CHAPTER NINE SINOP KALESİ ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS, 2015-2016 FIELD SEASONS OWEN DOONAN, HÜSEYİN VURAL, ANDREW GOLDMAN, ALEXANDER BAUER, JANE REMPEL, SUSAN SHERRATT, ULRIKE KROTSCHEK, PAOLO MARANZANA, AND EMINE SÖKMEN Introduction The Sinop Regional Archaeological Project (SRAP) conducted its first two seasons of excavations at the site of Sinop Kalesi in July-August 2015 and 2016. The excavation builds on more than a decade of survey and environmental research in Sinop and ties in with the longer-term regional project through ongoing environmental studies, ceramic analyses, and regional scale archaeological research. Sinop (ancient Sinope) was one of the earliest Ionian Greek colonies in the Black Sea and the earliest colony on its Anatolian coast. The goals for these initial field seasons were to clarify the Iron Age and early colonial phases of settlement investigated by SRAP in 2000 (Doonan 2007), and to establish the stratigraphic relationship of the defensive wall to early colonial and pre-colonial phases of the site. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) investigations of Sinop Kalesi, carried out in December 2012, suggested that early strata should be accessible beneath a paved modern surface to the west of the city wall, so we concentrated efforts there in our initial season (Doonan et al. 2015). SRAP conducted a scarp excavation of several exposed stone structures during the summer of 2000 and established that these belonged to the early to middle Iron Age (ca. 1000–700 BCE). The architecture was unlike local pre-colonial construction in the Sinop region, and the handmade ceramics