The CANEW Project

Debate

STONES MAKING SENSE: WHAT OBSIDIAN COULD TELL ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE CENTRAL ANATOLIAN NEOLITHIC

Mehmet Özdogan: As I’ll try to stick to the topic of origins and looking at Central Anatolia, the easiest thing to say would be: we don’t know anything about the origins. That would have been very simple and probably the most correct answer. But probably we can also go from some negative evidence to some insights and to some conclusions. First, I don’t think that there is anywhere in Central Anatolia any documentation of the Upper Palaeolithic. This base line is practically missing or, if there is anything, it is very poorly recognised. Secondly, when we look a little bit to the west, we have the Öküzini sequence, which is now a complete sequence without a break with the Palaeolithic tradition, and probably going into the Mesolithic. But as far as I can understand from the assemblage, the latest stages of Öküzini do not develop into the Neolithic. So it looks like a dead-end. So the origins of whatever is there on the Anatolian Plateau in the Neolithic do not seem to be derived from the Mediterranean Mesolithic or Upper Palaeolithic traditions. When we look east and southeast – and of course we don’t know what is on the north – there are, as Didier told, connections through the obsidian trade, but they are different worlds. So it is very difficult to see Central Anatolian origins on the east also, even if there are some connections. There is only one thing that comes to my mind as possibly common to both Southeast and Central Anatolia. The assemblages are different, the architecture and the settlements are different, the mentality and cultural technologies are different. But what seems to be common are the burial customs. Probably this might imply that once, at an earlier stage, both regions must have had some common denominators, some common origins. The cultural assemblages diverge, but burial customs, being more time-resistant, are sustained in both areas.

Didier Binder: I just noticed that obsidian didn’t fly. So I am sure that people came here, to Central Anatolia, for trade or exchange.

Mehmet Özdogan: No, no. I think that is the interesting part, because it shows that trade and/or exchange of commodities, or even of ideas, do not make an impact on the culture. As far as I can see, there are two different communities, who know of each other, producing commodities for the demand of the other side, but who culturally don’t seem to be intermingling. So I think it represents a very interesting model where people are in contact but not influenced by the other’s culture.

Laurens Thissen: I would like to ask Didier what could be the motive of the people coming from the Levant to colonise, if I am correct that is the term you use, Central Anatolia. What would be their motive to depart from their home country and to make this travel?

Didier Binder: Probably there are internal aspects linked to the evolution of local Middle-Euphrates–Levantine history. But I think the link is upon the prestigious goods. The reason is a necessity to reproduce the social patterns, to have prestigious things in order to show the status of people. And maybe the tropism to obsidian can help us to understand these links as a pioneer attitude: not colonists, but people investigating places in order to find raw materials used to reproduce society.

Laurens Thissen: So it is more acculturation than colonisation –

Didier Binder: Acculturation. Yes.

Laurens Thissen: So you deny in fact a colonising movement from the Levant to Central Anatolia?

Didier Binder: People were moving. So I think the model –

Laurens Thissen: Of course. But behind the idea of colonisation there is a deeper choice.

Didier Binder: It is an acculturation process, an interaction process. We can see that in the two complexes, I mean the Epi-Palaeolithic and the Levantine Neolithic, we can find a mixed system.

Douglas Baird: I just wondered – since I guess a lot of this turns on the extent to which Asikli represents a mixed assemblage – whether people are happy and agreeing with Didier that we actually see something that is genuinely mixed. Presumably in essence you are referring really to the presence of microliths within the chipped stone assemblage. But other aspects of Asikli for example might point to this mixture.

Didier Binder: I also spoke about the presence of a bipolar technology, but a very simplified bipolar technology, and I made a comparison between the points, which are polyfunctional in Asikli. I also made a parallel with Neolithic standardised points. So maybe the key for understanding the acculturation processes is to find the ideas, to conceptualise the transformation of these ideas. So this is a perfect example of mixing, of acculturation.

Douglas Baird: But potentially, as I understand it, Neolithic points from the Levant are now seen as polyfunctional items as well, so –

Didier Binder: Yes, but the Neolithic points from the Levant are much more standardised. And in Asikli you can see an incredible diversity.

Isabella Caneva: Well, the model is fascinating. But I think there are some weak points. For instance, what is the amount of obsidian in the Levant? Doesn’t it just defy such an investment, not only of work but also of caravan-like people? And also, this system is more like what happened for metal working, for the exploitation of copper mines, etc. But in that case there was a social organisation, a hierarchical social organisation to support it. The second question is: who are these people? Where do they live? Where are the sites backing the exploitation places in Kaletepe? Do you find any other traces of them? The presence of naviform core exploitation is also known in Çayönü at the beginning of the Cell Building Subphase. How do you explain that? Besides these, I agree with what you said about the Neolithic and the sedentarisation, putting people together in contact in a much closer way than before. This happens everywhere. But this closer contact is not necessarily a physical contact. It’s a political contact to establish territories and rights on resources and so on.

