Thereafter, the attention is turned to the environs of the modern villages of Çirpi, Çiftlik and Yeniköy and, therefore, to the hitherto least known interior areas of the “highlands”. Next come the territories around Yerkesik (Thera) south of Mugla, an area obviously rather densely populated in antiquity.
The discussion begins with the two largest plateaux of the area, the one of Mugla (Mobolla) in the north-east and a little farther west the one of Yesilyurt (Pisye). The archaeological sites of the region are presented in geographical order, which at first sight is not easy to follow. 23-75) follows the first main part of the study, essentially due to Patrice Brun, in collaboration with Bresson, Debord and Descat. Starting with the first “voyageurs” in the second half of the 18th century to the Roberts and Bean, 2 he describes their respective itineraries and the sites they discovered, without treating their travel reports in detail. 21-22) in merely two pages with the earlier scientific explorations of the region. The chapter closes with an excellent map of the “highlands” localising the finds - inscriptions, fortification ruins, tombs, altars, oil presses, etc. A geological map visualises the physical unity of the region. This introduction is lavishly illustrated with both colour and black-and-white photos. These geographical qualities form the framework for the agricultural exploitation and determine the possibilities of communication between the different settlements. After a brief history of the research project he describes the geological and climatic features of the area, which is characterised in turn by high hills and more or less wide plateaux. The book opens with a short “Introduction géographique” by Pierre Debord (pp. Even though the two parts refer to each other, the settlements and their inscriptions do not form the same unity, as was the case in the Roberts’ work. Nevertheless, the strict division into an archaeological and an epigraphic part is particularly regretable. Considering the scope and diversity of the material, this division was certainly inevitable. The corpus on the HTC is divided into five chapters varying widely in extent, which reflects the division of labour between the different writers. The model for HTC provides in many respects the famous Corpus on the Plateau of Tabai La Carie II by Jeanne and Louis Robert, and it is programmatic when the authors dedicate their own study to them. This documentation is based on the surveys, by which are not meant intensive archaeological surveys but epigraphic ones in the sense of the “visite systematique” of the region. The goal of this “method” is the archaeological, numismatic and epigraphic documentation of a region as complete as possible and embedded in its historical geography. Robert pouvaient legitimement servir de modèle” (Debord, p. Regarding the method, the authors do not and cannot claim originality: “Pour ce qui relève la méthode nous n’ avons guère innové dans la mesure où les publications de L. The insights following from this material throw manifold new light on the hitherto neglected area of the “subject peraea” and confirm the authors in their choice of subject. 1 The French researchers from the University of Bordeaux and their Turkish colleagues were obviously not impressed by this discouraging outlook and conducted in the years 1989 to 1993 four surveys in this very region the results of these surveys supplemented with a few inscriptions found later are presented in this study. The few surveys carried out in the region apparently confirmed the conjecture: As one of the last researchers George Bean explored the sector between Mugla and Sarnic, during a whole week in 1950 just to conclude: “I saw no inscription whatever”. Thus the area in the triangle Mobolla - Idyma - Keramos never seemed to be a rewarding objective for epigraphic research. The region north of the Gulf of Kermamos - “les hautes terres de Carie” (HTC) - is separated by a nearly 1000m high cliff from the sea and by barren mountain ranges from the larger polis-territories in the north, east and west, and was in consequence - so it was concluded - also cut off from Greek civilisation.
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