The Biconvex Seals of Alişar Höyük

Abstract

Archaeological excavations were conducted at Alişar Höyük in central Turkey from 1927 to 1932 by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The six years of investigation uncovered evidence that indicated the mound had been occupied intermittently from at least the Early Bronze Age through the modern Turkish period. The premature cessation of excavations at the site, however, left many issues unresolved, a situation that has bedeviled Anatolian specialists up to the present day.Foremost among the problems left unsettled by the Oriental Institute excavations was the question of whether a Late Bronze II settlement (1400–1200 B.C.) had existed at the site, an issue that was raised by the discovery at Alişar of cuneiform tablets written in the Old Assyrian script that referred to a town called Amkuwa, known also from Hittite texts as Ankuwa. On the basis of these references, scholars were quick to associate Amkuwa/Ankuwa with Alişar. The problem with this equation is that, on the one hand, a Hittite text dating to the reign of Hittite king Ḫattušili III makes it clear that Ankuwa was occupied in the LB II.