New tin mines and production sites near Kultepe in Turkey: a third-millennium BC highland production model.

Yener, K. Aslihan ; Kulakoglu, Fikri ; Yazgan, Evren 等

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Introduction

Prior to the identification of Anatolian tin, scholars argued that tin was necessarily traded into the region from Central Asia, Afghanistan or Europe for consumption in the Near East (see Muhly 1985, 1993; Stollner et al. 2011). Rather than seeing early copper-tin alloys as products of long-distance exchange, we can now hypothesise that innovations in technology, which focused on the primary extraction of tin ores, allowed Early Bronze Age Anatolian alloys to be produced locally (Yener 2009). They were also probably traded through regional networks that linked these regions to other areas of production and consumption in Anatolia.

Evidence that emerged in 1987 prompted the publication, in Antiquity, of the first stannite tin occurrence at Bolkardag in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey (Yener & Ozbal 1987); this radically altered implications for the source of tin used in the production of high-grade bronzes, especially for the third millennium BC. Subsequent excavations and surveys at the Early Bronze Age (calibrated radiocarbon date 3240-3100 BC to 2870-2200 BC) Kestel tin mine and its contemporary production centre, Goltepe, established the existence of a multi-tiered production, exchange and consumption system (Yener 2000). Chronologically and functionally related, these two sites became the template for a highland production model of bronze manufacture for southern Anatolia in the Early Bronze Age.

The Early Bronze Age Anatolian highland production model (Yener 2000) is one that involves the two-tiered production of metal artefacts and the use of a diverse resource base. The first tier encompassed mining and smelting operations in the regions where rich ore deposits and forests were located, usually in the mountains. The second tier comprised lowland urban centres where the processed ores, in the form of either metal ingots or semi-processed materials, were refined, re-melted, alloyed and cast into various idiosyncratic metal assemblages. In addition to the emergence of this hierarchical organisation of production, adapted technologies were selected to use the highly variable polymetallic ores of the Anatolian highlands. For example, evidence from Arslantepe, located along the Upper Euphrates near to modern Malatya, provides excellent evidence for the use of local polymetallic ores through time. At Arslantepe Late Chalcolithic communities used ores with significant traces of antimony, arsenic, bismuth, nickel and silver; by the Early Bronze Age copper-iron sulphides dominated (Palmieri et al. 1999). Analysis of finished metal artefacts from this period, however, showed not only a predominance of arsenical copper but also the consumption of copper-silver and copper-arsenic-nickel (Hauptmann et al. 2002). A similar engagement with polymetallic ores and adapted technologies is evident in both highland Iran (Thornton 2009) and the Transcaucasus (Courcier 2014). Analysis of highland metallurgical debris and finished artefacts demonstrates that there was probably no one single optimal strategy in early metal production and, furthermore, that these production strategies represent the intentional use of a diverse resource base that was based on cultural knowledge.

This can be contrasted in part with our understanding of the organisation of metal production in the southern Levant. Thornton (2009) correctly characterised production strategies in this region as distinct from those of highland Anatolia and Iran; in the southern Levant Thornton describes the well-known shift from site-centred smelting and melting in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age I (c. 4200-3000 BC) into a more diversified, large-scale and centralised mode of production during the Early Bronze Age II-III (c. 3000-2300 BC). This shift also followed a pattern of production that took place outside of habitation areas where ingots of metal, rather than ores, were imported (see also Levy 1995; Golden et al. 2001; Genz & Hauptmann 2002; Levy et al. 2002). This reorganisation of production is similar to our understanding of metal production in Syro-Mesopotamia (Stech 1999), where peripheral highland resource areas supplied lowland consumers with a range of valuable metal products (Algaze 2008).

