Kumtepe

Kumtepe ( sand hill in German ) is a prehistoric settlement hill in the Troas in northwestern Anatolia , about five kilometers northwest of Troy on the west bank of the Karamenderes, the ancient Skamander . Kumtepe consists of four layers, Kumtepe IA, IB, IC and II. The last two were badly damaged in the twentieth century. The hill is oval in shape, about 100 m long and 8 m high.

JW Sperling and Hâmit Zübeyir Koşay carried out the first investigations as part of Blegen's excavations in Troy in 1934, and they found that layers A and B were older than Troy I (around 3000 BC). 1993–1995, under Manfred Korfmann , excavations were carried out again on Kumtepe. It turned out that there was a period of several hundred years between the first layers A and B. The latest ¹⁴ C investigations date layer A to the end of the sixth to the beginning of the fifth millennium BC. The following period B could be dated to the last third of the fourth millennium BC. Layers C and II are roughly at the same time as Troy I.

During the excavations, stone foundations of buildings and ceramics came to light. Large amounts of mussel and oyster remains among the finds in layer A indicate a large proportion of marine animals in the diet, especially since the hills were located directly on the sea during the settlement period. Today it is two kilometers from the coast. According to archaeobotanical studies, figs and legumes are also important for the residents' eating habits. In the following periods, the cultivation of grain gained in importance, initially barley, in period C emmer and einkorn , as well as in Troy I. Among the objects found, obsidian for tools and marble for vessels are in the foreground in layer A , while in Kumtepe B increasingly Copper and bronze were used. Also whorls were among the finds. Ceramic finds from the first excavations can be seen in the museums of Istanbul and Ankara , the findings from the new excavations in the Archaeological Museum of Çanakkale .

In 1995 six pits dug into the rock with squat burials of one adult each were found. In layers B and C, infant burials were found in vessels.

literature

• Utta Gabriel: The first human traces in the area around Troy in Troy - dream and reality . Konrad Theiss Verlag 2001 pp. 343-135 ISBN 3-8062-1543-X
• Jak Yakar: Troy and Anatolian Early Bronze Age chronology in Anatolian Studies 29 pp. 51-67, 1979.

Web links

• TAY project

Individual evidence

1. ^ Erich Ebeling, Bruno Meissner, Dietz Otto Edzard: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Westasiatischen Aräologie Vol. 6 Walter de Gruyter, 1980 S. 341, ISBN 9783110100518 at GoogleBooks
2. ↑ Birgit Brandau: Troia, a city and its myth. Gustav Lübbe Verlag 1997, p. 136, ISBN 3-7857-0874-2