Central Anatolian Neolithic

The discovery of prehistoric cave paintings in the nineteenth century led to the shocking realisation that humans have been creating art for over 30,000 years. Episode two reveals how the very first pictures were created, and how images may have triggered the greatest change in human history.

To discover the first two dimensional paintings we need to look at the art created in caves such as Altamira, Chauvet and Lascaux; these were created roughly 35,000 years, the time Archeologists identify with a ‘creative explosion’.

The first of these cave paintings were discovered in Altemira by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, and his 8yr old daughter Maria, in 1879. The paintings they discovered on the walls of the caves were of animals such as aurochs, a long extinct relative of the bison. As these matched similar stone-age images he had seen, Sautuola concluded they were prehistoric. When the caves were opened to the public, however, they were considered a hoax, and unfortunately despite trying to clear his name, his discovery was not scientifically accepted until long after his death. Following this the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet came to light, and it is said that when Picasso saw images of the caves he declared “we have learned nothing”.

Today artists create images of every aspect of life, but back then the images were almost exclusively of animals,  in particular horses, bison and reindeer. The expert Henri Breuil believed the paintings to be linked to rituals that increased the chances of a successful hunt, however more recent archeology has shown that the animals depicted were not those eaten by the people of the time. In addition some of the paintings were in very hard to reach areas of the caves and featured dots and lines. However, it is easy to take a modern view such as this and miss the point completely, that being how did we learn to project our 3D world into 2D.

There are very similar paintings to be found in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, however unlike their European cousins, these were not produced thousands of years ago, but much more recently. These images were produced by the San “bush men” and although they do not produce paintings like this today, Professor David Lewis Williams discovered papers from the late nineteenth century by a German settler that documented the life and rituals of the San people. It became clear to Williams that their religion was based around traveling in a trance state to a spirit world and that they documented in these pictures their experiences of the trance. Often these transitory states involved animals, and the animals depicted were normally large or powerful, such as the Eland, that were respected by the San people. Williams also noticed another similarity with their European counterparts, that of the dots and lines.

Research into altered states, such as the trances of the San people, show that on entering these states, visual disturbances similar to migraine aura that involved lines and dots occur. Furthermore, these images can also be produced through sensory deprivation, for example from being placed deep in a cave for a long time. Prehistoric people, it appears, had hallucinations , which took the form of things that were close to them, such as the horses, bison and aurochs. These hallucinations were remembered and prehistoric people then recreated them on the walls of their caves.

Returning to the European palaeolithic caves, it seems that 12,000 years ago people stopped painting. We don’t know why, but the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, in Southern Turkey may hold the answer.  When excavated the site revealed monolithic pillars built around 12,000 years ago, dated to just the time that the paintings in caves seem to stop. These stone pillars feature carvings of animals such as those in the caves. The effort in creating these stone pillars would have required considerable  labour and organisation, the workers for example, all needed feeding. Recent research has shown that modern wheat can be traced to wild wheat that grows within 20 miles of this site, which has lead scholars to speculate that this was the birthplace of agricultural farming and, in turn, complex society,'civilisation', itself.

The long time of studding have been pased since I venture to write this text in intention to contribute in resolving mystery of motifs in the design of Serbian Pirot Kilim – the licenced traditionally  woolen, home woven carpet, rug, from the town Pirot, South Serbia – Turkish: sarkoy. Explanation that folow about one abstract pattern – motif from that carpet, made in geometric manner, which I found interesting because of association on Egyptian symbol Djed, is my personal one. I named this pathern “Djed”, grandpa in Serbian lannguage, and argue it’s meaning as: commander , because of Djed /grandpa in Serbian patriarchal society really was the commander of the household all his life, and  sons were living with him, all the life, to the half part of the 20ct. Tis analogy come from the fact that “Djed” is offten in center of the patthern wich consists ov radiating rhombuses or radiating rectangulars with lot of streith lines spreding horisontally from theirs body in the space around, like we see at the Egyptiyn symbol Djed, too. Analyze is based on history of art, ethnology, antropology, archeology, and other disciplines, in gestalt manner, necessary, I think, in analyzing symbols of this type. I trying to find some similarities with other cultures, especially tribal once, because  tradition of woving in Serbia is the old one, from the 5000 BC, and Serbian society was most the rural one, to the half part of 20 ct. We still have the familly clans and tribes on Balkan today, the most in Monte Negro and Herzegovina – part of the Bosnia and Herzegovina. Balkan was the most pastoral, too, one etnic group Vlasi /Vlach/ got name from wooll’s  hair, in Balkan languages – vlas! But, I have find the similar motifes, from Neolitic times further, too, all around world, from Kordun /the  Southwest part of Croatia/, via Balkan Peninsula, Anatolia, Turkey, Afganistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, some parts of Kina, Malaysia and Philippines, to Middle and South America: Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and NorthAamerica - indian tribes Kiowa, Nawajo, Shoshone and many others. Looks like in the beginning of  our civilisation layes the new technologies –  spining and weaveing of the wool. Personally, I think this civiliation had  spreaded from the same place, somewhere in the Ancient Near East, from the middle of the terittories where it later evolved  and where the same traditions exhist today.

