Authors' replies                                                                                      

Eleni ASOUTI, Andrew FAIRBAIRN, Louise MARTIN, Nerissa RUSSEL, Denise CARRUTHERS
e.asouti@ucl.ac.uk / andrew.fairbairn@anu.edu.au / louise.martin@ucl.ac.uk / nr29@cornell.edu / denise@permedia.ca

SUBSISTENCE ECONOMY IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA DURING THE NEOLITHIC : THE ARCHEAOBOTANICAL EVIDENCE

Eleni Asouti and Andrew Fairbairn

The points raised by the discussants are very interesting, each picking on a different topic of special interest. We believe that many of these topics (e.g., the similarities/differences with Southeast Anatolia) have been sufficiently addressed in the written version of the paper (not everything could be included in the presentation for obvious reasons) and thus need not be repeated in length here. We would like however to pursue further two subjects that attracted most comment during the debate: the presence of the wild progenitors in Central Anatolia, and the question of the location of Çatalhöyük in relation to the associated costs and/or benefits for agricultural production.

Concerning wild cereals, there is evidence for the presence of wild einkorn wheat (Triticum boeoticum) in Central Anatolia, both today (Zohary and Hopf 2000) and in the past, at Asikli Höyük (Van Zeist and De Roller 1995) and Çatalhöyük (Fairbairn et al., in press). It is however present in tiny quantities and may have derived either from wild stands grazed by animals or from plants growing as weeds in crop fields. There is however no evidence (including genetic, phytogeographical and archaeological) for the presence of wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides) in Central Anatolia at any time. In addition, domesticated emmer wheat is the dominant crop at sites of this period in the region and we assume therefore that it was introduced to the region. Wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) is also absent from the modern vegetation of Central Anatolia. Possible wild-type Hordeum rachis segments have been reported from both Asikli Höyük and Çatalhöyük, but note that these may have equally derived from cultivated forms (Van Zeist and De Roller 1995:183). Again, one could also argue that the wild type seeds were present as crop contaminants.
The naked wheats are derived from emmer and other tetraploid glume wheats as well as from the hybridisation of tetraploid wheat (T. dicoccum) and the grass Aegilops squarossa (making a hexaploid wheat) of which the latter has a distribution well outside Central Anatolia (Zohary and Hopf 2000). Both tetraploid and hexaploid wheats are found in Central Anatolian Neolithic sites (Asikli Höyük, Çatalhöyük, Canhasan III and Erbaba). They are definite imports, created under human control and are totally dependent on human action for their survival.

In summary, the only possible wild cereals in Central Anatolia during this period are wild einkorn and wild barley. Neither is well represented in the excavated archaeological sites and neither is found without an association with cultivated cereal crops, thus suggesting that the archaeological finds may have derived from weeds rather than wild stands. Peter Kuniholm suggested that the crop species might have been distributed by migrant birds. This is of course possible and may well account for the spread of wild einkorn in the area. However, any domesticated crops distributed in this way would not have persisted. Domestication prevents the natural dispersal mechanism from working and leaves the grain to be eaten and/or rot on the straw. We believe that dispersal via exchange or population movement is the only credible agent for the spread of cereal crops in Central Anatolia.

Moving on now to the ‘big question’: was or was not Çatalhöyük ideally located for the purpose of agricultural exploitation?
We agree that the geomorphological evidence, as it stands at present, is inconclusive about certain elements that are of key importance for addressing this question from a sound factual basis. Much of the criticism levelled against the current geoarchaeological interpretation stems from the presence of a moderate number of sediment cores, whilst in private communications other colleagues have expressed concerns about the ability to detect geomorphologically and with the resolution necessary for this purpose, the frequency of flooding events. Overall, poor organic preservation and the homogenous fine-grained sediments deposited in many areas means that there are few well-defined sedimentary facies preserved that allow distinguishing between different depositional environments and landscape units.

