Society and Settlement in a Territorial State: Survey and Excavations at the Outer Town of Ayanis, Turkey

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Elizabeth Stone and hercolleagues will conduct archaeological research in the settlement areasurrounding the Urartian fortress of Ayanis, located on the shore of LakeVan in Eastern Turkey. Occupied for only a single generation around 650B.C., this city covers at least 80 ha. Prior work on the citadel hasrevealed extensive fortifications, large scale storage facilities and apillared hall/temple complex, of the kind associated with theadministrative elite at other Urartian centers. Ayanis is the onlyUrartian site that currently offers an opportunity to investigate thegoverned as well as the rulers, and an investigation of the outer town,through mapping, shovel test survey, magnetometry and selected excavation,commenced in 1997. With NSF support Dr. Stone's team will extend andrefine its study of the relationship between the denizens of the fortressand those of the outer town. Shovel testing will define the limits of thesettlement and extended magnetic field gradient survey will revealsubsurface architectural patterning over a substantial portion.Excavations will be conducted in areas within the outer town that exhibitdifferential patterning in the magnetometry. Analysis will focus primarilyon high status materials such as red polished ceramics and bronzes that mayindicate interactions between the central government and the largerpopulation, and on economic reconstruction. Specific methods to beemployed include: ceramic petrography; radography of ceramics to determinewhether they were wheel-made or hand-made; neutron activation analyses ofceramics and bronzes to determine chemical composition; analysis of faunalremains; phytolith analysis; micromorphological analysis; statistical andspatial analyses of domestic artifact assemblages; the use of GIS toexamine the spatial distribution of activities.The goal of this project is to determine whether the principles used bymodern city planners can be modified to help identify key organizationaldistinctions in ancient cities and states. The variable distribution ofpeople and institutions within the urban framework may be understood toreflect fundamental differences in the structure of ancient societies,between hierarchically organized territorial states and moreheterarchically organized city states, but as yet too little work has beenconducted on urban organization in different archaic states to be certainof this. The data generated by this project will make clear theorganization of an urban center in an archetypical territorial state. Thisresearch is important for several reasons. It will provide data ofinterest to many archaeologists and students of urbanism on urban planningand its relationship to social organizationm, and a paradigm of thematerial imprint of a state that is known to be highly centralized. Itwill foster Turkish-American academic cooperation, and its results shouldhelp in the understanding of early complex societies that were either notliterate, or whose writing has yet to be deciphered.