"Anatolia" comes from the Greek word ἀνατολή , "sunrise", "East".Four genetic clusters define the uniqueness of Neolithic Anatolia. Autochthonous, associated with the "Dzuzuanna" cluster, theWHG cluster that came from Europe, as well as the additional influence of Natufan (the Levant N genetic cluster) and Zagros (Iran N). These four genetic clusters defined all the diversity in the middle East, differing only in the local identity of the regions. Thisdiversity of regions generally corresponded to the cultural (archaeological) characteristics and traditions of the population.Central Anatolia of the Neolithic period could represent the core and Indo-European ancestral homeland, whose population wasmainly composed of Western European hunters and gatherers and local population. From this core, there was further expansionthroughout the Middle East, Europe, and further East into Asia.

In the middle 1980's the Anatolian Kelim quite suddenly became the prime genre of oriental carpet to generate research and collector interest.
The mechanics behind this have remained unknown to the public and even to many of the particpants.
This long paper for the first time exposes what happened, who was responsible as well as much of the behind the scene story.
But there is far more than social history here, the author, who was at the epicenter, sets out to codify the Anatolian Kelim by proving there is a tiny, actually only 11 example, group of masterpiece archetypes which have influenced the production of tens of thousands later examples.
Within this premise and with voluminous examples this paper makes clear and demonstrates the cohesive and proprietary nature of the Anatolian Kelim.
It also showcases the magic, mystery and beauty of those archetypal examples.
***CLICK ON THE LINK TO weavingartmuseum.org TO READ THIS PAPER***

Nieuwenhuijse O.P, Bernbeck R, Akkermans P.M.M.G & Rogash J. (Eds.) 2013.




FINAL PROOFS, APRIL 2013
The times between the Neolithic and Urban revolutions in Mesopotamia have for a long time been interpreted as a period of stagnation. This volume is part of an emerging discourse that challenges such assumptions. Focussing upon the northern parts of ancient Western Asia, where most recent research has concentrated, an international group of researchers demonstrates that Upper Mesopotamia underwent complex historical changes that we just begin to grasp fully. The Late Neolithic was a critical phase of the history of the ancient Middle East. Authors investigate settlement patterns, practices of painting pottery, distributions of various raw materials, the role of craft industries, the emergence of seals and other issues from a variety of theoretical and practical questions. The book is a must-have for prehistorians working in the Near East, and a rich source of information for archaeologists working in other parts of the world.

Review by Ian Hodder: "This is an enormously impressive volume that consigns to the waste bin any notion that the Late Neolithic in Upper Mesopotamia was an inconsequential period of stagnant inactivity between the PPNB and the Ubaid, between the origins of farming and of urbanism. Rather, the period emerges as diverse and complex, witnessing much dynamism and challenging many accepted assumptions. A hugely impressive compendium of papers transforms our vision of this time period. The papers are lively and diverse in terms of theory and perspective. Some deal more with excavation results and with microhistories, while others provide synthetic accounts. ‘Interpreting the Late Neolithic’ is a milestone in late prehistoric research of Western Asia." (Ian Hodder Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology of Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center, Stanford University)

