The Byzantine churches of Cilicia have attracted considerable attention during the last 80 years. Often scholars have focused on the urban centres of Cilicia Pedias, the coastal settlements of Cilicia Trachea, and the monasteries near the important roads. However, the Taurus mountains, those lofty barriers which surround the fertile plain, have been ignored by most modern investigators. In the late antique world Greek communities found protection and sustenance in the isolated Highlands. While not as wealthy or numerous as their more urbane cousins to the south, these Cilician Greeks also have left behind monuments of their worship.

In the summer of 1979 I was fortunate to locate and survey in the Highlands two Byzantine churches which hitherto had not been published. The study of these buildings was part of a more general field survey of classical and medieval sites. Since no excavations were undertaken all descriptions and surveys are based on surface remains. The purpose of this paper is to describe the location, masonry and plan of each church and to offer rudimentary conclusions based on a comparison with the known Cilician churches.

In the south-east Aegean, among the earliest finds reported to be Minoan were those of Italian excavators in the Dodecanese. A reference in 1928 to “numerosi avanzi di ceramica del tipo di Camares” in the Vathy cave on Kalymnos is typical (Maiuri, p. 114). Yet little imported Middle Minoan pottery has been published from the south-east Aegean. Many sherds described in preliminary reports as Kamares or MM (as were those at Vathy), when illustrated, have turned out not to be imports but local products. It today seems clear that around the time of the Shaft Graves, many pots with dark ground decoration copying Cretan designs were produced and distributed in this part of the Aegean. Largely on the basis of its decoration (believed in imitation of MM pottery), the discovery of such pottery in the south-east Aegean has been taken as evidence of contact with MBA Crete (Mee 1978: 134). I will argue here, however, that if the contexts in which it has been found are carefully examined, there is little evidence that this local dark ground pottery was produced prior to the beginning of the Late Minoan period; nor is there much unassailable stylistic evidence that it indeed was produced in imitation of MM styles. It becomes necessary to reconsider the evidence for contacts between Crete and the south-east Aegean in the MBA, and MBA settlement patterns in this area.

The celebrated “Letter of Gilgamesh,” treated by Gurney, AnSt VII (1957), 127 ff. and by Kraus, AnSt XXX (1980), 109 ff., has so far remained without parallel in Akkadian literature. Kraus pondered the significance and interpretation of this enigmatic text, and found it an “Erstling” (p. 120). He looked ahead to Ovid for a parallel. With diffidence one may also look backward to some obscure school-boy efforts from Sargonic Girsu. In the archives of the ensi of Girsu appeared various learner's texts which I have suggested elsewhere were the efforts of bureaucrats learning their profession “on the job.” Among these are two fanciful products that raise some of the same problems that the Gilgamesh letter does.

The first is a “letter” (L. 1073), that, daydream though it be, offers a tantalizing glimpse of another scholar apparently thinking along the same lines as the amanuensis of Gilgamesh.

The investigation of the building which is the subject of this paper was undertaken in 1975, 1977, and 1981 in the course of the survey of Oinoanda conducted by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. I am most grateful to Mr. A. S. Hall, director of the survey, for inviting me to participate in it and for supporting my work on the site, to Bay Sırrı Özenir, Bay Osman Özbek and Bay Edip Özgür, successive representatives of the Turkish government, for much assistance, and to Mr. P. Forster and students of the Department of Land Survey of the North-East London Polytechnic for more technical aid.

Before discussing the building itself, some general remarks on the development of the survey are required. The initial survey of the site was begun in 1974 by a group from the North-East London Polytechnic led by Mr. A. Slade. An arbitrary bearing was defined as grid north and a datum point for levelling was arbitrarily allotted a height of 1000 m. Extension of the survey in 1977 established that the level of the acropolis summit in terms of this arbitrary datum is approximately 1095 m., whereas the actual height above sea level is 1532 m.

Der letzte größere Bericht zum Artemision von Ephesos beruhte auf den Grabungen bis 1975 mit einem kleinen Nachtrag aus der Grabung 1976. Auch im Katalog zur Ephesosausstellung in Wien 1978 erschien ein Bericht über neue Forschungsergebnisse, insbesondere das Modell des spätklassischen Altares (Pl. XIa). Außerdem wurde anläßlich eines Kongresses der École Française de Rome 1980 über “Architecture et Société” auch zu neueren Ergebnissen am Artemision Stellung genommen. Ansonsten war nur den jährlich erscheinenden Berichten über die Grabungen in Ephesos im Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien einiges zu entnehmen.

Eine Überraschung der Grabung im Jahre 1977 war die Freilegung des Fundamentes eines apsidalen Baues, mit seiner Apsis nach Osten. Erhalten ist das Fundament aus kleinen Hausteinen (Pl. XIb). Der südliche Ast des Fundamentes dürfte irgendwann teilweise zerstört worden sein, weil aus seinen Resten eine Verbindung zur schräg laufenden Rinne aus Kalkmergelsteinen hergestellt worden ist. Der Boden des Apsidenbaues ist noch erhalten, er bestand aus einem ockerfarbenen Lehm-Sandgemisch. Auf dem Boden fand sich das Fragment eines polychromen Gefäßes mit einem Gesicht am Gefäßrand (Pl. XIc). Das Fragment stammt offenbar aus jüngerer Zeit als der Apsidenbau.

By the following lines I should like to express my gratitude to Fritz Eichler, the late Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, a gentleman whose like may not be found so easily nowadays, who made possible A. Bammer's work at the Ephesus Artemisium, and who directed my interest to East Greek art and artistry as well, since at the moment times are hard for an archaeologist who works on other than Roman Imperial trifles at Efes City.

