These two well-presented and readable volumes offer the final report on the rescue excavations conducted at Kilise Tepe in the Göksu valley of southern Turkey by a team from Cambridge in collaboration with the local museum at Silifke from 1994 to 1998. Since then, excavations have resumed at the site since 2007 for a further five-year period, this time as a collaboration between the universities of Cambridge and Newcastle. The excavators are to be credited for their speedy publication falling prior to the resumption of work at the site. Comprehensive and final as this monograph may be (p. 7), a supplementary publication concerning the finds of these first five years of excavation has recently appeared (S. Debruyne, “Tools and souvenirs: the shells from Kilise Tepe (1994–1998)”, Anatolian Studies 60, 2010, 149−60).
The first volume describes the excavations and presents the finds, with no fewer than twenty-four eminent international contributors giving thorough and authoritative consideration to their specific fields in fifty-three chapters divided over six parts (A–F). The second volume contains archaeobotanical data; a lengthy index of excavation units, providing a handy reference tool for finding the context of each find; artefact drawings, maps, plans and sections. Despite the absence of an index relating the drawn artefacts to the pages on which they are discussed, it is easy to navigate between vol. 2 and vol. 1, as the figures are arranged in the same order in both volumes.
Volume 1 is divided into the following parts. Part A has the introduction, with chapters contributed by Nicholas Postgate and Mark Jackson giving background information on the site in various periods of its history as well as a summary of the excavation results in chapter 5. Part B, “The surface collection”, by David Thomas, provides a thorough evaluation of distribution of pottery sherds on the surface in relation to the mound's morphology, including the illuminating observation that a cluster of sherds does not usually correlate to a structure under the surface. Part C contains The Excavations, in which various authors (S. Blakeney, L. Seffen, M. Jackson, N. Postgate, D. Thomas, D. Collon) present descriptions of the structures and objects unearthed in each of the site's five levels, from Early Bronze Age to Byzantine (V to I), with special chapters dedicated to pits and fire installations (chapters 8 and 9 by N. Postgate) as well as to architectural fragments (chapter 19, D. Collon).
Part D is “The pottery”, in which scientific petrological analysis (C. Knappet and V. Kılıkoğlu) is refreshingly prefaced to consideration of pottery from the relevant periods (D. Symington, C. Hansen, N. Postgate), as well as special consideration of Mycenaean pottery (E. French, J. Tomlinson); Part E, “The small finds”, includes seals with hieroglyphic inscriptions and other glyptic, loomweights, spindle whorls, beads, glass, mosaic tesserae and metalwork among others. Most of these are written by D. Symington and D. Collon, with contributions on the lithics by T. Reynolds, on coins by K. Koruk and on bone, horn and ivory by P. Baker and D. Collon. Part F contains environmental studies on the site's archaeobotany (J. Bending and S. Colledge), phytolithic evidence from storage containers (M. Madella), fish remains (W. van Neer, M. Waelkens), human remains (J. Pearson) and dating by dendrochronology (P. Kuniholm, M. Newton) and radiocarbon analysis (R. Switsur).
Kilise Tepe, although not a large site, commands a bend in the Göksu river as it leaves the Mut basin and heads towards the sea at Silifke some 45 km to the south-east. It was placed at an intersection of ancient routes and controlled a river crossing. As Postgate points out in the introduction (ch. 1, p. 5), the pre-classical archaeology of Rough Cilicia, to give it its classical name, has hardly been exposed at all. This vacuum provided a major impetus for the beginning of the excavations and the book provides a solid frame of reference for Early to Late Bronze Age archaeology in the region. Unexpectedly there was also thriving Byzantine settlement on the site with a church on the highest part of the mound, which must have given the site its name: “church mound”. This had originally been built as a basilica, which was destroyed and later rebuilt as a smaller single chamber church, reflecting a pattern observable at other sites in the region (chapter 16).