The collection "Art and Religion of Ancient Societies" is a continuation of the series of the scientific publications which is devoted to the problems of study of the spiritual culture in the primitive societies. The previous edition "Art and Ritual of Ice Age", that was published in 2005, covered a circle of questions directly connected with the theory and practice of study of the Paleolithic Art. In this collection we also address to the same problematic. However, taking into account that the understanding of the most ancient culture stages of the human society is connected to a wide circle of questions of the study of the traditional communities, we think it is necessity to expand the edition’s subjects. Therefore we have tried to capture not only questions directly connected with field and basic study of the ancient art, but also practical analysis of the cultural and ethnographic facts. The questions of the aesthetics and theory of development of the early forms of art are considered as separately subjects in works. The published materials enable the reader to familiarize with the questions and methods of their analysis more in details, which are submitted in works of the researchers from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Germany, Canada, USA, Australia.

Bu yazı Göller Bölgesi olarak bilinen Burdur, Isparta, Beyşehir-Suğla göl havzalarını da içine alan geniş bir böl- gede 1950’den bugüne yaklaşık 50 yıllık bir zaman diliminde yapılmış olan kazı ve araştırmalarda tespit edilen Neolitik yerleşmelerin analiz denemesidir.

“Göller Bölgesi”nin tanımlı bir kültürel coğrafya olduğu çoğu araştırmacının hemfikir olduğu bir saptamadır. Ba- demağacı, Höyücek, Kuruçay ve Hacılar kazıları belirli bir bölge içinde MÖ 7200-5500 tarihleri arasında 2000 yıla yakın zaman diliminin tanımlanmasını sağlamıştır. Bölgenin kronoloji tabloları, yerleşmeler arası ilişkiler ve bölgenin kültürel karakteristiği çanak çömlek grupları ve beraberlerindeki kültürel öğeler üzerinden yapılmıştır. Oysa çanak çömlekte görülen benzerliklerin aksine yerleşme dokuları, bina biçimleri ve hatta beslenme alışkan- lıklarına kadar kazılan tüm yerleşmeler birbirinden farklılıklar gösterir.

Bölgenin Hacılar’la başlayan tanınma süreci ile “Hacılar Kültürü”nün Balkanlara kadar geniş bir coğrafyayla etkileşim içinde düşünülmekteydi1. Ancak bu iki coğrafyanın etkileşim ekseni yayılmacı görüş çerçevesinde ele alınırken Hacılar’ın ait olduğu kültürel coğrafyanın sınırları hakkında herhangi bir veri yoktu. R. Duru’nun 1970’lerin sonunda bölgede sürdürdüğü çalışmalar Hacılar’ın Göller Bölgesi’nde yalnız olmadığı çağdaşı başka yerleşmelerin varlığını ortaya koymuştu. Kazıların yanı sıra M. Özsait’in yaptığı yüzey araştırmaları bölgenin kültürel sınırlarını ve kırılma süreçlerini ortaya koyması bakımından büyük önem taşımaktadır.

James Mellaart was a pioneering archaeologist who made some of the greatest discoveries about Turkey’s prehistoric past, changing our understanding of the late stone age forever. His excavation of the huge Neolithic mound site of Çatalhöyük, now a World Heritage Site, brought revolutionary evidence of a complex prehistoric town, revealing previously undreamt of art and culture, and making him famous. However, there was far more to the man than his archaeology – his troubled childhood, fierce identity, love for Turkish culture, as well as the controversies by which he was dogged, meant that his life was filled with adventure and exoticism.

This book delves into the life of James Mellaart and his wife Arlette, their family histories and historical Istanbul, the romantic backdrop to Mellaart’s ground-breaking work. His son Alan explores in detail how the lives of his parents and their respective families unfolded, set against the social whirl of a summer palace on the Bosphorus. Mellaart’s archaeological discoveries and the excitement of excavation are vividly explained in first-hand accounts by those who were there at the time. Historical reports, eyewitness accounts from those who knew him and assessments of the impact of both Mellaart’s work and character by leading academics show the undoubted importance of his contribution to the archaeology of Turkey and the wider Near East. Richly illustrated in colour throughout, here for the first time the reader encounters previously unseen archive materials, including Mellaart’s personal notebooks and accounts, giving new perspective on one of the greatest and most controversial characters in the history of archaeology.   

