Most Recent Evidence for the Early Bronze Age, Chalcolithic and Neolithic Periods at Prehistoric Miletus and its Aegean Connections

At Miletus, evidence for Minoan and Mycenaean presence or contacts was established by excavations in the Bronze Age levels in the area of the Temple of Athena in 1938 and in the fifties and sixties. Three Bronze Age building periods were distinguished, the first of which showed signs of Minoan influence, the second and third of Mycenaean influence. The excavators stated that the so-called first building period may not form the first human settlement at Miletus because they were not able to dig underneath this level due to the high level of groundwater. In the eighties, deposits of chalcolithic settlement rubbish were unearthed in the insula to the west of the Bouleterion and underneath Heroon III. Unfortunately, these deposits were not found in stratigraphic sequences but in the levellings of the archaic or classical period.

Since only a selection of the finds from the Bronze Age levels in the area of the temple of Athena was published and a continuous stratigraphic sequence of prehistoric levels were missing at Miletus, important questions remained unanswered: What was the character of Minoan/Mycenaean influence at Bronze Age Miletus, acculturation or actual Minoan/Mycenaean settlement? When did Minoan influence (or presence) begin, either in the so-called first building period (MM III, 18^th/17^th century B.C.) or earlier? Was Miletus settled between the chalcolithic and MMIII periods or was there a hiatus? In 1994 we have started a new excavation and research project to answer these and other questions.

The most recent work at Miletus has results of interest to this conference, but since the 1997 season ended less than two weeks ago, this paper necessarily has a preliminary character. In three trenches we reached chalcolithic levels with clearly stratified material and features and in the lowest level of one trench we found pottery comparable to the Cretan Final Neolithic pottery. Evidence for settlement in the chalcolithic period exists not only in the area of Graeco-Roman city of Miletus but also on the hill of Kiliktepe to the south of Miletus as well as on the footslopes to the north of Yenikoy between Miletus and Lake Rafa. In this last location a series of wells, dug by power shovels in 1996, contain sediments of alluvial fans starting with a chalcolithic accumualtion horizon containing characteristic chalcolithic and (in one case) possibly also neolithic pottery. A chalcolithic building was excavated in 1993 at Assessos on the hill above Yenikoy. This dense chalcolithic settlement in the Miletus area certainly relates to its position at the mouth of the Maeander river (Buyuk Menderes). From prehistoric times on the Maeander valley was one of the most important arterial roads between the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and the inland. The most exciting find of the 1997 season was the head of a Cycladic figurine of the Keros-Seros culture which demonstrates that Miletus took part in C. Renfrew's "international spirit" of the EBII period in the Aegean.