University of Liverpool

Department Member, School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology

Postgraduate research student

SACE

Thesis Title: The lost Hittite Gallery: John Garstang & Turkey

About

This study addresses the ways in which archaeological negotiation in Britain and Turkey was utilized to project national identity both intentionally and inadvertently during the 1920s and 1930s.

My research aims to evaluate the construction of Turkey and the “Oriental other” in Colonial Britain at the turn of the 20th century through a post-colonial theoretical perspective presented through the analysis of various data regarding the Aegean & Hittite Gallery at the Public Museum Liverpool (now World Museum) from 1931 till the Blitz of June 1941.  The sources include undocumented archives such as diaries, postcards and correspondence and what remains of the “Garstang Hittite Collection held at National Museums Liverpool (NML).  A full investigation into how the collection was put together through curatorial and archaeological methods, what it consisted of, why these specific objects were chosen and what value were attributed by the collector and curators of the time along with gallery pals and visitors’’ guide book will allow for valid reconstruction and re-interpretation of the “Aegean & Hittite Gallery”.  Furthermore I shall also explore the value of displaying a substantial collection of Hittite casts at a time when such objects were tools for Classical and neo-Classical artistic education, understood by contemporary British society to be the pinnacle of artistic achievement.  This Hittite imagery had no artistic value attributed to it and was displayed in a context of educational value for the lower social classes who could not perceive the ‘high’ arts involved in Classical Greek culture that had been adopted by aristocratic Britain as the paradigm for its own colonial identity; popularly reinforced nationally through various media, including exhibitions such as this, and also internationally through neo-Classical architectural design e.g. The Liverpool Acropolis.

My thesis also relates the above premises with the life and work of Prof. John Garstang, his role within the Institute of Archaeology in Liverpool, his contribution to the “Aegean & Hittite Gallery”, his role as archaeological agent for private collectors, his work ethics and methodologies and his later role as establisher of British archaeological institutes in Jerusalem, Amman and Ankara.  Academic reception of Hittite archaeology in Britain and the newly-formed nation-state of Turkey following the abolition of Ottoman rule in 1923 will also be considered especially regarding Garstang’s standing as a British archaeologist contributing to the Kemâlist Turkish capital city of Ankara in 1947.  This research will place the Hittite Gallery’s contents and displays within their archaeological, cultural and intellectual contexts but also aims to explore the political use of contemporaneous Hittite archaeological negotiation both in Britain and Turkey at such a tumultuous time bound together through the work of Prof. John Garstang.

Evidence types used:

Archival evidence at

National Museums Liverpool:

 Handbook & Guide to the Aegean & Hittite Gallery Collections Exhibition, March 1931
 North Street Archives – regarding Garstang’s role as archaeologist for private collectors
 World Museum, Liverpool archives regarding their accessions and protocol from 1912  till 1941

University of Liverpool:

 Garstang Museum Archives regarding Garstang’s role within the Institute of Archaeology
 Garstang Museum Photo Archives regarding Garstang’s archaeological methodology.

British Institute at Ankara:

       Establishment archives in London & Ankara

News Archives:

 Liverpool Daily Post & Mercury, The Liverpool Daily Echo and The Times

Material evidence

• The surviving artefacts from the ‘Garstang Hittite Collection’ after the July 1941 Blitz.
• Woolley’s Carchemish neo-Hittite artefact contributions to the “Garstang Collection” and how that came about.
• Artefacts were misplaced, intermingled and moved from store to store loosing track of records, objects and context.
• The Hittite cast collection was lost, abandoned and destroyed. However the cast moulds are still extant and are to be considered as material evidence.

Turkish Kemâlist Hittite archaeology negotiation:

• Boğazköy, the Hittite capital is located in Anatolia, which was also the Kemâlist territory of origin
• 1920:  Treaty of Sévres – Following WWI Anatolia was the only Turkish region remaining after Ottoman Imperial disintegration by the Allies
• 1921:  First national museum of archaeology opened in Ankara called the “Museum of Anatolian Civilizations” 
• 1922:  Publication of the propaganda tract Pontus Meselesi by Ağaoğlu Ahmed Bey; distributed to all schools.
• 1923:  Treaty of Lausanne - The Kemâlist Republic of Turkey led by Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk was officially recognised by Europe
• The Kemâlist city of Ankara in Anatolia is officially established as the formal capital city of Turkey replacing Ottoman Istanbul
• 1930s: Kemâlist Hittite Identity Campaign hit full force through huge social reformation, education and by replacing the Ottoman identity with a conjectured Hittite one.

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