By Alan Mellaart and contributors, edited by Emma L. Baysal
476 pages, 239 illustrations (149 colour, 90 black and white), cloth hb, limited edition.

Bu makalenin asıl amacı petroglif ve kaya resimlerinin karşılaştırmalı yorumunu yapmak ve birçok kriteri göz önünde bulundurarak tarihlendirmeye çalışmaktır. Anadolu coğrafyası tarihi kültür ve envanteri ile her zaman odak noktası olmuştur. Lakin petroglif ve kaya resmi açısından bir hayli zengin olan bu coğrafyada (Harita 1, bkz. s.1) konuyla alakalı sağlam verilere dayanan pek fazla araştırma da yoktur. Anadolu ile komşu coğrafyalarda birçok benzer petroglif ve kaya resmi bulunmaktadır (Ermenistan, Gürcistan, Azerbaycan, İran, Nahçıvan). Çoğunlukla bütün tarihlendirme ve değerlendirmeler diğer coğrafyalarla olan tipolojik benzerliklerine göre yorumlanmaktadır. Bizde bu makalede hem Anadolu coğrafyasından hem de diğer coğrafyalardan örnekler ve veriler alarak bazı analizler ve hipotezler oluşturmaya çalışacağız.

Abstract: A tiny bone plaque found at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, and currently on display in nearby Sanliurfa Museum, shows the first recorded depiction of the site’s familiar T-shaped pillars. In addition to this, the etching on its surface might well be the earliest known use of a 3D perspective in prehistoric art. The plaque’s finely carved imagery also reignites the debate over the axial orientation of the site’s main enclosures and any potential astronomical targets during the epoch of their construction.

Orta Anadolu’da yer alan, UNESCO Dünya Mirası Çatalhöyük yerleşmesi, evlerdeki göz alıcı duvar resimleri ve duvarlardaki sıvalı hayvan kafatasları ile, bugüne dek bilinen en büyük Neolitik yerleşmelerden biridir.Çatalhöyük’te bitki ve hayvan evcilleştirmenin yanı sıra ritüel alanındaki gelişmelerin önemi de ön plana çıkar ve bu olguların birbiri ile ilişkili olabileceği öne sürülür. Öte yandan Çatalhöyük, Neolitik sonlarına tarihlenmektedir. Çatalhöyük’ün yalnızca 10 km kuzeyinde yer alan Boncuklu Höyük’te ise, Orta Anadolu’da tarımın ilk ortaya çıkışını ve Bereketli Hilal’den batıya doğru yani ilk ortaya çıktığı bölgeden Avrupa’ya doğru yayılımını daha geriye götüren ve Çatalhöyük’ün öncülleri olduğunu gösteren heyecan verici bulgular ortaya çıkmıştır. Çatalhöyük’ten birkaç yüz yıl daha erken tarihli olan Boncuklu Höyük, MÖ 8.500-7.500 civarına tarihlenir. Yaklaşık 1 hektarlık bir alanı kaplayan, küçük bir höyük yerleşmesi olan Boncuklu’daki arkeolojik kazılar Douglas Baird, Andrew Fairbairn ve Gökhan Mustafaoğlu tarafından yürütülmektedir.

Humans have been living with other animals side by side since the beginning of their journey on this planet, and have inevitably been dependent on them for various needs and conditions. In one hand, completely relying on natural resources, the prehistoric people had to hunt and heavily exploit other animals for meat and animal products which were very essential for their survival. On the other hand, animals were worshiped, respected and considered to be very vital in different symbolic activities of human groups since Palaeolithic period. Consequently, as like present human societies, the human-animal relationships in prehistoric period were also very complex and multi-dimensional.

