Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Colloquium Anatolicum, cilt.0, sa.11, ss.179-204, 2012 (Hakemli Dergi)
Toggle pin is a kind of headed metal pin with a hole below the head. The heads come in different forms and are often decorated with grooves. They were used not only for decorative purposes, but also for fastening clothing together. It seems they first appeared in the Northern Mesopotamia and Syria/Palestine around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. The toggle pin quickly spread as far west as Inland Northwestern Anatolia (the area around Eskişehir-Afyon) during the second half of the EB II period. On the other hand, along the Aegean coastline, toggle pins do not appear until the late EBA.We now have a nearly complete EBA chronology of the toggle pins in Inland Northwestern Anatolia thanks to the examples recovered in the Küllüoba and Demircihüyük excavations as well as the cemeteries of Demircihüyük-Sarıket, Bozüyük-Küçük Höyük, and Kaklık Mevkii. Küllüoba yielded seven toggle pins in total. Three of them come from the EBA II and 4 from the EBA III layers. Whereas only two toggle pins have been found at the Demircihüyük mound, 38 of them were recovered from its cemetery (Sariket) situated 300 m to the west of the site. Some other toggle pins are also known from cemeteries Küçük Höyük and Kaklık Mevkii. Five different classes of pins have been identified in Inland Northwestern Anatolia, according to their head shapes: sphere-headed, ellipse-headed, round-headed, lentil-headed and human (?) or animal-headed. They seem most likely to have been manufactured locally in Inland Western Anatolia, since they are not exact copies of the Mesopotamian and Syro-Palestinian examples.Before the Middle Bronze Age most toggle pins manufactured in Inland Northwestern Anatolia were made of copper or tin-bronze. The late EB II is the period in which the first use of tin-bronzes is observed in Inland Western Anatolia. Analysis of metal artifacts from Demircihüyük-Sarıket, for example, revealed many objects made of tin-bronze. Indeed, the use of tin as an alloy might well have been one of the factors that opened up this inland trade route stretching from Cilicia to the North Aegean in the west. Inland Western Anatolia -especially the northern part- is rich in copper ores. Two of the ore deposits come from Tahtaköprü and Serçenköy. The slags pulled out from the EB I layers exposed during the road construction at Tepecik Höyüksuggest that the site might have been established here due to the existence of nearby copper mines. Tin-bronze, which found its first widespread use in the Near East from the late EB II on, has become one of the main areas of interest for scholars. There are limited tin sources in Inland Northwestern Anatolia and its immediate surroundings. Although evidence is minimal, tin has been reported at inhisar, Mihalgazi and Saricakaya, as well as at Gölpazarı in Söğüt near Bilecik.We can almost certainly say that intensive trade with the Mesopotamian cultural sphere was the driving force behind important changes toward the middle of the third millennium, which mark the beginning of a new phase in the cultural development in Western Anatolia, namely the late EBA II and EB III periods. In Western Anatolia, its early influence on the material culture can be traced most clearly along this overland trade route from Cilicia to the north Aegean. The early distribution of wheel-made plain ware diagonally crossing the Anatolian peninsula constitutes one of the most convincing pieces of evidence for Turan Efe's theory of a 'Great Caravan Route' between Cilicia and the Troad and, consequently, for the origin of west Anatolian EBA cultural elements. It is hardly a coincidence that the geographical distribution of the early toggle pins and the distribution map of tin-bronzes in Western Anatolia by Pernicka indicate the same diagonal crossing. In this context, toggle pins make an important contribution to the establishment of the main communication routes and the intensity of cultural/trade relations between Mesopotamian territories and Western Anatolia in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC.