Archaeological landscapes are composed of diverse places and intertwined temporalities. From the black slag dumps and deforested plateaus of Paphlagonia to its settlements on terraces surveying gardens and marshes, places are not singular, but connected in a web of always changing social and natural relations. This chapter lays the framework for an archaeology of Achaemenid Paphlagonia by introducing the multiple temporalities of the physical and social landscapes. The geological, ecological, and geomorphological components of the physical landscape do not become the ground upon which the social landscape emerges; rather, they become players that share in the development of the archaeological landscape. Consequently, this chapter introduces only the features of the physical landscape relevant to the analysis of the Achaemenid landscape: seismicity, aquifers, mining, forest cover, deforestation, and alluvial deposition. The engagement of these natural landscape features in the Achaemenid social landscape, particularly mining and aquifers, are described in subsequent chapters.
This chapter continues with an introduction to the routes that connect the subregions segmented by the topography. Through a description of the location of representative settlements and routes, I demonstrate how connectivity can integrate the diverse places of Paphlagonia. Connectivity is, however, dependent on an accurate reconstruction of the settlement pattern as well as the ancient physical landscape, and the chapter closes with an analysis of that pattern. This analysis is prefaced by a discussion of how the
limitations of Achaemenid ceramic chronologies and the methodologies of the surveys in Paphlagonia affect our confidence in the settlement patterns of the Achaemenid period.
B. Geological landscape
Geology is an important component of the relationship between people and their landscape in a region as mountainous as Paphlagonia. From tectonics to high terrain and from ore deposits to limestone aquifers, numerous geological processes and features are active players in this relationship. The following summary of the geological landscape introduces the processes and features that played a part in the archaeological landscape of the Achaemenid period.
i. Seismicity
Tectonics is the foundation of the process of orogeny that produced the mountainous southward progression of Paphlagonia, from the coastal Küre Mountain Range to the
Daday-Devrekani and Ilgaz Massifs in the middle, and the Köroğlu Mountain Range at
the border of the Anatolian Plateau. The temporality of tectonics consists simultaneously of the contrasting temporalities of this orogeny and the experienced geological events, such as earthquakes. The landscape continues to be seismically active and earthquakes
frequent the memories of the inhabitants.62 Earthquakes in Paphlagonia occur along
faults when stress is suddenly released, and these memories are often coupled with the tears and ruptures in the landscape that the earthquakes cause.
62 An earthquake centered east of Taşköprü in 1919 is still remembered by the inhabitants of the nearby village of Samanlıören built on the Kaygunca fault (Dirik 2004; O. Yılmaz 1980:123 fig. 17, 124; Boztuğ and O. Yılmaz 1995:36 fig. 2, 38-9). Samanlıören is the location of Iron Age settlement of Yüklütepe (C.6).
The principal branch of the North Anatolian Fault Zone runs south of the Ilgaz Massif
from east of Kargı, through Tosya, north of Ilgaz, and to the Gerede Valley in the west
(fig. 7). Lateral displacement, with the north moving east and the south moving west,
characterizes this branch of the fault zone.63 The motion of the fault is visible in the
landscape of Kargı where a sheer cliff rises behind the town, and the Kızılırmak and its
northern tributaries flow in a rectilinear pattern.64 Secondary fault zones run through the
Kızılırmak Valley south of Çankırı and the Gökırmak Valley. The Kızılırmak Fault Zone
splays off the North Anatolian Fault Zone and runs from the northeast to the southwest.65
In the Gökırmak Valley from Boyabat to Kastamonu, the Ekinveren Fault Zone is a series
of thrust faults that arc across the northern border of the Kastamonu-Boyabat Basin.66
The result of these tectonic processes is a landscape with narrow linear valleys
following the fault lines that alternate with sedimentary basins. The Gökırmak Valley is
one such basin filled with Cretaceous to Eocene sediments.67 Other basins are the Sinop,
Devrekani, Vezirköprü, Kargı, Tosya, Ilgaz, and Çankırı.68 With the exception of the
Çankırı Basin, the gentle slopes and fertile soils of these basins are the most amenable to
agriculture. The salt-bearing evaporates of the Çankırı Basin produce infertile soils, and
63Şengör et al. 2004:20-5, 31-2; Matthews and Glatz 2009a:36-7. In their review of historical earthquakes along the North Anatolian Fault Zone, Şengör and others refer “for the sake of provocation” to the absence of historical references to earthquakes around Ilgaz as the “Paphlagonian Temporal Seismic Gap” (2004:40)!
