 Okay. First, hello everyone. Firstly, I want to thank the organizers of the session for having me here today. So in this presentation, I will talk about the site of Bece Sultan and the new chronology that has been suggested by the new excavations at the site. After discussing the new proposed chronology by the new excavators and taking it as a starting point, I will try to combine textual and archaeological data in order to conclude whether the new chronology can bring forward new conclusions. So as you may or may not know, Bece Sultan is situated some 300 km from the Aegean coastline in the University of Anatolia on a fertile valley at the upper Marder River. As far as the excavation of this site is concerned, the first excavations took place from 1954 to 1959 by Seton Lloyd and James Mayer. Whereas in 2007, SF Abbey started new excavation sessions at the site. As far as the chronology is concerned, the first excavation project suggested that the late Bronze Age at Bece Sultan was represented by four layers, namely layers 3, 2, 1b and 1a. Mayer dated layer 3 at the 14th century based on a machine importer fragment, corresponding to either in Late Heladic 3a or 3b, which was found in a platform of layer 3. As for layer 2, Mayer dated to the 13th and early 12th centuries, and finally the two last layers were dated after the fall of the Hittite Kingdom, namely the 12th and 11th centuries BC. The new excavation project confirmed that the late Bronze Age at Bece Sultan comprised by four layers, namely layer 6, which corresponds to layer 3 of the old excavation, layer 5b, which corresponds to layer 2, layer 5a, which corresponds to layer 1b and layer 4, which corresponds to layer 1a. For the remainder of my presentation, I will use the new numbering of the late Bronze Age layers. So, 10c14 samples that were taken by the new excavators from layer 5 documented that the new dating should be applied for late Bronze Age at Bece Sultan. More specifically, layer 6 is the earliest late Bronze Age layer, but no date has yet been proposed. The new excavators date layer 5b from 1700 to 1600 BC and layer 5a from 1600 to 1500 BC. Layer 5b ended with the violent fire destruction based on the c14 samples at 1830 to 1685 BC, the earliest, and at 1530 to 1410 BC, the latest, with an average chronology of 1680 to 1547 BC. No c14 samples were taken from level 4, however the new excavators dated based on the pottery samples between the 14th and 12th centuries BC. In this presentation, I will discuss two different scenarios as for the cause of the destruction in layer 5b. In the first one, I will use the average chronology of the earliest and latest dates, namely from 1680 to 1547 BC, and the second one I will use the latest chronology, namely from 1530 to 1410 BC. I personally favor the average chronology because the archeological and the textual evidence and the c14 samples we will see later on collaborate better with this date. On the other hand, the latest chronology has also a big percentage of probability, and this is why I mentioned it as well in this presentation. So layer 5b manifests the continuation of level 6. Both levels have strong locale character in terms of pottery and domestic architecture, and there is very scarce evidence for connections with southern Anatolian plateau. As I said before, layer 5b ended with a violent fire destruction, and both the old and the new excavators suggested that this destruction was possibly caused by invasion, since in some rooms human skeletons were found and two of them used pithoid vessels as hiding positions. Layer 5b was immediately built after the destruction of the previous layer. In this phase, the inhabitants performed some modifications and repairs to the buildings of the previous phase. During this phase, archeologists have identified the change in the architectural chronology settlement. First of all, the so-called lived palace, which was destroyed at the end of layer 5b, seems to have been abandoned completely, and layer 5a does not seem to have a central administrative building as it was in the previous phase. Moreover, the houses in the previous phase were characterized by a living room and a connected storage room. In layer 5a, the houses of the settlement had a living room and an L-shaped cart, and they lacked a storage room. Furthermore, except for the changes in domestic architecture, the shrine area R, in which shrines can be detected since the early Bronze Age, was abandoned. Thus, the new excavators of Bethesda-Sultan have suggested that these changes in the overall settlement architecture documented change in the settlement organization. As far as the pottery of this layer is concerned, the analysis of the pottery assemblages of the previous excavations indicated that after the destruction of layer 5b, there is an introduction of 20 new pottery shapes in level 5a, a differentiation in the ornamentation of the pottery in contrast to level 5b, and finally an adaptation of a new pottery style, namely the use of burnished ware. Furthermore, some shapes of the newly introduced pottery have paralleled with north-central Anatolian sites. More specifically, Bethesda-Sultan in this phase documents the introduction of ketite burnished red, orange, or postural colored flasks, tall jars with crescent handles, lendoid bottles, libation arms, hemispherical bowls, and large dishes in coarse ware with rope-impressed ornament. All the aforementioned shapes have paralleled to hatusa. However, since the previous excavations dated this phase after the collapse of the ketite kingdom, and this kind of pottery, especially the flasks and the bottles primarily dated in the 15th and 14th centuries BCE, they believed that the new shapes did not represent the ketite influence. However, parallels for the lendoid flasks and jugs exist already since the 16th century BCE. In an article, Claudia Glad describes the presence of ketite pottery types at various sites in Anatolia, among them Bethesda-Sultan. In her chart, we can see that the proportion of ketite and local pottery types at levels 6 and 5B is steadily 20% ketite and 80% local in both levels. Whereas in levels 5A and 4, which based on the previous chronology, Glad's dates to the Iron Age. Sorry, I lose today. We observe an increase in the proportion of ketite pottery types up to 40% alongside the 6% of local pottery. That's the above evidence documents an increased ketite influence after the destruction of level 5B in a previously heavily