Maşat Höyük
Coordinates: 40°8′54″N 35°45′44″E / 40.14833°N 35.76222°E Maşat Höyük[1] is a Bronze Age Hittite archaeological site 100 km nearly east of Boğazkale/Hattusa, about 20 km south of Zile, Tokat Province, north-central Turkey, not far from the Çekerek River. The site is under agricultural use and is plowed. It was first excavated in the 1970s.
Masat Höyük | |
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Masat Höyük Location in Turkey | |
Coordinates: 40°08′54″N 35°45′44″E / 40.14833°N 35.76222°E |
History
The enigmatic marauding Kaskas burned this site during Tudhaliya's reign. The Hittites rebuilt it under the next king Suppiluliuma I.
Cuneiform tablets from the site form a new archive of Hittite texts. The letters found at Masat Höyük were edited by Sedat Alp in a two-volume edition in Turkish and German in 1991. Most tablets here are correspondence between the site and the Hittite king, a "Tudhaliya" who was probably Tudhaliya III; most concern the Kaska front. The Hittites' capital at this time was either Sapinuwa (which has been found) or else Samuha (which has not). One place-name mentioned in the texts is Tabigga/Tabikka, which is now generally considered to be the Hittite name of the Maşat Höyük site.[2]
The site also contains 14th-century Helladic period[3] ware from mainland Greece.
Archaeology
The site of Maşat Höyük measures 450 by 225 meters, with a lower town and an upper citidel area which stands 29 meters above the plain. A cuneiform tablet was found on the surface by H. G. Guterbock in 1943 and published. A small excavation resulted in 1945. Full excavation did not begin until 1973, sponsored by the Turkish Historical Society.[4]
Wood collected by field archaeologist Tahsin Özgüç of Ankara University at the upper Hittite level at Masat Höyük has been added to the Aegean Dendrochronology Project, a 30-year-long project established to build tree-ring chronologies for the Eastern half of the Mediterranean. The wood, which was tentatively dated to 1353 BCE, was retrieved from an excavation site of a building where archeologists also had found imported Late Helladic IIIA/B Stirrup jars, a famous form of pottery.[5] In 2005, the project published an updated report on the dendrochronology research results for Anatolia.[6][7]
Notes
- ↑ Höyük means mound.
- ↑ As by Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites, rev. ed. 2005.
- ↑ The ware at the site is correlated to Late Helladic IIIA (LHIIIA:1).
- ↑ Tahsin Özgüç, Excavations at the Hittite Site, Maşat Höyük: Palace, Archives, Mycenaean Pottery, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 305-309, (Jul., 1980)
- ↑ Aegean Dendrochronology Project December 1996 Progress Report
- ↑ BC Kuniholm P.I., Newton M.W., Griggs C.B., Sullivan P.J., Dendrochronological dating in Anatolia: the second millennium, Der Anschnitt, vol. 18, pp. 41–47, 2005
- ↑ Data from the Aegean Dendrochronology Project is available at the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) at NOAA.
See also
References
- Alp, Sedat, 1991. Maşat Höyük'te Bulunan Çivi Yazılı Hitit Tabletleri, Hethitische Keilschrifttafeln aus Maşat-Höyük (Cuneiform Tablets Found in Maşat-Höyük, (series Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, VI. vol. 34)
- ---, 1991. Hethitische Briefe Aus Masat-Hoyuk(series Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, VI. vol. 35)
- Özgüç, T. 1978. Masat Höyük Kazilarive Çevresindeki Arastirmlar: Excavations at Masat Höyük and Investigations in its Vicinity, Ankara (TTK Yayinlari, V Dizi - Sa. 38). Turkish/English text
- Yakar, Jak, "Excavations at Masat Hoyuk and Investigations in Its Vicinity" Journal of the American Oriental Society 100/2, pp 175–177.
- T. Özgüc, Masat Höyük, 11, A Hittite Center Northeast of Bogazköy, ser. V. no. 38a, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1982