Burak Belge

(Middle East Technical University, Department of City and Regional Planning, Ankara, Turkey)

In Turkey, the majority of the historic city centres have been continuously occupied since early ages onwards and where still occupation exists. However, the recent policies and strategies don’t allow the handling of urban archaeological resources, especially invisible sub-soil resources, into planning and decision-making process. The study aims to define a simple methodological framework to integrate the urban archaeological resources – especially sub-soil sources- into the planning and decision-making processes.
An ideal Urban Archaeological Database (UAD) is defined as a technological facility to make spatial analyses by archaeological and historical datasets in various formats. Then, primary and secondary sources of information in UAD are defined according to their reliability. In this defined context, how UAD can be used to define the Ideal Archaeological Potential, theoretically meaning probable archaeological resources without any destruction, is explained step by step. Then, equi-property areas, where the same urban archaeological layers overlay, are defined as the sub-units of ideal archaeological potential.
After that, the evaluation methods of the mass destruction by modern construction methods or partial destruction by re-use and disasters on urban archaeological resources are defined. After that, the evaluation of past and recent planning policies and conservation decisions are defined as the necessity for determining the real archaeological potential.
The real urban archaeological potential is defined as an output of the aforementioned steps. The probable characteristics of the evaluated potential are determined as unclear crucial subjects. The real problem can be seen as the determination of spatial diffusion of the urban archaeological resources underneath the cities. Certain problems as well as the archaeological potential concentrate on urban archaeological character zones (UACZ), which are described as the basic units of planning and conservation policies, have been described for the management of urban archaeological resources.

Keywords: Ideal and Real Urban Archaeological Potential, Multi-layered Historic City Centres, Equi-property Areas, Urban Archaeological Character Zones