Sacred Landscapes in Anatolia and Neighboring Regions

The ritual dimension of land use in both prehistoric and historic societies is a flourishing research issue examined by a growing number of archaeologists, historians, philologists, and anthropologists today. Anatolia, because of the time depth of its human settlement and its geographical as well as cultural diversity, offers a great potential for such studies. The chronological span of these papers stretches from the enigmatic world of Chalcolithic cave paintings at Latmos to the contemporary yet no less mesmerizing reality of sacred spaces in the Yezidi religion. Space in terms of its geographical aspect is equally well covered, reaching from the western and southwestern shores of Asia Minor to the Anatolian highlands, Cappadocia, and the Black Sea littoral, finally touching and crossing the easternmost borders of modern Turkey.