The theories of the ‘Great Caravan Route’ between Cilicia and Troy: the Early Bronze Age III period in inland western Anatolia

Abstract

AbstractAt the beginning of the second settlement a change that we can define as a ‘breaking point’ takes place in Trojan indigenous cultural development. Behind this change must lie, to a great extent, the intensification of Troy's cultural and economic relations with the interior of Anatolia and beyond (north Syria and Mesopotamia). This change is archaeologically most evident in the pottery; the potter's wheel is introduced to Troy IIb along with new forms and wares. For a long time it has been widely accepted that the wheel – in use in north Syria and Cilicia since the Late Chalcolithic period – became known in the interior of western Anatolia only after its appearance at Troy, and there has been a general consensus that the potter's wheel and other Mesopotamian influences reached Troy through maritime trade from Cilicia westward and northward along the Anatolian coastline. The author, on the other hand, as early as the mid 1980s, had begun to defend the thesis that Trojan-Cilician relations were established over inland western Anatolia, rather than by sea. Here again he deals with the subject, now strengthened by new evidence that continues to come to light from recent investigations and excavations within western Anatolia – most especially that from Küllüoba, where excavation has been continuing under the author's auspices since 1996. The author now goes one step further to define this overland route between Cilicia and the north Aegean as the ‘Great Caravan Route’.