Archaeology in action is not necessarily limited to wielding the trowel while brushing and sifting through the debris of past generations. It occasionally also includes the equally demanding task of studying artifacts that were excavated and documented some time ago but never fully published. The evidence from Polatlı Höyük (Polatlı, Central Turkey), dated to the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE and excavated in only one short but massive 3-week rescue campaign back in 1949, is particularly rewarding, since the assemblages from the mound also contain superb metalwork that warrants further scrutiny.
In the frame of the 100th year anniversary of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations Ankara, access was given to previously unpublished find complexes ranging from Paleolithic scrapers to Byzantine artworks. For the Polatlı Höyük material, a major focus lies on objects dating to the Early Bronze Age, since, despite decades of intensive research and excavations, the availability of well-published 3rd millennium settlements and cemeteries in Central Anatolia remains rather limited. This situation is further complicated by an odd (real or imagined?) lacuna expanding over the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BCE, which has only recently been improved by new evidence coming from Central Turkey. The publication of finds and features from Polatlı Höyük will therefore provide another much-desired jigsaw piece to better understand the social and technological dynamics of the Early Bronze Age in this particular part of Ancient Turkey.
Current work involves the comprehensive documentation of pottery and small finds from the 1949 campaign stored in the archives of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations Ankara. Furthermore, cooperation with the neighboring Ankara District Laboratories aims to reveal the elemental composition of metal objects from Polatlı Höyük through pXRF analysis.