Archaeomagnetism from Bronze Age and Iron Age archaeological settlements in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey is extremely rich in archaeological sites, with ages from the Paleolithic (pre ~12.000 BC) onward. Archaeomagnetism derives the direction and intensity of the ancient Earth´s magnetic field from burnt archaeological artefacts of known age. This study obtains 60 new results from Bronze to Iron Age settlements in Anatolia, expanding the existing database by a factor of 30. In terms of geomagnetic field behaviour, we confirm an exceptionally high intensity period found in the Levant (1050-700 BC) at five settlements in Anatolia and we provide new evidence for another high intensity peak around 550 BC with a longitudinal range from at least Turkmenistan to Italy. From a series of potsherds, we provide the longest sequence recorded so far in Turkey, from 2100 to 1350 BC. In general, the results agree well with existing geomagnetic field models, but also provide crucial new results that will improve the models. Our new archaeomagnetic results also provide new insights in the archaeological history of several settlements. Our results allow us to conclude that the fire events at the largest settlement from the Assyrian Trade Colony Period were not all contemporaneous with one another and with the abandonment of the site as previously hypothesized but ranged over a 100 year period (1950-1850 BC). Our results around 547 BC from three large Lydian and Phrygian cities prove that the first Persian emperor Cyrus the Great destroyed these cities in a very short time span of at most a few years.