CANAKKALE, Türkiye

An excavation team has unearthed a cylinder seal and a lead sling stone dating back some four millennia in Canakkale, a historic province in northwestern Türkiye.

Goksel Sazci, an archaeologist at Türkiye's Onsekiz Mart University based in Canakkale, known for the World War I Battle of Gallipoli, told Anadolu on Monday that this year's excavations started in July and will continue through the middle of this month.

Noting that this year's excavations are concentrated on layers dated to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, i.e. the 2000s BC, known as the Troy-5 period in the region and on which they have little information, he said: “We worked in two areas during this year's excavations. First, we worked in an area related to defense systems. This area is in the southwestern part of the settlement.”

"We also opened a new trench in the northwestern part of the settlement in order to investigate this period in a wider area. During our work, we also found stone tools such as bowls, pots, spindle whorls, weaving tools, metal tools and drills used by the people of that period in their daily lives. The most interesting among the finds was a cylinder seal.”

Pointing out that the tradition of the cylinder seal is actually a foreign tradition to Anatolia, Sazci said: “This tradition first emerged in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to the trade and relations with Anatolia, it came to the middle of Anatolia towards the end of the third millennium BC.”

"With the progress of trade, it came to northwestern Anatolia. We saw the closest example in Tavsanli Mound in Kutahya (in western Türkiye). Such seals were also found during the excavations in Troy. This is the first example of this type of seal found in Europe outside Anatolia."

"It is also found in Greece, but it dates to a slightly later period. We can say that this practice, which dates back to approximately 3,900 years ago, spread to Europe, and even if it did not go all the way to the interior, it may have reached the Balkans, thanks to trade,” he added.

Explaining that a lead sling stone was also among their findings, Sazci said: “Such finds have been used since the Paleolithic era, when the hunter-gatherer lifestyle prevailed."

He said sling stones are generally made of stone and terracotta.

“The ones made of lead are very rare and are mostly found in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Such finds are mostly known from the Mediterranean island of Crete, its Knossos settlement, and the nearby island of Cyprus.

*Writing by Serdar Dincel in Istanbul