The CANEW Project

Debate

DEFINING THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Turan Efe: I want to make only a comment on one point. Although we have now a much better perspective on the process and mechanism of the neolithisation and on the cultural groups or core areas in the Near East, our knowledge is, however, still very sketchy, basically due to the lack of research and excavation as Mehmet Bey and some other colleagues have also emphasised. The information from the contact zones of these cultural groups is almost completely missing. For example, the area of Asikli, as far east as the Euphrates, which would tie us to the Çayönü culture or the so-called Taurus Neolithic and also to the Levant, is completely terra incognita. Also the relations between the Neolithic cultures of the Konya Plain and the Lakes District are not fully understood. The same situation we have of course encountered along the western coast of Anatolia between the Lakes District and mainland Greece.

Mehmet Özdogan: To add on Turan Efe’s comment, we more or less know the Neolithic of the Marmara region with sites like Ilipinar, Pendik, Fikirtepe, etc. But what is happening to the east of the Marmara – is it really an abrupt border there, or is this Marmara Neolithic going also eastwards towards Bolu, or towards the Kastamonu area, and is it merging with what is coming up from Central Anatolia? Our knowledge of this particular area, of its boundaries, is not due to scientific investigations, but to chance finds done in the beginning of this century.

Marcel Otte: I want to raise a point about the temples. As you said they are disappearing at least in the central part of Anatolia, but don’t forget that they are rising again in the Balkan region. I think the temple phenomenon is a very important issue. In a way you need, in quotes, ‘you need temples’, in order to progress, in order to go on in an unknown land. Remember that when the conquistadors came to Southern and Middle America, they first had to plant the Holy Cross in order to take off the chaos and then to make the land knowledgeable. It’s happening each time you’re conquering an unknown land.

Mehmet Özdogan: I didn’t want to go into details. Of course, the belief system, or some religious leaders or shamans or whatever you want to call it, are going to Central Anatolia, to the west and to Europe, that’s evident. But some of the buildings which in the Balkans are claimed as temples or cult buildings are not temples like we see in the East, that’s what I am stressing. They are built in the same fashion as normal, domestic buildings, but used or given the function of a cult building. By contrast, in the East, even if I don’t find anything in a so-called cult building in Çayönü, only by seeing the plan, or the stone-construction technique even, I can see that this is one of the temples. I think that is the difference. In Central Anatolia, when you look at Çatal, they are cult buildings – of course they are used for cultic purpose with all these contents, all of the wall paintings with bull heads, etc. But it is not a specially built concept, it’s not dominating the settlement. Take away the contents and it’ll look perfectly like a normal house. In the eastern model, it is a special building dominating the settlement, just like today’s temples, or like the later prehistoric temples. It is bigger than any other building, even in the early wattle-and-daub stages, in the PPNA, the buildings in Hallan Çemi, or in the first round building, in the earliest skull building in Çayönü, they are stone and massive buildings. For normal houses they were using completely different building techniques, even in the masonry. When you come to Nevali Çori or Göbekli or to other sites, with the pillars, with the niched architecture, with special types of using stones in the walls, with the special flooring techniques – they are a completely different concept. As if they are giving a big message – there is a message there. I also think that with these Southeast Anatolian temples you have a kind of male figure which is going with the temple. But within the domestic structures you start finding female figurines in the Southeast. This female figurine moves west, it goes all the way up the Balkans. So the domestic belief system is moving with these religious leaders. But they are not the priests, I suppose they didn’t have such an economical or social power as in the Southern, or the Levantine, or the Southeast Anatolian belief system.

Roger Matthews: I’d like to look at two of the extreme limits of the area you were talking about, that is the southern limit first, and then the northern. In the southern limit, that is towards Northern Mesopotamia, I believe there is actually quite a complex series of trajectories that are happening from the Early Neolithic, the Early Holocene onwards. On the one hand we have sites like Qermez Dere, Nemrik, Tell Der Hall, etc., which have buildings which appear to have both cultic and perhaps – I am not absolutely sure about this – but I think domestic activities as well. They are not grand buildings like the Göbekli ones, they are on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, we have sites like Bouqras, Pre-Pottery, and then Umm Dabaghiyah, into the Pottery period, Zagheh in Iran, all of which have wall paintings and evidence of various cultic activities which again seem to be within a domestic context, or at least I don’t think there are any buildings that one might call exclusively cultic at those sites. Also I think to be taken into consideration in that general region are the latest arguments by Jean-Daniel Forest, to the effect that many of these buildings which have long been identified as temples, are not in fact temples but communal meeting places for tribal leaders, or reception houses.1 Whether or not this is true, there is nevertheless quite a gap really between what we get in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic at sites like Göbekli and any sort of what one could call, even debatably, a temple economy in Mesopotamian later prehistory.

