Less than two months left, before we know the names of the 2019 winners of the IAA prizes..
Today we conclude our presentation of the 2018 recipients, with a text kindly sent by Alvise Matessi.
The IAA awarded him the Prize for the best first article written after the PhD, for his “The making of Hittite imperial landscapes: territoriality and balance of power in south-central Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age”, which appeared in the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 3, 2016, 117-162 .
Thank you for this article, Alvise, and congratulations!
The Making of Hittite Imperial Landscapes (ca. 1650-1200 BCE): A View from South-Central Anatolia
In the awarded article I explore the mechanisms informing the making and reproduction of the Hittite Empire in its diachronic evolution by focusing on an area of South-Central Anatolia, located between the Konya plain and the Mediterranean coast. Building upon the rich scholarship on the geopolitical organization of the Hittite empire, my work takes a new dynamic approach addressing the diachronic evolution of Hittite political landscapes. While reviewing past research, I realized that both archaeological and text-based works on the spatiality of the Hittite empire have mostly concentrated on its structural characteristics, often analyzed from a timeless and Hatti-centric perspective. Intending to push our understanding beyond these limits, I decided to target my research on imperialism, seen as a large-scale dynamic process whose motor does not reside only in an expansive core, but also in the peripheries that may contribute to significant transformations within the core itself.
A focus on South-Central Anatolia grants considerable advantage to this approach for two reasons. Firstly, the relationships between the Hittite central authorities and the geopolitical entities of South-Central Anatolia are quite well documented throughout the period of Hittite rule. Secondly, South-Central Anatolia occupied a geographic position halfway between the core and the southern and western peripheries of the Hittite Empire and, consequently, its socio-spatial networks were heavily impacted by the multiple trajectories of imperialism. In order to attain the proposed goals, my article draws conclusions from the combined analysis of regional data on the Late Bronze Age archaeological landscapes of South-Central Anatolia and of the geopolitical information derived from relevant written sources. I consider archaeological datasets to be especially useful for a view on long- and mid-term variables of sociocultural interaction. Conversely, I rely upon textual data in order to obtain the chronological resolution necessary to examine short-term processes of geopolitical change.
From the analysis of settlement data, chiefly obtained by combining results from several regional surveys, I infer that the study region was a pivotal crossroads in the Anatolian communication network, representing a complex node between east-west and north-south routes, the latter providing direct access to the Mediterranean coast. Moreover, stratified and well dated sequences from three excavated sites (Porsuk, KiliseTepe and Kınık Höyük) witness multiple episodes of reformulation of built environments during the Late Bronze Age. These range from destructions to (re)building activities, but they equally affected public buildings or large portions of settlements, thus acquiring particular significance in a socio-political perspective. Moreover, at all three sites such stratigraphic transitions consistently date between the late fifteenth and the early fourteenth centuries BCE.
The analysis of textual information shows that this very same period significantly coincided with major transformations in the territoriality of Central Anatolia, signaled by the transition from a constellation of town-based districts, a hallmark of the Old Kingdom period (ca. 1650-1400 BCE), to a more organic landscape of extensive regional provinces. One such province, termed the Lower Land, occupied much of South-Central Anatolia, another one being the Upper Land in Northeast Anatolia.
In the subsequent discussion, I argue that the creation of the Lower Land province in South-Central Anatolia likely paved the way for the full implementation of long-standing local resources through the 14th and early 13th centuries BCE. In particular, thanks to its centrality in interregional connectivity, South-Central Anatolia became a pivotal node in an expanded network that, after the conquest of Ugarit by Suppiluliuma I, also included sea routes across the Eastern Mediterranean. This historical phase may also have had an impact on settlement histories, being possibly associated with the transition between Levels III and II at Kilise Tepe, a site strategically located in the central Taurus region, along one of the main routes between Central Anatolia and the Mediterranean. Ultimately, the increased geopolitical importance of South-Central Anatolia had a tremendous effect on the inner politics of Hatti. The region, in fact, became the seat of a new capital, Tarhuntassa, founded by king Muwatalli II in the early 13th century BCE with the intent of making it his new permanent residence in place of Hattusa and the new core the Hittite empire.
After the death of Muwatalli II, Hattusa was restored as the Hittite capital. Tarhuntassa, however, was not abandoned. In fact, following a period of internecine struggles within the royal family, it became the seat of an appanage kingdom formally subject to Hatti but endowed with major privileges and autonomous power. This event opens a third and last phase in my reconstruction, when the political landscape of South-Central Anatolia became the focus of strong competition between Hatti and Tarhuntassa, especially signaled by multiple landscape monuments scattered across the whole area.
The picture of Hittite imperialism emerging from this synthesis reflects multi-causal and multi-directional processes, not predicated on the sole centrifugal hegemonic expansion of the Hittite Empire. In fact, I have tried to show that structural changes in the empire’s periphery may have propelled revolutions within the core sources of power, in turn having further side effects on the socio-spatial network of political relations.
This article re-elaborates in a synthetic form issues detailed in my PhD dissertation, entitled “Il mare è il suo confine”: geografia politica dell’Anatolia centro-meridionale durante il regno ittita, defended in 2014 at the University of Pavia. As such, the work could not have been accomplished without the moral and scientific support of my advisor, Prof. Clelia Mora, and that of my other mentors, professors Lorenzo d’Alfonso, Mauro Giorgieri and Stefano de Martino. I am now revising the dissertation in the form of a monograph, which I expect to have completed in the next few months.
I am very grateful with the IAA committee for the prize that has strongly encouraged me to strengthen my methodological approach to Ancient Near Eastern studies and to expand my horizons towards other research frontiers. I hope that my work will contribute in the near future to promoting more interaction between archaeology and history, disciplines that are still too often kept apart in academic environments.
As Sherlock Holmes once said, “we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or the other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later, we must come upon the right” (Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles). Reuniting the threads of Archaeology and History will just increase our chances of holding the right thread.
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