Lecture
TRANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIETIES IN THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA
Frédéric GERARD
IFEA, Nuru Ziya Sok n° 22, PK 54, 80072 Beyoglu, Istanbul, TR. CNRS-UMR 7041 ArScAn, Maison de l'Archéologie et de l'Ethnologie, Nanterre, FR.
frederic.gerard@isbank.net.tr 
In the spirit of the CANeW project, I will present some ideas on the transformations of the Central Anatolian societies with the purpose to go beyond the material and to suggest a general comprehension of the evolution of societies from the archaeologist’s viewpoint. The aim here is of course not to tell what really happened in the Neolithic societies, but to arouse debate on this issue.
The transformations of societies
From a theoretical synchronic perspective, Neolithic societies can be defined by the expression of the identity of the group or through contrast with others. They are not isolated or homogeneous units, but can more surely be depicted in a dynamic situation of varying contacts and mutual accommodation between similar groups. This ‘faceted overview of prehistoric societies includes group differentiation regardless of function or hierarchy, in consideration of ethnological studies’, as Isabella Caneva says in her abstract for this Table Ronde.
But we will keep here the archaeologist’s subjective viewpoint, only speaking in broad terms in order to provide a somewhat schematic picture of the reality, and will postulate that societies have a development in the long term only perceptible by archaeologists. The Neolithic people themselves must have never been conscious that they were changing, as they were constantly adapting themselves to the transforming environmental conditions, which are generally not perceptible at a human scale. They must have reproduced their ways of life by conceiving them as a cyclical phenomenon, because they had to maintain their links to the ancestors, and because of the very nature of their society, which is based on a cosmogonic and a cosmological representation of the world, as Damien Bischoff explains in his paper. So, in practice, when looking for the social reasons of change, we have to deal with the social impact of the transforming environmental conditions. This social impact can only be analysed indirectly by looking at the general material assemblages and the trajectory logics of changes.
For Central Anatolia, two different transformational developments, reflecting two regions/landscapes and two societies will be proposed. Moreover, inside each region, in order to explain the alternative patterns of increasing site-densities vs. lack of sites in formerly occupied regions, we will stress a cyclical model of shifts of stable periods with settlements in the plain, to unstable periods with sites in the mountains (see Roberts 1990). Some specific examples will be used for explaining the changes: the end of Asikli/Musular and the intra-site transformation of Çatalhöyük.
The Cappadocian development
To consider Cappadocia, we could say that Asikli Höyük (see Esin 1998) – on the basis of its impressive continuity in architecture and in the intra-site settlement pattern expressing a cyclical, seasonal, conception of time – is characterised by a very conservative society. Material culture and funeral practices demonstrate the same conservatism. In practice, the ‘deliberate’ choice of conservatism made by the Asikli inhabitants was determined by social conventions and influenced by social strategies, which are expressed in particular in architecture, settlement pattern, and burial practices. So, what happened at about 7400 cal BC, after the abandonment of Asikli and Musular, and related sites, when we observe a lack of sites in the whole region? Where did the people go? Did they revert to hunting and gathering? It is hard to see large-scale settled communities reverting to hunting-gathering once they have gone down the road of intensified plant and animal exploitation. Since having built up an enormous amount of knowledge especially on sheep ‘husbandry’ (see Buitenhuis 1997; Vigne, Buitenhuis and Davis 1999), Cappadocian society at the tail end of Asikli occupation may have turned to a sort of nomadic/pastoral life style. Nomadism – or semi-nomadism – in specific variants is not at all incompatible with previous sedentarism, nor with farming (see Cameron 1993). It seems that first of all, with the process of domestication already in progress, and with the extension of agglomerations in a much more controlled framework, the choice to prefer to rely on sheep involved the use of courtyards for animals, for which indeed there is evidence available in the open spaces of Asikli. But later, the people may have chosen to abandon the former villages and to move to higher places better adapted to itinerant breeding of sheep on a seasonal basis, building slighter and archaeologically less visible structures such as sheepfolds, etc. In that case, and if this hypothesis is correct, part of the sites for this period could be found closer to the mountain ranges, some in relation to valleys for a winter occupation and others connected to mountain pastures for the summer time. Altogether with a change of landscape and way of life, people must have made the alternative choice of a lighter social system. In Cappadocia, a turn to semi-nomadism is highly probable, as the increasing dependency on sheep in the Asikli sequence (Buitenhuis 1997; Vigne, Buitenhuis and Davis 1999) may have ultimately provoked a shift towards a pastoral life-style in the practices and minds of the people. It is the same phenomenon that occurred one millennium later in the Southern Levant for the so-called PPNC period, but with a dependency on goats and a move towards the eastern desert areas (see Rollefson and Rollefson 1994). There, the desegregation of the former habitational pattern could fit a more pastoral way of life, as Jean Perrot argued in his recent Paléorient article (Perrot 2000).