However, the sediment record from around the site does indicate that there were floods and waterlogging (whether annual or at longer intervals). If indeed the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük preferred to cultivate the immediate surroundings of the site (perhaps on small undulations or hummocks raising from the floodplain) one should also then be prepared to recognize the possibility that they followed very opportunistic strategies of land use, by relying on risk-carrying predictions about the availability and accessibility of arable land during each agricultural cycle. At the same time, the wood charcoal evidence suggests that there were certainly drier patches close to the site, as can be surmised by the ubiquity of riverine forest species. However, their high frequencies in the charcoal record throughout the examined sequence also indicate that these woodland patches were probably under low clearance pressure, which would accord with an opportunistic pattern of small-scale, very dispersed arable exploitation. How one could, though, fit such a pattern with the on-site record, suggesting the high dependence of the Neolithic community on cultivated cereals and pulses, seems to be another question in need of a plausible answer (pending of course on the population size estimate one chooses to believe). On the comment of Douglas Baird about the low arable potential of more distant areas, we must note that the hillslope soils are still used today for rainfed cultivation (Driessen and De Meester 1969; field observations at Karadag 1999) and with the higher rainfall modelled for the period of occupation, these soils would have been certainly much less marginal for agriculture.
Of course the temporal aspect of the whole process should not pass without comment and due consideration. It is entirely likely that later on in the history of the settlement, as the alluvium built up, suitable raised areas became more and more available in the immediate environs of the site. It is possible (in fact almost certain) that the geoarchaeological and the archaeobotanical record lack the resolution necessary to discern such subtle and slow developing changes in both the environmental setting and agricultural production. However, our concern was mainly directed to the beginnings and hence, in a way, the origins of the community residing in Çatalhöyük. And our evidence clearly indicates that agricultural production (however one decides to define it) was central to their subsistence practices. The apparent contrast between this fact and the palaeoenvironmental evidence (so aptly summarised by Catherine Kuzucuoglu in her questions) is what we tried to address in this paper.

As we stressed during the discussion part, an alternative interpretation positing the arable exploitation of areas further away from the settlement (at a 5km minimum distance for the sand ridges to the south, and 10–12km maximum for the terraces in the area of Çumra) is not an exclusive one. It appears indeed that the site offered some benefits in terms of diverse resource availability (particularly in the prospect of a bad harvest when they could have switched to gathering, game or wildfowl as a risk-buffering strategy). Unfortunately, the research on cultivation practices (that could furnish some direct evidence on the issue of field location) has been hampered so far by the lack of storage contexts that could provide sound indications on the types of stored crops and their associated weed floras (the latter generally considered as good indicators of field-specific microenvironments). However, both the wood charcoal data and the seed material from dung fuel assemblages do suggest that more distant environments (including both the steppe and the park woodland) were regularly exploited by the Neolithic community. Therefore, if agriculture was practiced only in the immediate surroundings of the site, there at once arise some serious interpretive challenges to tackle: how were agricultural activities scheduled in order not to conflict with wood gathering and pastoral production? What would be the implications concerning the division and scheduling of labour for spatially separated activities? Inherent of course in the last question are also issues of population size and the organisation of production. Ethnographic and archaeological evidence worldwide has suggested that ‘in most agricultural economies activities that conflict with agricultural production are soon abandoned’ (Wenke 1999:275). Our record however does not indicate that any such ‘abandonment’ took place through most (if not all, for we lack evidence from the latest levels) of the settlement’s history.

This is not the place (fortunately) to begin unpacking all the complex issues raised by these questions. However, they are indicative of the range of the subjects involved and certainly preclude the conceptualisation of any answers to the problem of settlement location as the most ‘straightforward’ or ‘logical’ ones. Research is ongoing and the level of detail in current and forthcoming analyses guarantees that exciting new results will be produced which can only sharpen further our analytical and interpretive concepts. The present evidence (however inconclusive) when viewed in the context of the regional settlement record (cf. Watkins 1996) suggests that Çatalhöyük forms part of a continuum in the settlement history of the Konya Plain. This history in turn seems to have awarded special importance to the habitation of wetland environments and the exploitation of diverse resources for some 1000 years prior to the establishment of Çatalhöyük. We put forward a hypothesis suggesting that the subsistence choices of the Neolithic inhabitants of Çatalhöyük could have formed as a response to parameters that moved beyond the mere availability and accessibility of exploitable resources. Part of this explanation involved the consideration of factors such as group identity and cultural traditions mediating with settlement economy, both admittedly difficult to prove (or disprove for that matter) on the basis of the evidence currently available. Only through further research will it become possible to refute or substantiate our claims.

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ANIMAL REMAINS FROM THE CENTRAL ANATOLIAN NEOLITHIC

Louise Martin

Many thanks to the discussants for raising such stimulating points. I will attempt to briefly expand on a few of those points here: the degree of hunting at Central Anatolian Neolithic sites, the differences observed between Asikli Höyük and Çatalhöyük East, and the question of the diffusion of domesticates from Central Anatolia to Western and Northwestern Anatolia.

