At the North-Eastern Anatolian frontier: a project gallery

Abstract

International audience ; The aim of this paper is to summarise the activities and results of the University of Melbourne's Northeastern Anatolia project. The project was directed by Antonio Sagona, who worked in this location for almost 15 years. Field surveys in the region of Bayburt and the plain of Pasinler identified more than 150 sites, dating from the Chalcolithic to the Medieval periods, and enabled detection of diachronic transformations in settlement pat- terns and different territorial strategies in the region. The excavations at Büyüktepe Höyük and Sos Höyük revealed the long history of this region, where geographic, cultural, politi- cal and military frontiers overlapped and interacted for millennia. Phenomena of cultural hybridisation, resiliency and innovation emerged—from the earliest developments of the Kura-Araxes culture in the Chalcolithic period, through the appearance of new funerary practices and mobile societies in the Middle-Late Bronze Age, to the spheres of influence exerted by Urartians and Achaemenids during the Iron Age and the era of military expan- sion by the Roman empire.