built a variety of freestanding houses of rectilinear, subrectangular, or circular plan with mud-brick or wattle-and-daub walls. Typically, each dwelling was single roomed, sometimes with an antechamber, and had an eye-catching circular hearth fixed into the floor, probably the focus of domestic worship. Portable anthropomorphic or zoomorphic potstands, fragments of distinctive black-and-red burnished pottery, and other artifacts were generally strewn on the floors.

In the Pontic region, the inhabitants at I·kiztepe also used timber for building constructions, including a palisade around the summit of the town. Noteworthy are the richly furnished shaft burials at Horoztepe and Mahmatlar, which have affinities with similar complexes found elsewhere, including the thirteen “Royal Tombs” discovered farther south at Alaca Höyük and dated to between 2500 and 2200 b.c. (Joukowsky 1996). The practice of covering a shaft or pit grave, as in the case of Alaca, with a mound of earth and stone derives from the steppes north of the Caucasus, where the graves are known as kurgans. This connection is supported by the contents of the graves. Funerary gifts included components of wheeled vehicles, a striking feature of Caucasian societies, and animal figures in bronze, inlaid with precious metals, that have broad stylistic similarities with finds from the Maikop burials in the eastern Black Sea region. Indeed, at the end of the third millennium b.c., peoples of different ethnic backgrounds appear to have moved across Anatolia; among them were the Indo-Europeans, speaking a Luwian dialect, who settled in the southwestern region.

In the second millennium b.c. Anatolia, in regions other than the northeast, was composed of city-states with centralized power bases (Joukowsky 1996; van Loon 1985). By the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600 b.c.) settlement patterns indicate a reduction in the number of villages and a concomitant increase in the size of urban centers that accommodated a larger population. Long-distance trade networks, both overland and maritime, expanded considerably and firmly established commerce as an important component of the economy.

Clear testimony of the scale of these commercial initiatives is afforded by the trading colonies established by Assyrian merchants about 1900 b.c. in central Anatolia. These entrepeneurial newcomers recorded their commercial affairs in Akkadian and introduced cuneiform writing in Anatolia. Their clay tablets, which number over 15,000, are the oldest surviving texts from Anatolia and mark the earliest historical period. The best-documented of these Old Assyrian colonies is the large site of Kültepe, in ancient Kanesh, where over half a century of excavations have revealed an extensive trading area (karum, in Akkadian) around a fortified citadel that contained the palace and other buildings. The karum at Kültepe is a circumscribed area some 3 kilometers in diameter. Levels Ib and II correspond to the Old Assyrian period and consist of blocks of multiroom houses separated by pathways. The Assyrian caravanners clearly had no problem acculturating to Anatolian life, for apart from their clay tablets and seals incised with Mesopotamian motifs, they are archaeologically invisible. Acemhöyük, Alişar Höyük, and Bogazköy also had settlements of Assyrian merchants attached to their cities.

Archaeological evidence reveals an abrupt break in the trading patterns between Kültepe and Ashur in the late nineteenth century b.c., which some suggest might represent the conquest of Kanesh by Pitkhanas, a semilegendary figure (as was his son Anitta) whom the Hittites include in their pedigree. Sometime between 1850 and 1750 b.c. the political focus shifted from Kanesh to Hattusha (modern Bogazköy), which went on to become the capital of the Hittite Empire (MacQueen 1996; Seeher 1999). Hittite history is generally divided into two periods, referred to as the Old Kingdom (ca. 1700 to ca. 1500 b.c.) and the Empire (ca. 1400 to ca. 1150 b.c.). Essentially landlocked, the Hittites pursued expansionist policies, effectively using the horse-drawn chariot to become one of the powerbrokers in the second millennium b.c. The Hittites, Indo-Europeans who spoke the Neshite dialect, are known for their governance and civil law codes (Biblical Archaeologist 1989). Their society drew heavily on aspects of