Lecture

TIME TRAJECTORIES FOR THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Laurens THISSEN                                                                                        
Independent researcher, Amsterdam, NL.

Introduction

In a major article in Paléorient, Jean Perrot recently stressed the long-term processes in the history of the Near East, denying the ‘shock elements’ of the kind favoured by Jacques Cauvin when explaining the neolithisation of that region. He took a stand against terms such as ‘revolutions’, ‘ébranlements idéologiques’ (perhaps best translated as ideological shakings) or what were called ‘ruptures mentales’ – ‘drastic breaks in the mentalities of the people’ (Perrot 2000:16, 21). Instead, he argues for a basic continuity in thinking and mentality – humans being always inclined to appriopriate that which surrounds them, to fulfil their basic needs, but also, beyond that, inclined to appeal to their memory, and to use memory to reach a synthesis with their surroundings (ibid., 21). Conceived in this way, Perrot regards neolithisation, for instance, as a normal process, where humans possess and make use of an accumulated memory, a body of knowledge and experience. Given the unchanging basic condition of human mentality, he puts emphasis on repetition and reduplication of practices, on processes being halted through deteriorating climatic circumstances, to be taken up when things grew more favourable again. The history of the Near East may be seen as an alternation of mobility, and of, what Perrot calls, a ‘fixation au sol’ – an attachment to the soil (ibid., 18ff.).

It is along this viewpoint that I would like, here, to make some comments on Central Anatolian prehistory. For this reason, I propose to treat it as a trajectory of time having its repetitions and reduplications, its recurrent patterns, – a standpoint first put forward by Neil Roberts in a fascinating study published in 1990 on landscape change in Southern Turkey during the later Holocene. Speaking on Central Anatolian settlement patterns for the historical period, Roberts noticed a kind of fluctuation, or an ‘oscillation’ even, between economically and politically stable periods with sites established in the plains, and periods of instability, where sites moved into the mountains and foothills – becoming, however, archaeologically less visible (Roberts 1990:58).

Such a pattern of alternation might have been at play within prehistoric Central Anatolia as well. If we make here a geographical distinction for Central Anatolia in a western and eastern part, that is, in the Konya–Eregli Plain on the one hand and Cappadocia on the other, then we can notice such alternative patterns for both areas, which are different in rhythm but similar in the way the alternations follow upon each other. The differences in rhythm therefore might be taken as describing two separate time trajectories, and in this paper I would like to give a short overview of these separate sequences.

Fig. 1: Central Anatolia and Mersin 14C chart, 10,000-5000 cal BC
split between the Konya Plain (orange) and Cappadocia (brown)

Cappadocia

Starting with Cappadocia, it is the site of Asikli Höyük that yields the earliest evidence thus far of permanent occupation at a fixed spot. The exact point in time at which people decided to stay near the Melendiz River cannot as yet be established. Virgin soil has not yet been reached. 14C data stemming from the visible base of the site do, however, suggest a date as early as 8500 cal BC, and we may take this date, the middle of the 9th millennium, as the starting point for Asikli. The site will continue to be inhabited for over a thousand years, deep down into the 8th millennium cal BC. Recent surveys have discovered many more sites dating somewhere in that time-span between 8500 and 7500 BC. The CANeW Sites Database has enumerated 22 sites possibly belonging to this time-span. Some of these sites appear to have been obsidian workshops; others must have been village settlements like Asikli Höyük, as for instance the Aceramic site of Hacibeyli south of the Sultansazligi Lake. (Not excavated, but a deposit amounting to 2m in thickness containing sections of mud-brick wallshas been reported (Fujii 1995). At a certain moment in time then, Cappadocia must have been quite densely settled, with sites close to each other, and perforce aware of each other. We may envisage a dynamic archaeological landscape, possibly containing smaller and larger villages, of shorter duration and of very long duration; of obsidian workshops and campsites. At the end of the period, at about 7500 cal BC, there is evidence of sites with additional, special purposes, like Musular, as argued by Günes Duru. About 7400 cal BC, Asikli Höyük is abandoned, and most probably, the use of Musular came to a halt as well. (Compared to Southeast Anatolia, 7400 cal BC is the time to which at Çayönü the Cell Buildings Subphase is dated, followed by the Large Room Subphase. Also Gritille and Akarçay Tepe may have continued to be occupied over the second half of the 8th mill. cal BC. Here we must be aware of the very strong tradition evident from the continuous pattern of rebuilding at Asikli, where the earliest known settlement already is a blueprint for the latest occupation – basic building materials, building layout and orientations not changing over 1000 years. We could be tempted to view this abandonment of tradition, this halt of permanent settlement, and the suspension of the use of special-purpose sites, as a general pattern afflicting the whole of Cappadocia. Frédéric Gérard has discussed the possible causes for this abandonment, where I would not like to imply that abandonment is equal to depopulation. Concerning the outward form of post-abandonment society – currently invisible archaeologically – we could perhaps think in the direction where people reverted to a life-style existing prior to the establishment of permanent settlements, a life-style the memory and remembrance of which was preserved through time, (‘Conserver le souvenir’, as Perrot put it in a slightly different context (2000:21) but remains equally elusive for us archaeologists. From this perspective, Cappadocian history as very sketchily outlined here, inserts itself in a much longer span of time and tradition harking back way beyond the event of founding Asikli and other sites.

