Andreas Schachner | “A New Look at an Ancient City: An Outline of the Development of Hattusha during the 2nd Millennium BC”

Please join us on Monday, February 26 at 5 PM for Prof. Dr. Andreas Schachner (German Archaeological Institute, Istanbul, and University of Würzburg, Germany) for his talk entitled “A New Look at an Ancient City: An Outline of the Development of Hattusha during the 2nd Millennium BC” in Fowler Room A222.  Reception to follow.

All are welcome!

Lecture description

In the 2nd millennium BC, despite geographical obstacles, the Hittites succeeded in establishing the only supra-regional empire with its center in Central Anatolia, which was one of the major political players in the competition of the great empires of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. Even though the urban settlement of Boğazköy is several centuries older than the foundation of the Hittite dynasty, its development reflects essential characteristics of the Hittite state. The lecture will present these events by means of a virtual tour of the city, thus demonstrating its unique position not only in Anatolia but also in comparison with other regions of western Asia.

Andreas Schachner biography

Andreas Schachner (born 1967) is a senior research associate at the German Archaeological Institute´s Istanbul Section and an adjunct Professor for Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. After having participated in various excavations in Turkey and Uzbekistan during his education (PhD in 1999) he conducted two independent research projects in Southeastern Turkey while working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology of Munich University. Since 2006 he directs the German Archaeological Institute´s Boğazköy Excavations focusing not only on the Hittite remains but taking the settlement history as whole into account. The research in Hattushais characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that combines humanities and methods of various natural sciences and attaches particular importance to the application of archaeometric research. Beside his excavation responsibilities Andreas Schachner´s research interests cover a wide range of mainly Bronze and Iron Age topics reaching from the Anatolian Highlands to the Caucasus, Syria and Mesopotamia, but also the history of archaeology in the Near East as well as issues of heritage conservation and management. His numerous publications deal not only with his fieldwork but contribute to theoretical and methodological aspects of the Ancient Near Eastern art, archaeometric analysis of materials as well as various aspects of the relationship between humans and their geographical environment in Antiquity.