The site of Sirkeli Höyük in the province of Adana in modern Turkey is one of the largest settlement mounds in Plain Cilicia. In 2012, a geophysical survey revealed that the ancient settlement was not confined to the höyük, but also encompassed an extensive lower town to the southeast of the main mound. To gain information on the dating and development of this part of the settlement, an excavation area (“Sector F”) was opened at a spot where the magnetometry survey suggested the presence of a city gate. Since then, archaeological work in this area has continuously produced new discoveries that help us understand how this residential area and its inhabitants developed throughout the periods of its occupation. Especially the Iron Age (Neo Cilician period) levels, which cover approximately the 11th–7th centuries B.C., provide important information on how this urban center of the Neo Hittite kingdom Hiyawa/Que changed over time and to which extent historical events impacted the people living in one of its residential areas. This contribution discusses the stratigraphic sequence, the pottery, and the archaeobotanical remains discovered in Sector F during the 2013–2019 campaigns, and concludes with a synthesis of the development in this area from a historical perspective.

The archaeological evidence from Late Bronze Age Nuzi has ever since the publication of R.F.S. Starr's final report in 1939 experienced few attention, leaving the interpretation of the inner structure of this extraordinarily extensively excavated settlement to a thriving philological research. This paper presents a macroscopic spatial analysis of mobile inventories in the domestic areas. Based on the comparison with stationary installations and the formal architectural structure a revised socio-topography is proposed. The combination with the evidence from the investigations of the private archives elucidates the great potential for the consideration of multiple approaches in the future research on the function, meaning and sociology of spaces in Near Eastern Archaeology.

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