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Sources for Anatolia map:

Only the successor to the Medes, the Achaemenid Persians, laid claim to the entire peninsula. Some regions belonged to dependent princes, the same as in the era of the Hittites. Isolated spots were practically independent.

Troy, Taurus, Anti-Taurus

Principle Features of Eastern Anatolia: Nemrut, Sipan, Ararat, Binguel

Everyday that the Macedonians spent in Anatolia was a day in which the Persians could rush troops to the Cilician Gates and block this exit from the Peninsula. Except at the Gates, there was no southern route out of Anatolia, for the Taurus mountains were impassible. The alternative was to go east, through the more torturous Antitaurus, a route of 215 miles at heights of up to 5,000 feet

there is impenetrable mountain country on the west sides of both Lake Eǧridir and Lake Beyşehir.

Eastern Anatolia, which can be defined as the part of eastern Turkey located south of the Pontic Range, bordered to the west by the upper stretches of the Euphrates River and, to the south, by the Taurus Mountains, is mainly a region of mountains and highlands. The Taurus Range, which runs west to east from the Mediterranean almost as far as the Zagros Mountains, forms the region’s southern backbone and acts as a clear-cut geographic and ecological border that separates the eastern Anatolian highlands from the lowlands of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. Much more difficult to identify are its geographical eastern borders, because of the strong geographic and ecological continuity with the Lesser Caucasus.

Features of eastern Anatolia’s landscape: Ararat, the Nemrut, and the Supan Dağ, Lake Van (the largest lake in Turkey), Bingöl, Van, Kars, and Sarıkamış districts.

The two highest mountains in Anatolia Suphan Dag (4058 m) and Ararat (5123 m) are to the northwest and north-northeast of Ahta Dag

Largest Rivers: Araxes, Çoruh, Kara Su, Murat, and Euphrates

The Euphrates, Kara Su, Murat, and Araxes therefore form part of a complex natural communication system connecting eastern Anatolia both to the southern Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley and, more indirectly, to the lowlands of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria.

Van:

The best evidence for such large-scale irrigation in eastern Anatolia comes from the Van region, where canals, dams, aqueducts, and associated monumental inscriptions can be attributed to the kings of Urartu (Belli 1999; Zimansky 1985:66–70).

Plains of southeastern Anatolia:

• Urfa/Harran Plain (Creekmore 2008; Yardımcı 2004)
• the Malatya Plain (Di Nocera 2008)
• the Cizre/Silopi Plain (Algaze 1989; Algaze et al. 1991; Kozbe 2008; Parker 2001)

Northern boundary of SE Anatolia:

At the northern fringes of southeastern Anatolia, sites of the Early Transcaucasian (ETC) or Kura-Araxes culture (actually a heterogeneous group of cultures with general similarities in ceramics) emerged in the mid-fourth millennium b.c.e. and expanded into the third millennium b.c.e. (see, most recently, Kohl 2007:86–102; Rothman 2003; Marro, chapter 12, and Sagona, chapter 30 in this volume). The communities using this material culture appear to have dislodged or replaced the communities using northern Mesopotamian ceramics in the Caucasus (Marro 2007b). Although frequent in the Karakaya and Keban Dam regions, the distinctive ETC ceramics are very uncommon in the lower plains and river valleys of southeastern Anatolia.

Boundaries of SE Anatolia:

For purposes of this reassessment, I define southeastern Anatolia as the lowland area bordered by the Taurus Mountains on the north and the Tur Abdin Mountains to the south, the latter a low limestone mountain range with elevations between 900 m and 1,400 m (Radner 2006). The hinterlands of the Upper Euphrates River and its various tributaries form the natural western border of the area considered here, while the hinterlands of the Tigris River and its various tributaries in turn mark its eastern extent.

Northeastern Anatolia/Erzurum:

The archeology of the Early Bronze Age northeast Anatolia has often been characterized by the dominant presence of the so-called Karaz Ware...In northeast Anatolia, this distinctive ceramic tradition is represented in the archaeological contexts of major excavated sites of the Erzurum plain: Karaz, Guzelove, Pulur, Buyuktepe, and Sos Huyuk (Kosay, Turfan 1959; Kosay, Vary 1964; 1967; Sagona et al 1993; Sagona et al 1996)