Maşat Höyük is a
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
Hittite archaeological site 100 km nearly east of
Boğazkale/
Hattusa, about 20 km south of
Zile,
Tokat Province, north-central
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...
, not far from the
Çekerek River
The Çekerek River ( tr, Çekerek Çayı, ancient Scylax) is a tributary of the Yeşil River in Turkey. It flows for about in a "southwest-northeast arc". Its source is near Tokat. The confluence with the Yeşil in the northeast is just to the so ...
. The site is under agricultural use and is plowed. It was first excavated in the 1970s.
During the Hittite period, it is believed to have been named Tappika (Tabigga, Tabikka).
History
The site dates back to at least the Early Bronze Age. Most of the EBA remains on the upper city were destroyed in the construction of the Hittite palace. Some remain in the lower town.
The enigmatic marauding
Kaska
The Kaska or Kaska Dena are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living mainly in northern British Columbia and the southeastern Yukon in Canada. The Kaska language, originally spoken by the Kaska, is an Athaba ...
s burned this site during
Tudhaliya II's reign. The Hittites rebuilt it under the next king
Suppiluliuma I.
Cuneiform tablets from the site form a new archive of Hittite texts. The letters found at Masat Höyük were edited by
Sedat Alp Prof. Ord. Sedat Alp (January 1, 1913 in Veroia – October 9, 2006 in Ankara) was the first Turkish archaeologist, historian and academic with a specialization in Hittitology, and was among the foremost names in the field. He was the president ...
in a two-volume edition in
Turkish and
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
in 1991. Most tablets here are correspondence between the site and the Hittite king, a "Tudhaliya" who was probably
Tudhaliya II; most concern the Kaska front. The Hittites' capital at this time was either
Sapinuwa (which has been found) or else
Samuha
Šamuḫa is an ancient settlement near the village of Kayalı Pinar, c. 40 km west of Sivas, in the Sivas Province of Turkey. Located on the northern bank of Kizil Irmak river, it was a city of the Hittites, a religious centre and, for a ...
(which has been identified since 2005 based on archives). One place-name mentioned in the texts is Tabigga/Tabikka, which is now generally considered to be the Hittite name of the Maşat Höyük site.
The site also contains 14th-century BC
Helladic period ware from mainland Greece.
Archaeology
The site of Maşat Höyük measures 450 by 225 meters, with a lower town and an upper citadel area which stands 29 meters above the plain. A cuneiform tablet was found on the surface by
H. G. Güterbock in 1943 and published. A small excavation resulted in 1945. Full excavation did not begin until 1973, sponsored by the
Turkish Historical Society
The Turkish Historical Society ( tr, Türk Tarih Kurumu, TTK) is a research society studying the history of Turkey and the Turkish people, founded in 1931 by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with headquarters in Ankara, Turkey. It has been ...
.
Wood collected by field archaeologist
Tahsin Özgüç
Tahsin Özgüç (1916–2005) was an eminent Turkish field archaeologist. The careers of Tahsin Özgüç and his wife, Nimet Özgüç, began after World War II and lasted for nearly 60 years. He was said to be the doyen of Anatolian archaeology. ...
of
Ankara University at the upper Hittite level at Masat Höyük has been added to the Aegean Dendrochronology Project, a 30-year-long project established to build tree-ring chronologies for the Eastern half of the Mediterranean. The wood, which was tentatively dated to 1353 BCE, was retrieved from an excavation site of a building where archeologists also had found imported
Late Helladic IIIA/B Stirrup jar
A stirrup jar is a type of pot associated with the culture of Mycenaean Greece. They have small squat bodies, a pouring spout, and a second nonfunctioning spout over which the handles connect like a stirrup. During the Late Bronze Age, they we ...
s, a famous form of pottery. In 2005, the project published an updated report on the
dendrochronology research results for Anatolia.
[Data from the Aegean Dendrochronology Project is available at the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) a]
NOAA
See also
*
Cities of the ancient Near East
Notes
References
*Alp, Sedat, 1991. ''Maşat Höyük'te Bulunan Çivi Yazılı Hitit Tabletleri, Hethitische Keilschrifttafeln aus Maşat-Höyük (Cuneiform Tablets Found in Maşat-Höyük)'', (series ''Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari'', VI. vol. 34)
*---, 1991. ''Hethitische Briefe Aus Masat-Hoyuk''(series ''Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari'', VI. vol. 35)
*Özgüç, T. 1978. ''Masat Höyük Kazilarive Çevresindeki Arastirmlar: Excavations at Masat Höyük and Investigations in its Vicinity'', Ankara (TTK Yayinlari, V Dizi – Sa. 38). Turkish/English text
*Yakar, Jak, "Excavations at Masat Hoyuk and Investigations in Its Vicinity" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 100/2, pp 175–177, 1978
*T. Özgüc, Masat Höyük, 11, A Hittite Center Northeast of Bogazköy, ser. V. no. 38a, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1982
External links
TAY Project: Destruction report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Masat Hoyuk
Tokat Province
Hittite sites in Turkey
Archaeological sites in the Black Sea Region