Ricerc@Sapienza

The reconstruction of ancient road systems is one of the main topics of historical geography, but the possibility of tracing ancient routes, which formed pathways of cultural, economic and political interchange, often clashes with scanty historical and archaeological sources, especially in those cases in which even the identification of ancient toponyms remains doubtful.

The site of Arslantepe, known from the Hittite and Assyrian cuneiform sources as Melid/Mal(i)tiya, has always represented a natural crossroad of the rugged thoroughfares cutting through eastern Anatolia. In political and cultural terms, the settlement has been both an interface and a frontier with different cultural and political entities all through the long history of the site.