It is only more than a thousand years later, at about 6000 cal BC, that we see the first signs of re-establishment of permanent places in the area, avoiding, however, the old sites. The most notable of these new locations are at Kösk Höyük and Tepecik-Çiftlik (Biçakçi 2001). Many more sites, surveyed in the 1960s by Ian Todd, exist in Cappadocia and may be dated to this general period as well. (The dating of the sequence excavated at Kösk Höyük to the Early Chalcolithic has some important repercussions. It suggests that the obsidian industry and technology as best exemplified at Çatalhöyük East, did continue generally unaltered into the 6th millennium cal BC. Indeed, the obsidian tools and weapons now known from Kösk (Silistreli 1985, Fig. 12; 1986a, Fig. 12; 1989a, Fig. 9) supplement the material collected by Todd (1980, Figs. 16:11,12; 25; 26) and provide an explanation for Todd's difficulty in assigning his sites to a particular stage on the basis of the lithic industries (Todd 1980:109f.). Accordingly, the possibility that several sites from Todd's survey may postdate the Çatalhöyük East sequence should be kept open; these sites may, in fact, fit in anywhere from Çatalhöyük to the end of Kösk, i.e., a period spanning the 7th and first half of the 6th millennia cal BC. This goes as well for the dating of the site of Ilicapinar west of the Salt Lake (Mellaart 1958). Assigned to the Early Neolithic by Mellaart, the obsidian from Ilicapinar might certainly postdate Çatal, considering the maintenance of the sophisticated lithics tradition as evidenced now from Kösk. The possibility cannot be ruled out that Ilicapinar is not an Early Neolithic site, but an Early Chalcolithic one, where we may add that Todd pointed out that the pottery found on its surface does not resemble that of Çatalhöyük East (Todd 1980:53, Fig. 12:14-27) As Todd was able to observe, it was strategic positions overlooking thoroughfares, or spots optimal for the exploitation of a specific good – obsidian in Cappadocia, salt in the Salt Lake area – that determined the choice of suitable locations by post-6000 BC society (Todd 1980:113, 118, 121). Coupled with an emphasis on storage, as exemplified by large storage vessels dug into the floors of veritable storage buildings in Kösk Höyük, and coupled also with a certain affluence visible in a rich and diversified material culture, post-6000 BC Cappadocian society – traditionally labelled as ‘Early Chalcolithic’ – appears to have been successful and confident. At Kösk, huge blocks of obsidian were found ‘ready to be worked’, as its original excavator, Ugur Silistreli, put it (1986:204). Rich grave objects accompanied the dead of Kösk. And the surface of Ilicapinar, a site SW of the Salt Lake, was littered with obsidian, although far removed from the sources. It may have been directly related to the Cappadocian communities, possibly exchanging salt for obsidian, as Mellaart has argued (1958:83).

