is not enough to be able to access its various landscapes. Through ASOR’s generous support, we were able to temporarily relocate to work in the southern areas of Polatlı we could not work before. We discovered 19 new sites, substantially increasing our dataset and putting the results of our previous seasons to test. As this was our last season for this first phase of the PLAS project, we are grateful to ASOR for helping us expand our research area for better understanding the borderland dynamics in this region.

Müge Durusu-Tanriover, Director of PLAS

(Temple University and Bilkent University)

Learn more about the Polatlı Landscape Archaeology and Survey Project (PLAS) on their website or their Instagram!

ASOR is currently accepting applications for 2024 archaeological project grants. The deadline to apply is February 26th.