Debate
JOINT DISCUSSION 
Geoffrey D. SUMMERS & Douglas BAIRD
summers@metu.edu.tr / D.Baird@liverpool.ac.uk
Catherine Kuzucuoglu: I was struck by the importance of the evidence as presented that there is lot of sedimentation, which means burial of sites. And whether this is on lake shores or in valleys, so that a lot of site findings are related to cuts that may be natural, like incision of rivers, or artificial, like canals or people digging to get some sediment. I am also struck by the evidence supplied here showing the ability of human societies to exploit soil as a resource for their settlement locations. Now, if I come back to what we know of the climatic and possible environmental change of the early Holocene, as far as the Konya Plain is concerned, we still have 1000 years after the onset of the Holocene where nothing seems to happen in the plain. And even before the alluvial fans are built we still have 1500 years. Climatically and environmentally there is a rupture which is not at the onset of the Holocene but a little bit afterwards, which seems then to correspond effectively to some settlements of what I was saying, in terms of the ability of the people to exploit new resources. And then you have the building starting. And the alluvial fan is building all through the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic, so that you can imagine maybe that some of the Neolithic sites do not appear so big, as they could still be buried during the Chalcolithic period because these fans change the rivers, change places. So you have erosion and construction. With the onset of the Holocene, you can say the same thing for the north of Central Anatolia and for Cappadocia where you have valleys, but not for the Konya Plain where we have incision. That incision had occurred during the Glacial; when people started to settle the relief was much more contrasted than it is now. And it is very striking in the southern area that after, again, the onset of the Holocene, we have this alluvium which is starting and seems to be regular. The flooding is regular and the flood plains are constructed by regular aggradation until the mid-Holocene when the climate starts to change and we have then unstable environments starting. What I would like to ask is, when you have a society which is stable for 1000 years, is it so difficult to adapt yourself to some change in the environment, as we can imagine towards the end of the building of fans, in the Konya Plain?
Douglas Baird: One of the instant things is, if we go back very quickly to these graphs that shows simply the number of sites but the aggregate site area as well, that the periods of biggest fluctuation, Ceramic Neolithic to Early Chalcolithic to Middle Chalcolithic, are all, in geomorphological terms, within one unit: the formation of the lower alluvium. It may be that the formation of the alluvial fan is shifting downstream during this time. But it would appear that the most dramatic fluctuations in settlement numbers and also in settlement structure in the sense of large and small sites do not correlate with the beginning or end of alluvial deposition and flooding in these areas. So I would say that in terms of the early Holocene record there is no correlation. In terms of your other points about nothing happening in the early Holocene, in grand geomorphological terms I think that is true. In terms of alluviation that’s true perhaps, although not necessarily completely, because already there may be alluvial fans forming south of the Pleistocene beach ridges. But that’s simply an indication of problems we have with geomorphological signatures. There might be many subtle changes in environment that we just can’t detect because of the fact that they don’t leave the sort of sediments that Neil Roberts and Pete Boyer can go through. So, that’s just a difficult area. Absence of evidence not necessarily meaning –
Catherine Kuzucuoglu: – It’s also maybe erosion. It may start with an erosion phase.
Douglas Baird: In fact, quite a lot may be happening. One of the interesting things for me is just how sculpted that lake-marl surface must have been before the alluviation started. There were all sorts of bumps and dips on which sites could be founded, perhaps on which farming might have taken place, even though the area was extensively flooded. In terms of the scale of the human communities that we are dealing with – very small-scale communities, relatively speaking – these very small variations in micro-topography might be incredibly important.
Rainer Czichon: I did a survey in the surroundings of Bogazköy, and I found around 30 Early Bronze and what we call Chalcolithic sites in an area of around 80 square kilometres, that means in a very small area. And the biggest problem was or is how to identify Chalcolithic material without any stratified material. What is Alisar, what is Büyükkaya or Yarikkaya Chalcolithic? It is impossible to identify these periods without stratified material. We need more excavations in this north-central Cappadocian area. We also found for example obsidian, but we found obsidian in connection with what is called Yarikkaya Chalcolithic. So the discussion goes only about Asikli and Çatalhöyük and this area because it’s well excavated, but let’s also talk a little bit about this northern area if possible.
