Graduate program in Settlement Archaeology

... of enforced, pre-construct Environmental Impact Assessments, or, in the case of Namibia, Botswana, and ... interplay of the extremely local and the global that brings the greatest challenges, but ... He has conducted extensive field research in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Djibouti ...

 Many initiatives, such as conferences and workshops have been put in place in order to create awareness, remediate and prevent as well as attempt to minimise the devastating situations for the archaeological heritage, specifically of Iraq and Syria. The majority of these events principally emanated from the US or Europe; with some isolated exceptions in the MENA region. Only a single conference marginally touched upon the issue of protecting Syrian and Iraqi cultural heritage in Turkey in October 2015. Yet Turkey's people and heritage is not only directly impacted by the conflicts at its borders but also, possibly under threat from being on the path of international trafficking of looted museum pieces and archaeological artefacts from Iraq and Syria; as reported in the press but also emphasised by ICOM Emergency RED List for Iraq (http://icom.museum/resources/red-lists-database/red-list/iraq-2015/) and Syria (http://icom.museum/resources/red-lists-database/red-list/syria/) distributed to all museums and heritage entities nationwide.  These constitutes the main reasons behind the idea of this Conference in Ankara, in an attempt to raise awareness and analyse the current condition of the region's archaeological heritage, following specific thematic sessions, examining complex and constantly evolving local and regional political and heritage environments.

Over the course of twenty years of research at Kerkenes Dağ in Central Turkey, a combination of different archaeological survey techniques have been employed to understand the urban structure of this Iron Age mountain-top city. These techniques include aerial photographic surveys, a GPS and geomagnetic survey of almost the entire site which has an area of nearly 2.5 km² as well as electrical resistivity surveys in selected areas of the site. Experiments were also made with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Electrical Conductivity and Magnetic Susceptibility. The surveys were accompanied by ground-truthing, total station surveys, and test excavations as well as a regional survey program of environmental and geomorphological studies by coring local sediments in the surrounding valleys. Since 2000 results have been complimented by substantial excavation in selected areas. The end results were brought together in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) allowing for further analyses providing insights into the many aspects of the urban pattern. While each technique helped reveal archaeological evidence at different speeds and scales, problems have arisen from time to time due to equipment, weather and soil conditions, the absence of institutional backing, degrees of surface visibility, the nature and the depositional history of the site, and the roughness of the terrain. In this presentation I will discuss the usefulness of these techniques in furthering our understanding of this extensive Iron Age site together with an assessment of their problems and limitations.