Debate

CENTRAL WESTERN ANATOLIA - KEY-REGION FOR THE NEOLITHISATION OF EUROPE?

Clemens LICHTER                                                                               
clichter@gmx.de

Turan Efe: Herr Lichter has given us a short summary of the present state of research in Western Anatolia where the distribution of the Late Neolithic is now very well known. Late Neolithic sites reach as far north as the Dardanelles, and to that I can add the site of Akmakça found during one of my surveys in the Gediz plain, southwest of Kutahya. It is a flat settlement and has only one phase, consisting of a very thin deposit, partly completely eroded. It has typical West Anatolian Late Neolithic material, but alongside this material we have found some Fikirtepe elements such as a box fragment decorated in the Fikirtepe style. This demonstrates that classic Fikirtepe can be dated roughly to the Late Neolithic period. And the other point I wanted to stress is that the investigations in the Marmara region endowed us with a long and reliable sequence showing that the Neolithic way of life was already established in the Marmara region quite early, as we know from the type site of Ilipinar. So there is a possibility that this region played a role in the neolithisation of Turkish Thrace. In this respect I want to mention another site in this area, which is Keçiçayiri, south of Seyitgazi, on the southern part of the Phrygian highlands. Here we found lots of flint artefacts but only very few sherds, five or six only were collected from the surface. The tool types are very reminiscent of what we know from Çatalhöyük: pressure flaked and including different kinds of points. Most probably we have here on top the earlier phases of the Fikirtepe sequence, or even earlier than archaic Fikirtepe. The site, according to these artefacts, should be dated to Çatalhöyük, and most probably there are earlier phases that can take us down to the Upper Palaeolithic. Because of these relations with the Konya region, the neolithisation in Northwest Anatolia may have come from the Konya direction and eventually moved to the Marmara region and beyond.

Nikos Efstratiou: Since you are talking about the Neolithic, I have to give you some information on the Greek side of the Aegean. The big problem for me is how to define neolithisation. I don’t agree with ideas that they are based on stylistic similarities or singular technological traits. I think we have to see the problem in a more coherent way. And the fact is that the Greek Neolithic starts suddenly with the Neolithic package fully developed. It arrives in Thessaly and in Crete without any sign of proto-domestication. So I don’t know how relevant it is to try and find similarities, pottery similarities or lithic similarities. And the big question is still open, namely, whether the Neolithic in Greece is a local development or comes from the east. I myself believe the second option – that it comes from the east. Unfortunately we have no evidence from the contact zone, that is Greek Thrace, the eastern islands and also the Dodecanese. With nothing earlier than the Late Neolithic from all these areas, this may represent just the state of research or it is a true picture – I don’t know.

Hijlke Buitenhuis: The Ilipinar sequence and the animal remains there give us some clues as to the neolithisation of this area. The oldest phase (Ilipinar X) shows a full domestic package of sheep, goat, cattle, pigs and dogs, they are all there. And it could almost have been transplanted immediately from Central Anatolia. At the same time, we see that people in that early stage who were in Ilipinar, didn’t exploit the natural resources of the area. Actually we can see when they become more familiar with the area. In the later phases there are drastic changes in the subsistence patterns of Ilipinar. So it seems as if people, when they started in Ilipinar, were still very much aware or bound to the Central Anatolian way of life. Only the moment they had definitely settled down at the place, they changed their patterns.

Mehmet Özdogan: Looking at the general problem of the relations between Anatolia and Southeast Europe we first have to define the western border of Central Anatolia. Is there such a border? Currently we are learning more and more about the Lakes District, and especially its western limits. From Refik Duru’s excavations at Bademagaci it becomes clear that the site may be as early as basal Çatal, challenging the idea that the Lakes District represents a later neolithisation area. What Turan Efe has been finding in the Eskisehir plateau, which is really a geographical border between Central Anatolia and the Aegean world, especially with Keçiçayiri we now know that this area is also no strict border. Ilipinar for example clearly represents an Anatolian type of economy. But its architecture is ‘wrong’. What we know from Central Anatolia, all is of the conglomerated type of architecture, a traditional mud-brick architecture. But Ilipinar’s architecture and village layout are different, representing a tradition that is foreign to Central Anatolia. Also the architecture of Hoca Çesme is completely different from Central Anatolia. It is a massive, stone architecture with round plans, which had been forgotten in Anatolia thousands of years ago. This would imply that there must be other koinai in Central Anatolia. So Central Anatolia possibly has no real limits but is merging into the Aegean littoral areas. And on the basis of what Turan Efe has found in Keçiçayiri and what we have found in Çalca I think there must have been a Pre-Pottery substratum in some areas. And usually such sites are in the highlands, not in the lowlands. As to the process of neolithisation, the process of Neolithic transformations onto European soil is not a one-stage event, I think, but a phenomenon that lasted for several millennia. As to the model of contact, there is not one solution. I think from the whole of Anatolia to the whole of the Balkans there has been a kind of penetration, or infiltration. It’s a kind of unorganised movement probably lasting several millennia. That’s why we find the components of different parts of Anatolia spread out in the Balkans. And at the same time there is acculturation going on. But when we come to the Balkan, Greek or Bulgarian Neolithic, we see that the lifestyle of Anatolia, which originated in Anatolia, is going there.