483 Bronze‑Age Settlements in Western Turkey Reveal a Lost Luwian Cultural Sphere

Scholars surveying western Anatolia have identified 483 settlements dating to the Middle and Late Bronze Age (roughly 2000–1300 B.C.E.), revealing a cohesive cultural sphere long underrepresented in regional histories. Published as a dataset in Nature Scientific Data and now available via the LuwianSiteMap portal, the catalogue offers a new, data-driven window into the Luwian-speaking world that sat between Mycenaean Greece and Hittite Anatolia.

Regional Survey and Dataset

Beginning fieldwork in 2011, an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists and geodata specialists mapped an area about the size of modern Germany and recorded 483 major settlements occupied continuously during the second millennium B.C.E. Each site appears to have supported at least several hundred residents. The dataset and interactive map make these records publicly accessible for researchers and the interested public.

Settlement Patterns and Environment

Analysis of the mapped sites reveals clear patterns in how communities chose locations: fertile farmland and reliable water sources were decisive, floodplains were usually avoided, and hilltops were favored for defense and control of passes. Many settlements are spaced at intervals of roughly 17 kilometres (about 10.5 miles) — a distance consistent with a day’s travel — while coastal sites align with natural harbors.

Cultural and Historical Implications

Because previous narratives for the region relied heavily on Hittite written sources, western Anatolia has often been treated as a blank or peripheral zone. The new empirical evidence supports the existence of an independent Luwian cultural sphere that appears to have operated alongside — and at times independently of — the Hittites and Mycenaeans. The authors suggest that integrating these sites into broader reconstructions can shed light on major puzzles of late Bronze Age Mediterranean history, including the identities of the Sea Peoples, the causes of the Hittite collapse, and the role of Troy.

"The capacity to study these relationships on a regional scale is entirely new for western Anatolia," the researchers write, noting that the catalog permits examination of catchment areas, network density and community clustering around mineral resources.

Next Steps

The research team acknowledges that their survey may represent only part of the original settlement density and that further fieldwork and comparative analysis will refine the picture. Still, the public dataset creates opportunities for regional-scale studies of population, resource control and inter-community ties across western Anatolia during the second millennium B.C.E.