Dr Yağmur Heffron Receives Prestigious Research Grant from the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund

Fig.1 YH excavating (2024)

Uşaklı Höyük is a multi-period site in central Türkiye, where an Italian-led team from the Universities of Pisa and Florence has been excavating since 2008. Dr Yağmur Heffron joined the Uşaklı Höyük Archaeological Project (UHAP) as Assistant Director in 2022. UHAP’s long-term research agenda is invested in the multidisciplinary investigation of the site’s settlement landscape, focusing primarily on the preclassical history of communities from the period of initial urbanisation into the various transformative phases (territorialisation, state formation, collapse, fragmentation, regeneration) during the Bronze and Iron Ages (2000-1100 BCE). Particularly for the second millennium, UHAP’s programme of research, sheds light on a significant but underexplored part of ‘the Hittite heartland’ in north-central Anatolia.

Fig.2 Study trip to nearby site of Boğazköy-Hattusa, the Hittite capital. UCL students Emily Cox (2nd year Ancient History) and Josh Britton (PhD in Ancient History) stand against cyclopean masonry with YH (2023)
 

The site is widely identified as the ancient city of Zippalanda, which was one of the holy cities of the Hittite Empire, and served as an important cult centre. During annual festivals, the Hittite king stopped at Zippalanda to carry out religious rites. The remains of a monumental temple discovered at Uşaklı Höyük would have been the focal point of such rites. The temple also boasts what the Turkish press has described (not inaccurately) as the world’s earliest mosaic floor – a courtyard paved with coloured pebbles in a geometric design, dating back to ca. 14th century BCE. Not far from the temple, we have discovered a mysterious circular structure with a spiralling wall, and a series of unusual ritual deposits containing animal remains as well as infant/child burials. We believe this to be some kind of ceremonial construction. It has no known parallels in the Hittite world, nor in the broader Near East.

Fig. 3 Uşaklı Höyük in the spring (2023)
 

Yağmur’s project focuses on life of Uşaklı Höyük (ancient Zippalanda?) as a religious centre, by targeting a previously unexcavated portion of the lower town between two special zones, marked by a monumental Hittite temple, and the highly unusual Circular Structure. New excavations will document the spatial/chronological connections (or disconnections) between the temple and the Circular Structure, and how the religious-ceremonial profile of an urban site was created, sustained, or altered through strategies of architectural programmes, as well as through human use and experience. The project is also designed with a pedagogical agenda for establishing a new field school model to train students in a wider range of excavation methods, as well as field recording skills in two languages. 

Fig. 4 Emily Cox assisting a local worker in excavating a portion of the Hittite temple (2023)
 

The first year of Dr Heffron’s project at Uşaklı Höyük is supported by a fieldwork grant from the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund (University of Oxford).

Each year at least one UCL student accompanies Yağmur in the field as a trainee assistant. Yağmur hopes to bring more students to participate in the real-life collective research effort of the project.