The possible reasons for the change
The possible reasons for the change – the turn to a pastoral economy mainly relying on sheep – may be searched for in the interference of the subtle changes of the subsistence economy with the conservatism apparent in the Cappadocian society, which represents an accumulating conflict. The increasing importance of domestication practices mainly involving sheep, within an ancient society of hunter-gatherers must have created social incompatibilities leading to the choice of nomadism/pastoralism, maybe in reminder of old practices.
Within an increasing population, problems of representation of the family heads in the ‘village council’ must also have produced social inadequacies and accumulating conflicts. In practice, the system was not working anymore. The dead-end ‘aceramic’ system of Cappadocia was finally not able to support the transformations taking place in the relations between humans and their environment. It was preferred – not consciously of course – to change the horizon and the place of humans within the landscape.
The Çatalhöyük sequence
The question of the ‘abandonment’ of the ECA I settlements in Cappadocia, like Asikli, and the subsequent occupation of the Karaman and Konya areas are not directly linked in our opinion. The Konya and Karaman Plains, as well as the Beysehir–Sugla Lakes area stand for a different development.
We may note that the abandonment of Asikli and the beginning of Çatal seem to overlap at 7400 cal BC, but Çatal cannot be regarded as the continuation of the Asikli village life because the occupation of the Eregli and Konya Plains is known from earlier examples (Pinarbasi A, Canhasan III) and the Çatal assemblages demonstrate a local origin. Also, the impressive use of symbolism and imagery, related to the lack of exceptional buildings in a specific part of the settlement at Çatal – at least not found – seems to us a major difference with Asikli. Another striking point is the ‘splendid isolation’ of Çatal as an example of a huge community in the big Konya plain for this period, this in contrast to the dense distribution of sites earlier in Cappadocia. While the Asikli people developed some controlled culling of wild flocks as said by Hijlke Buitenhuis (Buitenhuis 1997; Vigne, Buitenhuis and Davis 1999), later on from Levels VIB–VIA onwards the much more dynamic site of Çatalhöyük was relying largely on the domestic subsistence mode (see Hodder 1996). All shows that Çatal represents a society that developed differently from the Asikli village life.
First, from Levels VIII to VIA, the Çatalhöyük settlement pattern can be summarised as an intimate agglomeration of normal and ‘ritually elaborate buildings’ that are rebuilt continuously on the same spot. They embody the social unit, with a cluster of houses grouped in a neighbourhood all around a ‘ritually elaborate building’, which is centrally located, as is argued by Bleda Düring in a recent article (Düring 2001). ‘Buildings had histories that were tied up with those of their inhabitants.’ At that time, specific buildings were important as a link to the past and the ancestors.
Then, in Level V till Level II, a big discontinuity occurs, both affecting building continuity and access patterns. We further see the introduction of public space; the ‘ritually elaborate buildings’ become more easily accessible. ‘Identities were no longer linked to specific buildings and specific localities’, Bleda Düring argued. ‘The neighbourhood no longer expressed the manifestation of a group. The consequence of this major break is a shift from a large and coherent social group, made up by the inhabitants of some 30 buildings, to a smaller social group, the inhabitants of a single building’, the ‘nuclear family’.
Although they share the same intra-site settlement pattern, Asikli and Çatal differ from each other in the importance given to the use of domestic plants and animals, in the other cultural aspects, and in the way they adapted to different landscapes. The differences between the choices made in Asikli and Çatalhöyük are to be found symptomatically in the way they changed: abruptly in Asikli, and progressively in Çatalhöyük (Levels VIII–VIA, then V–II). They also have not transformed themselves at the same stage of integration of the domestic culture. They have changed in a different cultural and environmental context, thus involving different choices.
We will postulate here the heterogeneous composition of the Çatalhöyük population. Concentration of heterogeneous people could explain the dynamism of the social structures when adapting to the changing living conditions. People’s distinction among communities could be interpreted for instance as a divide between the upland and the lowland, the plain close to the Pleistocene lakes’ shore and the hilltops of the Taurus piedmont.
‘Ethnic identity is frequently a reaction to processes of modernisation: ethnic/cultural fragmentation and homogenisation are two constitutive trends of [the same] global reality. (…) Demonstrations of group identity develop particularly when highly mixed people are concentrated in restricted space, when people moved to new areas or were subdued by other groups’, as Isabella Caneva put it for Mersin-Yumuktepe. Her idea may very well be valid also for Çatalhöyük. The mythical consciousness of the Neolithic people of Çatal expressed itself there in a maximalist way, corresponding to specific needs to mobilise images in order to strengthen the social order, as Jean-Daniel Forest already stressed it (Forest 1993). Çatal shows specific logics through cosmologies of a farming world, or at least experimentations of farming, and sees hunting-gathering loosing its importance. The social dimension organises and superimposes itself on the former world order through the ritual vocabulary and building, as Damien Bischoff argues in his paper.