This important social shift during the Early Bronze Age II and III in the southern Levant also included changes in technology. Empirical evidence suggests that in earlier periods, smiths produced copper using crucible-based technologies and relatively homogenous iron-rich tile ores. Later, a shift towards the use of manganese-rich ores and furnace-based smelting allowed a larger scale production of relatively pure copper (Hauptmann et al. 1992: 7; Craddock 2001). It was also during this time that the first tin-bronzes were produced in the southern Levant, which indicates a formal alloying technology using imported primary tin and copper ingots (Hauptmann 2003). This contrasts somewhat with Anatolia, which saw a similar degree of diversification and hierarchical production; in Anatolia, however, a more diverse resource base extended the range of technological possibilities. Traditionally, bronze making was thought to segue naturally from using arsenic as the alloying material in the formative fourth to third millennia BC to the use of tin in the third millennium BC. According to text-based evidence, during the early second millennium BC tin was brought from the exotic lands of the east, potentially including Afghanistan and Central Asia, by caravans of Assyrian traders in search of gold and silver in Turkey (ancient Anatolia). Old Assyrian texts found at Kultepe testify to the existence during this period of a highly organised and sophisticated metals trade that possibly linked tin resources from central Asia (see Boroffka et al. 2002; Parzinger 2002) to central Anatolia by way of Babylonia and Assyria (Larsen 1976; Dercksen 1996, 2005). With the decades of research that followed, this simple picture was shown to be far from complete, especially for Early Bronze Age Anatolia.

During the late 1980s excavations at an Early Bronze Age tin mine at Kestel and its associated miners' village, Goltepe, in the central Taurus Mountains near Camardi, Nigde, shed light on the origins of 5000-year-old tin bronze figurines, implements and crucible fragments previously found at Tell Judaidah in the Amuq valley, Hatay (Adriaens et al. 2002). Kestel mine was discovered by the Turkish Mining and Geological Directorate during mineralogical surveying in metal-rich zones of the Taurus; the results of subsequent archaeometallurgical investigations yielded the solution to a major enigma that had been puzzling scholars for decades--a source of the elusive tin of antiquity. The discovery of tin in Turkey attracted attention after its publication in Science (Yener et al. 1989) and much heated discussion followed (Muhly 1993). The realisation that multiple tin sources could have been exploited in the Near East was surprising, and the viability of extrapolating the sourcing of tin from second millennium BC contexts backwards into the earlier periods from c. 3000-2000 BC was called into question (Yener 2000, 2009).

Almost 30 years after the first publication, an archaeometallurgy survey has been conducted by the authors documenting the sources and occurrences of tin in Turkey; the highland tin-production model has now been extended to include the Hisarcik-Kiranardi, Kayseri Erciyes area north of the initial discovery of cassiterite reported in the Taurus range. This unexpected source of a polymetallic ore deposit of tin (cassiterite), combined with arsenic (yazganite), located in the foothills of the stratovolcano, Erciyes (Roman Argaeus) in the Kayseri Plain, 26km south of the site of Kultepe, has profound implications for defining a major production zone in the hinterland of the largest Early Bronze Age settlement in Central Anatolia, ancient Kanesh (see Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey website 2013). The development and exploitation of local and exotic ore bodies for the production of copper alloys by these third-millennium BC polities could be viewed as one of the magnets attracting Assyrian merchants in the second millennium BC.

The discovery of the Hisarcik deposits

The Hisarcik cassiterite deposits were discovered by the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration, specifically by geologist Evren Yazgan (Pehlivan et al. 2005; Yazgan 2005). Cassiterite was observed together with other oxides of iron and arsenic on the north-east slopes of Erciyes Dag near modern Hisarcik and Zincidere in the province of Kayseri. The tin is unevenly mineralised inside pyroclastic rocks with acid composition formed by volcanic emissions ejected into the atmosphere, which then settled as bedded deposits, forming the foundations for long ridges such as Senir Sirti (Figure 1) where scores of mining galleries were located. These ridges formed through seasonal erosion by intermittent streams, leaving in some places exposed rocky outcroppings (Figure 2). The evidence clearly indicates a complex relationship between the tin and the volcano, Erciyes (Figure 3). Archaeologists generally associated volcanoes in Turkey with obsidian sources; they were not known to be a source of metal ores, much less tin.

