The Luwian culture flourished in western Anatolia in the second and first millennia BC. It is characterized by an independent artistic and religious tradition and is considered one of the most important, but long overlooked, cultures of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, not least because of its unique language and script. Their sphere of influence extended over the western part of the Anatolian Peninsula.
The Luwians benefited from fertile soils and a flourishing craft industry, which contributed significantly to trade and cultural networking in the eastern Mediterranean. The Luwian language, an early Indo-European language, was transmitted in its own hieroglyphic script, as well as in cuneiform and later alphabetic writing. The hieroglyphic script remained in use for over 1000 years, until about 700 BCE.
The independent and prosperous city-states and kingdoms of the Luwians, despite their mineral resources and rich cultural heritage, have received little attention in the history of archaeology because the focus of archaeology has been on their neighbors, the Hittites and Mycenaeans.
The Luwian sphere of influence in western Asia Minor lay between the well-investigated Late Bronze Age cultures (Luwian Studies #0109).
However, recent research has shown the significant contribution of the Luwians to the cultural diversity and political developments of the Bronze Age. The study of Luwian culture opens new perspectives on the complex interrelationships of this era. The Luwian Studies Foundation has set itself the task of researching and documenting this heritage and making it accessible to the general public.
The Luwian hieroglyphic inscription in Chamber 2 of the Südburg at Hattusa is 4 meters wide and 1.8 meters high (Luwian Studies #1032).
Since November 2024, the Luwian Studies Foundation has been presenting an expanded catalog of archaeological sites on this website, which now includes 483 Bronze Age settlements in the western part of the Republic of Türkiye.
The comprehensive data management system was developed by Dr. Alper Aşınmaz. It provides scholars and the public with free access to information about the Luwian culture and integrates advanced data standards such as CIDOC-CRM, DCTerms, and Wikidata. Users can access site-specific details such as toponyms, coordinates, descriptions, and historical contexts through an interactive map and dynamic database. The catalog is also linked to external resources such as Pleiades, Wikidata iDAI.gazetteer, iDAI.objects, and Dbpedia, greatly expanding research potential.
All data is fully accessible and can be exported for custom analysis – an important step in promoting research into the early history of Western Anatolia.
The most famous site of Bronze Age Western Anatolia is undoubtedly the legendary Troy at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which, according to Homer, fell victim to an attack by the Mycenaeans between 1190 and 1180 BC. Homer describes the battle for the city in great detail in the Iliad, listing the attacking Mycenaean petty kingdoms on the one hand, and Troy’s allies on the other. The latter came from as far away as northern Greece and Thrace, along the entire Aegean coast of Anatolia to Lycia and the Black Sea.
Of course, Homer is not a reliable historical source. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the Late Bronze Age cultures of these regions have hardly been systematically studied by archaeologists in the past. This gap obviously contributes to the fact that the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean – which led to the decline of entire cultures and the loss of writing in some regions – still cannot be satisfactorily explained.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to analyze nearly 500 known Bronze Age settlements in western Asia Minor dating from 2000 to 1180 BC. Thirty physiogeographic parameters were examined to determine which sites were preferred by the people.
An admiral from Cyprus dictates a letter to his king, warning him of the Sea Peoples (artistic reconstruction by Joe Rohrer, Luwian Studies #0313).
Proximity to sources of drinking water and fertile arable land seemed to be most important. Presumed transportation routes into the interior also played a role. Interestingly, the region’s abundant ore deposits do not seem to have influenced settlement patterns.
- The Luwians had their own language, Luwian, which was predominant in western and southern Asia Minor during the second millennium BC.
- They also possessed a distinct script, Luwian hieroglyphics, from at least ca. 1700–700 BC.
- Luwian hieroglyphs continued to be used throughout the Dark Ages (ca. 1200–800 BC), while the other Bronze Age writing systems were either abandoned altogether (Linear B) or were no longer used in Asia Minor (cuneiform).
- Troy, in comparison with the other cultural centers of the Late Bronze Age (Mycenae, Cnossos, Hattusa), is without question the most important site in terms of world history.
- Today we know of 483 Luwian settlement sites over 100 m in diameter that were inhabited throughout the second millennium BC. This is more sites than are known from the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hittite cultures combined.
- The Luwian sphere of influence covered at least 250,000 km2 – an area larger than the spheres of influence of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hittite cultures combined.
- A Luwian king corresponded on equal terms with an Egyptian pharaoh, as evidenced by the Amarna correspondence. There is no correspondence with a Mycenaean king in that archive.
- Luwian culture provided the substrate for the prosperous kingdoms of the Early Iron Age, most notably the Phrygian and the Lydian kingdoms.
- Among the legendary rulers of this period were King Midas, in whose hands everything turned to gold, and King Croesus, who to this day is considered the proverbial richest man of all time.
The presumed political and economic importance of the Luwians supports the thesis that they were behind the legendary Sea Peoples, who contributed significantly to the demise of the Bronze Age cultures. It emerges that the small states in western Asia Minor took advantage of a phase around 1190 BCE when the Hittite royal house was weakened by internal turmoil. By entering into a military alliance and secretly building a fleet, the states of Western Asia Minor aimed to free Cyprus from Hittite control. Having quickly succeeded in this, they continued to the coast of northern Syria to raid and weaken the main Hittite allies based there. This series of destructions eventually led to the complete downfall of the Hittite Empire. Accordingly, the hitherto enigmatic so-called Sea Peoples, to whom the raids of that time are attributed, ultimately conceal an alliance of Western Anatolian small states.