First archaeological survey of Paphlagonia published

Project Paphlagonia is the first fully published multi-period archaeological and historical survey of the little explored region of north-central Turkey. Today this region includes the provinces of Çankiri and parts of Karabük. Directed by Professor Roger Matthews (UCL Institute of Archaeology), the project surveyed an area of almost 8,500km2 over three years and located and recorded more than 330 historically significant archaeological sites. The aim of the project was to recover enough evidence to reconstruct and analyse patterns of settlement and land use from early prehistoric to Turkish times. Sites dated from early prehistoric to Ottoman, and included Palaeolithic campsites, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age settlements and cemeteries as well as fortified defensive sites of the Hittite period, Phrygian villages and burial tumuli, and a wealth of small towns, villages, farmsteads and hill-top refuges of the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and early Turkish periods. Roger said: ?The project revealed the delicate balance through time between the settlement patterns of human communities and the impact of environmental and, particularly, political factors. The location of Paphlagonia means that for much of its history it was a contested border zone with evidence for fortification and rural abandonment at the edge of a succession of empires (Hittite, Phrygian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman).