The third season of excavations at Çatal Hüyük lasted from 10th June until 30th August, 1963, seventy working days with an average of thirty-five men, some local but most from the Beycesultan area, under our foreman, Veli Karaaslan, and our trusted ustas, Rifat Çelimli, Mustafa Duman, and Bekir Kalayci.

The 1963 season received financial support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York, the Bollingen Foundation, New York, the Munroe Fund of the University of Edinburgh, The British Academy, the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, the Australian Institute of Archaeology, the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London, an anonymous donation, and Unilever, Istanbul, and transport and survey equipment from BP Aegean, Ltd., Istanbul.

The deposits of carbonized grain and seeds excavated at Çatal Hüyük are the largest and best preserved finds of their kind ever recovered from so early periods in the Old World. Indeed the volume is so great that it is a matter of years just to examine the plant remains and put names to the many species. The development of the proper attitude of mind in the examiner is by necessity a slow process when he is faced with so many completely novel cultural circumstances that there is no valid background of reference. However, five months' ecological and floristic studies on the spot have cleared up so many problems that a satisfactory result may be anticipated in due course. The generosity of the Danish Carlsberg Foundation and James Mellaart made this long and extremely useful excursion possible.

The third season of work at Can Hasan took place between 11th and 25th September, with additional work on the site between 26th and 28th September. This year we employed, as usual, Veli Karaaslan as foreman, Rifat Çelimli and Mustafa Duman as ustas, seven other men from Menteş and two local men from Canasun village. At the end of the season the site was completely filled in with earth from our dumps, except for areas where we hope to continue work in future seasons. Finally we fenced in, with posts and wire, an enclosure approximately 110 by 90 m. around the excavated area.

This season's staff included Messrs. N. H. S. Kindersley and D. J. Blackman, field assistants; Mrs. D. J. Blackman, Messrs. J. E. Reade and M. C. C. Davie, pottery assistants. Bay Behçet Erdal of the İstanbul Archaeological Museum represented the Turkish Government.

This article is the result, not of weeks of intensive field survey, but of three days borrowed from other work in order to check specific topographical points. My thanks are due to Mr. Gough for company and transport to Sidrova in 1958; to Leverhulme Awards and the Royal Geographical Society, who made possible the reconnaissance of western Cappadocia in 1961 that included the visit to Başmakçı; and to Mr. G. D. B. Jones for his help at Başmakçı and for the photographs reproduced as Pl. XXVIII, a and c.

The discovery in 1956, at Kerti Hüyük between Aşıran, Beydilli and Salur, of a Derbetan dedication to Antoninus Pius, showed that Derbe was to be sought to the north-east rather than to the west of Laranda. The lack, at Kerti Hüyük, of any evidence of Byzantine settlement was, however, against its being the actual site, and our visit to Sidrova in 1958 was made with the intention of finding an alternative.

Gümüş—“Silver” in Turkish—is the name of a small town of something over 2,000 inhabitants about 7 kilometres north-east of Niğde, capital city of the Turkish vilayet of the same name, and not far to the south of an earth road which branches from the main Niğde–Kayseri highway. Another 3 kilometres towards Kayseri is the modern hamlet of Andaval, the ancient Andabilis, where the so-called Church of Constantine is a familiar sight to travellers on the Orient Express as the train makes for Niğde, Ulukışla and the Cilician Gates. Andabilis existed as early as the principate of Hadrian, and thus was on the main route from Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri) to Tyana (Kemerhisar). Gümüş, whatever may have been its ancient name, was then at no great distance from an arterial road linking Constantinople with the Orient by way of the great Taurus pass. The modern town, its economy almost entirely based on extensive apple orchards, now consists of two closely linked villages, divided by a shallow stream with steep banks, and the monastery is in Eski Gümüş—Old Silver—where an outcrop of volcanic tufa, honeycombed with caves, natural and artificial, rises to a height of between 12 and 25 metres.

An inscription at Comana Cappadociae (Şar köyü, Mağara, Adana), hitherto unpublished, provides the evidence for this note (Pl. XLIIa, Fig. 1). The stone is now in the yard of the school at Şar. It is a white marble slab, 0.90 × 0.40 m., recut below and at the lower right corner. The building which now houses the school was a church when the village was inhabited by Armenians and seems to have been built by them entirely out of ancient materials. This stone is said to have formed the door-sill of the church and to have been taken out when the position of the door was changed recently. Lines 4 and 5 certainly appear to have been worn by the passage of feet.

Just over a century ago the first excavations at the foot of the Serpent Column in the Hippodrome at Istanbul led to the discovery on it of the engraved names of the city-states whose contingents had fought at Plataea, thus confirming the justice of Gibbon's caustic footnote on its authenticity: that “the guardians of the most holy relics would rejoice if they were able to produce such a chain of evidence as may be alleged” from the Classical and Byzantine historians and from the accounts of European travellers.

When first set up at Delphi, the monument represented three snakes, whose intertwined bodies formed the column, and whose three heads, with gaping jaws, branched out to make a triangular support for a golden tripod. The tripod did not long survive, but the bronze column with the three heads, transported by Constantine to his new capital, apparently remained undamaged until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. All three heads had, however, disappeared by the time of Gibbon, who alleged that the discrepancies in the travellers' descriptions were “occasioned only by the injuries which [the Column] has sustained from the Turks”, and reproduced Thévenot's story that Meḥemmed II, on his triumphal entry into the city, “as a trial of his strength … shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.”

The castle of Feke, formerly known as Vahga, stands at a height of 1,250 m., less than 10 km. NE. of the modern town of the same name, and about 60 km. NNE. of Kozan. The site is a prominent rock outcrop overlooking the right-hand bank of a principal tributary of the River Seyhan, the Gök Su, whose valley here carries one of the lesser passes of the Anti-Taurus range southwards into Cilicia.

The castle played an important part in the establishment of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. The fortress appears to have been among the first to fall into Armenian hands, Constantine, son of Roupen, capturing the castle from its Byzantine garrison by a stratagem during the last decade of the 11th century, at a time when the Armenian princes were consolidating their positions in the mountain passes of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus preparatory to their descent upon the Cilician plain.

Last year, during the months of July and August, the Institute completed a third season of excavation at Alahan Monastery in Isauria and, although the season was fairly short—six weeks in all—more workmen were taken on to ensure a maximum effort. Many of these, with six or seven years experience of early Christian excavations at Daǧ Pazarı and Alahan, quickly instructed the newcomers. Of the British staff, Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Martineau helped Mrs. Gough with the administration as well as on the site. Miss Hall, Mr. Harper and Mr. Hayes acted as site supervisors, while Mrs. Gerard Bakker was again responsible for pottery and small finds. The expedition's architect and draughtsman was Mr. Adrian Cave, of the Architectural Institute. Finally, by a happy coincidence, the representative of the Turkish Government was Bay Süleyman Gönçer, who found himself after his retirement from the Directorship of the Afyon Museum with a British expedition again, after so many years of collaboration between the wars with Dr. Winifred Lamb at Kusura and with Sir William Calder during his Phrygian explorations.