Explore Ancient Anatolia

Heracles Tomb @ Konya Museum of Archaeology Photo credit ancient-anatolia.blogspot.com

Sarcophagi @ Konya Museum of Archaeology Photo credit ancient-anatolia.blogspot.com Sarcophagi from the Roman period from Iconium Necropolis (Konya, Turkey) showing characteristics of Pamphilia and Sidemara. Date back to 2nd & 3rd cc A.D.

The Hattian Sun Disc at Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations Sacred geometry is geometry used in the design of sacred architecture and sacred art. The basic belief is that geometry and mathematical ratios, harmonics and proportion are also found in music, light, cosmology. This value system is seen as widespread even in prehistory, a cultural universal of the human condition. It is considered foundational to building sacred structures such as temples, mosques, megaliths, monuments and churches; sacred spaces such as altars, temenoi and tabernacles; meeting places such as sacred groves, village greens and holy wells and the creation of religious art, iconography and using "divine" proportions. Alternatively, sacred geometry based arts may be ephemeral, such as visualization, sandpainting and medicine wheels.

Background History on Pinarbaşi Dr David French first drew attention to the sites at Pınarbaşı while he was working at Can Hasan in the 1970’s. At that time, French noted small amounts of chipped stone scatters during a preliminary survey of the area (Watkins 1996). In 1993, Prof. Trevor Watkins and Dr Douglas Baird visited the site as part of the Konya Plain Survey. A preliminary inspection of the site noted a series of small-scale occupations, constructions and tombs dating from the Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine. However, recent damage to the site by looters had unearthed evidence of small-scale obsidian bladelets and flakes. The material was found in several rock shelters and in an open site located at the edge of a small spring-fed lake just to the north of the rock shelters. The spoil-heap at this site also contained genuine microliths along with two pieces of decorated stone. Indications were that there were possibly numerous Epipaleolithic settlement sites ...

Konya Plain Survey - Central Anatolia HRH Prince Charles @ Çatalhöyük Site @ Konya, Turkey The role and importance of the alluvial plains of South West Asia in the development of the earliest agricultural and urban societies and the earliest empires has yet to be thoroughly established. Have specific features of these settings a key role to play in such developments? In addition alluvial environments are generally acknowledged as among the most dynamic. They offer a unique opportunity to study settlement responses to dynamic environments. By establishing the nature of settlement developments on the Konya plain we can address these questions. In addition we can put the site of Çatalhöyük in its historical and contemporary context.

Eflatunpinar is the Turkish name of a Hittite site in Beyşehir district in south-west Central Anatolia, near the eastern shore of Lake Beyşehir, 80 miles west of the province seat of Konya. It is also the name of the spring which rises up from the ground and creates an oasis and a fountain to drain later into the Lake Beyşehir.