Beycesultan: Late Bronze Age and Phrygian Pottery and Middle and Late Bronze Age Small Objects v.3

The mound of Beycesultan in Western Anatolia was excavated between 1954 and 1959, under the direction of Seton Lloyd, Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, with the aim of providing an archaeological sequence in a hitherto unknown area of Anatolia, possibly within the ancient country of Arzawa, as a counterweight to the discoveries at Troy and Bogazkoy. The excavators were disappointed not to find any written tablets and only one sherd of Mycenaean pottery and the work was abandoned after six seasons. But the pottery and small finds were well-stratified and carefully recorded, and this publication sheds new light on many questions in Late Bronze Age archaeology. The significance of the finds is discussed in comparative chapters on the chronology of the LBA levels and the distribution of LBA pottery. A general picture of a local evolution of pottery types, drawing more on early Bronze Age traditions than on neighbouring areas, emerges. This conclusion should be of interest to scholars concerned with trade and contact among states of the Hittite period.