Cilician Kinet Höyük, Cyprus, and the Archaeology of Seaports; Achaemenid Cilicia: Kinet Höyük and Beyond

In this joint lecture, Marie-Henriette Gates and Charles Gates present the Bilkent University excavations at Kinet Höyük, a 3.3-hectare multi-period harbour mound in eastern Cilicia on the Gulf of İskenderun.

Marie-Henriette Gates examines the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age levels as a model for the archaeology of seaports, drawing on Greer Jarrett and Thomas Tartaron to explain how a small site enclosed by the Amanos Mountains functioned as an autonomous relay. In Middle Bronze II (Phase V), a monumental building of the late 18th to 16th centuries BC yielded a Syro-Cilician ceramic assemblage divided by petrographic analyses into numerous imported fabric groups, alongside a Middle Cypriot III to Late Cypriot I import, a coarse crater imitating a Cypriot Bichrome bird crater, and painted tankards with parallels at Tarsus and Hala Sultan Tekke. In the 16th century BC, Kinet became the Hittite port of Izziya in Kizzuwatna (Phase IV), adopting central Anatolian wheel-made pottery alongside metalwork, vessels marked as royal or palace property, hieroglyphic sealings, transport amphorae, and around a hundred Cypriot exports.

Charles Gates surveys Cilicia under Achaemenid Persia through texts, coinage, and archaeology, noting the shift from the Syennesis dynasty at Tarsus to fourth-century military satraps. After reviewing Persepolis-style reliefs at Meydancık Kale and Tatarlı Höyük, he outlines three Persian levels at Kinet Höyük (ancient Issos): Period 5 (c. 540 to 440 BC), with packed-gravel foundations comparable to Susa; Period 4 (c. 440 to 400 BC), with amphora platforms and Attic, Aegean, Cypriot, and Levantine wares; and Period 3B (c. 400 to 330 BC), with fortifications, a gateway, a barracks-like complex, and harbour remains from the era of Cyrus the Younger and Evagoras of Salamis, before contrasting Cilicia with Phoenician Al Mina.