During the previous decade numerous appeals were made for a reassessment of the impact of the Achaemenids on the western reaches of their empire, especially during the Achaemenid History Workshops (Root 1991). Following a revised appreciation of an artistic style prevalent in the western empire, the so-called Graeco-Persian, and other recent studies, the impact once described as limited is now thought of as profound. Additionally, Graeco-Persian style, once thought of as a sign that the Achaemenids did not possess an artistic tradition of significance that spread under their rule, is now described as a sign of the diverse identities of the elite of the western empire. Concepts of diversity and contingent identity are concerns that reflect the postnationalist abandonment of territorially and temporally bounded identities. But two problems remain; methodologies derived from nationalism persist and there is the risk of merely exchanging concepts derived from nationalist ideologies for more current yet equally problematic concepts, such as multiculturalism, derived from postnational discourses.

The at present poorly studied region of Paphlagonia during the Achaemenid period consisted of several rival chiefdoms occupying the mountainous valleys extending from the verdant Pontic coast in the north to the sparser Anatolian plateau in the south. The chiefdoms fell under the sway of the Daskyleion satrapy (Fig. 1; Briant 1996). The most recent, but brief, study of the region articulated a bounded Paphlagonian identity related to coterminous artifact distributions and the Paphlagonian language (French 1991). In the only study of the visible monuments of Achaemenid Paphlagonia, a series of monumental rupestral tombs with façades carved in relief, von Gall identified the various national traditions of their constituent parts, such as Greek reliefs and Phrygian gables (1966). Dependent on bounded national assemblages of features this methodology also underlies most archaeological classification and dating and it is the most persistent of the aspects of nationalist studies because of its ease of application (Jones 1997). Achaemenid Paphlagonia is, however, seen through a palimpsest of contemporaneous and later writings. Nationalist methodologies are only the most recent layer to influence the study of Paphlagonia. Nineteenth and early twentieth century dilettante travelers regarded Paphlagonia as a mountainous region with various essential features such as a constant architectural tradition spanning the two millennia from the elite tombs of the Achaemenid period to the vernacular architecture of the early twentieth century. Paphlagonians were also regarded as having constant ethnic identity sprung from the mountainous habitat and unmitigated by civilization (Leonhard 1915; Trigger 1989).

In stark contrast to regarding Paphlagonians as evolved from their habitat, contemporary approaches to environments, such as landscape studies, center on how humans construe their built and natural environments. I propose to study in my dissertation the landscape of Achaemenid Paphlagonia as a palimpsest of predilections, theories, and ideologies. If the postnationalist concepts belong not to an ideology but to an emergent discourse, such as landscapes, ideology is replaced by methodology. Similarly Foucault appeals for discourse "to take account of its own present-ness, in order to find its own place, to pronounce its meaning, and to specify the mode of action which it is capable of exercising with this present" (Foucault 1993:12). Through this methodology aspects of the natural yet conceptual landscape, such as the geographer Strabo's mention of the numerous sacred places on the Olgassys massif (12.3.40), can be integrated with other more scientific approaches (Bradley 2000; Knapp and Ashmore 1999). One of the schisms that recent poststructuralist epistemologies have moved beyond is between scientific techniques and conceptual interpretations and between space and its representation (Jones and Natter 1999). For example, the façades of the rupestral tombs appear to dominate the river valleys where they are placed. After conducting a visibility study of the façades, I will determine from how far they were visible and whether they are directed towards the local inhabitants or travelers. The rupestral tombs are only part of an assemblage of structures that appear in inland Paphlagonia under Achaemenid rule and continue through the Hellenistic period. This assemblage consists of rupestral tombs, stepped tunnels, forts on bedrock outcrops surveying the surrounding landscape with walls often evident only in their imprint left in the bedrock, and perhaps a settlement below the outcrop. Although there are other similarly visible features of the present landscape, such as settlement mounds and tumuli, the assemblage is distinct yet comparable to a similar assemblage from the highlands of Phrygia (Haspels 1971). A landscape also consists of the resources that it supplies. After studying the timber exported from the Pontic mountains, horses sent as tribute to the king, and copper mining in the region (Belke 1996, Dengate 1978, Marek 1993, Robert 1980), I will decide whether concepts of center and periphery in their economic sense hold true for Achaemenid Paphlagonia (Wallerstein 1979).

Paphlagonian studies are also at a turning point where the preliminary reports of comprehensive fieldwork are only beginning to be published. The Sinop Regional Survey begun in 1996 is conducting intensive surveys in combination with geomorphological investigations, underwater archaeology, and possibly excavation on the Sinope promontory and in the western Amnias valley. The project will augment our understanding of Sinope's chronology, trade, and relations with its adjacent and more distant hinterland (Doonan et al. 1998; Doonan, Gantos and Hiebert 1999; Hiebert et al. 1997). The human geography of Paphlagonia during the Achaemenid period is complex and entangled in the tendentious scholarship on the process of Greek colonization in the Pontos Euxeinos. An assumption often arising in this scholarship is that the Paphlagonians were rural and inland, and the urban centers along the sea were Greek. The Sinope Regional Survey's work will allow my assessment of Paphlagonian presence on the coast to be grounded on less contentious evidence. In the eastern Amnias and neighboring valleys a survey was begun in 1995 under the auspices of L'Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes. Although the objectives of the project are to study third and second millennium settlements, the project has already published some unexpected first millennium ceramics and a preliminary geomorphological summary (Kuzucuoglu et al. 1997; Marro, Özdogan and Tibet 1996, 1998). To the south the Paphlagonia Project of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara was begun in 1997. The project was designed as a regional survey of the understudied Çankiri province, and combines extensive and intensive surveying. New evidence on forts that were previously thought to be Galatian and dated to the Hellenistic period suggested more continuity from the earlier Iron Age (Matthews, Pollard and Ramage 1998). Istanbul University excavations beginning this summer at the fort at Akalan will hopefully reveal a ceramic sequence for Paphlagonia that may clarify Achaemenid period ceramics and permit a chronological refinement of the settlement structure. To these projects I plan to arrange to have the Middle East Technical University photogrammetry team produce elevations of the tombs.

Several aspects of Achaemenid Paphlagonia make it an interesting place to study through the discourse of landscapes. Firstly the appearance of the Paphlagonian rupestral tombs and other artifacts under Achaemenid rule supports the notion that the Achaemenid impact on Paphlagonia was significant. Additionally, transhumants likely inhabited Paphlagonian valleys prior to Achaemenid rule and there was a clash of levels of complexity. Did the subjected people perceive the façades, which visible from a distance, as coercive? How can interpretations of the Achaemenid landscape be extended beyond the built monuments? Are the few contemporaneous literary references to Achaemenid Paphlagonia, such as Xenophon, and the later Strabo helpful? These questions and others concerning how Paphlagonian identity is historically contingent will add to our knowledge not of the satrapal capitals of the western empire, but chiefdoms in the liminal mountainous valleys between the Greek coast and Achaemenid interior.

In the light of the part archaeology has played in the national identity of Turkey from its foundation to the present, it is curious that Turkish nationalism does not affect explicit influence on archaeological methodologies except to lend support to an underlying national ideology. As a consequence of national myths that place Turkish origins further east and prevent explicitly connecting the bounded Turkish Republic with Turkish identity, archaeologists often substitute Anatolia. A geographical designation originally meaning east, Anatolia in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods referred to the provinces lying to the east of Istanbul and west of the Euphrates river. Adopted as an archaeological euphemism for Turkey and unfettered by contrary myths, Anatolia is a bounded region often connected to national entities dated to before the Hellenistic period.

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