Tracing fire events and destructions of Late Bronze Age date: the end of the Hittite Building on the citadel of Uşaklı Höyük

Destruction, abandonment and resettlement, in particular, characterise the sequence of many Central Anatolian sites during the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of Iron Age. The current interpretative models and theories of the end of the Late Bronze Age consider it to be an age of complex events and in terms of archaeological evidence, the demise of a particular form of settlement and a change in ceramic horizon are the more striking circumstances together with markers of discontinuity in the main sites. Movement and reallocation of people, change in socio-political and economic organization, migrations and assimilation are all elements that could have been occurring against the backdrop of the modified material cultural horizon. This contribution concerns a particular and minor history of a site at the centre of the Kızılırmak bend that can provide new inputs for the debate about the crisis, decline and fall of the Hittite urban model in Central Anatolia. Although the exploration of the site is in its early stages, the state of the research allow us to define the Late Bronze Age settlement of Uşaklı Höyük as a Hittite city that ended, at least partly in destruction by fire. The critical review of evidence related to the burned horizon offers some insights into the process that led to the end of the Hittite building located on the mound and addresses more general questions about the end of the settlement of the Late Bronze Age with the disappearance of monumental public architecture and reconversion to different forms of settlement as people adapted to a modified social, economic and political scenario.