2. Cilt - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

The area between this complex and the J/L house was occupied by agravelled space sloping at a visible gradient west and south. Lines of stoneshad been placed transversely to the slope to counter erosion, induced notonly by topography but by this region’s rainy climate 12 . To the same purpose,drainage channels lined the exterior walls of room 637, and a terracottadrainpipe was set into the gravel at the northeastern limit of the building 13 .This sector resembles a street, in use for a long time. Canaanite jars and cookingpots littering its top surface, and postholes for its earlier phase, suggest itdoubled as a courtyard or plaza, with wood fixtures (sheds, shelving) sharedby the two buildings. The gravel itself produced huge amounts of householdtrash, in part contemporary with the life of the buildings 14 . Much discardedpottery belonged to this level’s repertoire, as known from J/L. But other typeswere better suited to LB I, and were refuse from the underlying level: a threehandledcooking pot and platters with a broad red-burnished band at therim; the earlier Cypriot imports (B-R I, WS I); and a black-impressed juglet ofAlalakh V and Tarsus type, characteristic of LB I in this region 15 . Exceptionalfinds were a fragmentary, red-burnished Hittite zoomorphic vessel shaped asthe head of a bird of prey; a flint nodule carved, in cameo technique, into araptor’s head; and a battered, but recognizably Mycenaean, female terracottafigurine (Fig. 9) 16 . A red-slipped rim sherd painted with zigzags and dots,and the same vessel’s handle, may be a Late Minoan IB conical rhyton (Fig.10) 17 . The street’s destruction debris also produced bronze/copper alloy12 Visible proof of erosion rates along this street were a heavy basalt tripod’s two joiningfragments, found 8 m apart.13 The rock-lined tunnel (feature 534) discovered at E/H’s east balk line in 2006 might be linkedto this drainage system. Its ambitious scale would associate it best with the architecturalenterprise of Periods 14 or 15, but soundings in 2006 and again this year were inconclusive.Period 14 is likely.14 Disproportionate numbers of ovid, caprid and bovid mandibles, parts of hyenas and a bear,and a human infant conform to debris from an extramural midden, as source for the street’sgravel: S. Ikram and R. Kabatiarova, 2007 archaeozoological report.15 Cf. Goldman 1956: 185-186 and fig. 314: 1088.16 Red-burnished rhyton fragment KNH-1635 [‘07 E/H 623 L. 1585], pres. l = 7.2 cm.; stoneraptor head KNH-1634 [‘07 E/H 641 L. 1584], l = 8.4 cm.; Mycenaean figurine KNH-1619 [‘07E/H 641 L. 1584], pres. h = 4.6 cm: fine yellow slip with red-brown stripes.17 KT 24817 [‘07 E/H 640 L. 1580]. Cf. Betancourt 1985: 165 (shape), pl. 22, D (decoration); for anidentical example from Alalakh V: Woolley 1955: 318, pl. 96a.357