In contrast to the long-lasting, earlier period of permanent, sedentary settlement involving Asikli and other sites, the Early Chalcolithic is unlikely to have lasted as long. Time-depth is much less in evidence now. Abandonment, or better: non-continuation, of these prosperous communities can be pinpointed at about the middle of the 6th millennium cal BC. One of the decisive reasons for the collapse may ultimately be linked to a decreasing importance of the raw material to which several sites apparently owed their existence and wealth, that is, obsidian. James Mellaart in his masterly 1975 book The Neolithic of the Near East made an intriguing remark in this context, saying that ‘with the Halaf orientation of Northern Syria (…) Mersin’s obsidian trade may have suffered a reverse since it was East Anatolian obsidian that was now used in the Levant’ (Mellaart 1975:125f.).

His remark raises several questions: if correct, would it mean that Kösk Höyük and related obsidian-procuring and processing sites in the region were dependant on an external trade in obsidian, for instance, by way of Mersin? Would it also mean that this network of ‘obsidian sites’ – to give them a name – did not play a role in the distribution of obsidian within the Central Anatolian Plateau itself? It is a fact that obsidian in the western part of Central Anatolia, in the Konya area, and also further to the west in the Lakes Region, did not know the sophistication and diversity, nor the abundance as encountered in Cappadocia. Mellaart described the obsidian industry of contemporary Çatalhöyük West, for instance, as ‘poor’ and restricted to blades (Mellaart 1965:136). (Despite the fact that the obsidian of Hacilar was retrieved from the Acigöl source, Mortensen, in his analysis of the Hacilar obsidian, was not able to relate it to the obsidian industry in the Konya region or to Mersin (Mortensen apud Mellaart 1970:156f.). Chronological difference between Çatalhöyük and Hacilar might be adduced to explain this contrast. However, the Early Chalcolithic obsidian industry of Kösk still seems to be wholly in the Çatal tradition, exemplifying its preservation even after a millennium.)

Whatever the exact reasons for the end of Early Chalcolithic Cappadocian communities, Kösk Höyük may have been resettled only by the end of the 6th millennium cal BC, as indicated by the dendrochronological work carried out by Peter Kuniholm and Maryanne Newton on samples from the top level of the site. A rough 5000 cal BC marker is also the date for the intricate structures excavated by Sevil Gülçur at the site of Güvercinkayasi. The three 14C dates available for the top levels of Kaletepe suggest use of that site (cq. of the obsidian workshop?) again in the early 5th mill. cal BC. More settlements are known for that period in Cappadocia (Gülçur 1997), where we could, very provisionally, include the pottery-bearing site topping Aceramic Musular (pers. observation). Both in Kösk and in Güvercinkayasi, storage facilities, storage rooms and huge pots suggest a continuation of the earlier pattern of accumulation (to which may, albeit very tentatively, be added a renewed use of the Kaletepe workshop) – although data are still very fresh and in the process of analysis.

Having sketched a scenario of stability and tradition for the Aceramic period, and, demonstrably for the post-6000 BC period of economic affluence, there remain the intervening stages of longer- and shorter site-abandonment. The enormous span of time of over a thousand years following the giving-up of Asikli and possibly of the whole of Cappadocia of sedentary villages is perhaps mirrored by the shorter interval of site-abandonment in between the Early Chalcolithic and the late-6th millennium re-establishment of settlements. The Early Chalcolithic sites appear to be on a completely new footing when compared with the Aceramic sites. Settlements are now small, but rich, and bent on accumulating wealth, showing that wealth. Times appear to have been more dynamic, and time-depth was shallow, changes possibly more quick, compared to the repetitive patterns evident from Asikli. Moreover, the 6th millennium period of site-abandonment may not have been as disruptive as the earlier one: late Kösk and Güvercinkayasi suggest a continuation of Early Chalcolithic practices.

Taken as a whole, this Cappadocian tract of time conforms to the alternative pattern of Perrot’s attachment to the soil and mobility, the latter of which results in invisibility and volatility for archaeology.

