The CANEW Project

Debate

SOME ARCHITECTURAL ASPECTS OF THE CENTRAL ANATOLIAN NEOLITHIC

Mihriban Özbasaran: I think the significance of the settlement patterns and how they reflect the social organisation of a community is a good way to understand the differences or the similarities between cultures or cultural regions. While Günes was trying to find out hints for the origins of Central Anatolia, he mentioned the differences in settlement patterns between Central Anatolia and the Southeast. He said that the Central Anatolian intra-site settlement pattern is tightly packed, and it contradicts with the Southeast. In the Southeast the buildings are situated separately or independently. So if we associate this arrangement of buildings, i.e., the intra-site settlement pattern, with the social structure, I think the Southeast symbolises individualism, and Central Anatolia symbolises the community itself as a whole. Looking to the non-domestic buildings in both regions and interpreting the red-plastered floor buildings of Asikli as public buildings, as already said by Günes, the pattern may imply an egalitarian social structure, as was also indicated by Roger Matthews yesterday. Now if individuals are important in Southeast Anatolia, could we then go on and conceive the non-domestic buildings there as belonging to a special group or a chief or a leader? Could we talk of a ranked society in the Southeast? And the contrary for Central Anatolia? Cauvin interprets the presence of sanctuaries as one of the hallmarks of an egalitarian social structure. But Bar-Yosef writes that they may imply ranked societies as well. Secondly, if we think of the Southeast with skull cults and the Levant with plastered or modelled skulls of elites maybe, I think the idea of a ranked society seems more acceptable in the Southeastern case. On the other hand, one remembers Çatal of course with skulls also cut and apart from their bodies. But as far as I know, Hodder does not say that they belong to a special group, rather that they are a representation of being close to the ancestors. Therefore, if there is a ‘skull cult’ in both regions, the concepts should be different I think. The perceptions can be different, which confirms the difference in settlement patterns. I’d like to hear comments about this.

Harald Hauptmann: And one shouldn’t forget that if you look at the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, apart from these really planned villages, you also have sites with very dense, complex settlements. The later phase of Göbekli is such an example.

Mihriban Özbasaran: I think Göbekli is functionally very different, isn’t it?

Harald Hauptmann: It’s different, yes. And if you look at the Levant, in Baja1 and other sites, these are also quite different. We’ll find in future, we have the impression, the same type. And there will be different groups of settlements also in that region.

Nurcan Yalman: Speaking about Central Anatolia, what is the difference between chiefdoms, egalitarian societies and ranked societies? Because I see Central Anatolian sites as quite controlled societies, continuing for thousands of years with the same styles, the same beliefs maybe. So I would say that needs some sort of control. So I don’t know if we talk about egalitarian society under these conditions – whether they are not just obsessive about continuing in the same way, the same style, in the same place for thousands of years. Considering the settlement patterns of, for instance, Asikli and Çatalhöyük – there is a very strange continuation on top of each other. These sites are not changing a lot. Yesterday Roger was saying that we don’t know about chiefdoms in Çatalhöyük, but as far as I can see there must have been a controlling system.

Roger Matthews: Your question, Nurcan, is in fact one of the great research issues in Central Anatolia. What is structuring the continuity of these codes practised through centuries at Çatalhöyük? I don’t think we really have an adequate answer to that question yet. What I would like to say also related to that – Mihriban’s idea of an emphasis on individualism in the Southeast, and on community in Central Anatolia, is a very interesting idea. I think you could actually more or less turn it on its head and say the buildings at places like Göbekli are actually communal buildings built by and for a community, whereas the buildings at Çatalhöyük and Asikli are individual buildings.

Wendy Matthews: Concerning the differentiation within buildings at Çatalhöyük, Ian Hodder and Tim Ritchey in volume 1 of the Çatalhöyük project compiled a graph of the buildings at Çatalhöyük based on Mellaart’s material, showing an increasing complexity but no big divide between more complex and less complex buildings, so that the attributes selected for that could be questioned. But one of the differentiations which is quite significant within the buildings is the presence of burials within them and what this means. Like Building 1 had 70 people buried underneath the floor, thereabouts. Yet there are other buildings which have none. And I think this is perhaps quite an important social focus on differentiation between buildings. And I also want to point out a shared technology between the Levant, Southeast Anatolia and Central Anatolia, which is the fired lime-plaster floors. These are present at Asikli Höyük but also at the earliest levels of Çatalhöyük; from the deep sounding there are fragments of them. Mellaart also records finding them at Levels XII and XI. Later on at Çatalhöyük, they are just mixing the soft lime with water.

