Pottery Of the Hellenistic Period from Yukarı Ova (Ceyhan Plain)

Alexander the Great (Alexander III. 336?323 B.C.) became king of Macedonia after the death of his father Philip II. (359?336 B.C.) in 336 B.C. The empire which was formed by Alexander the Great divided into pieces by his generals and had been spread to wide geographies. During The Hellenistic Period, the communities which were settled in Anatolia ruled by the empire of Alexander the Great were using their own language and had their own taste and pottery traditions. The urbanization of those communities affected pottery techniques and decoration of ceramics production during The Times of Diadoch? in Cilicia.After the death of Alexander the Great, the empire was divided into three parts: Ptolemies in Egypt, Libya and Levant regions; Seleucids in Syria and Southern Anatolia; Antigonoids in Macedonia, but Hellas had resumed their control and power.The reflections of urbanization on the pottery techniques and ceramics schools of the region in The Hellenistic Period were very similar to the rest of The Ancient World. Especially in The Early Hellenistic Period (300?240/30 B.C.) the region was under the influence of The Near East and Cyprus pottery traditions. The interaction between the regions could be considered as the inevitable result of urbanization activities of Hellenistic kingdoms and the importance of the trade between the sites.By the Department of Archaeology Çukurova University surveys in Ceyhan Ovası constitute the second stage of our surveys in Adana and Kayseri. Our primary goal was to revisit the settlements that had previously been surveyed by other researchers and published in the archaeological literature and to identify the prehistoric, proto-historic and 1st millennium B.C. settlements.Within the borders of the Ceyhan and Kozan various village settlements that developed from the Pottery Neolithic period have been identified. We have also obtained new data from the Ceyhan and Kozan mounds located between the Çukurova and Amik plains that connect northern and western Anatolia with southeast Anatolia as also with the Middle East. Some mounds are located on the Mersin-Adana-Ceyhan line indicating the presence of a road network. This road is on the extension of the Cilician coastal road that was constructed over a nine years? period when Vespasian (69-79 A.D.) in Rome ordered the construction of numerous across the empire.Large amount of pottery of the Hellenistic Period that had been found in the region after the surveys in Yukarı Ova (Ceyhan Ovası) showed that there were small settlements that were supplying the needs of the major cities as Tarsos, Aigeai, Hierapolis/Kastabala, Mopsuhestia-Misis and were acting bases.In terms of their pastes, glazes, forms and decorations, there is much variation in the Yukarı Ova bowls. The objects were not unearthed in the course of regular excavations; analogy is based rather more on comparisons with those with known dates. In making such assessments, I have naturally refrained from citing definite dates or workshop names in all but a few cases and have instead suggested what the possible manufacturing place might have been. For classification, I have made use of a system based on decoration that was first introduced by F. Courby and was later developed and elaborated upon by A. Laumonier and is widely accepted by researchers in this field. As previous researchers on this subject have noted, features such as clay, glaze or form are only of limited value in classifying these wares.Keywords: Survey, Ceyhan, Kozan, Cilicia, Yukarı Ova (Ceyhan Ovası), The Hellenistic Period, Pottery of the Hellenistic Period, Moldmade Bowls, Luxury Tableware of the Hellenistic Period, Megarian Bowls