Investigation Into The Social Organization Of An Early City

The University Of Central Florida Board Of Trustees, Orlando FL

Investigators

Abstract

With the support of the National Science Foundation, Scott Branting of the University of Central Florida will lead an interdisciplinary archaeological team analyzing the social organization of a large and short-lived Iron Age city. Archaeological investigations of large ancient cities, which are at a comparable scale to some modern cities, offer an opportunity to explore how households and social networks, and the people that comprise them, interacted with each other over extended periods of time. Knowledge gained from this analysis of the past could be used to help plan cities of the future that better fit changing climates, resources, and social forms. With limited later occupation or soil accumulation on top of the city's buildings and streets, as well as a wealth of geophysical data that has been used to map the buried structures and open spaces within the city, Kerkenes provides an exceptional location to undertake large-scale urban analysis of a planned city that predates forms of city planning that predominate around the world today. The international team that will collaborate on this project includes: Dr. John M. Marston from Boston University, Dr. Sarah R. Graff from Arizona State University, Dr. Canan Cakirlar from the University of Groningen, Dr. Sevil Baltali-Tirpan from Istanbul Technical University, Drs. Nilüfer Baturayoglu Yöney and Burak Asiliskender from Abdullah Gül University, and Dr. Joseph Lehner from Koc University. To accomplish this research, three walled urban blocks within the ancient city will be the target for archaeological excavation and analysis. These urban blocks have been selected so as to investigate a range of different households that inhabited the city. Basic questions to be answered by the research include: how many households inhabited the urban blocks and what were the range of activities each household participated in during the relatively short life of the city? These results will be leveraged through the existing geophysical plan in order to model the locations of different social networks throughout the city that the inhabitants of these urban blocks interacted with in their daily lives. In addition, environmental archaeology and material analysis components of the research will explore how these households had access to and utilized resources that lay outside the city's walls. The results of this research will contextualize how the inhabitants of the city used this large, non-western, planned city and its hinterland during its approximate sixty year life. They also hold great promise for better understanding the role this city at Kerkenes Dag in central Turkey played in the larger historical and geopolitical events in this area of the world between 612-540 BC. Finally, the data generated by the project will be used for educational purposes. The Kerkenes Project has an over twenty year track record of training elementary, high school, and university students in archaeology and evolving geospatial technologies. Project data has and will continue to be used in courses and outreach programs emphasizing STEM and social studies concepts across these educational levels within the United States and abroad.