64 The Kızılırmak River flows along the fault. With the south’s continual movement westward, the northern tributaries are unable to erode acute angles (Tüysüz and Erturaç 2005:29-33). The sharp bend in the course of the Kızılırmak near Kargı is an additional consequence of the seismic offset (Şengör et al. 2004:32).
65 Kaymakçı 2000:6-7; Kaymakçı, White and Vandijk 2003:87-90.
66 O. Yılmaz 1980:122-4; Sonel et al. 1989:45-6; Tüysüz 1999:77 fig. 2, 87 fig. 7.
67 The Gökırmak Valley is composed of the Daday and the Kastamonu-Boyabat Basins (Aydın et al. 1986, Tüysüz 1999, Leren et al. 2007:405-7).
even these soils have completely eroded between Çankırı and the Kızılırmak River.69 The valleys that are not structurally basins are primarily north-south running valleys formed by erosion and the Quaternary coastal estuaries and deltas.
ii. Aquifers
Additionally, the tectonic processes are associated with several aquifer and mineral bearing geological formations that surveys have demonstrated to be meaningful places in
the landscape during the Achaemenid period. The İnaltı limestone is one such feature.
The limestone is exposed along the fault lines of the Ekinveren Fault Zone within the
Gökırmak Valley and on its northern border (fig. 8).70 Springs generally arise where
faults cause variations in the flow of ground water, but the İnaltı limestone is additionally
an aquifer. In places along the Ekinveren Fault Zone, the limestone lies in near-vertical beds unconformably sandwiched between earlier impermeable metamorphic rocks and the later, weakly consolidated sands and impermeable clays. Settlements in the
Gökırmak Valley are located near the springs that emerge from the aquifer along the
faults. The relationship between karst characteristics of the limestone and archaeological evidence suggest, however, that the limestone played a more significant role in the landscape than just influencing settlement locations.
Although sometimes simply considered as passive features of the geological landscape, phreatic caves and other karst geological features are numerous in the areas of
Paphlagonia north of the Gökırmak River where the İnaltı limestone is visible. The
limestone is a Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous cover formation that is buried by
69 Kaymakçı, White and Vandijk 2003:87-8; Matthews and Glatz 2009a:42.
70 Derman and Sayılı 1995, Tüysüz 1999:78, Ustaömer and Robertson 1997:274 fig. 11. The İnaltı limestone is exposed at a fault near the mouth of the Karadere Stream 8 km west of Taşköprü and along the entire northern border of the Gökırmak Valley from Boyabat to Kastamonu.
subsequent sedimentation in the basins, such as in the Gökırmak Valley, and uplifted and penetrated by subsequent orogeny in the Küre Range. In the Koru Polje and adjacent
closed depressions of a karst plateau to the south and east of the summit of Yaralıgöz
Mountain in the Küre Range, water flows through a series of swallow holes and resurgences before draining on the surface. Although the freezing and thawing of the holes are a yearly event referred to by the local inhabitants as “Koru has exploded,” no archaeological evidence exists to support the significance of the yearly resurgences in
antiquity.71 The Koru Polje demonstrates, however, that the phreatic features of the İnaltı
limestone share the contrasting temporality of the geological event and the process seen in the seismicity. A discussion of the archaeological evidence for the significance of the
İnaltı limestone during the Achaemenid period in the Gökırmak Valley is found in the
fifth chapter. The following paragraphs illustrate various phreatic features of the karst landscape in the Küre Range where archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze Age and Byzantine period connects phreatic features of the limestone with long-term local practices.
In August of 1992, a group of British spelunkers discovered a Hittite sword in a cave
in İnaltı limestone near Pınarbaşı.72 The limestone forms cliffs that define the eastern
71 The swallow holes are frozen in the winter, and, in the spring, water bursts through the resurgences causing flooding in villages downstream. Snow cover in the plateaus lasts 4-5 months (Bottema, Woldring and Aytuğ 1993/1994:19). The villagers refer to the event as “koru patladı” (Uzun 2004). The plateau is located 7.5 km from the slag dumps in the Alaçam Valley associated with the Iron Age and Hellenistic settlement at Garipoğlu Kayası (also Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, B.2). Routes
to the Black Sea at Çatalzeytin are passable in the summer.
