Rough Cilician Region Archaeological Survey

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With National Science Foundation support Drs. Richard Blanton, Nicholas Rauh and colleagues will conduct a two year archaeological survey in the Antioch region on the Turkish coast. During the period from ca. 139-67 B.C. this area, which was peripheral to the Roman empire was controlled by Cilician pirate societies which massed large numbers of sailors and ships to raid both seaborne commerce and port cities. These exploits of these groups are well documented but relatively little is known about the internal organization of these societies. For several years Blanton and Raugh have conducted preliminary surveys in this Cilician area and they shall now expand their survey to allow full coverage of an area of approximately 800 square kilometers. Using methods developed both in Middle America and in the Old World, crews will walk carefully over the entire region and note and map archaeological occurrences. Materials from both all time periods will be collected and analyzed. On this basis it will then be possible to reconstruct demography and settlement patterns and gain insight into Cilician social and economic organization. The historical character of the Mediterranean reflects the importance of extensive long-distance sea travel that moved commodities, culture and people and that figured into military strategy and state-building. A growing number of archaeological researchers recognize the utility of social theories that address the consequences of interaction at the scales of world-system, area and region and are working to develop models of how regional interaction occurs. During Roman times the study area while environmentally marginal, and never the site of a major polity, was well situated in a way other marginal regions were not, to intermediate in major sea-borne commercial flows along the boundaries of important polities and along major Mediterranean sea routes. It thus provides an excellent setting to study what happens in semi-peripheral areas and to compliment an extensive literature which examines interactions between core and true peripheral areas. Nations and individuals today participate in, and are affected by, worldwide systems and archaeologists wish to understand how such widespread interactions develop over time. This study should provide new insight. The research is also important because it brings together New World and Old World archaeologists and introduces into a `classical` Old World setting survey and analytic techniques which have proven highly effective in the Americas. The project will further intellectual interchange which will enrich research in both regions. It will also provide data of interest to many archaeologists.