Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Archaeology of Hittite Imperialism and Ceramic Production in Late Bronze Age Cilicia

在Peter Magee教授的指导下，Steven Karacic将研究青铜时代晚期的IIA（c。塔苏斯-格兹吕库勒遗址（Tarsus-Gözlükule）是土耳其西里西亚地区的一个主要定居点，也是赫梯帝国的一个省级中心。 几代人以来，帝国一直是学术研究的主题，这些研究优先考虑来自帝国首都的物质和历史证据。 这种方法对生活在帝国枷锁下的人民提供了有限的洞察力，这些人民往往在建立帝国主义的过程中扮演着省级行动者的被动角色。 塔尔苏斯-格兹吕库莱作为一个省级中心，提供了一个独特的机会来研究帝国对政治上被剥夺公民权的人口的影响。由于考古记录只保留了一个社会的物质文化的一小部分，陶瓷的研究是研究古代生活方式的重要手段之一。 来自塔苏斯-格兹吕库勒和赫梯帝国其他同时代遗址的陶器通常被解释为标准化陶瓷工业的产物，该工业与帝国的直接控制有关，与外省人口的任何形式的代理无关。 对塔苏斯-格兹吕库勒陶器的初步宏观分析表明，生产和消费模式更为复杂。通过岩相分析、仪器中子活化分析和烧制试验，将有可能进一步了解赫梯帝国一个省的陶瓷生产和消费情况。 通过这种方式，本论文将重写第二个千年后半期的西里西亚叙事，为赫梯帝国主义提供新的见解，并有助于人类学学科中关于帝国的辩论。在更广泛的范围内，本项目将分析旧挖掘的材料，为该地区正在进行的研究提供相关数据，促进国际合作，将休眠的考古材料转化为教学资源。 这项研究中的陶瓷是在20世纪30年代被挖掘出来的，当时这些技术中的许多要么是不可用的，要么是处于起步阶段。 这种对以前挖掘的材料的重新分析及其随后在学术期刊和会议论文中的传播对该学科具有根本的重要性。 该项目产生的矿物学和地球化学数据将成为Tarsus-Gözlükule以及该地区其他几个遗址目前挖掘的资产，这些数据的交换将促进美国和土耳其研究人员之间的国际合作。 最后，为岩石学制作的数据和薄片将纳入布林莫尔学院的研究生和本科生课程，从而有助于培养新一代考古学家。

Under the supervision of Professor Peter Magee, Steven Karacic will study the Late Bronze Age IIA (c. 1400-1200 BCE) ceramics from the site of Tarsus-Gözlükule, a major settlement in the region of Cilicia, Turkey and a provincial center within the Hittite Empire. For several generations, empires have been the subject of scholarly investigations which privilege evidence, both material and historical, from the imperial capital. Such approaches provide limited insight into those peoples living under the imperial yoke, often assuming a passive role on the part of provincial actors in the establishment of imperialism. Tarsus-Gözlükule, as a provincial center, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of empire on a politically disenfranchised population.Since the archaeological record preserves only a fraction of a society's material culture, the study of ceramics is one important means of investigating ancient lifeways. Often the pottery from Tarsus-Gözlükule and other contemporary sites within the Hittite Empire as been interpreted as the product of a standardized ceramic industry linked to direct imperial control and divorced from any form of agency on the part of the provincial population. A preliminary macroscopic analysis of the pottery from Tarsus-Gözlükule suggests more complicated patterns of production and consumption. Through petrographic analysis, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, and firing tests, it will be possible to offer further insight into the production and consumption of ceramics within a province of the Hittite Empire. In this way, the dissertation will re-write the narrative for Cilicia in the later half of the second millennium, offer new insights into Hittite imperialism, and contribute to debates on empire within the discipline of Anthropology.On a broader scale, this project will analyze material from an old excavation, contribute relevant data to ongoing research in the region, promote international collaboration, and convert dormant archaeological materials into pedagogical resources. The ceramics in this study were excavated in the 1930s, when many of these technologies were either unavailable or in their infancy. This re-analysis of previously excavated material and its subsequent dissemination in academic journals and conference papers is of fundamental importance to the discipline. The mineralogical and geochemical data generated by this project will be an asset to current excavations at Tarsus-Gözlükule as well as several other sites in the region, and the exchange of this data will promote international collaboration between US and Turkish researchers. Finally, the data and thin-sections produced for petrography will be incorporated into graduate and undergraduate courses at Bryn Mawr College and will thus contribute to the training of a new generation of archaeologists.