Throughout many periods of cultural evolution, perhaps the most crucial stage of human-animal relationships occurred in Neolithic period, particularly during the early phase of Aceramic Neolithic period when human groups were advancing towards a settled socio-cultural and subsistence pattern giving up their nomadic hunting-gathering lifestyle. Contrary to previous periods, Neolithic societies started to live permanently in a certain place throughout the year and hunt animals mainly available in their local environment. Animal species too were forced to cope with this very strange and completely new change in their habitat. Consequently, both humans and animals were going through some very significant and life-changing mutual relationships, which eventually encouraged the domestication of certain ungulate animals in Anatolia and West Asia. Therefore, the essence of the detail study on these complex relationships during this transitional period comes first, if studying any crucial aspect of the human-animal relationships.

Providing that the Central Anatolia is among the most important core regions of Neolithisation, this study attempts to explore multi-scale aspects of human-animal-environmental interactions in Central Anatolian Pre-Pottery Neolithic Settlements throughout a period of about one thousand five hundred years.

Aşıklı’daki mikromorfoloji çalışmaları 1990ların başında, Prof. Ufuk Esin başkanlığında sürdürülen ilk dönem kurtarma kazılarıyla, dünyada mikro- morfoloji analizlerinin kuramsal ve terminolojik altlığının oturduğu ve arkeolojideki kullanımının ivme kazandığı dönemle eş zamanlı olarak başlamıştır. 2010 yılında Aşıklı’da yeniden başlayan ikinci dönem kazılarında ise, ilk dönem Aşıklı araştırmalarından alınan sonuçların beraberinde getirdiği yeni sorunsallar ve değişen yaklaşım çerçevesinde, mikromorfolojinin Aşıklı’daki yaşamı anlamaya yönelik sorduğu sorular değişmiş ve çeşitlenmiştir.

Bu yazıda arkeoloji dünyasında halen çok da yaygınlaşmamış bu yöntemin geçmiş insanların ve toplulukların yaşamının anlaşılmasına sağladığı katkı, Aşıklı yerleşmesinde yapılan mikromorfoloji çalışmaları ile değerlendirilecektir.

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource strategies, settlement patterns, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal food consumption.

This article provides an introduction to the Boncuklu Höyük excavation project, in progress since 2006, and underlines the place of the discoveries about the ‘Boncuklu culture’ that have come to light in the wider context of the archaeology of Anatolia and the Near East. Some of the results of the works at Boncuklu Höyük are discussed from the point of view of archaeo-cultural ad- vancement, in which discussion is seen their importance for Central Anatolia. We see the importance of the evidence at Boncuklu Höyük for the story of the period of change to sedentary life in Anatolia. It is emphasised that the mate-rial and cultural characteristics seen at the site were not developed by chance.It has been debated that the Central Anatolian Neolithic is situated at the periphery of the core of the Eastern Neolithic and as a result of this under-standing the cultural interactivities and interconnectedness have been inter-preted from the point of view of diffusionism. On the basis of this, cultural progress has been re-modelled within a framework of material culture history as the ‘Neolithic Package’ scheme. There are contradicting views in reference to this model, based on the argument that cultural characteristics should be evaluated as a whole rather than by comparative analysis focused on stylistics or typological similarities amongst the objects. In addition to this, the presence of local cultural developments, as in the case of Central Anatolia, and the area’s internal and external cultural dynamics have been deliberated in order to prove the homogeneity of Central Anatolia. In order to test these views, expressed a decade ago, more data was required.In the last ten years of archaeological research, programmes that have been conducted in Central Anatolia include new sites such as Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu Höyük, which appear to chronologically follow one another and/or partially overlap. The Epipalaeolithic levels at Pınarbaşı and its influences provide a powerful chronological tool for understanding Boncuklu Höyük as the antecedent of the approximately 1000-year later site of Çatalhöyük.In order to understand the local cultural development Pınarbaşı, Boncuklu Höyük and Çatalhöyük can be defined as an archaeological laboratory in this part of the Central Anatolia. The apparent continuation of the cultural traits seen at Boncuklu Höyük (such as bull heads, platforms and human skulls) at the later site of Çatalhöyük is an indicator of a continued cultural tradition and sense of identity rooted in Central Anatolia. The settlements of Boncuklu and Pınarbaşı show that the symbolism and social development seen at Çatalhöyük can be traced backwards. In addition to this continuum in cultur-al traits in a local sense, recent excavations that have been conducted at Aşıklı Höyük by M. Özbaşaran of İstanbul University have revealed that the earliest levels of this site also have oval planned mudbrick houses. Boncuklu Höyük, although dated slightly later than Aşıklı Höyük level 4, also revealed simi-lar oval planned houses made of mudbricks. The oval planned structures at Boncuklu contain platforms, stone lined hearths, animal heads installed as at Çatalhöyük, red painted floors and applied reliefs on the walls. All these char-acteristics, echoed at Çatalhöyük more than a thousand years later, empha-size the cultural importance of Boncuklu Höyük in time and space. In short, Boncuklu Höyük can be seen as the birthplace of the Çatalhöyük culture and the point from which it developed. Characteristics such as symbolic formation, oval planned architecture, rebuilding houses on previous footings, tool types and technology, adaptation to regional geography and climatic conditions and internal, external and interregional relations, which have been proved by imported raw material and status objects, like beads, are all indicative of the well established and recognized culture in Central Anatolia. This article shows that Boncuklu is not the only such example in Central Anatolia, other sites such as Pınarbaşı and Aşıklı Höyük, far from being coincidence, are further evidence that rather than coming from the east, maybe developments were localized within the Central Anatolian context. Current evidence suggests that, rather than being a result of the introduction of a ‘Neolithic package’ the culture of Central Anatolia maintained a regional identity when compared with its eastern contemporaries. The data that have been accumulated during the last decade allow us to interpret an individual regional identity for the Central Anatolian Neolithic cultures that endured from the time of the first sedentary settlements

