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In the Van Lake basin, or in Northeast Anatolia in general, Early Iron Age denotes pre-Urartian times. Although the beginning of this age is rather obscure, it is generally accepted that it came to an end with the establishment of the Urartian Kingdom in the middle of the ninth century BC. Following the focus on a number of large, well-planned Urartian sites over the last hundred years or so, there has been a shift in the last twenty years to small, rural settlements and necropoleis, like Dilkaya, Karagündüz and Yoncatepe in the hope of finding pre-Urartian Early Iron Age remains. In this paper we shall discuss 'grooved pottery' and other important finds used to date these sites and necropoleis to the Early

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Doğu Anadolu, Transkafkasya ve Kuzeybatı İran dahil olmak üzere geniş bir alana yayılmış olan Urartu kalıntıları, bazı coğrafi birimlerde daha yoğun olarak karşımıza çıkmakta, bazı bölgelerde ise daha az çağdaş malzeme ile temsil edilmektedir. Sınır bölgeleri bir yana bırakılırsa, merkezi Van bölgesi ile Urartu yapılaşmasının çok sayıda merkez ile temsil edildiği batıda Elazığ, güneydoğuda Urmiye Gölü ve kuzeydoğuda da Sevan Gölü arasında kalan alanlarda bile önemli boşlukların bulunduğu görülmektedir. Aynı durumun Van Gölü havzasının kuzey ve kuzeybatısında yer alan Ağrı ve Erzurum için de geçerli olduğu söylenebilir.

The Neo-Assyrian Kingdom and the Urartian Kingdom were two important Near Eastern states in the Middle Iron Age (ninth to sixth centuries BC) that steered political developments and considerably transformed the lives of populations within their territories. This article aims to explore the origins of Urartian-Assyrian relations: the processes and ways through which Mesopotamian and Assyrian influences reached the eastern Anatolian highlands. The populations who founded the Urartian Kingdom lived mostly as semi-nomadic tribes in eastern Anatolia and surrounding areas during the Early Iron Age (thirteenth to ninth centuries BC). It is impossible to explain the emergence of the Urartian Kingdom in the Van region towards the mid-ninth century BC-which quickly became a powerful rival of its contemporaries-as a natural development of local culture. The main question at this stage is how and from where Assyrian influences were transmitted to the tribes who founded the Urartian Kingdom. Our opinion is that the answer to this question should be sought in the Upper Tigris region, which was inhabited by both cultures (Pre-Urartian and Assyrian) before the foundation of the Urartian Kingdom.