Previous Research
Archaeological Research in Cilicia
Despite the high number of ancient settlement mounds which are found in the region of Flat Cilicia, only very few excavations were actually conducted there. In the 1930s excavations were carried out at Gözlu Kule (near Tarsus), Yümüktepe (near Mersin) and at Karatepe.
Only recently a renewal and intensification of excavations and surveys in the region of Cilicia has emerged. However, the data gained so far is still too small to give satisfactory answers concerning the history and archaeology of Cilicia.
Contrary to its apparent geographical isolation, Cilicia—and especially the region of Flat Cilicia—was an important cultural contact zone and a ›mediator‹ between Northern Syria, Cyprus and the Anatolian Highland.
Sirkeli Höyük with the Misis Mountains in the Background –
there is still a lot of archaeological work to do in Cilicia.
The ›modi of cultural exchange‹ are not always the same: until the Early Bronze Age a clear Anatolian influence on Cilicia is prevailing, during the Middle Bronze Age, however, this influence is replaced by strong cultural ties with Northern Syria. In the Late Bronze Age another clear Anatolian (Hittite) influence on Cilicia is detectable in the archaeological record. During the Iron Age the influence of the Cypriot pottery production on Cilicia is striking in such a way that one is tempted to talk of a cultural koiné.
Historical information on Cilicia in general is—still hampered by the sparse finds of inscriptional evidence so far—very limited. For the Bronze Age almost no inscriptional evidence from Cilicia is known, in the Iron Age only the 8th century has yielded some information. However, as Cilicia (Kizzuwatna) is frequently mentioned in external historical documents of the second and first millennium BC (and the few documents from Cilicia itself prove this), the lack of inscriptional evidence is only due to the lack of excavations in this specific region.
Next page: Sirkeli – Previous Excavations.