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THE YORTAN CULTURE WITHIN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE OF WESTERN ANATOLIA by Turhan Kiamil VOLUMEI Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Institute of Archaeo- logyj University of London, 1980. TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME I Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 BURIALS OF YORTAN CEMETERY 5 CHAPTER 2 FINDS FROM YORTAN. CEMETERY 21 a) Pottery 21 b) Idols and Figurines 34 c) Spindle Whorls 37 d) Metal Objects 39 CHAPTER 3A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE YORTAN POTTERY 41 Class A Pottery 42 Class B Pottery 88 . Class C Pottery 91 Summary 96 CHAPTER 4 CHRONOLOGY 103 CHAPTER 5 THE YORTAN CULTURE OF WESTERNANATOLIA 119 CATALOGUEOF THE FINDS 134 ABBREVIATIONS 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY 200 ABSTRACT Yortan is a prehistoric burial site in the valley of Bakir gay (Kaikos) in western Turkey. It was found and excavated by a French engineer, Paul Gaudin, some eighty years ago, but results have never been properly published. The finds which constitute the material offerings to the dead are now widely dispersed between some seven European museums. The research aims at bringing, for the first time, this well known but improperly understood material of prehistoric Anatolia into one single body of finds, and in that sense it could be considered as the long overdue publication of the site. Two site plans which belong to the archives of the British Museum, Western Asiatic Department, are also brought to light for the first time and make an important addition to the understanding of the burial customs of Yortan and Bronze Age western Anatolia in general. Large pithoi, up to 2m in height, were used as coffins, where dead adults lay in a contracted position on, one side. Infants and children were put in smaller jars. The tomb furniture consists mostly of pottery in the form of jugs and jars,, and, less frequently, bowls. Out of 107 burials, over 250 individual pots could be traced and illustrated. Yortan itself is without any absolute date or stratigraphy. Thus the only possible way to bring the site into the established sequence of Anatolian and Aegean prehistory is by a com- parative and to a lesser degree typological analysis. Three major Anatolian sites, Troy/Hisarlik, Thermi and Beycesultan, are the major source of the parallel material. In conclusion, Yortan appears-to belong to a pottery culture of Early Bronze Age date that geographi- cally occupies the north-west corner of Turkey, perhaps with its main centre lying in the Balikesir region. Its westward extension reaches the Aegean caost and the off-shore islands, ie. Lesbos, Chios. The Gediz (Harmos) valley might define the immediate southern boundaries, better while in the North the celebrated site of Hisarlik, known as Troy, might well be a part of this inland culture, representing a rather poor and coastal variant. 1 INTRODUCTION In 1900 Paul Gaudin, an engineer in the employment of the Ottoman Sultan, began to excavate a prehistoric cemetery at a location called Yortan near Gelembe, ca. 16.5 km north-east of Kirkagap and ca. 55 km south of Balikesir. In October of the following year a more extensive digging was carried out, this time with the assistance of V. Chapot from the French School of Athens. Over one hundred burials were thus cleared out with an apparently unsuccessful attempt to locate the settlement at the nearby cavdar Tepe. Monsieur P. Gaudin's involvement in the field seems to have come to an end at this point. In the following eighty years much has been said and written about Yortan, yet neither its chronologi- cal limits nor meaning are clearly demonstrated while a term "Yortan Culture" has become a-familiar though somewhat ill-defined part of the Early Bronze Age of western Anatolia. Two main reasons underlie the cause of this controversial interest in Yortan. First, Gaudin was never able to produce a full publication of his work and only a brief report was presented to 1'Academie des Inscriptions at Belles-lettres in 1901 when some of the finds were also displayed before the members present. The absence of a scientific report has naturally obscured many details of the site, leaving many questions without definite answers. Neither the stratigraphy of the site nor the burial customs of the Yortan people could be determined, and even the exact location of Yortan remained uncertain. Secondly, after the fashion of his times Gaudin saw no harm in removing most of his finds out of Turkey and in distributing them to various museums in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and London. Thus it is now a very costly and time-consuming occu- pation for anyone to attempt a study of the whole of the pottery from Yortan. In 1936 K. Bittal and J. Stewart undertook to inves- tigate the nearby