Mehmet Özdogan: Well, in the beginning of my talk I first said that the generalisation when you apply it to details would not be true, and I perfectly agree that there are different trajectories within that region. But we should not forget that if, for example in Çayönü, the excavation would not have begun on the eastern side of the site by chance, if the excavation would have gone on in the other part of the site, probably this temple or this special building would never have come to light. And also, when you have a look at Nevali Çori, the special building is only just on the fringes of the site. So most of the area that’s excavated within a site can be domestic, but then we know that there are special areas which are reserved for the special buildings. But I also agree that it is not a homogeneous thing – not every settlement is repeating the same trend. And when I mean temple I don’t mean something like a church or basilica. I am talking about any special building which is dominating, which is different from the normal domestic things – it can be for sexual activities, it can be for communal meetings, etc. – but it is certainly not meant for normal domestic living. I think this trend is in the spirit of the Near Eastern Neolithic and it goes on for a long time.

Roger Matthews: OK, I‘m turning to the north, where, as you point out, there is far less to say in fact, and having worked in Çankiri Province to the north of Ankara for the past few summers, I know how little there is up there to talk about actually, but nevertheless I think it is worth stressing that during my survey in Çankiri we covered about 12,000 square kilometres, which is about the size of all of Cyprus, extensively, and intensively about 400 square kilometres, sampling of course, but nevertheless intensive fieldwalking. And not only do we have no evidence whatsoever of Neolithic sites, we also have no evidence of what you’d call a Mesolithic or even Upper Palaeolithic presence. That of course does not mean it isn’t there, but it’s an extremely fragile and sporadic presence, if it is there at all. And nobody, I think, has found genuine Upper Palaeolithic in Northern Anatolia. There are Middle Palaeolithic sites up there, which we are finding, and those are small scatters of Middle Palaeolithic lithics. So, I mean, small sites can be found up there – small, very early prehistoric sites. This is, I think, a major issue really, that is on the fringes of what we’re talking about, of course.

Mehmet Özdogan: Yes, you are right, the Upper Palaeolithic substratum is missing almost all over Anatolia, except for the littoral areas along the Mediterranean. Even in the most intensively surveyed areas of the Anatolian Plateau no clear-cut Upper Palaeolithic substratum is evident, so the question of the origin of the Anatolian Mesolithic or Neolithic is still open. And I think you might be right that by the time you are in the Kastamonu or Çankiri area you are away from this typical Neolithic formation zone.

Turan Efe: As for the Palaeolithic, I found two sites during my surface surveys in inland Northwestern Anatolia, around the Kutahya region, having definitely Lower Palaeolithic material. There are typical Acheulian hand axes, but we couldn’t find any site which we can ascribe to the Middle or Upper Palaeolithic.

Mehmet Özdogan: I think Lower and Middle Palaeolithic are all over the place, but the problem is the Upper Palaeolithic. And this year we have been surveying in the Birecik area, and we found some Upper Palaeolithic sites for the first time, but typologically these are more at the end of the Upper Palaeolithic.

Laurens Thissen: I just want to raise one point, which creates a kind of conflict in your talk. You mentioned an endemic movement from east to west after the Pre-Pottery stage. So I think this would be in chronological terms at about 7000 cal BC or even earlier. Now it happens that at just exactly this moment in the eastern edge of Central Anatolia, in Cappadocia – if we stick to that definition of the geographical borders – we have an abandonment of sites at least as established at Asikli and Musular. So I see a conflict there with your endemic model. And also, how to connect this movement with the data which Douglas this morning has presented, where he mentions sites with microliths, possibly Mesolithic sites. He also mentions Aceramic sites. For the Konya area alone I think he enumerated at least five sites with microliths and six Aceramic sites. There is of course also the site of Pinarbasi. So how would you solve this conflict in data of an east–west movement with a simultaneous abandonment phase in Cappadocia, the contact zone between east and west?

Mehmet Özdogan: Well, first of all I never said that Anatolia was empty. Since the Mesolithic Central Anatolia was inhabited, but it was not as densely as in the Pottery Neolithic, that is something else. Well, I don’t know exactly what is happening in the Cappadocia area. Of course Asikli and Musular are coming to an end, that’s evident, but when exactly are sites like Tepecik-Çiftlik or other sites being established? What is also evident is that the locations are changing in most of the times. Of course there is a local substratum of Mesolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic, but what I see is that there must have been an endemic movement which started very randomly probably towards the end of the PPNB. There must have been some kind of a beginning stage of this westward movement. There is clearly a kind of a momentum to migrate in masses towards the end of the thing. I think this is coming with this latest Pre-Pottery horizon. All of a sudden you see that people are moving. But within this general schema, of which I cannot prove every detail, of course there are local and regional ups and downs. But when you will have a look in Central Anatolia, all of a sudden, even in the Lakes District and in West Anatolia, you see numerous more sites than we know before, even in the intensively surveyed areas.