Pathways of communication: roads and routes in

Anatolia from prehistory to Seljuk times

Lutgarde Vandeput | British Institute at Ankara

Over three days in March 2014, the conference ‘Pathways ofcommunication: roads and routes in Anatolia from prehistoryto Seljuk times’ took place in the historic Farabi Auditorium,the largest conference venue of the Faculty of Languages,History and Geography at Ankara University. This event wasan element of the British Institute at Ankara’s Divisions,Connections and Movements: Rethinking Regionalityresearch programme, which has been funded by the BritishAcademy. It was co-organised by the BIAA and AnkaraUniversity, and ran extremely smoothly thanks to theorganisational talents of Leonidas Karakatsanis, who, in turn,was able to count on excellent help from several archaeologystudents and assistants from Ankara University. Over thecourse of the event, more than 450 people attended andparticipated in the discussions.

The aim of the conference was to bring togetherphilologists, ancient historians, epigraphers, ancientgeography specialists and archaeologists to discuss the ancientroutes and roads of Anatolia from different perspectives and todevelop a diachronic perspective on their use anddevelopment from the earliest beginnings to the end of theSeljuk period. Thus, 14 speakers were invited to deliverkeynote papers on overarching topics, and each of thesepapers was presented in combination with two or three otherswhich highlighted specific aspects of the theme introduced bythe keynote address. The positive response to the call forpapers permitted the scientific committee, composed ofDouglas Baird (University of Liverpool), Kutalmış Görkay(Ankara University), John Haldon (Princeton University),Michele Massa (UCL, Koç University’s Research Center forAnatolian Civilizations), Stephen Mitchell (University ofExeter, BIAA) and myself, to choose from many promisingproposals for papers and to select those that would, together,generate the most coherent programme.

The conference started off with a panel on maps, digitalmapping and related possibilities and difficulties in thedigital era; this was followed by a panel on digitalapproaches to roads and networks. These two panels set ageneral framework for the other ten sections that werebroadly arranged in a chronological order, apart from onepanel that had a thematic subject and dealt with sea routes.

The chronological arrangement highlighted several gapsin our knowledge. Whereas the papers on earlier prehistoryby necessity dealt with communication and long-distancetrade routes without developed roads, other contributionsmade it clear that this situation may have changed already inthe course of the third millennium BC, when the combinedaction of pack animals and wheeled vehicles may havehelped shape better-defined roads. However, the pathwaysand extent of Bronze Age roads/routes can only be elicited by

comparing the scant archaeological evidence with later roadnetworks. This is despite the fact that written evidenceclearly indicates the existence of a well-defined road systemin Hittite times, as the panel devoted to that topic nicelydemonstrated. Surprisingly, the information we have onroutes and roads through Anatolia between the Hittite and theHellenistic periods is thin and patchy for many regions ofTurkey throughout the Iron Age. Even for the Hellenisticperiod a large question mark remains over the appearance,density and course of roads.

This is partly due to the expansion of the built-roadsystem in the Roman imperial period. The contributions tothe conference clearly showed the wealth of material fromthis period. Not only are paved stretches of roads preserved,so too are milestones, inscriptions related to routes and roadsas well as literary evidence. What is more, papers dealingwith newly-recovered material made it clear that much moreis still waiting to be discovered. The careful plotting ofremaining stretches of roads as well as other remainsindicating the existence of a road in ancient times have led tothe partial reconstruction of local road networks in certainareas. This work has also revealed how, in less denselyinhabited areas, local tracks in some cases still follow thoseof the Roman period. Remarkably, the amount and variety ofinformation on routes and roads for the post-Roman period isless rich and we are largely dependant on road-relatedstructures for reconstruction.

The conference thus collected together, for the first time,material on the routes and roads of Anatolia across a widespan of time and considered it from a variety of angles.Among the important results is the recognition of thelongevity of the main long-distance routes through thecountry and an understanding of the clear impact oflandscape and geography on the course of these ‘highways’.The importance of natural features was a recurrent element inthe papers dealing with long-distance routes as well as thoseconsidering local networks of roads. An edited volume basedon the conference papers is currently in preparation.

14 | Heritage Turkey | 2014

Conference participants and organisers outside the event venue at Ankara University.