This book offers a comprehensive evaluation of the epistemology by which archaeology has translated the architectural record at Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic (6500-5500 BC) sites in central Anatolia into interpretations of social organisation, as well as an exploration of how people in LN/EC central Anatolia used architecture to create communities.

A tiny bone plaque found at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, and currently on display in nearby Sanliurfa Museum, shows the first recorded depiction of the site’s familiar T-shaped pillars. In addition to this, the etching on its surface might well be the earliest known use of a 3D perspective in prehistoric art. The plaque’s finely carved imagery also reignites the debate over the axial orientation of the site’s main enclosures and any potential astronomical targets during the epoch of their construction.

Volcanic Cappadocia is a unique region in Anatolia, having a diverse geology that has provided prehistoric communities with a variety of raw material sources, including obsidian, basalt and tufa, as well as water resources in the catchment area of the Melendiz River and its tributaries. However, data on the presence of local prehistoric communities in the region has been scarce. Of late, studies concentrated on the transition from a mobile hunter-gatherer way of life to sedentism and food production in the region. Recent research at Aşıklı Höyük has provided substantial evidence on the processes of early sedentism of a mid-9th and 8th millennium calBCE community on the banks of the Melendiz River. However, an in-depth understanding of the cultural context of the transition to sedentism required further research. The Cappadocia Prehistoric Survey (CAPs) was initiated in 2016 to gain further data on this timeframe. Three seasons of survey and the subsequent excavations at the newly discovered site of Balıklı since 2018 provide new evidence on the early Neolithic communities and the diversity of lifeways towards the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 8th millennium calBCE in the region, which is the main focus of this study.

The transition from Epi-paleolithic to Neolithic is one of the most enigmatic social transformations in human history. Archaeologists have been tracing this radical transformation for over a century. New opinions come up with the fact that cultural interchange among communities living in the
same region increased by the end of Epi-paleolithic at local scale, and inter-communal relationships triggered the onset of sedentism.

Central Anatolian Plateau stands as a distinct region in the Neolithization process. Konya Plain and Cappadocia seem to have hosted various mobile forager groups prior to sedentism. These groups could have been both locals and foreigners. The main attraction for the foreign groups was the abundant raw materials available in volcanic Cappadocia.
The Aşıklı people who settled on the banks of a river constructed a new lifestyle that lasted almost 1000 years. The critical question is where and how their ancestral past and legacy was forged. 25 years of research at Aşıklı has shown that they were fully conscious of the natural environment and ecosystem of the region.

