A new look at an ancient city: An outline of the chronological and urban development of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša

Abstract

The intense use of scientific dating over the last three decades makes it possible for the first time reasonably to connect the topographically diverse parts of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša. Not only was the decision to found a city at this site based on pre-Hittite parameters, but at the same time, it also becomes clear that the settlement is one of the very few in Anatolia which was continuously used from the end of the third millennium BC through the second millennium until the beginning of the Iron Age. Furthermore, the accumulation of radiocarbon dates in individual, archaeologically intensively studied areas of the site makes it now possible to understand the development as a dynamic and fluent process. Based on the results outlined here, permanent moves back and forth of the settled areas within a geographically defined space can be reconstructed. The Hittite city of Ḫattuša was always a construction site. Next to densely built-up districts there existed at all times large expanses of either ruins of buildings or of open spaces, which could have been used as pasture or arable land. The settlement’s map, regularly reproduced as its overall plan, thus represents a status reconstructed or idealised by modern research. Most probably the settlement was at no time occupied to this extent, and accordingly never looked like this in its history.