Dr. Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver Leads the PLAS Archaeology Project

PLAS is the first project to specifically target the Late Bronze Age in Polatlı, collecting archaeological data across an entire region rather than a single site. At its center is a question about empire: how did the Hittite state extend its reach to its western frontier, and how did the communities already living there respond to it.

The survey asks whether the empire held the area through large urban centers or governed it as a rural hinterland, and how the material culture of these frontier sites compares with the Hittite heartland within the bend of the Kızılırmak. It also traces continuities of practice across time, linking the Hittite period back to the Early and Middle Bronze Ages that preceded it and forward to the Iron Age states that later drew on Hittite heritage.

Three seasons of fieldwork have been carried out with the permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, supported by Bilkent University and its Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Koç University's AKMED, Temple University, the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and the Archaeological Institute of America, among others.