Cappadocians

From 1991 to 2000 the Centro Studi Sotterranei (Centre for Underground Studies), located in Genoa (Italy), performed every year research campaigns in Cappadocia, with the aim of locating, exploring and documenting a large sample of underground and rocky structures scattered in this historical district. A typological classification has been proposed and an urbanistic analysis of some selected underground settlements has been performed.
The investigations developed in an area of about 25.000 sq. km, made-up mainly by rocks of volcanic origin produced by 19 great volcanic apparatus, among which the Erciyes dağı, 3.916 m, and the Hasan dağı, 3.268 m, and by hundreds of smaller monogenetic volcanic centres. They originated a powerful deposit, few hundred meters thick, from which, in few circumscribed points, the limestone bedrock emerges; here natural caves used by prehistoric men have been found.
The most relevant feature of the district is given by the extended tufaceous deposits that, thanks to their softness, have been deeply modelled by meteorological agents (erosion, deflation, corrosion, cryogenic action) in very characteristic shapes (canyons, buttes, cliffs, calanques, pinnacles). Inside these rocks man has dug, during the centuries, rooms of several types, developing a "negative architecture" (underground dwellings, working spaces, churches, burials, shelters, hydraulic tunnels), exploiting the lithological and morphological characteristics of the environment, pressed by climatic conditions or historical events.
The surveys allowed us to outline the features of the "underground district" of Cappadocia according to different aspects. First, from the point of view of the geographic and altimetric distribution of the underground settlements all over the territory. Then, according to their typological variety, to distinguish anthropic cavities (rocky and underground cavities) from natural caves. Also, intermediate specimens representing transition forms of underground architectures have been identified and described (courtyard settlements and caves with anthropic interventions). At the same time, we took into account the differences in the destination of use observed in the various hypogea; special attention has been given to the reasons and the techniques of the defensive organization of some particular underground settlements, that can be classified as real war-shelters. Finally, we have studied and described the ancient hydric systems of catching, draining and carrying water, still in function at present, to allow an agricultural use of deep erosion valleys.
With regard to the dating, we noted a shortage of historical sources and archaeological evidence concerning underground settlements. Nevertheless, we proposed some hypotheses about their origin and development, which take into account the succession along the centuries and the overlap on the territory of different civilizations (Hittites, Romans, Byzantines, Arabians, Seljucks), comparing the data with the archaeological remains we found out in one cave, in collaboration with Halis Yenipınar and Murat Gülyaz of the Archaeological Museum of Nevşehir, and with the valuable analysis of the painting cycles of the rocky churches elaborated by Catherine Jolivet.
Thanks to the data collected in ten years of activity we implemented a "map of the underground sites of Cappadocia" and a list of 183 settlements, divided in six districts: Aksaray (59 sites); Kayseri (24 sites); Kırşehir (3 sites); Nevşehir (71 sites); Niğde (22 sites); Yozgat (4 sites). We are sure that further investigations may substantially increase this list. In fact, let us only mention the rocky churches that Jolivet estimates to be more than six hundred, and that have been deliberately excluded from the researches by Centro Studi Sotterranei, since we intended to devote more attention to less documented, but equally crucial sites for a comprehensive understanding of the cultural and landscape heritage of Cappadocia.

Key Words: underground and rocky structures, typological classification, urbanistic analysis

This current draft is a preliminary version of the proceedings of a video conference on Cappadocia and Cappadocians that was held on May 1415, 2020 on Zoom and therefore page numbers are subject to change. We should note that after producing an e-book, we will have a second and refined print-out version of the proceedings which will likely be published in Oxford in 2022. In this last version we will not include any abstracts any longer and it will only contain full papers.
The YouTube links of the e-conference can be found below. The conference committee kindly requests that you alert any persons within your research community by forwarding following links who would be interested in viewing our YouTube links.

All records of the e-conference in YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL89iPO_6ujofOfBo_I3IG1nwsf0bTyEWy