Dr Anna Lucia D’Agata (Consiglio Nationale delle Ricerche, Roma) will address the topic “Iron Age Cilicia and the Greek Connection (10th-8th centuries BC): Cultural Hegemonies, Material Entanglements, and Local Identities”. The lecture is part of the Upper House Seminar series organised by the BSA.
Abstract
In the early 1st millennium BC the Cilician plain was the heartland of the Syro-Anatolian state of Que, whose culture has never been thoroughly explored. Ongoing excavations at the site of Misis (ancient Mopsouestia), 25 km to the east of the capital city of Adana, have succeeded in discovering an Iron Age monumental citadel dominating the lower valley of the river Ceyhan, and controlling the access to the Mediterranean coast. One of the prominent features of Que was the cultural contact with early Greece, which still is an ill-defined phenomenon due to limited archaeological data from primary contexts. The long and detailed stratigraphic sequence documented at Misis makes it possible to integrate imports within the local pottery assemblages, and to detail the development of this multicultural site in the crucial centuries of the early exchanges between Greece and the Near East. Taking the lead from the discoveries at Misis, I will review the available evidence for the Greek impact on the plain of Cilicia with the aim to define its effects on the material culture and the social complexity of this almost unknown region during the Iron Age.