site of Babaköy, then in the process of being by robbed by the villagers. This and a later research K. KSkten at Babaköy were very useful in the way of confirming some of the 2 burial customs that had become apparent at Yortan. A, full under- standing of the culture involved was.,, however, frustrated by the disturbed condition of the site. Some fragmentary pieces of pottery and several complete pots from three intact tombs which had escaped the looters' attentions could reveal the identity of the site to be very similar to that of Yortan but were not enough to present a comprehensive knowledge on the pottery repertoire of the Yortan Culture. ý 1.1 1 In this study the pottery. of Yortan cemetery is forýthe first time presented in a nearly full form, together with two plans which are faithful reproductions of Gaudin's original drawings available in blue print. The whereabouts of the originals and the rest of the pencil drawings of the burials are unknown to-the author. -With- out the excavation report by. the excavator himself there are still many questions to which satisfactory answers cannot be given today. This is. however, no fault, of Monsieur Gaudin who worked with care., recording conscientiously, and was methodical and precise even by present standards of archaeological investigations. His notes and' sketches bear witness to work towards a full publication which some- -,how never materialised. The fact that not all of the finds can today be referred to their original locations in the tombs is a serious defect that lies: not with him but with those who were res- ponsible for the good keeping of his records and finds. In this endeavour to obtain a better understanding of Yortan, an effort has been made to present as clearlyýas'possible almost everything that was lifted from the site. The collection at St. Germain-en-Laye makes a particularly important addition to various wares and shapes which had long been noted from other and better known collections but could not be fully analysed through lack of proper publications. One is now also helped by. the more recent developments in the pre- history of western Anatolia. Besides Blegen's published work at Troy/Hisarlik there is a full Early Bronze Age pottery. sequence of Beycesultan in the south-west and Yortan, situated in between these two sites, can now be analysed in a comparative study without much difficulty. Extensive surveys by D. French in the regions of 3 Balikesir, Akhisar and Manisa help to define the limits of-the culture as represented at Yortan, and the preliminary reports from the Karatq-Semayük excavations in the plain of Elmali and from Sardis in the Gediz (Hermos) Valley throw further light on the burial customs. The main theme of the research is based-on"the material which was excavated by P. Gaudin at Yortan and some care has been taken not to confuse it with the so-called "Yortan Culture" pottery. Today this pottery from Yortan can easily be located in museum registrations under the title of "Yortan" and as "presented by P. Gaudin" or his widow. The latter group contains a selection of pottery vessels which display features similar to those of Yortan but can come from anywhere in a large area of the "Yortan Culture" as defined in Chapter S. None of these often rare and exquisite objects was scientifically excavated but all have come to be known through the "mediation" of what one may describe as that immortal parasite of ancient remains, the antiquity dealer. It iss there- fore, with some regret that these plundered riches are included here and have been done so only for the sake of demonstrating some of the significant variations within the Yortan Culture itself. The research was undertaken with the encouraging and most stimulating supervision of Mr. J. Mellaart to whom the author also owes most of the material illustrated in. Fig. 89-92,94. Such a widely travelled research programme is well beyond the means of an ordinary student and was made possible only by a generous grant of L605.00 from the Central Research Fund of London University. Various museum authorities were most generous and helpful in grant- ing permission and facilities to study their collections. At the Istanbul Archaeological Museums Dr. N. Asgari and Miss B. Aksoy were helpful in every conceivable way; in London Dr. J. Curtis and Dr. D. Collon of the British Museum offered all the necessary assistance with friendship and patience, while Dr. R. Barnett kindly informed me of the existence of the long forgotten plans in blue print copies; subsequent to this discovery Mr. T. Mitchell very 4 generously allowed me to study them. In Brussels Prof. Dr. D. Homes-Fredericq and Dr. C. Skinkel-Taupin of the Musses Roysux d'Art et d'Histoire were most welcoming for their interesting "Yortan Collection"; I owe my deep gratitude to Monsieur D.

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