The question of the extent to which groups in Central Anatolia practiced hunting during the Neolithic is an interesting one, and not particularly easy to answer at this stage of research. For Asikli, Hijlke forwarded the idea that the labour expended on the early herd management of sheep and goats may have left little time for hunting, although he finds small proportions of wild animals present throughout the Asikli sequence. The implication of that idea is that at Çatalhöyük East, where a more developed system of sheep and goat herd management seems to have been in place, more hunting might have been possible. I find it difficult to make a direct link between the extent of hunting activity at sites and their herding systems, and propose that other factors, discussed below, are likely to have created differences in animal procurement between the two sites.

We ought perhaps to bear in mind that the dominance of sheep and goat at Asikli reflects only on-site processing and consumption activity, and there remains the possibility that off-site hunting expeditions used small camp sites, where parts of wild animal carcasses, or even complete carcasses, were eaten and deposited. If that were the case, some hunting activity may be ‘invisible’ at a large site such as Asikli. It seems unlikely that there were not smaller ‘task’ sites surrounding the main settlement, but unless such sites are located and investigated, the focus will inevitably be on the large, highly visible sites and results will remain partial, rather than encompassing a more inclusive ‘landscape’ view of human resource use.

The same reasoning applies to Çatalhöyük East, where the ecology of species present, plus skeletal part data, strongly suggest that there is hunting activity taking place at some distance from the site, with only selected carcass parts being returned to the settlement (e.g. deer antler). Despite this, as the discussants observed, there is generally a higher proportion of ‘wild’ fauna on site at Çatalhöyük East than at Asikli. This statement needs some qualification because until we have ascertained the exact status of the cattle, it is difficult to determine whether they should be considered ‘wild’ or ‘managed’. Nevertheless, taxonomic patterns differ between the two sites, with higher proportions of cattle and equids at Çatalhöyük. One of the obvious problems in interpreting this difference is that there is both temporal and locational variability between Asikli and Çatalhöyük, and it is difficult to speak of trends through time without first considering geographical variation (which is itself difficult when only two sites are being compared). As mentioned in the discussion, there are ecological differences between the eastern and western parts of Central Anatolia which could account for some differences in the availability of animals around each of the sites. In addition, there are clearly social and cultural differences at play, which may have included the choice of animals selected and how they were used. The inhabitants of Çatalhöyük had a strong ritual and symbolic focus on cattle, which is not evident at Asikli. Therefore, regardless of animal availability, the hunting and consumption of cattle had a social function, in addition to a purely subsistence-related one. It is thus difficult to give a single explanation to the observed higher proportion of ‘wild’ animals at Çatal, given the geographical and cultural differences between the two sites.

Turning to the question of Central Anatolia as a location for the westwards and northwestwards diffusion of domestic cattle, this is a complex subject. Firstly, it is too early to state from the current state of faunal analyses in Central Anatolia whether there is evidence for cattle management and domestication or not. If evidence for local domestication does emerge (e.g. from the later levels of Çatalhöyük East, Erbaba or Çatalhöyük West) then it is possible that Central Anatolia served as a dispersal centre for a Neolithic ‘package’ of domestic animals (and plants). It should be stressed, however, that unlike sheep and goats, wild cattle have a widespread geographical distribution and Bos primigenius existed across the whole of Anatolia and Europe. In theory, therefore, local domestication of wild cattle could have occurred in many locations once the knowledge of breeding was available. To obtain answers to these questions, close examination of local sequences is needed, and evidence of continuity and change in both subsistence data and material culture. Concerning Central Anatolia, patterns will hopefully become clearer with the analyses and publication of data from recently investigated sites.

References

Driessen, P. and T. de Meester, 1969. Soils of the Çumra area, Turkey. Wageningen: Centre for Agricultural Publishing and Documentation
Fairbairn, A., E. Asouti, J. Near and D. Martinoli, in press. Macro-botanical evidence for plant use at Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Watkins, T., 1996. Excavations at Pinarbasi: the early stages. In I. Hodder [ed.]. On the Surface: Çatalhöyük 1993–1995. Cambridge and London: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 47–58
Wenke, R., 1999. Patterns in prehistory (fourth edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press
Zeist, W. van and G.-J. de Roller, 1995. Plant remains from Asikli Höyük, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Central Anatolia. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 4, 179–185
Zohary, D. and M. Hopf, 2000. Domestication of plants in the Old World (3rd edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press