Maşat Höyük is a Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 Hittite

Hittites

The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...

 archaeological site 100 km nearly east of Boğazkale

Bogazkale

Boğazkale is a district of Çorum Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is located at 87 km from the city of Çorum. Population of the town is about 1,500. The mayor is Ali Rıza Soysat ....

/Hattusa

Hattusa

Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River ....

, about 20 km south of Zile

Zile

', also known as Zela, is a city and a district of Tokat Province, Turkey. Zile lies to the south of Amasya and the west of Tokat in north-central Turkey...

, Tokat Province

Tokat Province

Tokat Province is a province in northern Turkey. Its adjacent provinces are Amasya to the northwest, Yozgat to the southwest, Sivas to the southeast, and Ordu to the northeast...

, north-central Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. The site is under agricultural use and is plowed. It was first excavated in the 1970s.

History

The enigmatic marauding Kaskas burned this site during Tudhaliya

Tudhaliya

Tudhaliya is the name of several Hittite kings*Tudhaliya is a hypothetic pre-Empire king of the Hittites. He would have reigned in the late 17th century BC . Forlanini conjectures that this king corresponds to the great-grandfather of Hattusili I.*Tudhaliya I , ruled ca...

's reign. The Hittites rebuilt it under the next king Suppiluliuma I

Suppiluliuma I

Suppiluliuma I was king of the Hittites . He achieved fame as a great warrior and statesman, successfully challenging the then-dominant Egyptian empire for control of the lands between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates....

.

Cuneiform tablets from the site form a new archive of Hittite texts. The letters found at Masat Höyük were edited by Sedat Alp

Sedat Alp

Professor Sedat Alp was the first archaeologist in Turkey with a specialization in Hittitology, and is among the foremost names in the field....

 in a two-volume edition in Turkish and German in 1991. Most tablets here are correspondence between the site and the Hittite king, a "Tudhaliya" who was probably Tudhaliya III

Tudhaliya III

Tudhaliya III was a short-lived king of the Hittite Empire ca. 1344 BC ; he may have been the son and successor of Hattusili II, however he is normally viewed as the son and immediate successor of Tudhaliya II . He is never explicitly known to have been king at all...

; most concern the Kaska front. The Hittites' capital at this time was either Sapinuwa

Sapinuwa

Sapinuwa was a Bronze Age Hittite city at the location of modern Ortaköy in Turkey. It was one of the major Hittite religious and administrative centres, a military base and an occasional residence of several Hittite kings...

 (which has been found) or else Samuha

Samuha

Samuha was reputedly a city of the Hittites, a religious centre and for a few years military capital for the empire. Samuha's faith was syncretistic. Rene Lebrun in 1976 called Samuha the "religious foyer of the Hittite Empire"....

 (which has not). One place-name mentioned in the texts is Tabigga/Tabikka, which is now generally considered to be the Hittite name of the Maşat Höyük site.

The site also contains 14th-century Helladic period

Helladic period

Helladic is a modern archaeological term meant to identify a sequence of periods characterizing the culture of mainland ancient Greece during the Bronze Age. The term is commonly used in archaeology and art history...

 ware from mainland Greece.

Archaeology

Wood collected by field archaeologist Tahsin Özgüç

Tahsin Özgüç

Tahsin Özgüç, was an eminent Turkish field archaeologist. His long career, began after the World War II and lasted up to the present, made him doyen of Anatolian archaeology....

 of Ankara University

Ankara University

Ankara University is a public university in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in the Turkish Republic....

 at the upper Hittite level at Masat Höyük has been added to the Aegean Dendrochronology Project, a 30 year-long project established to build tree-ring chronologies for the Eastern half of the Mediterranean. The wood, which was tentatively dated to 1353 BCE, was retrieved from an excavation site of a building where archeologists also had found imported Late Helladic IIIA/B Stirrup jar

Stirrup jar

Stirrup jar is a pottery vessel probably originating in the ancient Mediterranean region. Such vessels were sometimes decorated with painted designs or ornamentation. Throughout history including modern times have created versions of this vessel. Early examples of the stirrup jar have been...

s, a famous form of pottery. In 2005, the project published an updated report on the dendrochronology

Dendrochronology

Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree-rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year...

research results for Anatolia.