EARLY BRONZE AGE DAGGERS IN CENTRAL ... - Bilkent University

dated to the second half of the third millennium B.C. The conventional date given for
the “royal graves” is between 2400 and 2200 B.C. (Mellaart, 1957: 65-66).
The royal graves were built as low rooms with masonry sides and flat, wooden
roofs. The floors were usually packed with dirt, but some had paved floors such as
grave R.M. Akok proposed that the rooms were organized as if they were a bedroom
(Akok, 1979: 109). The orientation of the room and the deceased is on an east-west
axis, with the head of the individual pointed towards the west, and legs towards the
east.
Most of the graves contained a single individual, but it was not unusual for a
grave to contain two individuals. The deceased are buried in flexed position with
many belongings, which may or may not have been considered valuable. Even the
richest graves contained simple items such as pottery that might have been used in the
individual’s daily life. The evidence indicated that the dead were buried with their
clothes on and were perhaps wrapped in animal hide as it is evinced by grave H. The
suggestion of the individual having been buried clothed comes from the in situ finds of
pins to attach the fabrics, metal ornamentations for fabric, and jewelry and weapons
worn as they would have been in daily life. Daggers, when present, are found at the
hip level of the deceased (Harmankaya-Erdoğu, 2002). It appears that weapons were
not exclusively found in male burials since some were recovered from a female burial.
The presence of weapons belonging to a female burial led to suppositions that the
individual was a high status individual, perhaps a “queen”. One should be aware,
however, that the remains might belong to adolescent and mistakenly identified as a
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