The ways of an empire: Continuity and change of route landscapes across the Taurus during the Hittite Period (ca. 1650\u20131200 BCE)

Routes are part of broader \u2019landscapes of movement\u2019, having an impact on and being impacted by other sociocultural processes. Most recent studies on connectivity networks remain highly topographic in scope, incidentally resulting in the restitution of a long term fixity. The anachronistic transposition of best known route networks across various ages, irrespective of context-specific circumstances, further enhances this static approach. On the other hand, when changes in connectivity are considered, trends are generally analysed over \u2019big jumps\u2019, often spanning several centuries. This article aims to contextualise dynamics of change in route trajectories within shorter and well-defined chronological boundaries with a case study on the evolution of route landscapes across the Taurus mountains under the Hittite kingdom and empire (ca. 1650\u20131200 BCE). I will adopt an integrated approach to multiple datasets, aiming to investigate variables operating at different time depths. In the conclusions, I will argue that, while the Hittite route system in the target area was in part rooted on previous patterns of connectivity, some eventful shifts can also be individuated and historically explained. This enables, in turn, an enhanced perspective on the formation and transformation of Hittite socio-cultural landscapes

The ways of an empire: Continuity and change of route landscapes across the Taurus during the Hittite Period (ca. 1650–1200 BCE)

Abstract Routes are part of broader 'landscapes of movement', having an impact on and being impacted by other socio-cultural processes. Most recent studies on connectivity networks remain highly topographic in scope, incidentally resulting in the restitution of a long term fixity. The anachronistic transposition of best known route networks across various ages, irrespective of context-specific circumstances, further enhances this static approach. On the other hand, when changes in connectivity are considered, trends are generally analysed over 'big jumps', often spanning several centuries. This article aims to contextualise dynamics of change in route trajectories within shorter and well-defined chronological boundaries with a case study on the evolution of route landscapes across the Taurus mountains under the Hittite kingdom and empire (ca. 1650–1200 BCE). I will adopt an integrated approach to multiple datasets, aiming to investigate variables operating at different time depths. In the conclusions, I will argue that, while the Hittite route system in the target area was in part rooted on previous patterns of connectivity, some eventful shifts can also be individuated and historically explained. This enables, in turn, an enhanced perspective on the formation and transformation of Hittite socio-cultural landscapes

Contacts of languages and peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite world

Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West

Identities in the Making: Cultural Frontiers in Central Anatolia in the 2nd Millennium BCE

The Hittite Laws draw a separation of the Hittite domain into seemingly discrete socio-geographical entities: Hatti, Luwiya, and Pala. This distinction has inspired a long-lasting debate among Hittitologists, chiefly oriented to the definition of different ethno-linguistic spheres in Anatolia. The present paper moves on from this debate and takes the Hatti-Luwiya-Pala opposition to signify a permeable divide between Hatti and other spheres of the early Hittite administration, based on a core-periphery organisation. I propose that this divide did not emerge as an abstract feature of the Hittite administrative map, but was determined by a cultural frontier having its traceable roots in the Old Assyrian period of the early 2nd millennium BCE, when the term Hatti (attested in the form Hattum) already indicated a geographic entity clearly distinct from the rest of Anatolia. In conclusion, I propose that both Hatti and Luwiya originally derived from ethnolinguistic designations for the “Hattian” and the “Luwian” lands respectively, but these meanings were already altered by the time the Hittite kingdom emerged

Kubaba and other Divine Ladies of the Syro-Anatolian Iron Age: Developmental Trajectories, Local Variations, and Interregional Interactions

Already by the Late Bronze Age, culturally distinct cults of Kubaba existed throughout the region controlled by the Hittite Empire. After the fall of the empire and the fragmentation of the political landscape of the Syro-Anatolian region, these cults persisted in local contexts, developing along their own trajectories, and thus producing hypostases of the goddess with unique roles, modes of expression, and perhaps aliases. However, these local variations did not evolve in a vacuum, but in many cases through a process of interregional and intercultural interactions. This paper will examine these processes along with the resultant expressions of local cults of Kubaba, demonstrating specific trajectories for interactions between neighboring groups, along with selective adaptations and rejections of foreign cultic concepts. Preliminary results suggest an interesting convergence between these cults and certain sociolinguistic boundaries within the region, perhaps connected to communities with shared group identities

Territorial administration in Alalah during Level IV

Since they were first catalogued by Wiseman (1953), 1 the two corpora of tablets unearthed at Alala\u1e2b/Tell A\ue7ana, in the Amuq plain, one deriving from the 17th century b.c. (level VII) and the other from the15th century (level IV), have proven to be among the richest in the 2nd millennium Near East in terms of economic, political, social and demographic information. The sequence of such remarkable archives in the same place, in two relatively close periods, offers a rare occasion to observe how different political formations, in different historical contexts, built their networks of interaction within approximately the same geographical space. The territorial organization of Alala\u1e2b\u2019s domain in the context of level VII has been the subject of many studies, based on both epigraphic and archaeological evidence, while, for the period of level IV, this issue has been mainly addressed by focusing on the recent archaeological data acquired under the purview of the Amuq Valley Regional Project. 2 Starting from a coherent archival group, the present paper proposes a new interpretation of some documentary sources on the territorial organization of the kingdom of Alala\u1e2b during the period of level IV, by providing evidence for an administrative subdivision of the state. These results will then be compared with the situation attested in level VII, viewed through the filter of previous scholarly work

"Symbols of power" ittiti: considerazioni sul doppio disco solare alato (DDSA)

Il Sole alato rappresenta il simbolo della regalit\ue0 ittita pi\uf9 facilmente riconoscibile nell\u2019iconografia anatolica, ricorrente sia sui sigilli reali sia sui numerosi monumenti sparsi nel territorio di Hatti. La forma meglio conosciuta del Sole alato \ue8 costituita da un disco solare singolo disposto al centro di un paio di ali variamente caratterizzate. Oggetto del presente lavoro, tuttavia, \ue8 una tipologia particolare di Sole alato, caratterizzata da un disco supplementare sovrapposto al motivo standard. Propongo quindi che questa variante servisse primariamente a simboleggiare l\u2019autorit\ue0 congiunta del Gran re e della Grande regina, richiamando la loro rispettiva identificazione con il dio Sole del Cielo e la dea Sole di Arinna/ Hebat

Resilient Vines? Religious motifs and areal contacts between Central Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean in the post-Hittite period

Throughout the Bronze Age, material and historical frameworks attest to a broad cultural interchange between Central Anatolia and the Northeast Mediterranean, superimposed on patterns of regional differentiation. After the demise of the Hittite Empire, around 1200 BCE, political unity and strong cultural interference left place to a more fragmented panorama, coupled with a conspicuous reduction in interregional contacts evidenced by archaeological, linguistic, and historical sources. This paper explores how cultural interactions were reshaped during this transition. We show that niches of cross-regional convergence existed in the 8th century BCE, as especially evidenced by the distribution of religious motifs in the Syro-Anatolian area, chiefly the Storm-god of the Vineyard. We propose that this convergence was made possible by the local diachronic resilience of cultic traditions facilitated by a limited, cross-regional, synchronic interference