The Konya–Eregli Plain

When we now turn to the western part of Central Anatolia for the time-span interesting us here, we can see a different time trajectory, foremost lacking the long periods of site abandonment, lacking the reversion to prior ways of life. At a certain moment, at about 7500–7400 cal BC, so at a time when in Cappadocia sites were being abandoned, people decided to settle at Çatalhöyük East (see Cessford 2001). There has been lots of discussion in the CANeW e-mail debate about the origin of these people, and there was a kind of agreement that the settlers of Çatal were in fact of a mixed constitution reflecting diverse origins. But permanent settlement had a longer ancestry in the Konya–Eregli Basin. The Aceramic site of Canhasan III in the Karaman Plain, as well as, what has been termed, the ‘hunters’ village’ at Suberde on the shores of the Sugla Lake date back to about 7600 cal BC on the basis of the 14C dates. Earlier occupation in the Konya area is proven by the rockshelter at Pinarbasi A, dating to the second half of the 9th millennium cal BC, and Douglas Baird has found at least one other Aceramic site in the Konya Plain. These examples illustrate that the Konya region was not empty of people prior to the founding of Canhasan III and Çatal. They further demonstrate that the long-term settlement of Çatalhöyük East can be inserted in a much longer tract of time, and should, consequently, be inserted in an older tract of accumulated knowledge and experience.

Viewed like this, it is not necessary to treat the settling of Çatal as caused by people from an extra-regional origin, even if we accept these people to be of a mixed constellation. And if we read the sophisticated analyses of various Çatal specialists, a ‘local’ origin for Çatal seems indeed undeniable. Eleni Asouti and colleagues, in the Çatal Archive Report for 1999, make it clear that the use of the nearby and further away environments by the Çatal people was intense, knowledgeable and diversified. These people knew exactly which plants to use, what to use them for, where to find them and how to get them. The same goes for fruits, like almonds, figs, acorns, etc. The botanists also demonstrate that this knowledge existed from the earliest occupation onwards. In short, Çatal settlers must have had an extremely good general and detailed knowledge of the region and also of the wider region, building on memory and experience. They might have exchanged products they knew of, but didn’t grow in the area, like figs. And as is also clear from Çatal material culture, they were inserted in a wide regional network of possibly great ancestry, and fraught with tradition.
While Çatalhöyük East is rightly considered by many as a unique site, it was possibly not altogether an isolated settlement in the area. James Mellaart found a few sites that could possibly date to the earlier part of the Çatal sequence, although the evidence is slight. Again, the site of Suberde comes into view, where pottery has been found which looks similar to the early ceramics from Çatal.
Çatalhöyük East yields a continuous sequence from about 7400 cal BC to the later centuries of the 7th millennium cal BC. Of equally long duration as Asikli earlier, Çatalhöyük shows, however, a much more dynamic history. At about the middle of the Çatal sequence, Levels VII–VI, there occurred major changes in pottery manufacture and use, in the layout of the site and also in the lithics industry. Pottery manufacture shifted from the earlier chaff-tempered tradition to grit-tempered and burnished wares, very suitable for cooking (see Last 1996; Thissen 1999). The lay-out of the settlement plan moved towards a more open concept of arranging buildings, as Bleda During has argued (Düring 2001). James Conolly noted an increase in the production and use of prismatic blades at about the time of Level VIA, and he linked this to an increased dependence on domestic foods at Çatal (Conolly 1999). We might add that both phenomena might be related to changing cooking habits, as exemplified by the burnished wares.

