Archaeologists Discover More Than 70 Ancient Settlement Areas In Yozgat (Turkey)

Archaeologists working at the ancient settlement of Tavium located in what is today Yozgat have discovered more than 70 previously unknown ancient settlements in the area.

The Central Anatolian province, mostly famous for the Chalcolithic Period discoveries at its Aliþar Tumulus and the Hittite era artifacts at Kerkenes, is likely to hold much more archaeological wealth than previously believed, and archaeologists say the new studies will shed more light on history.

Austrian archaeologist Professor Karl Strobel, who is currently heading surveys and excavations at the ancient city of Tavium, said he and his assistant Cristoph Gerber have identified the previously unknown settlements in a very large area that stretches as far as Yozgat's borders with Çorum, Kýrýkkale and Kýrþehir.

Strobel, who has been studying in the area since 1997, told the Anatolia news agency that the new settlements belonged to various periods in history, including Roman, Bronze Age, Byzantine, Hittite, Early Bronze, Chalcolithic, Early Chalcolithic, early and mid-Iron Age, Hellenistic and Ottoman.

Strobel said they submitted a report on their discoveries to officials and that they were waiting for the sites to be registered as archaeological conservation areas. An Italian team of archaeologists will kick off surveys in Yassýhöyük -- one of the sites that hold newly discovered settlements -- next year, he said. The team is expected to be in Yozgat this weekend for initial studies, he added.

Excavations currently are continuing in three major sites in Yozgat. Austrian and German archaeologists are working at Tavium, the capital of Galatia. British archaeologists are at Kerkenes, which is home to the lost city Pteria, and U.S. archaeologists are at Çadýrhöyük.

That list is a bit on the dopey side, IMHO. The first group of five should be:

Early Chalcolithic (Chalcolithic is "Copper Age", but overlapping with the end of the Neolithic or New Stone Age)
Chalcolithic
Early Bronze
Bronze Age
early and mid-Iron Age

Those are periods based on a just-so story 200 years old or so; the idea is that as harder materials became available, revolutions in their use took place, and older materials were mostly abandoned. They are IMHO pretty outmoded and mostly useless, because (in the case of bronze) the use of bronze came and went on different schedules for different regions; also the use of bronze would fluctuate based on the supplies of raw materials, fuel to smelt, etc.

Here's the order, without dates, of the five actual historical periods:

Hittite (a polyglot, large kingdom which ruled a bunch of Anatolia and chunks of the Near East; its archive was discovered in the 1800s; it contained at least five different languages, but was mostly in just two; one of those turned out to be of the Indo-European language family and was cracked by Emil Forrer)

Hellenistic (Greek, although more accurately the period from Alexander the Great onward)

Roman (Roman? Never heard of it. ;')

Byzantine (from the Eastern Roman Empire; name Byzantine came later)

Ottoman (Turkish empire period; preceded by the Seljuk Turkish invasion)

Thanks Blam.

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