72 The Hittitologist who published the sword gives an “incredible” provenance for this chance find. “The sword was found in a cave, called by locals Buz Mağarası (‘Ice-Cave’), which lies in a steep canyon…. Buz Mağarası canyon … derives its name from the huge masses of ice inside the cave which form grotesque deposits, predominantly made of stalactites and stalagmites. Hard though it may be to believe, it is claimed that the sword, embedded in ice and icicles, was found inside the ‘Ice-Cave’ by a group of British speleologists….” (Ünal 1999:210). Imagining Arthurian legends to be written of a Hittite ‘Sword in the Ice,’ I immediately associated the provenance with the relief of the “Sword-god of
border of the Pınarbaşı Valley on a tributary of the Devrekani River in the west of the
Küre Range.73 The cave, Mızrak Mağarası, is a gently descending active phreatic tube
formed in limestone with a single gently ascending extension with numerous inlets where the sword was discovered. In the words of sword’s discoverer, Chris Daly:
“Beyond the duck was an immature streamway - the spear head was very lightly calcited in, and had been held by a small gour lip. (My memory of this is good as it was one of the highlights of my caving career!) It had washed in from the nearby surface through this very small inlet. Beyond, the inlet was too tight. The spear was in my opinion not arranged but accidently washed in” (pers. comm.).
A second and more probable explanation for the provenance of the sword is that it was deposited in the cave, and, during an exsurgence event, the sword was carried in the pressurized water to the extension. Exsurgence occurs when water percolating through the rock during a storm floods the tube and flows out the mouth. The villagers report that the cave exsurges every 6 to 7 years.
My research into the limestone landscape of Mızrak Mağarası led me to redefine as
geological many phreatic features of the landscape that appear in archaeological literature as artificial. Active phreatic features form below the water table in the zone of saturated rock; often they become inactive due to a drop in the water table or uplift along a fault. A
Byzantine settlement on Doğanlar Kayası located 5.5 km to the northeast of the copper
mines at Küre has three stepped tunnels that have been interpreted as ritual because they
do not lead to water sources.74 The tunnels of Doğanlar Kayası are inactive branching
the Underworld” in Tudhaliya IV’s funerary chamber at the extramural natural limestone sanctuary of Yazılıkaya (Bittel et al. 1975:pl. 62 no. 82). With respect to the ‘Sword-in-the-Ice’, however, my correspondence with the leader of the British spelunkers, Shane Harris, and his published and unpublished reports revealed that Ünal’s provenance was not credible (Harris 1992, 1993). The
coordinates of Mızrak Mağarası are 41.5934° N, 33.1346° E.
73 The Valla Canyon cuts through İnaltı limestone and separates the Pınarbaşı Valley from the mouth of the Devrekani River on the Black Sea.
74 Jacopi 1937:9, 16, pl. 7 fig. 23, pl. 16 fig. 56; Jacopi 1938:8, pl. 4 fig. 12. Jacopi interprets the tunnels at Doğanlar Kayası, Molla Ahmet Kalesi, and Kılıçkaya as temple tunnels (cf. Gökoğlu 1952:123-4, 126;
phreatic tubes with steps carved into them. The tubes have phreatic features, such as avens, and follow fissures in the limestone. Interpretation of the tunnels is difficult, because the carving of the steps alone is not a significant endeavor, but only a slight alteration to the phreatic tubes. The Ilgarini Cave, however, does provide further evidence of where caves are placed in the imaginative landscape of Byzantine Paphlagonia.