The iron-tin-arsenic ores were deposited in fumeroles within soft, easily carved material, allowing the mineral to be readily extracted, even with antler and horn. The new mineral (Na[Fe.sup.3+][sub.2](Mg, Mn)[(As[O.sub.4]).sub.3] [H.sub.2]O) was named yazganite after Evren Yazgan who discovered it. This mineral is unique to the andesitic volcanic complex, occurring in association with tridymite, hematite, cassiterite, magnetite, orpiment and realgar (Sarp & Cerny 2005). Independent analyses of the ore deposits near Hisarcik (Yalcin & Ozbal 2009) confirmed the presence of tin in the still extant occurrences. The Erciyes volcanic rocks present a petrographic composition that changes from a basalt to basaltic andesite, andesite, dacite or rhyolite. The illustrated samples bearing cassiterite and yazganite minerals (Figures 4 & 5) come from the edges of fissures in the porphyric pyroxene andesitic rocks at Senir Sirti. At Senir Sirti these fissures were developed as near-surface extension fractures on the northwestern and south-eastern sides during the Upper Pliocene. Cassiterite, yazganite, hematite and trydimite mineral paragenesis have developed on the cavity walls as coating materials in the near-surface open fractures. According to fluid inclusions studies, the common formation temperature for cassiterite and yazganite is between 460-580[degrees]C. Four hundred degrees Celsius is a critical temperature for the hydrothermal solutions; above 400[degrees]C all of the aqueous solutions transform in a gaseous phase (Yazgan in press). The metallic elements Sn (tin), As (arsenic), Fe (iron) and Mg (magnesium) are transported with halogene group elements F (fluorine), Cl (chlorine), Br (bromine) and I (iodine) in the fumerolian gaseous phase, which is why the cassiterite and yazganite minerals form on the cavity walls as coating materials. Oxides form during the gaseous phase and deposit, presumably upon cooling at near surface temperatures. Similar shallow levels of tin-mineralisation emplacement with close associations with stratovolcanic processes were also observed in Bolivia (Sillitoe et al. 1975). It is important to emphasise that unlike the Kestel mine, many of the Hisarcik deposits are not vein-type deposits, but are more superficially deposited on the interior surfaces of the fumeroles and fissures; those observed at Zincidere are the exception. The natural exposure of these fissures would have enabled extraction of the ore deposits without the time- and energy-intensive mining technologies associated with extracting ores from veins in hard host rocks.

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In 2013 as part of the Kultepe survey and excavations, investigations began at the second tin source on the foothills of the volcano Erciyes at Hisarcik and Zincidere. A portable X-ray fluorescence analyser was used alongside the survey efforts to identify the presence or absence of major ore types rapidly. Semi-quantitative analysis of ores was conducted using an internally calibrated procedure developed for the compositional analysis of ores; this analysis was conducted using the instrument in mining mode, which is a suitable method for measuring major and minor concentrations of metal elements (for the basic limitations of current portable X-ray fluorescence technology, see Liritzis & Zacharias 2011). These new tools have also allowed the rapid identification and characterisation of complex ore bodies, and the discovery of new and hitherto unknown alloys and sophisticated crafting of ancient metal artefacts in museums. Multiple, semi-quantitative portable X-ray fluorescence analyses (in weight per cent, wt.%) of the Hisarcik ores at the Kerim household location yielded significant but variable values up to 90.7% [Fe.sub.2][O.sub.3], 20.4% Sn[O.sub.2] and 11.8% As, in addition to significant impurities of antimony, manganese and zinc (Table 1 & Figure 6).

