THE BEGINNING OF THE IRON AGE AT ARSLANTEPE: A14C PERSPECTIVE

Federico Manuelli,Fabio Marzaioli,Isabella Passariello,Cristiano Vignola,Filippo Terrasi

doi:10.1017/rdc.2021.19

Federico Manuelli, Fabio Marzaioli + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/rdc.2021.19

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Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Iron Age chronology at Arslantepe is the result of the interpretation of Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions and archaeological data coming from the site and its surrounding region. A new round of investigations of the Iron Age levels has been conducted at the site over the last 10 years. Preliminary results allowed the combination of the archaeological sequence with the historical events that extended from the collapse of the Late Bronze Age empires to the formation and development of the new Iron Age kingdoms. The integration into this picture of a new set of radiocarbon (14C) dates is aimed at establishing a more solid local chronology. High precision14C dating by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and its correlation with archaeobotanical analysis and stratigraphic data are presented here with the purpose of improving our knowledge of the site’s history and to build a reliable absolute chronology of the Iron Age. The results show that the earliest level of the sequence dates to ca. the mid-13th century BC, implying that the site started developing a new set of relationships with the Levant already before the breakdown of the Hittite empire, entailing important historical implications for the Syro-Anatolian region at the end of the 2nd millennium BC.

Highlights

AND BACKGROUNDArslantepe is located in the fertile Malatya plain, in southeastern Turkey a few kilometers west of the Euphrates River (Figure 1)
The results show that the earliest level of the sequence dates to ca. the mid-13th century BC, implying that the site started developing a new set of relationships with the Levant already before the breakdown of the Hittite empire, entailing important historical implications for the Syro-Anatolian region at the end of the 2nd millennium BC
The IIIA.1 samples are on the average older than the IIIA.2 ones, and the IIIB samples are the youngest with the exception of the sample from pit K1859

Summary

Introduction

AND BACKGROUNDArslantepe is located in the fertile Malatya plain, in southeastern Turkey a few kilometers west of the Euphrates River (Figure 1). The beginning of the Iron Age at Arslantepe is marked by archaeological and historical continuity with the previous Late Bronze Age phases, in a period that, on the contrary, has been labelled for a long time as a “Dark Age” (Frangipane and Liverani 2013). The 12th century BC in Anatolia is marked by the dissolution of the Hittite empire and the subsequent development of a new set of independent regional entities, called the “Neo-Hittite” kingdoms (Bryce 2012). The synergy between archaeological, textual and scientific data has allowed comprehensive understanding of their chronological development, as well as their integration into the wider set of events that changed the Eastern Mediterranean world at the end of the 2nd millennium BC (Knapp and Manning 2016)

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