This international and interdisciplinary project in historical archaeology aims to investigate the past of Akkerman fortress, a site on the estuary of the Dnister River and within the modern town of Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky in southwestern Ukraine. Archaeologists have previously concentrated on the remains of ancient times-in particular those of the Greek outpost of Tyras-and later strata have been ignored or destroyed in order to reach earlier ones. Our project, by contrast, emphasises the Ottoman centuries which have been wilfully neglected thanks to the prejudices of the Soviet era. Furthermore, the archaeological investigation of more recent time-periods has only relatively recently come to be seen as a legitimate exercise: our understanding of them can be greatly enhanced by integrating the wealth of documentary evidence that is available to us.
Members of the archaeological team have been working at Akkerman with inadequate resources since 1999. A grant from the FVB in 2005, augmented by another from the BIAA in 2006, has provided greater security and allowed the project to expand and eventually include Ottoman historians, fortress specialists, geophysicists, dendrochronologists, architects, a mortars expert, and soil specialist. Subsequently the project has received renewed funding from the FVB in 2006-8 and the BIAA since 2007. Support for the study of specific Ottoman-period structures was provided in 1999-2002 by the Turkish Historical Society (Turk Tarihi Kurumu) and in 2004-2006 by the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA). In 2004-2005 the Department for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage of the Odessa Regional Administration also supported the project.
The bringing together of archaeologists and historians at Akkerman will allow a much fuller picture of the evolution of the site than archaeology alone can provide. We are exploring the pre-Ottoman phases in the life of the fortress through survey and excavation but the later, Ottoman, period is also portrayed in a plethora of archival data concerning construction and repair works at Akkerman which are kept, for the most part, in the Prime Ministerial Archives Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA) in Istanbul. Interpretation and analysis of this documentary record is assisting us in locating Ottoman structures within the fortress and in recreating their layout, typology, social function and meaning. Despite the past loss of Ottoman material at the site, before it could be studied, an abundance of small finds in a variety of media is being unearthed, which will tell us much about the material culture of historical Akkerman.
Earlier surveys of Akkerman fortress have been found to be unsatisfactory, and we are re-surveying the site with the benefit of modern geophysical survey tools; Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS), electrical resistance meter (RM15), fluxgate gradiometer (FM36), Ground Penetrating Radar [GPR], and photogrammetry/synth.
At present we are devoting particular attention to the port yard, which appears to be an almost entirely Ottoman section of the site. Excavation is being conducted here, as well as the non-invasive survey of the yard and analysis of the documentary record. It is not at present our intention to excavate elsewhere.
More narrowly historical aims of the project focus on Akkerman as an Ottoman frontier post. There is no comprehensive map of Ottoman fortifications around the empire and on its frontiers, few have been surveyed, and little attention has been paid to their military role per se. Another of our aims is to begin to establish a glossary of the terminology used by the Ottomans to denote the constituent parts of a fortification.