Abstract

PROPOSAL FOR A REGIONAL TERMINOLOGY FOR CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Mihriban ÖZBAŞARAN & Hijlke BUITENHUIS
Prehistory Department, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, 34459 Istanbul, TR. / Centrum voor Archeologische, Research and Consultancy, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Poststraat 6, 9712 ER Groningen, NL.
mozbasaran@tayproject.org / h.buitenhuis@arcbv.nl                                     

With an increase in the number of the ongoing research, survey and excavations in recent years in Central Anatolia, it became necessary to redefine the region. In this paper, it is our goal to discuss on a new terminology for the region and shake off the conventional one, which implies broad and universal stages of technological development.

Although the traditional terminology of 'Neolithic', 'Chalcolithic', etc., is preferred by some scholars as general designations, it is based mainly on single cultural elements. The subdivisions like 'PPN-PN' or 'PPNA', 'PPNB' etc., again emphasise the developments and/or changes in lithic or pottery technology. Besides, the latter terms, which belong to Southeast Anatolia and the Levant, cannot be directly transferred to Central Anatolia (CA).

The need for an independent regional terminology for CA emerges mainly because of the lack of substantial connections with SE or any other known cultural region in Anatolia. So, with the aim of having an overall look to the changes in structure and socio-economy and an adoption to a new way of life in CA - covering a long period between the hunter-gatherer way of living and the beginning of urbanism - we suggest the following, five-staged terminology to be discussed, where 'ECA' stands for 'Early Central Anatolian.'

Proposed by Roger Matthews and accepted by the majority of the participants to the CANeW e-discussion group, developments in Central Anatolia can be classified as:

      ECA I:    end Pleistocene - late 8th mill.      Aceramic Neolithic

      ECA II:   late 8th mill. - 6700/6600             Early Pottery Neolithic

      ECA III:  6700/6600 - 6000                        Late Neolithic

      ECA IV:  6000 - 5500                                Early Chalcolithic

      ECA V:   5500 - 4000                                Middle Chalcolithic

          (All dates cal BC)

Due to the present data, ECA I can be culturally defined as the period of permanent settlements + next to domestic architecture, structures with special functions + intensive hunting-gathering, food production being non-essential.

In ECA II, agriculture and the beginning of domestication is starting.

ECA III differs from II by a shift in the way of processing food (or a change in the use of pots: cooking pots/Laurens Thissen and blade production (?)/Nur Balkan-Atli), which may imply a variation in the socio-economy and a change in pottery manufacturing.

Farming sites with full domestication and a change in settlement patterns can be attributed to ECA IV ("... a network of small sites around larger ones"/Çatalhöyük West/Douglas Baird), whereas settlements with mixed subsistence strategies represent the ECA V.

These definitions require to be discussed in detail, completed and/or changed during the Round Table.

PS: The phase following the Early Central Anatolian stages may be named as 'LCA' (Late Central Anatolian), being, however, out of the scope of this workshop.

__________________________

Go to the related lecture