Frédéric Gérard: What I found really fascinating in Günes’ talk was the question of the new hypothesis on Central Anatolian origins. It is true that there was a direct physical link between the earliest settlements in Central Anatolia, at least in the Cappadocian area (Asikli), and the Levant due to the obsidian ‘trade’ through the Cilician Gates. Alternatively, it is very interesting to consider the hypothesis that the Asikli people did not come directly from the Levant, but that they are a direct product of the evolution of the Central Anatolian societies, and that they still reveal in certain architectural practices their older roots. The original link would then much more be found in the Konya area, or even in the Beysehir–Sugla Lakes area. This hypothesis is changing the way we use the parameters of the Central Anatolian origins. I want to ask Günes to develop a little bit this hypothesis. Do you have an idea, even if there is a probable acculturation of the newcomers with an important Epipalaeolithic substratum, from where these new people came from at first? What could serve as an alternative to the traditional paradigm of people coming directly from the Levant thought the Cilician Gates?

Günes Duru: It is very difficult to say something. We have very limited information about it. But why not indeed the eastern Mediterranean during the Epipalaeolithic, and then by way of the sea? Perhaps Cyprus will supply data on this issue.

Laurens Thissen: What I always find irritating, if I may say so, in trying to find solutions for origins is to look away from the place where you are. To look for other regions. Not to consider the paradise itself which exists on the spot. And not to consider the origins of settlements in the locations themselves, in the regions themselves. I don’t really see why people would pick up their things and travel for a long way and then build a whole village there. I don’t see any logic in that.

Nur Balkan-Atli: I agree with you, but in the case of Asikli, I feel the same as Günes. Where you have an abundance of stones, why build in kerpiç? If the people are not coming from elsewhere, if they are local, in that case we should look for the reasons of using kerpiç where they have an abundance of stones everywhere in the region.

Peter Kuniholm: One question you might ask is that why do people build in kerpiç and the answer is, because it is there. And I wonder if anybody has ever taken the trouble to get an engineer and start, vector out from Çatal or Asikli, go north, south, east, and west and look at the quality of kerpiç blocks. And see whether the clays are better or worse in other areas. If you were to migrate for example from Asikli Höyük to the area of Hopa on the Black Sea and try to make a kerpiç house, it would fall down. It’s just no good. As Catherine was talking yesterday, as she was showing the marls and clays and all the rest of it, this is great stuff for making kerpiç. But there are other places where you try to use that same technique and it would get you absolutely nowhere. So, again it is there. And it’s a good thing to build it. And it is cheap.

Harald Hauptmann: Sumerians also liked to build in stone, if they would have it.

Catherine Kuzucuoglu: A comment on kerpiç. Evidently, when you are in a stony and volcanic area like Cappadocia you will use stone for your buildings. And when you are in an area like the Konya Plain, you will use kerpiç for your buildings. What is striking about kerpiç is that you have to build your house every fifty years, because, even in a place like the centre of the Konya Plain where it rains today something less than about 280mm per year, you have to change it and rebuild it every fifty years. When you look at Asikli, you have these people having most probably more rain than today in the Konya Plain, and insisting on building in kerpiç. I say insisting, because it was so difficult in a way to maintain the kerpiç system. And that all through some 800 years. It is much easier in the Konya Plain, and even in the Konya Plain people still have to spend a lot of work on it, rebuilding every two generations today their kerpiç houses. The kerpiç, and on the other hand the stone, has something to do with the perception of the duration of time.

Günes Duru: We have very important data for Asikli. I mean, they do not use stone for their houses, they use stone for surrounding walls, and for the public building but not for houses. This is an important key, I think.

Eleni Asouti: I just want to point to another characteristic of mud brick as a raw material for building houses. For example, we know from Çatalhöyük that probably no single house stayed unmodified thorough out its lifetime. Modifications, internal modifications and rearrangements were a constant characteristic of architecture and individual building development there. I am not so familiar with the Asikli material, but maybe this emphasis on using mud brick has also such a functional aspect there. Have you considered that? Because mud brick is obviously much more amenable to modifications than I suppose stone.

Marcel Otte: I would like to stress the importance of architectural traditions. Look, for instance, now in places where there are two different communities, like in the Crimea or in Central Asia. You see there that the Russian have their own architecture made of wood, but that the Cossack or the Crimean people build in stone. It is just a question of tradition and values deep inside their minds. It’s not a question of raw materials. Because the way of building is the way also of conceiving the self as a society and towards the others.

Bleda Düring: I am interested in this distinction you make between stone buildings and mud-brick buildings. One important thing is that we have to remember that mostly we are looking at the foundations of buildings only. I am not sure for Asikli, but I know from Kösk Höyük and Hacilar and Kuruçay a bit further to the west, where you have stone foundations with mud-brick superstructures. And in that sense, I don’t think there is any difference between how long the buildings lasted. Because they were not entirely built of stone. What we do see is that sites with mud brick only –, that the buildings are always founded on top of their predecessors. So from a purely functionalist perspective, they don’t really need any stone foundation. They have this continuity. And I am wondering whether we can we make a distinction between sites where buildings are built in a different place than the predecessors, where they use stone foundations; and sites on the other hand where they always built houses on top of each other, where they use mud brick.

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