Excavations at Mentesh Tepe, western Azerbaijan, have unearthed Neolithic levels dated to an early stage of the Shomu-Shulaveri Culture, with a specific material culture and several inhumations among which a multiple burial. At that stage, already a full domestication of plants and animals is evident. Many questions have been raised concerning the origins of this culture, and its end is also still obscure. Relations
with societies in the north-Mesopotamian area have again recently been evidenced at its beginnings. Mentesh Tepe, with its exceptional succession of occupations from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, could help providing some clues for the links between the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic periods. The site is presented here under different points of views (architecture, burials, material culture) but in a preliminary stage since many studies are still in progress. Questions are raised about the climate and the apparent absence of pre- and post-Shomu-Shulaveri Culture possibly due to silting or erosion processes linked with the mobility of the Caspian Sea level.

We review and evaluate human adaptations during the last glacial-interglacial climatic transition in southwest Asia. Stable isotope data imply that climatic change was synchronous across the region within the limits of dating uncertainty. Changes in vegetation, as indicated from pollen and charcoal, mirror step-wise shifts between cold-dry and warm-wet climatic conditions, but with lag effects for woody vegetation in some upland and interior areas. Palaeoenvironmental data can be set against regional archaeological evidence for human occupancy and economy from the later Epipalaeolithic to the aceramic Neolithic. Demographic change is evaluated from summed radiocarbon date probability distributions , which indicating contrasting and in some cases opposite-population trajectories in different regions. Abrupt warming transitions at ~14.5 and 11.7 ka BP may have acted as pacemakers for rapid cultural change in some areas, notably at the start of the Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures. However temporal synchroneity does not mean that climatic changes had the same environmental or societal consequences in different regions. During cold-dry time intervals, regions such as the Levant acted as refugia for plant and animal resources and human population. In areas where socio-ecological continuity was maintained through periods of adverse climate (e.g. Younger Dryas) human communities were able to respond rapidly to subsequent climatic improvement. By contrast, in areas where there was a break in settlement at these times (e.g. central Anatolia), populations were slower to react to the new opportunities provided by the interglacial world.

Orta Anadolu Bölgesindeki Aşıklı Höyük MÖ 8500-7400 (cal.) yıllarına tarihlenen, Çanak Çömleksiz Neolitik Dönem yerleşmesidir. Bu tez çalışmasında Aşıklı Höyük yerleşmesinde ortaya çıkarılan ateş yerleri incelenmiştir. Çalışmada ateş yerlerinin yapımı, kullanımı ve yerlerinin zaman içerisindeki olası değişimlerinin tespit edilmesi ve bina içlerinde bulunan ocakların, konut yapılarının düzenlenmesinde nasıl bir rol üstlendiğinin anlaşılması amaçlanmıştır.
Bu amaçla ateş yerlerinin teknolojik ve tipolojik tanımları, tasnifleri yapılmış, etnoarkeolojik çalışmalar ve deneysel uygulamalar çerçevesinde olası işlevleri anlaşılmaya çalışılmış, ateş yerleri ile ocaklı ve ocaksız binaların yatayda ve dikeydeki dağılımları, karşılaştırmaları yapılmıştır. Alınan sonuçlar, Aşıklı Höyük’te, 1000 yıllık süreçte, zaman içinde ateş yerlerinde değişim görüldüğüdür. Çalışmamız, bu değişimin yerleşmedeki diğer çalışma/uzmanlık alanlarında saptanan değişimlerle birlikte ele alınarak ilk yerleşik toplulukların yeni yaşam biçimine nasıl adapte oldukları konusuna katkıda bulunmaktadır.

Aşıklı Höyük, located in Central Anatolia, is a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement dated to 8500-7400 cal. BC. In this study, fire installations of Aşıklı Höyük have been investigated. The main aim of this study is to understand the possible changes in the construction, use and location of fire-places and the role of hearths in the organization of the buildings. In order to reach this aim, fire installations were analyzed technologically and
typologically; classified and compared to ethnographical and experimental examples that provide hints in understanding their possible functions. Analyses on stratigraphy and spatial distribution through time have also been carried out. The results indicated changes through time. Such changes, contextualised with other changes observed in the settlement, contribute in understanding the newly established way of living of the early sedentary communities.