Exactly during these major shifts occurring in Çatal at about 6500 cal BC, an – what we could call – external dynamism is at play in the area. Along the shores of the Beysehir and Sugla Lakes to the west a host of small village sites were established on rocky outcrops overlooking the lakes. (At least 14 sites are currently known from this area, and being roughly contemporary to the second part of the Çatal sequence. Among them count settlements such as Alan Höyük, Çukurkent, Erbaba, Kanal Höyük, etc. Both in pottery and in settlement plan they resemble Çatal concepts, as is clear from the site of Erbaba (see Bordaz and Bordaz 1982:93 Fig. 33). In fact, there is a parallel here in site location between these villages and the earlier village of Suberde, and this offers food for the thought that Erbaba and the other sites did represent a local adaptation to sedentary farming by hunter-gatherers exploring the lake region. So, we could argue for a different, but eventually converging time trajectory for the Beysehir–Sugla Lakes area. Different, because the decisions to establish villages at Suberde at an early age and later at Erbaba, etc., were most likely local, independent ones. Convergence set in when, after the abandonment of Suberde, these people did re-establish themselves fully hundreds of years later, this time practising full-bodied farming, borrowing knowledge of pottery-making from Çatal East, and, in due time, carrying out their own experiments in the craft, ameliorating the cooking pots by making full use of the advantageous properties of the abundant shell as a tempering material. (The pottery from Erbaba shifts over time from a grit-tempered ware in level III to a shell-tempered ware in levels II–I. Shell is an excellent tempering material particularly suitable for cooking pots (see Rye 1981:33)

Another possible effect of the dynamism evident in Çatal society from Levels VII–VI onwards, and possibly in parallel to the Beysehir–Sugla Lakes area, could be the establishment of farming sites towards the Anatolian Northwest, roughly at about 6400 cal BC (Thissen 1999). Settlements like Neolithic Demircihüyük near Eskisehir, and Mentese in the Yenisehir Basin, Ilipinar at the Iznik Lake, and the Fikirtepe sites along the eastern Marmara coast, might all have received specialist knowledge both on farming practices and pottery manufacture from the wider area of Konya society. Foremost in the pottery of these northwestern sites are the technological aspects and the ways in which the pots must have been manipulated and used, that lead me to relate all this back to the concepts fashionable at Çatalhöyük East from Levels VII–VI onwards (Thissen 1999:35ff.). Do we have to do here with exogamous marriage patterns, involving Çatalhöyük society and northwestern hunter-gatherers? Is there a link in the new pottery technology, in the increased dependence on domestic foods as Conolly has argued for, in farming itself, and in the transition to farming in the Northwest?

At about 6000 cal BC, that is the beginning of the Early Chalcolithic, a reshuffling of settlement is taking place in the Konya–Eregli Basin: occupation of Çatalhöyük is transferred to the West mound; Canhasan I, c. 1km SE of Canhasan III, is settled for the first time, and several other sites are founded as well (Mellaart 1954, 1961). The question of continuity with the previous tract of time is crucial here, and unfortunately not yet solved. In his surveys in the Konya area, Douglas Baird noticed that the pattern of smaller sites around Çatalhöyük East continued unaltered for Çatalhöyük West, even finding evidence for an increase in site frequency (Baird 1997:13). That would suggest simple continuity from one segment of the time tract into the other. However, Early Chalcolithic material culture in the Konya–Eregli Basin does not yield much that relates to the earlier tradition. Pottery is quite different, while new ways of cooking are suggested in the abundant occurrence of portable pot stands in Çatalhöyük West. As mentioned earlier, the poor blade industry in obsidian observed from the site cannot stand comparison with the lithic industry at its more famous neighbour, nor, for that matter with lithic industries in Cappadocia. It is in fact a curious thing that several aspects of tradition in Çatalhöyük East, in terms of iconography, in terms of lithic tool industry, and in terms of the use of obsidian in general, live forth not so much in the Konya area proper, as they do in Early Chalcolithic Cappadocia as well as in the intermediate Karaman Plain. (Consider, for instance, the transference of similar motifs from the Çatal wall paintings and reliefs to the storage vessels at Kösk and Tepecik-Çiftlik, in the form of appliqués (Silistreli 1989; Biçakçi 2001). Consider further the transference of meander patterns from the ‘seals’ or pintaderas of Çatalhöyük East to pottery and wall plaster of Canhasan I, layer 2B, in the form of incisions and painting (see French 1962:33, Pl. II and Fig. 9:4)

So we do see a certain convergence of east and west by Early Chalcolithic times. In Canhasan I (French 1998), for instance, we have in its Layers 3, 2B and 2A a small, nucleated, possibly special-purpose site similar to Kösk, with a comparable stress on storage, on accumulation of resources. Canhasan I is on an almost perfect strategic location, sitting, as David French puts it ‘on one of the great routes through the Taurus and one of the easiest’ (1962:27).

