1 Springs, Caves and the Rural Landscape in Hittite Anatolia: Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project (Ilgın, Konya) Preliminary Results of the 2011 Season 1 Ömür Harmanşah and Peri Johnson 1. Introduction Springs, caves, sinkholes and dolines are fundamental components of the Anatolian karstic landscapes and have long been associated with a multiplicity of cultural meanings, became central places of everyday life and served as symbolically charged spaces of stories and mythologies. The accumulation of local knowledge about the rural environment and the geographical imagination of local communities are first of all shaped by the stories of such powerful locales, while the roads that cross the landscape and areas of settlement are often configured around them. Therefore for archaeological survey projects, such places are mines for exploring long term, dense cultural activity, even though they are frequently neglected when compared to settlement mounds, burials and burial mounds (tumuli), fortresses or hilltop settlements, and similar sites. At the same time, springs and other karstic features are associated with a particularly long sense of time, an alternative temporality, which allows them to be always linked to deep pasts, ancient times and collective memories. They carry the traces of the deep local histories. Since 2010, Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Project has focused its research questions on an area where karstic geologies, local social practices, memory and local culture come together. Yalburt Project is a diachronic regional survey project centered at Yalburt Yaylası Hittite Spring Monument and covers the entire subdistrict territory of Ilgın and partially that of Kadınhanı and Yunak. 1 This is a translation of the following published article: Ömür Harmanşah and Peri Johnson; 2013. “Pınarlar, Mağaralar, ve Hitit Anadolu’sunda Kırsal Peyzaj: Yalburt Yaylası Arkeolojik Yüzey Araştırma Projesi (Ilgın, Konya), 2011 Sezonu Sonuçları.” 30. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı. Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kültür Varlıkları ve Müzeler Genel Müdürlüğü, 2. Cilt: 73-84.