THE POTTERY OF SOUTHERN CAPPADOCIA: PRELIMINARY PETROGRAPHIC ANALYSES OF SHERDS FROM NORTHERN TYANIS

Between 2006 and 2009 the University of Pavia carried out archaeological survey in Southern Cappadocia. Despite the historical, archaeological and geological importance of the region, a few studies have been performed until the present days. More than 30 sites were explored, covering a time span of around 7000 years, from the Early Chalcolithic down to the Middle ages. The sites are scattered on an extended area within the province of Niğde (around 800 km2) consisting of the south-eastern slopes of the Melendiz vulcans and the adjoining alluvial plain. Ceramic fragments were collected on the surface from all the sites, for a total of over 1300 diagnostic shards. A systematic study of the ceramic fabric of each diagnostic shard has been performed by means of a light microscope with stereo vision (binocular microscope), with the aim of characterizing the material features (texture, sorting, rounding, shape, abundance, grain size, nature of the inclusions). Several compositional groups were thus defined, on the basis of the mineralogical association of inclusions (minerals and rock fragments) or the presence of organic temper (plant fibres), some provenance attributes were identified; this is the main result of the microscope analysis. A set of 54 thin sections was realized, in order to improve the petrographic knowledge of the most representative groups. On the basis of the nature of the aplastic inclusions and their petrographic and mineralogical associations, two main compositional domains are recognised: one shows a predominant crystalline composition, the other a peculiar volcanic composition. The first domain seems to connect the production to the Niğde Massif, that is a member of the Central Anatolian Crystalline Complex (CACC), and extends on the eastern part of the Tyanis plain. The second one pertains to the Cappadocian Volcanic Province (CVP), extending to the northwestern part of the plain. A good fit between some petrographic groups and the chronological attribution of shards emerges by crossing both ceramological and material data, indicating that from the Late Bronze Age (LBA), along the Iron Age (IA), down to the Hellenistic-Roman period (HR), clay sources used for pottery production were located in the CACC. This is taken as a clue for a regional organization of pottery production during this long period, and is possibly connected to the role played by the main centre of the region along this timespan: LBA Tuwanuwa, IA Tuwana, and HR Tyana.