When Bammer came across bobbin-like objects made of rock crystal, some people thought that he had found parts of Wood's surveying devices or the like, in spite of the fact that they came without any doubt from stratified layers dated between 650 and 550 B.C. Besides, Hogarth had unearthed some 15 pieces of this type already. These “large studs or buttons”, as Hogarth had called them, are hyperboloids of specific shape turned on a lathe, as can be inferred by a faint deepening in the centre of the larger side of some of these hyperboloids. The larger side is always concave, the smaller one plane or slightly convex.

In December 1981, as this paper was being composed, there came the news of the tragic death of Colin Macleod. With shocking suddenness one had lost a former tutor, colleague and friend, whose passion, seriousness and total modesty were, in themselves, a reflection of the value and importance which he attached to ancient literature, and an inspiration to those who admired him both as a person and as a scholar. Apart from his work in the main stream of Classical writings he devoted much time and study to Patristic authors, and it does not seem inept that this examination of a fourth-century Saint's Life should be dedicated, with great sadness, to his memory.

In 1901 the Vatican scholar, Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri, published excellent editions, based on new manuscript recensions, of the Lives of two Anatolian saints, St. Theodotus of Ancyra and St. Ariadne of Prymnessus. The second Life, and a supplement to it published in the following year, have provided the material for a recent study by L. Robert, who demonstrates in detail that many biographical details found in it can be traced back to inscriptions of the Imperial period, thus providing, among other things, a valuable insight into its manner of composition.

When in the late nineteenth century inscriptions from Oinoanda in the Kibyratis (Fig. 1) began to be recorded and published in quantity, the relationship between Termessos Minor and Oinoanda caused a good deal of discussion. For it was in the city which everybody agreed to be Oinoanda that inscriptions set up by the boule, demos, and gerousia of the Termessians were to be found. Holleaux and Paris supposed that the two communities shared the Oinoanda hill, and Cousin added the suggestion that the late Roman fortification wall (traditionally known as the Great Wall) separated them.

This article began as a Note, offering literary evidence for the working of the glittering black sands found on some Euxine beaches to relate to the analyses of two samples made by R. F. Tylecote in his “Iron sands from the Black Sea,” Anatolian Studies, 31 (1981), 137–9. But in preparing it I read Prentiss S. de Jesus's lucid study of The development of prehistoric mining and metallurgy in Anatolia(Oxford, 1980), and re-read Speros Vryonis Jr.'s pioneering article on “The question of the Byzantine mines,” in Speculum, 37 (1962), 1–17. This explains why, while the Note has grown into a modest article, its conclusions have shrunk.

For sources for Byzantine mining from the seventh to twelfth centuries, Vryonis had largely to fall back upon prospective and retrospective literary evidence: mostly legal before the seventh, and Turkish after the thirteenth century. He noted how very few direct references there are to mining in the central period and in Byzantine Anatolia thereafter, and while I can add a handful of further indications for Pontic iron, alum and mummy, I must discount his most important one for silver. Vryonis offered a choice of answers to his question: either that “Byzantium had no access to mines and therefore they did not appear in the sources;” or that Byzantines did mine, but “Byzantine sources simply do not mention this type of ordinary or common matter.” Vryonis favoured the latter solution, but the question remains largely where he left it twenty years ago, and his explanation was cited again recently.

A small, thin, rectangular limestone plaque, bearing a five-line inscription, was copied by A.H. in the Konya Archaeological Museum in September 1980. The stone lacked an inventory number, and the Museum's staff could supply no information about its provenance. One may presume, however, that it has reached the Museum in recent years, probably after discovery in Konya itself. As will be demonstrated below, other grounds exist for supposing that it comes from Konya, but a provenance elsewhere in the Konya İli cannot be ruled out.

The block is complete to left and right, probably complete above and below, broken behind: H. 0·16, W. 0·32, Th. 0·06, with letters varying between 1·5 and 3 cm. (the smallest on the bottom line) which are irregular in shape and unevenly set out on the stone (see photograph of squeeze, Plate XXVIIa). The face is slightly damaged at its top right-hand corner and at the bottom left.

In 1968–69, three Phrygian tumuli in the vicinity of Ankara were excavated under the auspices of the Middle East Technical University and under the general supervision of Professor Ekrem Akurgal. The evidence from these tombs was initially examined from a purely archaeological standpoint. Recently, however, some of the metal findings were subjected to study through the application of physical and chemical analyses. The results have led to a re-examination of original conclusions drawn from the archaeological evidence.

In this paper, we present some of the results which have been obtained through these metallurgical analyses. But first, we would like to provide some general background information about the artifacts and about the locations at which they were found.

During the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Ankara appears to have been the second most important Phrygian city after Gordion. Explorations in Ankara have revealed approximately twenty tumuli, dating from the eighth century to the middle of the sixth century B.C.

The village of Tille, now named Geldibuldu, is situated on the right bank of the Euphrates, at the western end of the modern bridge which takes the Adıyaman—Urfa/Diyarbakır road across the river. Tille village lies on the north side of the modern road at c. 30 km. east of Kahta and c. 60 km. east of Adıyaman. It is not large; the number of houses is small. The village is surrounded by gardens, particularly on the east, south and south-west sides; there are several fountains in and near the village. A good spring rises on the hillside south-west of the village and provides the main source of water for irrigation (Fig. 1, Pl. XXXIIIa, b).

The village is a muhtarlık, although the present muhtar does not reside in Tille; he lives in a mezraa of the village, Karatilbe, one of six such independent hamlets of Geldibuldu muhtarliǧı: Kefiri, Açoǧlu, Körseluk, Tilbe, Karatilbe, and Semagün, all forming part of the territory of Geldibuldu.