It is also the end of Canhasan I by a huge conflagration that shows parallels with the Cappadocian evidence. Sites ceased to exist at what seems the top of their affluence and success, and in the Konya Plain both Çatalhöyük West and Canhasan I came to a halt. A period of non-site occupation of the area followed, comparable to that occurring in the same period in Cappadocia. At Canhasan I a new, open village of extensive nature was finally built spreading out along the edges of what must have looked like a small mound containing the big buildings of the Early Chalcolithic occupation (French 1998:50ff.). New pottery categories implying divergent use belong to this latest Canhasan village, possibly datable to the later centuries of the 6th millennium. ( In contrast to previous layers of the site, there is strong emphasis on unpainted, large-sized, sloping-sided dishes, on deep, carinated bowls with large loop handles, and on funnel-necked jars or bottles with strap handles on the shoulders (e.g., French 1963, Fig. 5, 1964, Figs. 7–8, 1965, Figs. 4–5) To the same period of time, roughly converging around the 5000 cal BC millennium shift, can be assigned a series of settlements, none of which are yet excavated, clustering around the modern city of Çumra and also in the Karaman Plain itself. (The date argument here is white-painted pottery found on at least eight sites near Çumra (e.g., Sarihasantolu) associated with plain pottery attested also at Canhasan layer 1 (cf. Mellaart 1963, Figs. 2:10; 3:16; 4:18, 21, 22, 24, 30, 32; also French 1963, Fig. 5:11). Parallels exist with Ikiztepe II and Kalythies. Elsewhere I have argued that both these sites together with a series of others (such as Büyük Güllücek, Alaca Höyük, Samos-Tigani I–III, Emporio X–VIII) may be dated contemporary to the Bulgarian Karanovo IV period, datable to the last quarter of the 6th mill. cal BC (Thissen 1993)

Outlook

The abandonment of sites at the end of the Early Chalcolithic both in the Konya–Eregli Basin and in Cappadocia may be due to similar causes. But where in Cappadocia the Middle Chalcolithic settlements appear to continue previous practices, in the west a major transformation may have affected society. At about 5500 cal BC a new period of site-invisibility, perhaps representing one of Neil Roberts’s unstable stages, conforms to a larger, more widespread disruption taking place in many areas of Asia Minor. At least a similar and total disruption is attested in Ilipinar, where its Phase VB denies almost all of the Early Chalcolithic tradition accumulated at that site before being itself followed by a final denial of the area for further occupation lasting two thousand years (Roodenberg 2001:231ff.). The Middle Chalcolithic, the label with which we might stamp this period, as well as the ensuing re-occupation of sites, coincides with a profusion of newly founded villages in Aegean Turkey, along the shores of the Black Sea and, as mentioned above, in the Konya Basin. From a formalistic point of view, this re-occupation of the land through permanent villages heralds a new age of internationalisation, of contacts with Greece and the Balkans, of sea traffic linking the Aegean to the Black Sea (Thissen 1993). The period, and the material culture, is, however, also in conflict with the pattern I mentioned in the beginning: there appears to be a conflict in the Middle Chalcolithic evidence and the concept that humans normally make use of an accumulated memory, body of knowledge and experience. To put it more precisely – I mean to say that the memories, know-how and experiences contained in the Middle Chalcolithic evidence seem to be different from those within which we could position all previously sketched development in Central Anatolia. One of the indications for this difference is that the Middle Chalcolithic pottery suggests a completely new categorisation, entailing new ways of use, new ways of manipulation, new gestures, and new dimensions. Within the time-span between 5500–5000 cal BC one can conceive of having two strands of memories, know-how, experience and categorisation existing side by side, finally giving way to the replacement of the earlier one by a later, conflicting one. It is the beginning of a new stage in the history of Anatolia.

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Go to the related debate (Panel : Craig Cessford, Didier Binder, Mehmet Özdoğan)