What Can Archaeology Contribute to Ottoman Studies (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire
Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology, 2002
Preface the process, we hoped to break down some of the barriers which isolated scholars working in various regions throughout the former imperial provinces. The feedback and responses provided results which were far more rewarding than what we initially set out to accomplish. Charles E. Orser, Jr. encouraged us to create this volume, and Eliot Werner and Herman Makler at Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers helped us carry it through to completion. We appreciate their patience and support throughout the various phases of this project, since a number of seasons of field work in Turkey and Israel led to delays. We have been pleased to see interest in an archaeology of the Ottoman Empire develop over the past decade. Yet, despite a growing interest in archaeology of the Ottoman Empire, we still are concerned that this field has yet to find its place in the ranks of more established archaeological research. We hope that this volume demonstrates the potential of archaeological investigations for understanding the recent past of the Middle East, and introduces an archaeology of the Ottoman Empire to a wider scholarly audience. As we discuss in the introduction, there are many avenues for an archaeology of the Ottoman Empire. We envision the volume as an invitation to a dialogue within the field of archaeology on the Ottoman period material record and encourage discussions of the theoretical implications of the case studies, If this volume encourages archaeologists to place the Ottoman period within their preview and consider some of its material remains, we would be satisfied with the endeavor. UZI BARAM LYNDA CARROLL Contents
A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire: Breaking New Ground
v Preface Archaeology has a long and distinguished tradition in the Middle East, but its realm has been limited to uncovering the history and social processes of the distant past. During the late 1980s, a number of scholars, following the lead of post-medieval archaeology in western Europe and Historical Archaeology in North America and coastal Africa, made calls for an archaeology of the recent past of the Middle East. Those calls included improving the discipline of archaeology by testing notions in the material record of the recent past, finding the commonalities in history for national groups that imagined their pasts as separate, and countering the impact of colonialism and imperialism in the region by exposing historical trajectories. The contemporary political situation in the region made it increasingly clear that new bridges to connect the distant past and the present were possible and necessary.
From the fourteenth century, until its demise in the early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was one of the world’s great empires. Stretching from the regions now known as Croatia and Romania, to Iraq and Yemen, and across much of North Africa, this empire had a significant influence on world history, and more significantly, on the history and peoples of the Middle East and Balkans in general. Yet, based on the narratives archaeologists tell about this region, one would hardly notice that the Ottoman Empire ever existed. While archaeologists tell grand and glorious stories of this region’s past, few have taken the opportunity to explore the Ottoman period. Instead, the archaeological narratives of this region tell of prehistoric achievements of humanity and of the rise of agriculture and settlements. We have a good understanding of the great cities of the Bronze Age and of the empires of the Iron Age, as well as the Classical civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. Some archaeologists even examine the early history of Islam in this region. But just as we begin to reach the doorstep of the present, archaeological insights-and research-trail off.
Bibliography of Ottoman Archaeology
After completion of my dissertation employing historical archaeology for an archaeology of the Ottoman Empire, I kept up a list of publications intersecting with Ottoman archaeology. The references are to archaeological publications or publications strongly related to anthropological material culture/settlement pattern studies.
Ottoman archaeology in Greece: a new research field
Archaeological Reports 65, 2019
Some areas of the territory of present-day Greece were under Ottoman rule for more than 500 years. To date, the study of this period has largely been neglected, with academic research generally focused on Prehistoric and ancient Greece. However, over the course of the last 20 years, there have been noteworthy developments in the study of the Ottoman history and archaeology of Greece. This paper has two aims: (1) to summarize research conducted in the fields of Ottoman archaeology and material culture in Greece, focusing on demographics, settlement layouts and ceramics, particularly table wares; and (2) to present recent efforts to record and protect the Ottoman monuments of Greece.
Cihannüma: Tarih ve Coğrafya Araştırmaları Dergisi / Cihannuma: Journal of History and Geography Studies, 2017
The history of Ottoman archaeology is yet to be written. The existing scholarship is lacking an exhaustive account on the subject and is in need of a critical outlook to the current discourse. There is ample literature taken into account by Turkish historians on the history of the Ottoman Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümayun) with a particular focus on the period following Osman Hamdi Bey's appointment as director of the museum in 1881. Turkish archaeologists, on the other hand, have remained remote to the early history of archaeology prior to the Republican era due to practical and ideological reasons. As a result, the field has been dominated by historians, whose approaches and areas of interest greatly differ from those of archaeologists. The concentration of historiographical interest on Osman Hamdi Bey and his role in the protection of antiquities lying in the Ottoman territory has overshadowed the merits and contributions of other pioneering figures in the field, most of whom with more in-depth knowledge and substantial technical expertise on archaeology. This paper aims to draw attention to the major issues prevalent in the Turkish historiography of Ottoman archaeology and calls for expanding the sources and areas of study in the field. Writing the disciplinary history of archaeology in Turkey is not an easy task; it requires language skills – the majority of the archival sources are in Ottoman Turkish, familiarity with historical methodology as well as a good understanding of archaeological method and theory. Thus, it is essential to engage archaeologists in the field and integrate different strands of evidence obtained from both literary and archaeological sources in order to produce an accurate narrative of the history of Ottoman archaeology.
2015
This dissertation aims to evaluate the socioeconomic structure of the Early Ottoman Period, and is based on an archaeological approach to reconstructing the early Ottoman state and its foundation. In this context, the settlement patterns of the region between Eskişehir and Bilecik and their reflection on settlement distribution and modification from the Late Byzantine to Early Ottoman Periods will be analyzed and interpreted using archaeological and historical data through the reconstruction of the Early Ottoman landscape in the region. The dissertation first examines archeological evidence relating to the Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman periods, including pottery and architecture. In the second part, it presents the extant evidence for and critical analyses of the relevant historical data dating a period from Mantzikert to Bapheus Battles. Through these evidences, the collected data from archaeological survey in the research area in Eskişehir and Bilecik provinces are analyzed. In this analysis, the data is discussed in viii to work and study in Karacahisar. I will remember every time the helps and supports