The study of Anatolian kilims has much in common with Anatolian archaeology of the second millennium B.C. In both cases we have the evidence from the texts; place names in the Hittite texts, tribal and place names in the Ottoman ones. Whereas the bulk of the Hittite place names can not yet be securely located, but with certain exceptions belong to settled population groups, those from the Ottoman records refer to nomadic or semi-nomadic elements that can sometimes be pinpointed, but more often are vague and imprecise. Further information of relevance is sometimes supplied, but more often not. Neither set of records is perfect, nor answers such to us essential questions of dates, ancestry, arrival, affinity with others, subdivisions, size of country or territory inhabited etc. Most of the Hittite texts are religious or political; most of the Ottoman records dealing with tribal groups deal with taxation, or later with military service.

The basic prerequisite both for Hittite and Ottoman tribal studies is the reconstruction of a map or better still of a series of maps for various successive periods on which the events recorded in the texts and the material evidence derived from archaeology or textile production can be plotted. Here the aims are the same and so are the methods; basically fieldwork.

In every aspect of Turkish studies, the non-Turkish scholar is at a disadvantage in trying to understand the complexities of the Turkish heritage. However hard we may try to learn and understand the language, customs, arts and crafts, through a lifetime of labour, enthusiasm and long residence, our Turkish colleagues should be able to do this better and with greater understanding. During the nineteenfifties, while living in Ankara, one used to regret the lack of interest in Seljuk art and architecture and complain about the absence of any reliable information about the flat woven rugs known as kilims that were just starting to appear in the market.

Things have greatly changed in the thirty years that have since passed; and there is a healthy revival in Turkish art of the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, not only in Turkey, but at last also in the West. The interest in Turkish kilims is a modern phenomenon; we have valuable studies on the Türkmen nomads of Anatolia, which never even mention the word kilim. In Turkey also few scholars, except Yusuf Durul who has devoted his life to the study of Yörük textiles, were attracted by kilims. Samples of Old Turkish carpets and kilims, published by the Sümerbank, Istanbul, 1961 broke the ice, at least in Turkey. Then came an exhibition at the Textile Museum, Washington D.C. in 1969 and its fine publication by A. N. Landreau and W. R. Pickering entitled From the Bosporus to Samarkand. Flat woven rugs (1969), followed in rapid succession by three publications by the Akbank in Turkey: C. Kerametli and Z. Güvemli: Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi (1974); Belkis Acar's Kilim ve düz dokuma yaygilar (1975) and Yusuf Duru's Yörük kilimleri (1977) all published in Istanbul. Then came a kilim exhibition in London, published by D. Black and C. Loveless in The undiscovered kilim, London 1977, followed by W. T. Ziemba, A. Akatay and S. L. Schwartz: Turkish flat weaves, London 1979, and now we have a sumptuous book by Yanni Petsopoulos: Kilims, Thames and Hudson, London 1979 (price £38.00) with not less than 278 illustrations of Anatolian kilims alone, many in colour and all old, i.e. before the introduction of chemical dyes, tentatively put at 1900, and nearly all in western collections, many private.

Although Beycesultan III; the Late Bronze Age is in the course of preparation, it would appear from a number of reviews of Beycesultan II, London, 1965, that some of our colleagues still maintain the erroneous view that Beycesultan was uninhabited during the Late Bronze Age. It is the purpose of this article to show that this view is not supported by the evidence; on the contrary Beycesultan has a rich and well stratified sequence of Late Bronze Age building-levels (III–IA), that run parallel to the Hittite New Kingdom deposits of Central Anatolia.

In the absence of epigraphic material or radiocarbon dates, the dating evidence from Beycesultan consists primarily of a stratified pottery sequence, for which occasional typological parallels can be found at other sites in Anatolia.

In another article in this volume, James Macqueen has re-examined the political geography of Western Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age on the basis of the Hittite texts. As long ago as 1957 we discussed these problems together at Beycesultan and the results that he has reached independently agree in all major points with mine, which are shown in Fig. 1. For the last fifteen years travel and exploration has carried me through most of the territory here discussed, and with this advantage the archaeologist is able to make a contribution towards the problems raised by the inadequacy of the texts which are not concerned with geographical details, but with politics. In a study of this kind an initial knowledge of the terrain and its archaeological remains is essential. In my opinion a thorough knowledge of classical, i.e. mainly Roman and Byzantine conditions in Anatolia is a definite disadvantage, for the conditions imposed by this essentially foreign occupation bear no relation to earlier patterns of settlement and the possibility of chance survivals of place names tends to distract the student of Second Millennium geography. Many of our troubles stem from rash identifications of place names of which one may single out those of Millawanda-Miletus, Lukka-Lycia and Ahhiyawa-Mycenaean Greece (or Rhodes) as key points in any geographical reconstruction.

A fourth season of excavation at Çatal Hüyük took place between 18th July and 25th September 1965 under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara with Professor O. R. Gurney as director administratively responsible to the Turkish Authorities. The excavation staff were Mr. and Mrs. James Mellaart, Miss Pamela Pratt and Miss Priscilla Berridge as conservators, Miss Raymonde Enderlé Ludovici (artist), Mr. and Mrs. N. Alcock (surveyor), Mr. Ian Todd, Mlle Anne Timonier and Mr. J. Jurriaanse as field assistants. Bayan Nemika Altan and Bay Mehmet Turgut, both from the Ankara Archaeological Museum, were our official Turkish Representatives.

