Kuşaklı (Sarissa)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kuşaklı, also known as Sarissa, is an ancient site in central Turkey. It lies in Sivas Province, about 4 km west of Başören in the Altınyayla district and roughly 60 km south of the city of Sivas.

What it was like
- In the Hittite era, Sarissa was a midsized provincial town with an upper city and a lower city. The walls had towers and several gates.
- The town’s layout included irregularly shaped houses with small streets. Two large houses stood in the middle of the town, near the main temple. One of these, House A, contained 45 clay tablets with ritual texts and may have belonged to a priest.
- About 5 km south of the town lies a lake and a temple area. Hittite texts say the king came to the town and went directly to the Weather God’s site, raising questions about whether the temple and lake were part of that ritual site.

Key finds and features
- Sarissa was founded in the 16th century BC near Kussara. It had gates at all four corners; one gate shows a Syrian-Levantine design.
- The main deity was the Weather God. The temple complex is the largest Hittite temple found so far, with a huge central courtyard about 76 by 74 meters. There is another large temple to the north, about 54 by 36 meters, possibly dedicated to the goddess Anzili. Inside one temple were seal impressions of a king named Mizima.
- A fragment of Mycenaean pottery was found at the north-west gate, which is rare for Hittite contexts.

History of destruction and rebuilding
- Sarissa was sacked in the 14th century BC during disturbances under Arnuwanda I, then rebuilt during a Hittite revival from Samuha under Tudhaliya III.
- The city was destroyed again around 1200 BC and later abandoned. In the Iron Age, a small village arose nearby in the 7th century BC, followed by a round fortress in the 6th century BC. In early Roman times a tumulus tomb was built on the hilltop, containing remains of six people (the tomb had been looted).

Archaeology
- Excavations began in 1992 under Andreas Müller-Karpe. Dirk Mielke identified several layers dating from the 16th to the 13th centuries BC and two Hittite building phases, plus a later Iron Age layer.
- During the second campaign, researchers found written records from the Hittite period, including an archive in the Hittite language. In 1997, Gernot Wilhelm reported on these findings.