Turkey: were Hittites Turks? The making of a new national past in Anatolia February 25, 2010

Arch 1810. Under the Tower of Babel: Archaeology, Politics, and Identity in the Modern Middle EastSpring 2010

Partitioning the Ottoman territories: the Treaty of Sevres (1920)

Treaty of LausanneJuly 24, 1923

Foundation of the Turkish Republic (29 October 1923)

M.K. Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republicinspecting archaeological finds from Alacahoyuk (1935) and visiting Ahlatlibel (5 May 1933)

autochthonous “formed or originating in the place where found”

territoriality of the nation state

Nascent states had to “reinforce their national territorial affiliationsthrough increasingly mythologizing their autochthonous ancestral pasts”

Shaw 169

Modernity and the urban space Ringstraße in Vienna, in 1872

“His majesty the pick”:Mussolini at the Imperial Forum in Rome

Image courtesy: University of Pennsylvania Fisher Fine Arts Image Collection

“His majesty the pick”:Baron Haussmann

Image courtesy: Google image searchhttp://icar.poliba.it/

Ankara ConstruitThe modernist architectural aestheticsof cubic blocks representing the new capitalIllustration from La Turquie Kemaliste,April 1935 (Bozdogan 2001)

Planning of Ankara

Nationalist cult of youth and health: Ankara 19th of May Stadium (1936)Designed by Italian architect Paolo Vietti Violi (Bozdogan 2001)

Anatolia and the Hittite Empire

Yazılıkaya Rock-cut sanctuary (Texier 1839)

Hittite Hattusha (13th c. BC) city of spectacle

Alacahoyuk royal tombs, Early Bronze Age III (Late 3rd millennium BC) Tomb B

Copper alloy “standard” with two bullsAnd a stag

Horoztepe near AlacahoyukCopper alloy sistrum with horned animals

Alacahoyuk royal tombs, Early Bronze Age III (Late 3rd millennium BC) Tomb E

Open worked “standard”

Ankara: Sihhiye monument

An Early Bronze age ritual standard,Alacahoyuk, Turkey

Hittite biscuits

The monument: archaeology as inspiration for nationalist imagination and commemorations of the ancient past