The Second Millennium B.C.

Excavations and archaeolgical surveys carried out in the Van province have demonstrated that there were no significant changes in the region’s culture in the second millennium B.C, following upon the third millennium, which had witnessed so many developments during the Early Bronze Age. In other contemporary Anatolian settlements the Middle Bronze Age culture emerged with its own original features, but it merely represents a somewhat inferior continuation of the Early Bronze Age culture of the previous period in Van. Data from the excavations indicate that the ceramic traditions of the third millennium B.C were more or less followed, but architecturally, simpler buildings of inferior workmanship are observed.

This indicates that after the first migrations from Trans-Caucasia to the Van area in the first half of the third millennium B.C there were no other migrations of any significance. Thus, no new culture strong enough to influence the Early Bronze Age culture of the area or to bring about any change in it arrived in the area in question at that time.

From the beginning of the second millennium B.C, in many countries to the east of the Lake Van Basin there was a painted ware culture, the existence of which has been proved by archaeological fınds. These ceramics were generally of a light buff colour on which geometrical patterns and animal motifs were painted in red or black. It was thought that traces of this culture would be found in the Van area, too. These ceramics, which were characteristic of Azerbaidjan (east of Van) and Transcaucasia in the 2 nd millennium B.C are either not present at all, or present in very limited qualities at Dilkaya and Van Castle. Thus, it is appropriate to consider the culture of the Van area in the second millennium B.C as a continuation of Early Bronze Age culture.

Surrvey carried out on the western slopes of Mount Süphan, which lies to the north of Lake Van, has revealed the graves of a large number of people who made painted ceramics; the graves are located 600-700 meters from the lake on plateaux more than 2000 m above sea level. Although the settlement they inhabited has not yet been found it is an undisputed fact that they once lived in the area. However, it is not known why the people who placed these painted ceramics in the graves as a gift to the dead lived so high above the lake. The fact that they did not live in mounds at lake level would indicate that they influenced the culture of Van in the second millennium insufficiently and consequently even if changes had occurred in the Early Bronze Age culture, it continued to thrive in the second millennium B.C.