A Way through the Hills

A Way through the hills

 

Eastern Anatolia Settlement Patterns (2.000 BC - 1.000 AD)

Introduction and Objectives

 

The Van Lake lays on 1645 m asl in the Eastern Anatolian highlands, its surroundings are still settled from the Bronze Age and, during this period, the constraining environment has given a lasting preservation of the settling forms (C. Toumanoff).

Through the ages the Van Lake has bordered and has acted has linking bridge among several different cultural horizons, consequently a peculiar culture and the related social forms and systems have merged as original result of these inside and outside influences. From the point of view of this research these processes could be seen dynamically from the starting point in LBA to the Seljukds invasion in the 12th century, namely the span of time indicated in the PhD project.
Neighbors regarding the span of time indicated, were:

• in North, the South Caucasia of the Scythians , Armenians, Georgians;
• in South, the Assyrian plateau and the Upper Mesopotamia;
• in the East, the whole Iranian plateau;
• in the West, the central Anatolia, from the Hittites to the Byzantines.

Both Paul Zimansky than Mirjo Salvini, concerning about the rise of Urartu, underline the pushing force of the Assyrians; moreover Nina Garsoian, Raffaella Biscione and Cyrill Toumanoff underlined the relevance of the Upper Mesopotamian political and social culture, in general Mitanni but also Assyrian, Persian and Arab, throughout the ancient and medieval history. In fine the whole areas, despite the west coming influences, was strongly under the preponderance of the rulers of the Upper Mesopotamia. It results that the ancient Upper Mesopotamia was for Eastern Anatolia the most important cultural and social historical outlet.

As a consequence of what said until now, the region was originally studied mainly in connection with the history of the neighbors with few exception like Toumanoff and Pietrovskji. Only in the last decades, a renewed interest has risen particularly towards the peculiar socio-political organizations resulting from the mix between “Near Eastern” and “Hellenistic-European” political and social forms. Toumanoff, taken up after by all the contemporary scholars, underlined how the idea of the dynastic leaderships, with the strong provincial assessment typical of the near eastern kingdoms and empires, and the bureaucratic and nobility-oriented Hellenistic influence are the root of the regional socio-political system.

However most of these studies aimed a specific period (namely Urartu for Zimansky, Salvini, Pecorella, Pietrowskji, Biscione and Smith, Armenia for Sinclair, Toumanoff, Grousset, Laurent etc.), so no time-extensive research has been done until now, but Toumanoff’s, which was mainly a historical instead archaeological research.

The PhD project “A Way through the Hills” aims to relate together all the previous research’s results and to outline consequently the regional settlement patterns, with a privileged look on the own social aspects. Truly relevant is the idea to relate the regional history with the whole near eastern ancient and medieval assessment. To achieve them, the project analyzes the regional landscape palimpsest in three different way:

• outlining a typology of the settlement;
• studying chronologically the merging and the change of the social regional system;
• analyzing some truly sensitive, rich-of-data sample areas.

Final objective is to achieve a “hypothetical reconstruction” of the landscape patterns.

The Sources

The whole research used the rich but unsystematized mass of historical, archaeological, anthropological data achievable in the primary and secondary literature. The former are mostly medieval Armenian treatises from the 4th to the 12th century AD, written by the order of the nobility; other sources are the Assyrian inscriptions and seldom some Hellenistic sources. Secondary literature are mainly the treatise made by the Soviet Archeology between the ’60s and the ’70s, strongly influenced by the Marxism and devoted to the study of the political and economical aspects, some old researches on the Armenian feudalism (Adonatz, Laurent and Toumanoff) and the recent works, mainly in the last decades, of some archaeological projects (Turkishs, Armenians, Germans, Italians and Americans most of all).

The Research

1. Typology of Settlement

The study has concerned several exemplar Armenian, Iranian and Turkish sites for the Eastern Anatolia and direct neighbors (Armenian Highlands and the hillsides around the lake Urmiya in Iran) as well as all the relevant regional sites to outline the functions of the structures and the settlement organization. To understand the relative general landscape functions ethno-archaeological sources were used too. This part of the research is finished and has brought to a organized typology of sites to be used to interpret the landscape.

2. Chronology of the social patterns

The study has concerned the whole regional history for the interested period (2.000 BC - 1.000 AD) aiming three different but interrelated aspects analyzed comparatively:

• regional political pattern, analysis of the regional political and economical organizations and related networks, underling the diachronic changes;
• cultural patterns, analysis of the influences brought by the different cultural horizons acting on the landscape;
• local patterns, analysis of the diachronic changes of the micro-regional local settlement patterns, for example the organizations of the farms and villages.

Together with a general view of the historical landscape process the results have brought to the light particularly: the dynamic of the rise of the feudal system; the process of “localization” of the political power through strongholds and castles; the particular role played by the Christian Church on the landscape.

Particularly the results:

• show the contemporary centripetal and centrifugal forces acting on the landscape assessment (confirm of Toumanoff theory);
• outline and describe the different processes acting on the History and on the archaeological palimpsest;
• outline a continuity of settlement forms at a local level paired with a strong discontinuity of regional political and cultural assessment. 

3. Analysis of the sample areas

Four areas have been chosen to be analyzed, each one strongly identified with a particular landscape aspect:

• the Muradiye District and the Zivistan area for the strong and old Urartian heritage (North and South Van, the main city of Urartu);
• the Kaputgohk Massif south of the Lake for the medieval monasticism and the isolated settlements;
  
• the Mokk’ Province through the valley for the ancient feudalism and the relationship with the Upper Mesopotamia.

Every area showed difference in the possessed data due to the different analysis done in the past, which have been done aiming different purposes. The decision to selected this four has been taken regarding the mass of data, the different questions posed and the relevance of the area.

The areas will be analyzed using the relative literatures regarding more the local patterns and socio-economical geographic networks than the single settlements on their own; indeed the palimpsest will be analyzed functionally concerning the landscape potential through spatial and geographic analysis (made with the open source GIS GRASS and using a “high definition” methodology).

This analysis begun this years and it has achieved several methodological tools presented in two congress last year.

4. Social patterns and social landscape

As conclusion of the research all the data will be used to describe the reconstructed hypothetical assessment of the settleement patterns and social system looking locally, regionally and as they were inserted in the Near Eastern and particularly in the Upper Mesopotamia area.

Simone Bonzano, PhD student, Freie Universitaet Berlin.

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