The excavation was sponsored by the British Academy, the Universities of Edinburgh and London, The Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Bollingen Foundation, both in New York, the Australian Institute of Archaeology, the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara and the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. BP Aegean Ltd. in Istanbul once again supported the expedition with survey equipment and transport.

To the west of Çatal Hüyük and directly across the old river bed lies the second mound, occupied after the desertion of the neolithic site, perhaps from c. 5600 B.C. Roughly circular in size, with a diameter of c. 400 m., it still rises to a height of 7·5 m. above the surrounding fields. A modern road and two of the canals which now take the place of the old river, cut into its sides, but like its sister site, it is not under cultivation.

This mound, the successor of the neolithic city, is strewn with painted pottery of the Early Chalcolithic period, some of which was published before. Its range of occupation would seem to be almost entirely of this period, but it is possible that Late Neolithic levels exist further down in the mound. Some surface sherds even suggest a possible occupation in what D. H. French has called “Middle Chalcolithic” at Can Hasan, some fifty miles to the south-east, but situated in the same plain of Konya.

The third season of excavations at Çatal Hüyük lasted from 10th June until 30th August, 1963, seventy working days with an average of thirty-five men, some local but most from the Beycesultan area, under our foreman, Veli Karaaslan, and our trusted ustas, Rifat Çelimli, Mustafa Duman, and Bekir Kalayci.

The 1963 season received financial support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York, the Bollingen Foundation, New York, the Munroe Fund of the University of Edinburgh, The British Academy, the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, the Australian Institute of Archaeology, the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London, an anonymous donation, and Unilever, Istanbul, and transport and survey equipment from BP Aegean, Ltd., Istanbul.

The end of the Çatal Hüyük West culture is shrouded in mystery. Both Çatal and Kara Hüyük South were apparently deserted and never reoccupied and it is only at Can Hasan Hüyük east of Karaman that later deposits have been recognised overlying remains of the early Chalcolithic culture. Elsewhere the evidence lies buried in the cores of the numerous city mounds of the Early Bronze Age period. Late Chalcolithic remains are fairly common in the Konya Plain, but they were in nearly every case found on sites where no earlier or later remains were encountered. This might suggest a shift in the settlement pattern of the plain after the end of the Early Chalcolithic period (see map, Fig. 1).

The excavations at Çatal Hüyük, the neolithic city mound in the Konya Plain, which were begun in 1961 were continued during the summer of 1962. The second season of excavation began on 7th June and lasted until 14th August, sixty working days, with a labour force which never exceeded thirty-five men, mostly trained under our foreman, Veli Karaaslan, at Beycesultan and Hacılar. Once again our trusted ustas included Rifat Çelimli, Mustafa Duman and Bekir Kalayci. Survey equipment and transport for the expedition were generously provided by Turkse Shell, Ankara.

The 1962 season was financed by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York, a bequest from the late Mr. Francis Neilson, the Australian Institute of Archaeology and its President, Mr. W. J. Beasley, The British Academy, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. In addition the Director had a personal fellowship from the Bollingen Foundation, New York.

The purpose of this short article is to draw attention to a number of features presented by these well known monuments near Beyşehir which are in need of further clarification, and to offer yet another suggestion about its original appearance.

During the last decade, a number of articles from the pen of Professors H. G. Güterbock, K. Bittel, R. Naumann and E. Laroche have been devoted to the sanctuary of Eflatun Pınar and it might be thought that there is little to add. That this is not so, I trust this article will show. These remarks are the result of three visits to these monuments in 1952, 1955 and 1957.

The Fasıllar statue (7·40 m. in height) lies in the Roman stadium of a classical site above the village of that name. Its rough condition suggests, as Güterbock has already pointed out, that it may have been unfinished and locally quarried, roughed out for transport and for some reason left there. The material is trachyte, which occurs locally. Güterbock comments on the lack of “Hittite” sherds at Fasıllar. One can go further; there is no site there earlier than the Classical one. The nearest Late Bronze Age sites are Karahisar, Evreği and Kızılviran Hüyüks. The latter site is the largest, but it is difficult to see why anyone should want to quarry a statue at Fasıllar, 50 km. away, if the statue was meant to be erected at this site, which is surrounded by trachyte rocks within a few kilometres.

The site of Çatal Hüyük was discovered during our survey of the Konya Plain in November, 1958. Rich in surface finds of a type hitherto only known from Professor J. Garstang's excavations at Mersin on the south coast of Anatolia, its importance was soon realised. However, at the time of the discovery, we were engaged in the excavation of the equally important site of Hacılar and it was not until after the completion of excavations there that digging could be contemplated at Çatal Hüyük. After the final season at Hacılar in 1960, we were free to devote our attention to this new site.

As Hacılar showed a gap in its culture sequence exactly during the Early Neolithic period, which surface finds showed was best represented at Çatal Hüyük, it was decided to start excavations at this site to complete the sequence and throw further light on Hacılar.

The fourth and final season of excavations at Hacılar, carried out under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, lasted from 1st August till 7th September, 1960. In spite of a number of difficulties such as shortage of staff, workmen and time, a most successful season of work was accomplished.

The Assistant Director was in charge, ably assisted by Mrs. Mellaart (housekeeping, accounts, registry and photography), Miss Clare Goff (surveyor) and Mr. David French (pottery expert). Bay I. Ebcioğlu represented the Turkish Department of Antiquities. Once more the expedition was accommodated in the large school building. For this final season we are especially grateful to Francis Neilson, Esq., Mrs. I. Ainley, the British Academy, the Russell Trust and the Munroe Fund of Edinburgh University, without whose timely help this season might not have taken place.