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The concurrence of tin and iron would have presented significant challenges to ancient smelters hoping to reduce tin metal from these ores. Given the similarity in the reducibility of iron and tin oxides, tin smelters would have faced a trade-off. Under low reducing conditions, slags rich in tin would be produced, effectively reducing the efficiency of the smelt, even if metallic prills of tin could be retrieved. Conversely, to reduce the amount of tin-rich slag under high reducing conditions, significant quantities of iron would also be reduced into a product called hardhead (an iron-tin alloy) (Wright 1982; Grant 1994: 456; Smith 1996: 91). The Hisarcik ores could also have been used in co-smelting or mixed smelting operations to produce tin alloys directly through a primary smelting process. Rovira et al. 2009 demonstrated a simple co-smelting technique, experimenting by adding copper ores with cassiterite into a crucible to produce prills that were highly variable in tin (up to 81%). The pXRF analyses were confirmed by more precise measurements using a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer at KUYTAM (Surface Technologies Center) at Koc University in Istanbul.

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Early Bronze Age II-III and even earlier Late Chalcolithic ceramics (Figure 7 & Figure 8: 1-6) found in association with the mining galleries shed light on the preliminary dating of the mines. Similar Red Slip wares, such as are seen in Figure 7 (7 & 9) and Figure 8 (3 & 4), stem from west Anatolian Early Bronze Age settlements. Red- and fine-burnished wares such as are shown in Figure 7 (4 & 6) and Figure 8 (5 & 6) were also excavated at Goltepe and dated to the Early Bronze Age II and III. Wares with mottling and dark or light burnishing, as seen in Figure 7 (1-3) and Figure 8 (1 Sc 2), are also known from the Late Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age in this region. Soundings planned for the future will hopefully provide samples for radiocarbon dates. The diagnostic sherds were found on Senir Sirti, one of the ridges that had multiple mining galleries. Comparable with archaeometallurgical finds at the Kestel mine and Goltepe (Kaptan 1995; Yener 2000, 2008), the ceramics as well as grinding stones were strewn on the surface near the gallery entrances, presumably as part of seasonal workshops for the initial processing of the ore at the mines.

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Predictably, akin to the linked and functionally related sites of Goltepe and Kestel Mine, 2km away from the mines on Senir Sirti was a fortified processing site, Teknekayasi Hoyuk (Figure 9), a major second-tier site. Located 24km from Kultepe, the mound measures 250 x 180m, and it was discovered during the Kayseri survey (Kontani et al. 2012, 2014a & b). A preliminary surface survey on this site in 2013 yielded Early Bronze Age II pottery together with Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery (Figure 10). Furthermore, ore-processing mortars, hammer stones, multi-hollow anvils and grinding equipment found on the surface are components of the highland production model, and are therefore suggestive of a second-tier specialised processing and habitation site.

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Discussion

The highland production model is one that involves metals, precious not only in terms of economic value but also critical beyond calculation for their role in the negotiation of status and power, and their embodiment of a value-added commodity for trade. These new ways of making things and organising production reveal much about the nature of society. Recent research in ancient metallurgy and its sources have led to a better understanding of cultural relations, especially during the formative periods of metal technology and state formation in Anatolia. Once metal became locked into a cultural system as an indicator of wealth, disparities in access to labour and resources influenced how individuals operated within and between communities of producers and consumers. These relations often linked distant groups together into cooperative agreements, hence the Assyrian commercial network. Therefore, metal technologies are strategically placed in complex networks and institutions of production, exchange and consumption that effectively unite disparate highland resource areas and agricultural lowlands (Lehner & Yener 2014).

