Professor Mirko Novák (Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Bern) will deliver the bi-annual BIAA Oliver Gurney Memorial Lecture on ‘Kizzuwatna-Hiyawa-Cilicia: A region at the interface of Anatolia, the Levant and Cyprus in light of the excavations at Sirkeli Höyük’
The ongoing Swiss-Turkish excavations at Sirkeli Höyük, one of the largest Bronze and Iron Age settlements in Cilicia, have shed new light on the cultural history of one of the most fertile regions of modern Turkey. Known in the Bronze Age as Kizzuwatna and in the Iron Age as Hiyawa/Que, its history is characterised by constant fluctuation between independence as a minor kingdom and belonging to one of the great empires of the Near East – namely Mittanni and the Hittite and Assyrian empires. The exploration of Sirkeli Höyük has so far resulted in the astonishing discovery of a large, complex, cityscape which consisted of a bipartite citadel, a vast lower town, an upper town complete with necropolis, a quarry and a water reservoir, as well as a suburb and several extramural workshop areas.
This event is co-hosted by the SOAS Department of History, Religions and Philosophies and the British Institute at Ankara.