Perfunctory users of the book need to be slightly wary of the periodization. The layers in the main excavation area are numbered I to V (Byzantine to Early Bronze Age), with a further subdivision into occupation levels starting at the earliest with a, b, c. In level V (EBA), however, this subdivision is reversed for circumstantial reasons, so that the earliest occupation level is Vl and the latest Va (p. 88). It is also interesting that the excavators see a serious break between level III (Late Bronze Age) and level II (End of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age). Historically speaking it would appear that this break occurred some years before the end of the Hittite period, which is conventionally dated around 1190 bc, so that the Hittite remains are divided over two levels, III and IIa–d. For historical considerations suggesting that the break correspond with the establishment of the Tarhuntassa dynasty see pp. 35–6. The remaining occupation levels in II (e–h), are scantily represented in terms of architecture and finds, with the exception of IIf, which can be dated by Cypriot pottery to the end of the eighth or beginning of the seventh century. While there is a continuity in occupation after IId, the current findings are slightly disappointing for those seeking to trace the developments in the area in the early Iron Age.
From this later Hittite period (IIa–c, and IId) special attention is due to the large Stele Building, so named after a large limestone stele, painted with straight lines, found in pieces due to burning, in one of its rooms (p. 127, fig. 108). It was here that four hieroglyphic seals were found, typical of those used by thirteenth-century Hittite officials (chapter 33). Excavation in 1998 had reached level IIc of this building, but soundings suggested it would have been founded earlier. This has now been confirmed by the renewed excavations, which have shown the building to have been constructed in level IIa (http://www.kilisetepe.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/text/Lev_II.html, 27.02.2011). Room 3 of the building, in its centre, contained beside the broken stele a structure that has been interpreted as an altar (p. 124, fig. 100). Surrounding rooms contained extensive storage facilities, for which reason the building has been interpreted as serving a dual administrative and religious function.
The religious function is further suggested by the find of a deposit of astragali and one of animal bones under the floors, as sometimes found in association with temples in the Near East (pp. 129, 133). In 2008 a disarticulated sheep was also found in a closed pit under the IIa floor of this building. This has been interpreted as a sacrificial foundation deposit, although the practice is not exactly paralleled by foundation rituals in Hittite texts (see P.R.W. Popkin, “The one sheep feast: a Late Bronze Age consumption event at Kilise Tepe, Turkey”, in D. Collard, J. Morris, E. Perego and V. Tamorri (eds), Food and Drink in Archaeology 3: University of Nottingham Postgraduate Conference 2009: Volume 3, Nottingham, 2010). The storage function of the building, and the suggestion of D. Symington (p. 137) that it was one of the storehouses (called “seal-houses”) known from Hittite texts, should be contrasted with the enormous underground silo-structures used for grain storage in central Anatolia in the earlier Hittite period at Kaman-Kalehöyük and Boğazköy Are these differences regional, chronological, settlement-type specific or a combination of these?
After its destruction at the end of the IIc period, this building appears to have been rebuilt along much the same lines in the IId period. This is of great interest as Mycenaean pottery found in the IId building appears to post-date the conventional end of the Hittite Empire by several decades. Among the Mycenaean pottery is a group of vessels that E. French interprets as a “drinking set”, i.e. krater, pouring vessel, other vessels (p. 374). Here one might refer to Itamar Singer's interpretation of a passage in a thirteenth-century inventory text from Hattusa, in which it appears that a similar drinking set is specifically labelled as being “Ahhiyawan”, the ethnic designation almost universally associated with Homer's Achaeans (KBo 18.181; I. Singer, forthcoming, “Beware of Aḫḫiyawans bearing gifts”, in F. Teffeteller, Mycenaeans and Anatolians in the Late Bronze Age. The Aḫḫiyawa Question, Proceedings of an international workshop held in Montreal, 4th–5th January 2006).
The attention to detail in this book is magnificent. It supplies a firm foundation for further work in the region and the finds it presents offer interesting glimpses of social and cultic organization and events, as well as crucial insights into local developments at key phases of Anatolian history. However, a full historical appreciation of the role played by Kilise Tepe in Bronze Age Cilicia will have to await much further excavation, not only on this site, but in the wider region.
