Abstract

SUBSISTENCE ECONOMY IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA DURING THE NEOLITHIC

Louise MARTIN, Eleni ASOUTI & Andrew FAIRBAIRN
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK. / School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, AU.
louise.martin@ucl.ac.uk / e.asouti@ucl.ac.uk / andrew.fairbairn@anu.edu.au

The purpose of our paper is to offer an overview of the evidence relating to subsistence economy in Central Anatolia during the Neolithic. In this task two different domains will be presented in some detail: a. Animal bone, and b. Plant food/fuel remains.

a. [Animal remains]

A major issue to address in any review of Central Anatolian Neolithic animal subsistence is whether communities were hunting or herding their food animals, or whether they were engaged in other practices such as managing wild animals, and exerting some breeding control over them. Any combination of animal procurement activities could also obviously have been practised.

The question of procurement is particularly challenging in Central Anatolia, which was within the natural distribution zone for wild progenitors for at least four of the major domesticates - cattle, sheep, goat and pig. Here, the method of tracing the importation of already domestic species cannot easily be used, but rather we must turn to more detailed forms of zooarchaeological data, such as osteometrics and cull patterns. The situation is complicated further by recent zooarchaeological data (from Asikli Hoyuk, Cyprus and the Zagros) which suggest that the earliest 'domesticated' ungulates may not necessarily have undergone morphological or size change, but may have remained morphologically 'wild' for long periods of time. It has become, then, increasingly important to attempt to identify the actual nature of interaction between humans and particular animals in the periods under question, as well as to search for the morphological change commonly associated with mammal domestication, which serves as a biological marker that a population has been genetically isolated from its wild ancestors.

This paper will briefly review the available zooarchaeological evidence for procurement practices from Central Anatolian Neolithic sites. Quantified but limited data are available from Suberde and Erbaba III, while large data-sets and higher-level analyses are available from Asikli Höyük and Çatalhöyük, which are the focus of ongoing research. Pinarbasi A is the subject of a current PhD project, although some results can be mentioned here. A comparison of the relative proportions of taxa shows caprines (sheep and goats) to dominate all assemblages except Pinarbasi A, which has a more diverse fauna, possibly reflecting broader spectrum opportunistic hunting. The higher dependence on caprines seen at other sites suggests more focused practices, which appear to develop from controlled culling of wild flocks at Asikli (after Buitenhuis) to the full-scale herding of morphologically domestic caprines from the earliest levels at Çatalhöyük. The situation with cattle is less clear - but there is tentative evidence for selective culling of morphologically wild animals appearing after Level VII in the Çatalhöyük sequence.

These patterns need to be viewed alongside the evidence for the continued hunting of wild fauna at Central Anatolian sites, and the highly symbolic treatment of certain animals at Çatalhöyük, which indicate that subsistence needs are only a part of the choice of animal procurement. Comparisons with zooarchaeological patterns emerging from eastern Anatolia and Cyprus will also open discussion about the nature of the changes seen at Central Anatolian Neolithic sites.

b. [Plant remains]

Contrary to currently established views, the Neolithic communities of Central Anatolia from their very beginnings (i.e., ECA I) practised cereal and pulse cultivation, whilst relying to a much lesser extent on the gathering of plant foods from the wild. The evidence available from all sites where charred plant remains have been systematically collected suggests that all the major southwest Asian domesticates were firmly present in Central Anatolia since the appearance of the first sedentary communities (ca. 8,400 cal BC). Such evidence includes sites as early as Can Hasan III and Asikli Höyük, based on the published archaeobotanical reports. Even though the archaeobotanical findings from Asikli Höyük have been interpreted as indicating intensive plant gathering, this assumption is largely based on the numerical predominance of hackberry fruit stones (Celtis). This however most certainly reflects post-depositional preservation biases favouring the survival of the denser hackberry stones (which survive mostly in calcified form) as opposed to the more fragile charred cereal remains. It is therefore highly dubious to translate the quantitative predominance of hackberry remains into qualitative statements about their relative contribution to food consumption. Pinarbasi A, on the other hand, has given minimal indications for the on site consumption of plant foods per se (let alone domestication). However, it represents at the same time a completely different habitation pattern, with all the available evidence (architecture, animal bone, charcoal remains) suggesting the seasonal occupation of the area from 8500 cal BC (Pinarbasi A) down to the late Neolithic/early Chalcolithic (Pinarbasi B).

In the light of such evidence the proposition that, during the ECA I, agricultural production was of minor importance compared to plant gathering is no longer tenable. Hence, interpretive models based on the notion of sedentary plant gatherers (apart from being at odds with the available evidence) serve only to reproduce arguments which, in what concerns plant food consumption, were generated and applied in entirely different environmental and cultural contexts (e.g., the Natufian settlements of the Levantine Epipalaeolithic). The cultural and social diversity evidenced in Neolithic Central Anatolia begs the question of its origins, but at the same time calls for the refinement of our understanding of the newly emerging Neolithic mode of production and its multiple manifestations in this region.

In what concerns the plant-based spectrum of the subsistence economy, few sites have produced thus far datasets coherent enough to address, with the necessary depth of time, such issues. This is partly due to the fact that the few published archaeobotanical reports come either from old excavations (e.g., Can Hasan III, Suberde, Erbaba) or describe limited sequences while awaiting further studies (Asikli Höyük, Musular). Recently completed analyses in Çatalhöyük East and Pinarbasi A/B however allow us to describe in detail the subsistence economies of these two sites both in their internal characteristics and their development through time. Part of the argument will involve exploring issues of resource perception and exploitation. It will be thus argued that, although it is possible to discern through time in Çatalhöyük a pattern suggesting that early opportunistic schemes of resource exploitation gradually gave way to a greater focus on the sustainable and pre-planned management of plant resources, this went hand in hand with strategies implying high seasonal mobility and diversification. Further than this, it will be demonstrated that although the Neolithic inhabitants of Çatalhöyük relied heavily on cereal consumption, at the same time settlement location was far from optimal for agricultural production. Such contradictory patterns, far from obscuring the process of archaeological interpretation, offer some exciting new insights into the complex process representing the spread of agriculture in Central Anatolia.