LONG-DISTANCE INTERACTION IN URARTU?: PROVENANCE AND COMPOSITION OF COPPER ALLOYS FROM AYANIS, TURKEY* A. BATMAZ Department of Archaeology, Ege University, Izmir 35100, Turkey J. W. LEHNER Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, A14 The Quadrangle Sydney NSW 2006 and G. DARDENIZ† Department of Archaeology and History of Art, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), Koç University, Istanbul 34450, Turkey The paper analyses tin bronze weaponry found at the first-half-of-the-seventh-century-BCE Urartian fortress in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey. Examples of finely manufactured artefacts provide evidence for the consumption of high-quality bronzes in a well-defined elite context. This study tests for the presence or absence of long-distance procurement of the raw materials used to produce status objects. The results of quantitative elemental and lead isotope abundance ratio analyses show that the bronzes were produced with varying copper tin alloys, and the copper was procured from several possible locations, including Anatolia and Cyprus. KEYWORDS: URARTU, METALLURGY, BRONZE, ANATOLIA, IRON AGE, ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS, LEAD ISOTOPE RATIO ANALYSIS INTRODUCTION Located around Lake Van (Turkey) and its peripheries, the Urartian state developed the during ninth to seventh centuries BCE, and it remains one of the most poorly understood political entities in the ancient Near East. Using strategies of imperial growth, Urartu expanded from its heartland in the Lake Van region into north-western Iran and further enlarged its borders into Transcauca- sia. This paper examines the role of long-distance interaction as a part of the strategic enterprise of the Urartian state. This paper uses elemental and lead isotopic analyses of copper alloys from Ayanis, which are known markers of long-distance interaction, to test for the first time the prov- enance of the metal to examine the role of long-distance interaction in the provisioning of copper metal related to maintenance of the Urartian state. The Fortress of Ayanis, founded by Rusa (II) (685–653 BCE), son of Argishti (II) (714–685 BCE), is located some 38 km north of the modern city of Van. The extensive excavations at the site revealed Urartian remains only from the period of Rusa II. Ayanis must have been the last fortress (Çilingiroğlu 2007; Çilingiroğlu and Salvini 2001, 15–24) built by Rusa II and it *Received 21 September 2017; accepted 3 August 2018 †Corresponding author: email gdardeniz@ku.edu.tr, goncadardeniz@gmail.com Archaeometry 61, 2 (2019) 406–422 doi: 10.1111/arcm.12428 © 2018 University of Oxford