The CANeW book

The CANeW book edition, consisting of 530 copies, is now unfortunately out of print.

Here is the presentation of the volume                                                   

THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA. INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS DURING THE 9TH – 6TH MILLENNIA CAL BC, Proceedings of the International CANeW Table Ronde Istanbul, 23–24 November 2001, edited by Frédéric Gérard and Laurens Thissen, Ege Yayinlari, Istanbul, may 2002.

‘There is the story of the man who goes out one evening with his wife, and perhaps has a drink or two, and then comes back when it is very dark, to go into his house and he drops his key somewhere on the pavement, and it is completely dark. He looks around for a moment and then moves ten meters away where there is a streetlight shining down, and starts looking. And his wife says: ‘What are you doing looking over there, it’s nowhere near where you dropped your key’. And he says: ‘Yes, but this is the only place where I can see!’ In the Neolithic of Central Anatolia, we have streetlight shining partially on Çatalhöyük, on Asikli Höyük and in various other places, but much of the street is actually still very dark and mysterious. The multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multi-stranded and integrated approaches that people have taken to the Neolithic of Central Anatolia, including geomorphology, settlement systems and structure, subsistence, technology, ideology and so on, both in terms of Central Anatolia as a unit in its own right, and Central Anatolia as it fits into the much wider picture’ were impressively reflected by the CANeW Table Ronde. ‘On the other hand, of course we do have so much still to learn, there still are so many dark places along the street, and there still is a need for so much more dedicated specific work on the Neolithic of Central Anatolia. Nevertheless we might expect one day a quite dramatically different picture to emerge. But it’s very encouraging that this work is actually taking place. This conference has been a real turning point, and a consolidation point in the history of the discipline, short as it is so far. It has been an opportunity to define research issues, but also to define the nature of the evidence – both the evidence that exists and the evidence that might come to exist in the future. Border zones are always very exciting areas, because things change in border zones, whether those borders are chronological or geographic or whatever. And we can see in Central Anatolia that the whole complex of social, economic, ideological issues are played out, acted out, worked out in a whole range of quite complex ways, not in a homogeneous way at all. And this is typical of a border region really. The Neolithic doesn’t come to Central Anatolia as a complete package, as it perhaps seems to do in other parts of the Mediterranean and beyond. And this I think is the great significance of Central Anatolia for our studies.’

Roger Matthews

Prepared through a discussion list of scholars and presented to the international community using a web site, the International CANeW Table Ronde aimed to produce a synthetic volume on the Neolithic of Central Anatolia, going for the big lines, for the big questions. Edited and published only six months after the event, the proceedings of the conference reflect an open and original experience – in spirit and format – of debates involving international students, PhD students and professors, young and older people; stressing dialogue, contrasting and exchanging ideas, pooling knowledge and expertise. The volume brings together synthetic data presentations (including new chronologies based on radiocarbon and dendrochronology, new geoarchaeological maps specially prepared for CANeW, statements on surveys, new visions on subsistence economy, etc.), detailed analyses (on architecture, on settlement patterns, on the use of symbols in Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe, on the obsidian trade, etc.) and new theories aiming to explain the dynamics of social transformations. An extra paper by Jean Perrot, presenting a challenging view on the archaeology of the Near East, a detailed dendrochronological chart and a sociological evaluation of the event complete this book.

The paper volume contains vii + 348 pages, 37 figures, 8 tables, 1 map and 5 charts, most of of which are in colour. Every lecture is followed by the edited transcriptions of the related discussions and by replies from the authors. The book was presented in May 2002 at the annual archaeological symposium in Ankara.

Download the of the cover, contents and participants list