Field Season 1999

Systematic Survey of Boz Tepe headland

Headland of Boz tepe. The town of Sinope (ancient and modern) is located on the isthmus connecting Boz tepe to the mainland. Survey tracts are marked in white. Access to the top of Boz tepe is nearly all restricted because of the military installations there. These areas were not included in the Boz tepe survey, nor were urban zones (middle-lower slopes to the West).

In 1999 the Sinop Regional Survey examined the part of the hinterland closest to Sinope itself: the Boz tepe headland. Boz tepe was very important for Sinope in all periods, easily defended from enemies because of its steep and rocky coastline. The slopes and upper part of the peninsula supported agriculture in antiquity, recorded by the great geographer Strabo, writing in the first century B.C.E..

The Survey examined about thirty tracts on Boz tepe, recording 17 sites. Boz tepe was widely settled from Hellenistic times onward, with nuclei of settlement forming at water sources. It was not possible to examine Sulluk golu, a pond at the top, since it is within the modern military base. We know that this pond supplied water for Sinope in many periods, collected in cisterns like the example shown below. Ottoman maps show Greek villages in the area, and the survey defined a number of Ottoman period villages at Nisikoy and Inciralti, at the south-east tip of Boz tepe. The coast is ringed with defensive installations of the Ottoman period, reflecting the strategic importance of Sinope in the struggle for power in the Black Sea.


Vaulted masonry cistern on the slopes between the summit of Boz tepe and the town of Sinope	Small cove at Inciralti, at the south-eastern tip of Boz tepe.

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