Thus it may have been the nature of their respective societies and the origins of their respective populations, that may have induced the differences in the evolution of Asikli and Çatalhöyük: the conservative Asikli people who did not adjust their society to the changing conditions, vs. the people of a mixed constellation founding Çatalhöyük East at about 7400 cal BC who continuously adapted their ways of life to a rich environment. The argument for a mixed origin of Çatal people, coming from much more diverse landscapes (the Konya Plain itself with the remains of the Pleistocene lakes, the Beysehir-Sugla Lakes area and the Taurus foothills) than is the case for Cappadocia, may explain why Çatalhöyük is a different story.
‘The Chalcolithic people are the real Neolithic’
As stressed by Laurens Thissen in his paper, a pattern of convergence for the Konya Plain and Cappadocia appears starting at about 6000 cal BC, at the beginning of the Early Chalcolithic, i.e., ECA IV. At that time, real farming sites appear with all the domesticates used at their full range. That’s why we can stress that the Chalcolithic people are the real Neolithic, as far as we artificially limit the sense of the term Neolithic to its ‘domestication’ dimension. It seems that conditions have changed and that in Cappadocia people turned back to quite small settlements on strategic locations. There seems to be a concomitant, renewed importance of the exploitation and distribution of obsidian, this already in the Late Neolithic, i.e., ECA III. In the Konya–Eregli Basin, the reshuffling of sites is part of the continuum that is attributable to the transformation of Çatalhöyük society. Çatalhöyük represents thus the successful transition and continuity to an Early Chalcolithic farming society.
The general appearance of small settlements in ECA III and IV at about 6500 and then 6000 cal BC cannot be related to another turn to nomadism/pastoralism, as they look much more like farming sites (Kösk Höyük, Tepecik, Canhasan I) that are connected to a land than places associated to any pastoral activities. But they could reflect, as Laurens Thissen said in the CANeW e-discussion, a sedentarisation of at least part of the former pastoral nomads that changed their ways of using nature and their ways of life, adapting one more time their territorial organisation and their social structure.
In turn, the abandonment of many Early Chalcolithic sites at about 5500 cal BC (Çatal West, Kösk Höyük, Canhasan I) could also be related to the same type of shifts to pastoralism, it could herald another cycle of ‘instability’ in Central Anatolia.
Conclusions
In this paper, I tried briefly to argue three main points, developing some propositions to understand the transformations that occurred in Central Anatolia at about 7500, 6500, 6000 and 5500 cal BC:
- The long term traditional aspect of Asikli society.
- The long period of nomadism/pastoralism following the abandonment of the Cappadocian permanent villages.
- The mixed constellation of the Çatalhöyük people and the possible consequences of these aspects for the specific arrangements at Çatal of domestic and ‘ritually elaborated buildings’ plus the diachronic shifts in this development.
References
Buitenhuis, H., 1997. Asikli Höyük. A ‘protodomestication’ site. Anthropozoologica 25–26, 655–662
Cameron, C., 1993. Abandonment and archaeological interpretation. In C. Cameron and S. Tomka [eds.]. Abandonment of settlements and regions. Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–7
Düring, B., 2001. Social dimensions in the architecture of Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Anatolian Studies 51, 1–18
Esin, U., 1998. The Aceramic site of Asikli and its ecological conditions based on its floral and faunal remains (Akeramik Asikli Höyük yerlesmesinin bitki ve hayvan kalintilarina göre ekolojik kosullari). TÜBA-AR 1, 95–103
Forest, J.-D. 1993. Çatal Höyük et son décor: pour le déchiffrement d'un code symbolique. Anatolia Antiqua 2, 1–42
Hodder, I., [ed.]. On the surface: Çatalhöyük 1993–1995. Cambridge and London: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara
Perrot, J., 2000. Réflexions sur l’état des recherches concernant la préhistoire récente du Proche et du Moyen-Orient. Paléorient 26, 5–27
Roberts, N., 1990. Human-induced landscape change in South and Southwest Turkey during the later Holocene. In S. Bottema, G. Entjes-Nieborg and W. van Zeist [eds.]. Man’s role in the shaping of the Eastern Mediterranean landscape. Rotterdam: Balkema, 53–67
Rollefson, G. and K. Rollefson, 1993. PPNC adaptations in the first half of the 6th millennium B.C. Paléorient 19, 33–42
Vigne, J.-D., H. Buitenhuis and S. Davis, 1999. Les premiers pas de la domestication animale à l’ouest de l’Euphrate: Chypre et l’Anatolie Centrale. Paléorient 25, 49–62
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Go to the related debate (Panel : Damien Bischoff, Roger Matthews, Laurens Thissen, Sevil Gülçur)