This article, along with the corresponding article on Scientific Chronology, was prepared in 1994 for inclusion in the Archaeology in Anatolia Encyclopedia, a compendium that, for financial reasons, was never published. While we remain hopeful that someday the article may get into press, we have included it in our web bibliography because some people, somewhere, might find it useful in the here and now.
Forests were exploited from the very beginnings of Anatolian civilization. From Aceramic Neolithic sites such as Çayönü, Aşıklı Höyük, Nevali Çori, and Hallan Çemi enough charcoal has been found to indicate that extensive forest use has a history in Anatolia of at least 10,000 years. There is ample burned evidence for timbers used as building foundations, headers and stretchers in walls, roof posts, the roofs themselves, ladders, and furniture. Although the evidence is sometimes to be assessed only by counting empty beam-holes, enough burned beams survive at Middle Bronze Age palatial sites such as Kültepe or Acemhöyük that a reasonable estimate for wood-use is well in excess of 2000 trees per 150-room building. Archaeological evidence includes cedar, pine, fir, juniper, oak, spruce, cypress, box, chestnut, walnut, maple, and ash. The Taurus, Anti-Taurus, Amanus, Pontus, and Zagros Mountains probably provided the bulk of quality timber for construction and fine furniture especially after local wood supplies were exhausted, although there is reason to believe that supplies on the Anatolian Plateau itself were sufficient for most needs in most periods. At all times wood of a lesser quality such as poplar, willow, plane, sycamore, elm, and beech, or wood for specialized uses such as terebinth, and assorted fruit and nut trees, must also have been exploited for ordinary carpentry, for fuel, and for pottery production. Wood products such as resins were used in treating illness and for caulking boats.
Shipbuilding, housing, and industry, especially metallurgy, as well as ordinary heating through the rigors of an Anatolian winter, must have represented an increasing drain on otherwise stable forest resources, but the Hellenistic city or town foundations of Alexander the Great seem to have put a final strain on the ecology of the plateau. In the centuries immediately after Alexander, increased siltation blocked the harbors of Didyma, Ephesos, and Miletos, for example, some of which had been in operation for a millennium. Something--probably deforestation--had happened in the interior of the plateau which resulted in a rush of forest soils to the river deltas. By the time of Strabo (late 1st century B.C.) the countryside around Afyon is axylon or unwooded.
Surviving architecture and artifacts at many sites show considerable use of wood with a wide range of quantity and quality. Much of the wood was probably from local stands from which it could be dragged to the site by ox-cart. At Gordion cuttings exist in the wood of the Midas Mound Tumulus indicating precisely this form of timber transport. At all times timber must have been floated down the big Anatolian rivers or from Anatolia down the Tigris and the Euphrates to Mesopotamian cities. The occupations or crafts of woodcutter, timber-transporter, timber-merchant, and carpenter must have been established from the very beginnings of civilization. Cuneiform texts indicate that royal authorities were concerned about regulating timber cutting, setting timber prices, and imposing taxes thereon.
Forests were a source for tribute. Shalmaneser III of Syria (9th century B.C.) demanded as tribute from one prince one talent of silver, two talents of purple wool, and 200 cedar logs. Another prince, somewhat poorer, had to send metal, cattle, 200 cedar logs, two measures of cedar resin at once, and annually thereafter 100 cedar logs and one measure of cedar resin. A third prince had to include 300 cedar logs annually. The depictions on the Assyrian royal reliefs confirm the textual account, with men hauling and floating large logs down from the mountains to Assur.
Ashurnasirpal (883-859) has left us the most detailed records of the logging activities of the Assyrian kings. His men cut four kinds of trees: erenu, šurmenu, dapranu, in the Lebanon and Amanus both, and burašu in the Amanus only. Our information regarding Assyrian names for wood is informed speculation. We think that erenu is Cedrus libani, although the arguments are complicated; dapranu is a kind of juniper, as is burašu, although the latter has also been identified as cypress; šurmenu is probably cypress. We know that the words refer to wood because they are preceded by a Sumerian logogram GIŠ, meaning "wood", but GIŠ.ERIN.MEŠ (= Cedar) seems more certain than the others although the text could refer to Juniperus excelsa as well as to cedar.
Although evidence for constructional timbers of all classes is the most commonly found demonstration of ancient use of wood, furniture is an obvious but less common use. Fine furniture, indeed, is rare in the archaeological record except for the remarkably well-preserved inlaid wooden furniture at Gordion. Stone furniture such as funeral beds may be presumed to be a copy of wooden furniture. Enough furniture inlay exists elsewhere--of ivory or bone or metal--at Assur, for example, to show that elaborately carved and decorated furniture was more common than the archaeological record might otherwise suggest. Almost every Urartian site has produced elaborate metal furniture fittings such as bronze animal feet and terminals, silver or gold medallions, plaques, and other attachments either practical or ornamental, and the lists of booty taken by the Assyrian kings include furniture of boxwood and ebony embellished with gold, silver, and ivory. Painted furniture representations on Greek pottery are another important indirect source of information.
Almost every tool known to modern carpenters was used by their Anatolian predecessors: axes, adzes, hammers, mallets, wedges, chisels, drills, lathes, right-angles or T-squares, plumb-bobs, compasses, planes, rasps, and polishing agents of various kinds. Evidence exists for the ancient use of almost every modern technique as well: mortising, tenoning, treenailing, bevelling, gluing, and intricate joining and inlaying. A glance at the more elegant pieces of the Gordion furniture (eighth century B.C.) should remove any doubt about the skill and sophistication of the ancient carpenter, not only in the craftsmanship thereby demonstrated, but also in the selection of half a dozen species of wood for their contrasting colors and textures, and the assemblage of thousands of such fragments into an agreeable whole.