Hittites' holy city Nerik to emerge

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

FULYA ÇİMENISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

Late in the second millennium B.C., as the Hittites were experimenting with bronze, they built a holy city called Nerik near the Black Sea, according to evidence being slowly gathered by archeologists.
Today, excavators at the Oymaağaç mound in the Black Sea city of Samsun's Vezirköprü district are reveling in their potential find, believing the evidence is mounting and Oymaağaç will be unveiled as the holder of Nerik.

The scent of Nerik
The geographical location of Oymaağaç, the impressive representative building on top of the acropolis, and especially the tiny cuneiform writing style on the tablet fragments all suggested the excavators might find Nerik here, said Thomas Zimmerman, representative from Anakara's Bilkent University and acting chair of the department of archeology and history of art.
Zimmerman, who is a prehistory specialist focusing on the Anatolian bronze ages, said the tiny cuneiform writing resembled that on clay tablets from the Boğazköy/Hattusha archives dealing with Nerik. He said the writings, along with several ritual texts from the Hittite period, suggested Oymaağaç had to be equated with the important Hittite cultic city of Nerik.

Bronze Age cuneiform fragments
According to Zimmermann, the most prominent findings to date at the Oymaağaç dig, which started two years ago and was expected to finish in 10 years, were the fragments of cuneiform tablets. He said they were the northernmost written sources found in Hittite Anatolia. Also, he said they had found a number of bullae, which are lumps of clay molded around a cord and stamped with a seal to prevent tampering with the contents of a container, from the Hittite imperial period in the late second millennium.
He said the current endeavors on the site focused on a large representative late Bronze Age building � probably a palace or temple � that was well visible in the geomagnetic survey conducted two years ago. Also, he said they were excavating late Iron Age domestic structures, including pits and the foundation walls of several dwellings, set into the debris of the preceding monumental Hittite structure. He said they yielded evidence of weaving and cloth production on a large scale, as evidenced by numerous loom weight and spindle whorls. The latest features discovered at Oymaağaç were several cist graves with multiple burials from the Roman era, Zimmerman said.

The details
In the excavation, consisting of 20 specialists and 15 local laborers from the nearby villages, Bilkent University, Samsun University and Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology of Freie University Berlin are working together.
Previous to the survey, which started in 2005, and excavation of Oymaağaç that started in 2007, the mound was initially discovered in the early 70's by professor Bahadır Alkım and professor Önder Bilgi, the long-term field directors of the İkiztepe excavation, which has been going on for 34 years.
They also emphasized the significance of this place, which revealed its potential after the discovery of several fragments of cuneiform tablets and sealed bullae retrieved during the surveys conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology of Freie University Berlin in 2005 and 2006, which also is in charge of the current excavations led by associate professor Rainer Czichon.
The present major collaborators at university level are Ankara's Bilkent and Samsun Universities. Zimmerman's second collaborator from Bilkent is Ben Claasz Coockson as the senior draftsman, with valuable field experience accumulated at countless digs in Anatolia and Syria in the past decades.
�Long-term research missions largely depend on private funding issued by companies and private donators,� said Zimmermann, who is also the initiator of an accompanying metal analysis project to learn more about the Hittite's largely obscure metal consumption in the second millennium B.C.

Turkish Daily News