Catherine Kuzucuoglu: There is another raw resource to exploit in Central Anatolia, which is salt. Did you find any evidence, direct or indirect, of the importance of the Tuz Gölü Plain as a salt-mining or salt-producing region starting from the time when people were in Central Anatolia? Because until recent times people were still ready to organise long and heavy travels to and from the Tuz Gölü (Salt lake) to obtain salt.
Douglas Baird: I’m sure it’s quite likely, but I know of no direct evidence that can help.
Catherine Kuzucuoglu: Yes but it is very striking that there is no site.
Douglas Baird: The Japanese survey is continuing and there may yet be sites. Until six years ago, there were no sites earlier than Çatalhöyük on the Konya Plain.
Geoffrey Summers: If I can add a comment there, there is a famous bronze tablet from Bogazkale which is a treaty between the Hittites and the kingdom of Tarhuntasha, and one of the exceptions to the border there was to allow animals to go to the salt-licks. And presumably those salt-licks are on the northern side of the Taurus Mountains. So perhaps in pre-modern times, with long distance transport, perhaps camel caravans or something like that, it was easier to take the animals to the salt than salt to the animals.
Sevil Gülçur: I can only express what I found on the surveys in the Asikli area. We are, I suppose, in a different setting than the Konya Plain. What I could see is that we had around Asikli tributary settlements to Asikli, maybe a little bit later than Asikli. We found, for example, above the eroded soils, above this greyish bedrock, the site Yellibelen. We found at Agzikarahan different type of settlements, belonging to different periods: Aciyer is sitting on the lower terrace of a small creek. It’s in altitude lower then the normal highway today. If we pass from this valley up to the plain we have the höyüks from the later phases. Then, along this creek, going north, we have medieval villages, underground cities. So if we look on the top of the plains we nearly find nothing. The erosion must be very high. If we go to the valleys, the valleys climb up very rapidly very high. And high mountainous ranges, where I am surveying, mostly surround the valleys. We have also big problems dating the ceramics. We have Neolithic sites like the höyük of Sirçantepe, in a valley, protected by a hill. Then we have a big site facing Nenezi Dag, on the spring zone of the Karasu and Melendiz rivers, they meet each other around Demirci, a huge site that could have an Aceramic deposit. With the Chalcolithic period, I can’t tell you if I have Early Chalcolithic and then Middle Chalcolithic. Most of the Chalcolithic sites that I could find are on high slopes. Guvercinkayasi is on a high rock. At Demirci we have two different sites, one is on a single high rock again covered by Hellenistic and later periods; another one is along the river, facing the river but again on top of a bare rock. We started to find at the higher ranges also Middle Chalcolithic settlements. We have also indications of very high locations with worked obsidian concentrations, but we don’t know if they belong to the Neolithic period or to another period. These altitudes go mostly from 1,100m up to nearly 1,800m. So I have the feeling that after the Neolithic period the people tried to settle on high points and went up into the mountainous districts which today in this region are mostly covered with oak forests.
Catherine Kuzucuoglu: I think you see this also in Northern Anatolia. In the mountains of the Kastamonu area, for example, there were also Chalcolithic sites on the hilltops. And even in the southern area you can notice that the Chalcolithic people established themselves more in the higher lands.
Geoffrey Summers: From our work in the area of the Kanak Su basin we have, as I said, small, very small Chalcolithic sites right up on the hilltops and the ridges in locations which are today very exposed. Whether they were always very exposed or whether these represent little clearings in the middle of oak forests, I don’t know. I would very much like to know. But I think that these are sites that are connected with the larger sites down in the valleys. So I do think we have big settlements down in valleys and little tiny sites right on top of the hills. What we are missing are things in between: things on the slopes, things on some of the more eroded ground. But I have no means of knowing at all how much we are missing in any of these periods. The other point I wanted to make very quickly is that much of our erosion, as Catherine has been showing, seems to be very late. We are looking at post-Chalcolithic and we are looking perhaps at post-Classical and quite recent erosion on a very large scale. Which is different to the picture Douglas has for the Konya plain.
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