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Clearly, the hinterland of the Early Bronze Age kingdom of Kanesh has provided extensive evidence of a rich and varied industrial resource for production and trade supplementing its abundant agricultural yields from the Kayseri region. We use the term 'kingdom' advisedly; texts such as the later sar tamhari, 'King of Battle' legends of Akkadian kings Naram-Sin and Sargon (Ozguc 1986; Westenholz 1997), refer to a 'king' of Kanesh in the third millennium BC. Recent surface surveys (Kontani et al. 2014b) indicate that by the Early Bronze Age a three-tiered settlement hierarchy, indicative of a markedly complex settlement system, existed in proximity to the massive site of Kultepe. The three-tiered characteristic of the production sites near Kultepe-Kanesh is the relationship between mine, processing site and urban centre; this system of interconnected tiers suggests that some networks established in the Early Bronze Age were at least maintained and possibly strengthened in later periods. Furthermore, they were the backdrop of the subsequent Assyrian merchant trade. While the lower town (karum) of Kanesh was the location of multiple metal workshops in the second millennium BC (Ozguc 1955; Lehner 2014a), it is not yet known whether levels III and IV in the lower town were established prior to the Assyrian merchants' presence, nor whether the Early Bronze Age levels on the mound contained metal workshops; these all remain future avenues for investigation (Kulakoglu 2010, 2011; Kulakoglu & Kangal 2010; Ezer 2014). Furthermore, the specific consequences for local bronze of the ready availability of Assyrian commercial tin in the second millennium BC remains a question for future investigation. Qualitative X-ray fluorescence analysis of a crucible with slaggy encrustations from the new mound excavations at Early Bronze Age Kanesh demonstrates that the crucible was used to process copper with tin and arsenic. These results are consistent with copper melting and the secondary production of copper alloys at the site. Primary metal products or scrap were therefore probably transported to the site for secondary production into finished objects. This pattern of production and trade is observed in later contexts at Kanesh and also at Late Bronze Age regional centres such as Hattusha and Alalakh.

Given the complex Middle Bronze Age copper alloys of Kanesh, which demonstrate a major grouping of copper-tin alloys with greater than 1% arsenic (Esin 1969; Lehner 2014a), it is increasingly likely that the knowledge of making bronzes using local sources of tin and arsenic was already established long before Assyrian merchants described the importation and trade of tin in economic texts. Understanding the existence and importance of such ternary alloys of bronze containing tin and arsenic, as well as other exotic alloys such as high-nickel- and high-antimony-bronzes, has taken on a new urgency. Analyses just completed by Lehner of third and second millennium BC copper alloys from Bogazkoy-Hattusa (Lehner 2014b; Lehner & Schachner in press) and Kultepe-Kanesh, as well as new analyses of Late Bronze Age Alalakh (Ozbal 2006), and Tarsus bronzes (Kurucayirli & Ozbal 2005; Kurucayirli 2007) have all revealed these unusual alloying combinations. Such ternary alloys have often been attributed to the re-melting of scrap metals, the collapse of trade networks, scarcity and other socio-economic reasons. Closer examination of the ore deposits has, however, revealed an alternative explanation: local production using the variations within myriad regional ore bodies. A similar observation has also been published by Radivojevic et al. (2013) for the Balkans. They suggest that mixed smelting of stannite, fahlore and chalcopyrite produced compositionally variable copper-tin alloys c. 6500 BP. Here we see the importance of mixed smelting in the earliest dated copper-tin alloys. This study gives the survey and characterisation of smaller occurrences of tin more urgency. Archaeological and geological survey of tin placer deposits in river valleys at Mount Cer in western Serbia, for example, shows a rise in possible Bronze Age settlements in locations particularly rich with tin placer ores (Huska et al. 2014), which further suggests that the localised production of tin-bronzes in south-east Europe is increasingly plausible.