locally oriented settlement, which combined with the new dating can be easily attributed within the ketite lifespan and not after its collapse. I'm not saying that the increased ketite influence observed in the pottery is evidence for ketite control of Bethesda-Sultan, but rather point towards an influence of the ketite material dated now at the dawn of the ketite era, which due to previous chronology has gone unnoticed. So we've combined the new evidence that came to light through the new excavations at Bethesda-Sultan with the architectural and the pottery publications of the earlier excavations and the textual evidence from the ketite kingdom. It is possible to associate the destruction of phase 5B with wider historical events that took place around this period in this region. However, I should mention at this point that the suggestions that we'll make later on constitute only some possible scenarios from the many that may have taken place. Having said that, I mentioned earlier that the new excavation concluded that the destruction of this layer happened between 1830 to 1685 BC, the earliest and 1530 to 1410 BC the latest. I explained earlier that in this presentation we'll use two scenarios, one with the average chronology and one with the latest one. So starting with the average chronology, in the ketite text there is no other military expedition mentioned before the 15th century against Western Anatolia, except that of Hadushili I. In the others of his campaign against Arcawa, located in Western Anatolia, we find a single sentence in the following year, I marched against Arcawa and took cattle and sheep. This sentence, although it shows that Hadushili conducted the first recorded attack of the ketites against Arcawa, it does not give us more evidence such as the conquest of cities. So it seems that perhaps his campaign was a raid, rather than a fully developed campaign. However, it's possible that this action layer had been sustained to be attributed to such a raid. In a much lighter text from the early 13th century BC, in the so-called Alexander Treaty, we have further evidence for another possible campaign of La Barna, identified with Hadushili I. In Arcawa, where he may have conquered various cities in Western Anatolia. Thus, although the textual evidence is not plentiful for that particular period, the text demonstrated that Hadushili had at least one campaign against Arcawa, and that's the destruction of the Etihad 5B if we use the average chronology, may have been caused during Hadushili's era. Moving on to the second scenario, namely to the latest chronology, at the end of the 15th century, ketite text provides us the first surviving description of ketite military expeditions against Western Anatolia, after the time of Hadushili I. More specifically, in the annals of the ketite king Halya I, four ketite campaigns against Western Anatolia are mentioned. In this presentation, I will analyze only two out of these four campaigns, which appear to be of much bigger scale than the rest. The first of these two campaigns took place when 22 Western Anatolian states created a confederacy as a reaction to a previous campaign made by Dut Halya, called collectively the Yashuvan confederacy, in the King's annals. It was not achieved to defeat the ketites and got crushed by Dut Halya. This part took place approximately in the second half of the 15th century BC and the aftermath of the battle was an extensive conquest and looting of various Western Anatolian sites. The second major campaign that is mentioned in the ketite text took place a little bit later, but still around 1400 BC and again in the time of Dut Halya I, and then it can also be associated with the destruction layer. The story of this campaign can be found in the so-called Dut Halya Maduata in which it is mentioned that Maduata's family was captured and taken as prisoners at the city of Salawasa by the king of Arcawa named Kupanta Kurunda and that Dut Halya sent military force in order to assist Maduata. According to Huyins, the site of Bece Sultan was probably a prominent site in the land of Kuba Ligia and James Merritt believed that Bece Sultan could be identified with the affirmation Salawasa. However, the identification of Bece Sultan was not certain and at the moment we can only say that Bece Sultan was a prominent site in the land of Kuba Ligia and that the campaign of Dut Halya in the region might have caused the destruction of layer 5B regardless whether or not we associate Bece Sultan with Salawasa. In other words, the text suggests that at the region of Bece Sultan around the date of the destruction layer a heated military campaign associated with the Maduata affair took place and it's extremely plausible for us to accept that the prominent site in the region as Bece Sultan would have been a primary target for the Hittite troops. As I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation I do not favor the latest chronology namely the time of Dut Halya at first as under the destruction of Bece Sultan happened. The main reason for my reluctance is the fact that only one C14 sample of 7 that were taken from level 5B gave a date of 1530 to 1410 B.C. Whereas the majority of the samples point towards a date around the time of Hattushil I. Having said that and bear in mind that borders parallel to existing Central Anatolia since 1600 B.C. I tend to favor the first scenario. So to sum up, the new dating of Bece Sultan based on C14 samples brought forward the necessity and interpretation of the cultural, the political and the historical processes that took place at Late Bronze Age Bece Sultan. The data from the first excavations which were considered of much later date than they actually are can be better explained now and can be combined with the Hittite textual evidence in order to produce a more accurate reconstruction of the historical reality of the time. During the first two Late Bronze Age layers 6 and 5B, Bece Sultan seems to have been a prosperous and thriving community with a strong central administration. However, this prosperity in my opinion may have come to an end at the end of the 17th century by Hattushil I. In the next layer, namely layer 5A the archaeological evidence displays the outcome of this destruction which was followed by a bigger influence of the Hittite culture on Bece Sultan's material culture especially when the cultural material of this level is compared to that of the two previous layers. Thank you for your attention.