Ilgarini Cave is located near the Valla Canyon of the Devrekani River downstream
from the Pınarbaşı Valley. The mouth and galleries of the Ilgarini Cave are much larger
than the phreatic tubes of the Mızrak and Doğanlar Kayası Caves. In the mouth of the
cave is a Byzantine settlement of approximately ten houses. The cave branches after 70 m and the descending branch leads to two level galleries in succession, each gallery with a chapel and numerous graves. Dendrochronological analysis dates the graves and
chapels to the tenth century C.E.75 The descending branch of the cave is an active
phreatic tube and the placement of the cemeteries there indicates, first, the intertwined relations between the natural and social landscape. Secondly, the placement demonstrates the associations between phreatic caves and a watery underworld in the
imagined landscape of the Byzantine period.76 In chapters 3 and 5, I argue for a
comparable imagined landscape of Paphlagonia that combines phreatic caves, mining, and the mythical figure of Herakles.
von Gall 1967b:513 no. 15, 521-7; Belke 1996:242-3 s.v. Küre, 253; Marek 2003:27 fig. 35). For a speleological report on Doğanlar Kayası, see Altay (1987:7). The coordinates of Doğanlar Kayası are 41.8253° N, 33.7718° E.
75 Gökoğlu 1952:129-31; Ülkümen et al. 1983:5-6, 8; Akkemik, Aytuğ and Güzel 2004. The coordinates of Ilgarini Cave are 41.7630° N, 33.0160° E, approximate.
iii. Mining
During orogeny, copper ore-bearing metamorphic rocks were intruded into the İnaltı
limestone north of the Gökırmak Valley. De Jesus separates the ore into the Küre and
Taşköprü groups (fig. 9).77 The Küre deposits (B.8) are a massive sulfide deposit with
vast reserves that radiocarbon dating and historical sources demonstrate to have been actively mined from the twelfth century C.E. to the present day. Lead isotope analyses of excavated artifacts and the copper ore and slag samples from Küre demonstrate that the mining at Küre had begun in the Early Bronze Age. Until the twentieth century, mining occurred in the Bakibaba deposit; this is accessible from the summit of the ridge running from south to north above Küre and by tunneling through basalts along the slope. The basalts sandwich the copper ore that runs from the surface downwards in a bed parallel to
the ridge.78 The mining at Küre today is centralized on the west slope of the ridge.
Mining before Ottoman industrialization, however, was apparently more dispersed over the landscape.
The mining of the Taşköprü group of copper ore deposits was even more dispersed in
antiquity. The deposits are found in the northeastern part of Daday-Devrekani Massif: in
mountains that separate the Gökırmak Valley from the Devrekani Plain in the west and in
the Çangal Mountains further east.79 The ore bearing deposits are within the intrusive
metamorphosed igneous serpentinite.80 In the west, the Gökırmak Valley is separated
from the copper bearing deposits only by the Ekinveren Fault Zone and the ridge of the
77 De Jesus 1980:21-2, 190-1, 358-9 table 3, 379 map 7. Küre is in group II-1, and Taşköprü is in group I- 2. See also Wagner and Öztunalı 2000:63 s.v. TG162 (Küre) and TG163 (Taşköprü).
78 Çakır, Genç and Paktunç 2006:124-6.
79 The northern half of Elekdağ south of the Gökırmak consists of the same copper ore bearing metamorphic rock. I tentatively infer that this is the location of the slag dumps mentioned by Fourcade and Kastamonu Project (see B.9).
İnaltı limestone that walls of the northern border of the valley. In the east, a zone of volcanic rock and eroded valleys with poor soils falls between the Ekinveren Fault Zone and the copper bearing deposits. Although these are not economically viable deposits, judging by contemporary industrial standards, mining at small surface deposits and traces of smelting slag were probably spread over the landscape in antiquity. Prospection for copper ore has located deposits with varying reserves at the threshold of contemporary viability at Cünür north of the settlement of Yüklütepe, which was occupied in the
Achaemenid period (C.6). Copper ore deposits have also been located throughout the
Karadere catchment north of the Achaemenid fortified settlement at Kalekapı (C.7), as
well as in the Alaçam Valley around Boyalı and in the Çatalçam Valley at Çaybaşı.81
Only three sites with smelting slag dumps have been surveyed: at Bakırboku near the
Kepez/Doğandere ore deposit in the upper Karadere Valley (B.4), at Davud’un Yeri near
the Boyalı ore deposit (B.3), and at Çaybaşı, adjacent to Ottoman mining shafts (B.1).
To the south of the Ilgaz Massif, the mines in the Köroğlu Range are as dispersed as
the Taşköprü group. The Köroğlu Range extends south of the primary strand of the
North Anatolian Fault Zone in the Devrez Valley. Compressed into an arc, the mountains
are intrusive metamorphic and volcanic rocks that define the boundary of the Çankırı