Conclusions

The suggestion that highland regions promote diversity is not a novel concept. Regional environments and resource distributions in the Anatolian highlands influenced diverse institutions of production and specialisation; the Hisarcik complex is only one example. The highland mining communities are one subset of such specialised institutions. These communities seemed to emerge with the greater demand for resources used in the creation of utilitarian and wealth objects during the mid-fourth millennium BC and especially the third millennium BC. The questions to research in the future are how these production zones were organised, managed and specifically how they developed into multiple tiers of production. Was it the result of emergent complexity or were they somehow coercively set in place? Furthermore, what were the exchange destinations of these raw materials and their impact on the consumers? For the more southern highland tin-production sites of Goltepe and Kestel, the second-tier destination was most likely the as yet unexcavated ancient city of Nahita underneath modern Nigde and beyond the Taurus Mountains, southwards into the Cilician and the Amuq plains, where the Early Bronze I tin bronze figurines, crucibles and utensils of Judaidah appeared. We suggest that the destination of the Hisarcik ores and the products of the first-tier processing centres in the hinterland of the Erciyes volcano was the Early Bronze Age regional centre of Kanesh.

doi: 10.15184/aqy.2015.30

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Abdullah Kocapinar, Monuments and Museums Director; Melik Ayaz, Head of the Department of Excavations and Surveys; Orhan Duzgun, Kayseri governor; Mehmet Ozhaseki, Kayseri Mayor; Abdulkadir Gurer, Faculty of Language and History-Geography Dean, Ankara University and Sami Gulgoz, College of Social Sciences and Humanities Dean, Koc University. We would like to acknowledge: Sukru Zekier, who brought the cassiterite-rich samples to the attention of E. Yazgan; Gregor Borg, who made possible the use of a Thermo Niton XL3t pXRF analyser; and the generous financial and logistical support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archaometrie.

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Received: 14 April 2014; Accepted: 18 July 2014; Revised: 1 September 2014

K. Aslihan Yener (1), Fikri Kulakoglu (2), Evren Yazgan (3), Ryoichi Kontani (4), Yuichi S. Hayakawa (5), Joseph W. Lehner (6), Gonca Dardeniz (1), Guzel Ozturk (2), Michael Johnson (7), Ergun Kaptan (3) & Abdullah Hacar (8)

(1) Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey (Email: akyener12@gmail.com)

(2) Department of Archaeology, Ankara University, Turkey (Email: kulakoglu@yahoo.com; guzelozturk@gmail.com)

(3) General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration (Retired), Turkey (Email: evrenyazgan@hotmail.com)

(4) Department of Contemporary Sociological Studies, Notre Dame Seishin University, Okayama, Japan (Email: kontani.ryoichi@gmail.com)

(5) Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan (Email: hayakawa@csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

(6) Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 308 Charles E Young Drive West, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA (Email: jwlehner@ucla.edu)

(7) Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1155 East 58th Street, University of Chicago IL 60637, USA (Email: mjohnson086@uchicago.edu)

(8) Archaeology Department, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir (Email: abdullahhacar@hotmail.com)

Table 1. pXRF analyses of ore samples from Senir
Sirti Kerim household location (J.W. Lehner).

Sample                 Fe203   SnO2      As      Cu     Ni
number   Location      wt.%    wt.%     ppm     ppm    ppm

Kerim1   outcropping   84.1    11.47     70     490    <350
Kerim2   outcropping   69.5    0.97      30     360    <270
Kerim3   outcropping   20.2    10.50   117830   330    450
Kerim4   outcropping   49.4    13.61    200     200    <240
Kerim6   outcropping   90.7    2.85     120     2380   <100
Kerim7   gallery       5.85    1.80     570     130    150
Kerim8   gallery       61.9    20.44   35740    500    <850

Sample    Co      Sb      Pb     Zn      Mn
number    ppm     ppm    ppm     ppm     ppm

Kerim1   <980    3470    <20     240    <4810
Kerim2    870    <140    <20     330    <3520
Kerim3   <580    15050   290    13060   54180
Kerim4   1290    5810    100     650    <3060
Kerim6   <1000   <170    <20     260    <3990
Kerim7   <520    3130     60     180    <6220
Kerim8   <2300   19730   <150    510    38240