Didier Binder: So the first question was about the quantities, and so the justification of this trade. First, in Shillourokambos obsidian elements were 2 % and it is a very well known situation, so it is very few. But the question is not about quantity, the question is about value. And of course this theory is based upon the feeling that there is value given to these materials. The argument is to say that we cannot imagine such a long-distance procurement without heavy reasons to organise it. Second, concerning daily life and the settlements and the settlements linked to the obsidian exploitation –, when we excavated in Kaletepe we found tools and arrowheads, we found charcoals. Our hypothesis is that, considering altitude and climate, so continental conditions, we deal here with probably seasonal activities. So we can imagine that the expeditions were organised with very light equipment, that is, tents and so on. So it is not necessary to imagine a tell controlling the obsidian procurement. Concerning Çayönü – we were starting with a reflection about Çayönü technology, and what we see in Çayönü is that a naviform, maybe standardised bipolar technology, appears very slowly in the Channelled Buildings Phase. And it develops. But probably the first links are older. And exactly at the same moment, during the third part of the ninth millennium, between 8300 and around 8200 cal BC. Maybe there is not a raise of naviform technologies in Çayönü, but this technology is progressively instilled in the sequence.

Isabella Caneva: I already said on other occasions that there is a growing regional network of connections around Çayönü probably linked with obsidian, obsidian use and diffusion, because the quantity of obsidian is growing quite suddenly in these subphases in Çayönü. But this is something else. What I object to is the model of caravan-like expeditions to exploit obsidian. I don’t think we have enough data for that.

Douglas Baird: As to whether or not caravans exploited the obsidian sources, perhaps that is a slightly unfair characterisation of what Didier is saying, I am not sure. Do you accept ‘caravans’?

Didier Binder: No, I don’t.

Harald Hauptmann: I wonder about the Central Anatolian and Levantine connection, as proposed by Didier. I would expect that there would be more than only stone tools or techniques. Because we know also from other regions in the world that technologies can be spread over a big area without having necessarily caravans or colonisations. This is a problem we have to face. For example, in the PPNA period in the Upper Mesopotamian area, that is the Zagros-Taurus between the Urfa region and Mosul, there are few contacts even in that area with the Levant. And if you look at Natufian art objects, is there anything of that which you can trace in Central Anatolia? Even in Greece they are claiming now elements from the Levant for the origin of the neolithisation of Thessaly or Macedonia. To have a common Upper Palaeolithic source for Central Anatolia or Upper Mesopotamia somewhere in the Levant, that is difficult.

Henk Woldring: I want to recall what are the fully domesticated crops at Asikli. They were growing their own crops, they were uprooting them on the site proper, in the settlement. And these were Triticum durum, a free-threshing wheat, and also common barley; these were grown quite certainly. So, there is not a stage of developing domestic crops. So they must have come from elsewhere.

Didier Binder: This suits with the general model. We have to know more about the consumption of seeds in the Epi-Palaeolithic levels because it is a very open region.

Nur Balkan-Atli: Well, unfortunately in Kaletepe we don’t have any burials. It would be very easy by DNA to know where they came from. I don’t totally disagree with Didier. When you speak about acculturation, I can accept that for the lithics, the bipolar technology, and the local Epi-Palaeolithic. But Asikli Höyük is so different from the Levant, it’s not only the bone industry, it’s not only the architecture. And I don’t agree with Mehmet, because the burial customs are different also. So for me in the Levant, in Southeastern Anatolia and in Central Anatolia there are completely different ways of seeing life, there are completely different ideologies. So, your hypothesis about acculturation does not satisfy me.

Didier Binder: Yes, but maybe this was an acculturation that was successful, soft, with partners in equal position. There are so many different ways to acculturate.

Nur Balkan-Atli: But what I understand by acculturation is the whole society. Not only just one aspect – the lithics.

Eleni Asouti: Well, I agree with Henk and say that at least as far as food production is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be a case of acculturation on the basis of the presently available evidence. So if you have some things coming from wherever they are coming, and you add food production to that, then it must be a pretty hard pattern of acculturation to define. I am theoretically predisposed to accept your position, but I think we need to wait for more research before we actually start attempting to define the process of acculturation.

Didier Binder: In archaeology it is necessary to put up hypotheses in order to make progress. But what you have to demonstrate are the local roots of plants use, of plant cultivation. You have to demonstrate that you have roots in the Epi-Palaeolithic in Pinarbasi, and as far as I know, it is not so easy to demonstrate.

Douglas Baird: From what I understand you are saying, Didier, you think the early phases of Kaletepe should be more or less contemporary with the early phases of Pinarbasi, with the microlithic assemblage, where about 80 % of the material is obsidian. Obviously under this scenario, there are people from the Konya Plain who are procuring obsidian from Cappadocian sources and reducing that material in a radically different way from the people at the Kaletepe assemblage. So potentially in this scenario, there is a significant period before any acculturation takes place. That would be the logical outcome there. The interesting thing of course is that at Kaletepe they are producing the blanks and the tools to take away, whereas at least the preliminary analysis at Pinarbasi suggests that they are only partly reducing raw materials and continuing the reduction sequence as they move wherever they are going. So it is not only a contrast in the specific sorts of tool types that we are talking about, but also in the whole technological process.