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. The site is under agricultural use and is plowed. It was first excavated in the 1970s.
| Masat Höyük | |
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 Masat Höyük
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| Coordinates: 40°08′54″N 35°45′44″E / 40.14833°N 35.76222°E |
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[edit] 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.
[edit] Archaeology
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.[4] In 2005, the project published an updated report on the dendrochronology research results for Anatolia.[5][6]
[edit] 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).
- ^ Aegean Dendrochronology Project December 1996 Progress Report. Retrieved 20 May 2008.
- ^ Kuniholm P.I., Newton M.W., Griggs C.B., Sullivan P.J. (2005). "Dendrochronological dating in Anatolia: the second millennium BC". Der Anschnitt 18: 41–47.
- ^ Data from the Aegean Dendrochronology Project is available at the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) at NOAA. See also Gordion Tree-ring measurements.
[edit] See also
[edit] 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
