Ways of Being: Hittite Empire and Its Borderlands in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Northern Syria

In this paper, I take identity as a characteristic of empire in its periphery, denoting the totality of: 1) the imperial strategies an empire pursues in different regions, 2) the index of empire in each region, and 3) local responses to imperialism. My case study is the Hittite Empire, which dominated parts of what is now modern Turkey and northern Syria between the seventeenth and twelfth centuries BCE, and its borderlands. To investigate the identities of the Hittite imperial system, I explore the totality of the second millennium BCE in two regions. First, I explore imperial dynamics and responses in the Ilgın Plain in inner southwestern Turkey through a study of the material collected by the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project since 2010. Second, I explore the identity of the Hittite Empire in the city of Emar in northern Syria by a thorough study of the textual and archaeological material unearthed by the Emar Expedition. In both cases, I argue that the manifestations of the Hittite Empire were mainly conditioned by the pre-Hittite trajectories of these regions. The strategies that the administration chose to use in different borderlands sought to identify what was important locally, with the Hittite Empire integrating itself into networks that were already established as manifestations of power, instead of replacing them with new ones.

Revisiting the Norse on the Western Isles from a Landscape Perspective

Historically the research on the relationship between the Norse and Pictish period population of the Western Isles has largely focused on place-name evidence, due to the prevalence of Old Norse place names over Pictish period ones and a scant archaeological record. Placename scholars, as well as archaeologists have traditionally split into two schools of interpretation: a ‘war school’ and a ‘peace school’. The war school argues that the archaeological and place-name material contains proof of a Norse genocide against the Pictish period inhabitants, while the peace school has advocated assimilation or acculturation. In the last few decades excavations and surveys have given a better understanding of the Norse presence on the islands. This article approaches the question of whether the Pictish period population survived, through an archaeological landscape analysis that incorporates settlement sites and uses place-name data. It argues that the landscape displays proof of a surviving Pictish period culture within a dominant Norse society, though this survival as probably asymmetrical and regional.

The Khandaq Shapur: Defense, Irrigation, Boundary, Frontier

Khandaq Shapur has been named one of the great barriers of the ancient world, but very little is known about the monumental-scale linear feature. This interdisciplinary paper brings together archaeologists and historians to present (1) an updated history of the Khandaq Shapur drawing upon a wider range of sources, including Arabic scholarly sources, and (2) a modern map of the Khandaq Shapur produced from a ground truthed remote sensing using historic Corona satellite imagery from the 1960s and imagery available in Google Earth. This new map of the Khandaq Shapur’s ground truthed location is compared to the known locations of Sasanian sites from previous archaeological surveys to contextualise the Khandaq Shapur within the wider archaeological landscape. Together, the landscape archaeology and historical evidence provide a comprehensive picture of this unique feature: shedding light not only on its precise location, but also its nature (what was it?) and how it was used over time.

A Room for Archaeologists and Kids

Beginning in June 2018, some forty‑five students from Zurich and Lima led by Guillaume Othenin-Girard (ETH Zurich) and Vincent Juillerat (PUCP) worked together to produce a structure in the heart of the archaeological landscape of Pachacamac, Peru. The project was the culmination of a half‑year collaboration between Studio Tom Emerson of D-ARCH, ETH Zurich and Taller 5 of the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, PUCP Lima, at the invitation of Denise Pozzi-Escot, the director of the Museum of Pachacamac. In this new structure, archaeologists make their first examination of artefacts emerging from the digs, shaded from the punishing Andean sun and in view of passing visitors and school children, who in turn, perform their own exploration in the sandpits across the courtyard. At each end, new finds are stored in rooms enclosed by woven cane walls before being transferred to the museum for permanent conservation. The structure was collaboratively designed and constructed by the students in three weeks in June and July, following a joint research project over several months that produced a new topological survey of the territory: the Pachacamac Atlas. The reality of a landscape changes according to the perceptions of time and memory that underlie it. The visual essay that follows is an attempt to recall the intuitive relationships and invisible links arising from the superimposition of the Atlas onto the processes of design and construction. The collective knowledge gathered over the course of the territorial survey draws an understanding of the place which is larger than the ancient sanctuary per se – unveiling ways of making and the material flows between humankind and the environment on various scales. This methodology of survey drawing reveals the inherent capacity of the architecture student to think both as a maker and a territorial agent, thus triggering an awareness of the designer’s social and environmental responsibilities within the design and construction process.

Cultivating Archaeological Landscape

The paper proposes an interdisciplinary exploration in order to define a set of strategies and tools oriented at planning/design/management of archaeological landscapes, especially featured by productive layers. The article adopts as a key dimension the “cultivating” approach, which can become a fertile ground for experimentation for developing sustainable and innovative planning methodologies to be applied in layered landscapes. In an extended semantic dimension, the term cultivation can be interpreted as a continuous attitude of taking care of (archaeological) places over time, to preserve and regenerate resources for the future in a holistic vision, also considering economic sustainability and liveability for inhabitants and local fauna. The cultivating approach can preserve heritage places by an active and inventive conservation, also fostering biodiversity and temporal diversity. As a case study, the article proposes the Landscape Masterplan for the Baratti and Populonia Archaeological Park.