Authors' replies
Geoffrey D. SUMMERS & Douglas BAIRD 
summers@metu.edu.tr / D.Baird@liverpool.ac.uk
CONCERNING THE IDENTIFICATION, LOCATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE NEOLITHIC AND CHALCOLITHIC SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA
from Geoffrey D. Summers
My starting point had been the climatic uniformity of the broad and topographically diverse region of upland plateau that made up ‘Cappadocia’, as would have been understood by Herodotus or Roman administrators, and also to the even wider region implied by the term ‘Central Anatolia’ as normally used by geographers, climatologists, ecologists, archaeologists, political scientists and others (e.g. French 1998:6 Fig. 04). This view was met, in so far as I am aware, with unanimous agreement, and its implications, with the exception of the response by Rainer Czichon, studiously avoided. Indeed, even with the confines of the two areas that were the primary focus of interest throughout the conference, the Konya Plain and the Nigde–Nevsehir region, there were few rumblings in opposition to the perceived centricity of Çatalhöyük and Asikli Höyük. Mere mention of other sites, at least partially known from excavation, particularly Kösk (Pinar) Höyük, Pinarbasi at Bor, Tepecik-Çiftlik and Canhasan, raised furtive brows but no responses.
Perhaps it will be helpful to use a broader brush. Ryan and Pitman (1998), confirming what had been long known, have hyped up the filling of the Black Sea and its transformation from a freshwater lake. The date of the inundation, whether or not it was as rapid and catastrophic as has been claimed, is put at around 7500 years before present, or c. 5500 cal BC. This dating has apparently been accepted by the most recent investigators (Ballard et al. 1998), although on what precise grounds is still rather vague. The extraordinary claims made in Noah’s Flood may provoke from us wry smiles, signs of incredulity or, when faced with wide-eyed students or a curious public, feelings of utter despair. We, archaeologists, know that there was no great thriving set of late Neolithic civilisations flourishing on the now submerged shores of a once great lake. But what do we know? There were flourishing Late Neolithic cultures on the Konya Plain and in the Nevsehir–Nigde region, and there was Late Neolithic also in the Caucasus, Western Iran and, viz. Tilkitepe, in the highlands of Eastern Anatolia. However, no trace has been found of parallel developments in either the west or in the north. It may turn out to be correct, although it is still far from certain, that farmers and/or agriculture came into the Konya Plain and heartland of Cappadocia from the south-east, but whether the Neolithic came there or whether it developed there, it appears not to have spread northwards to the Pontic region nor westwards into Thrace and Eastern Europe until its fluorescence was on the wane. We know some of these things from such considerable bodies of negative evidence that there can be extremely little room for doubt. Indeed, in the Pontic region, more or less north of a line from Ankara to Sivas, there is no secure evidence for any settlement before the Middle Chalcolithic, however that might be defined in detail (e.g. Thissen 1993). It still seems to me useful to think of a Pontic–Balkan region into which settled agricultural ways of life began to spread in what Anatolian specialists might term the Late Neolithic. If some of the pottery known from surface survey, but yet to be recovered from any clearly stratified context, does turn out to belong to the Late Neolithic (rather than to the Early Bronze Age) it will follow that the date of the earliest penetration into areas of the southern Pontic region, e.g. around Çorum, might have been a little earlier.
In general, however, the current picture of Neolithic settlement in Central Anatolia, i.e. Cappadocia, the Kizilirmak Basin, the Tuz Gölü Basin and the Konya Plain, has hardly progressed since the publication of Ian Todd’s volume more than 20 years ago: an absence of (recognised) Neolithic settlements north of the Konya Plain and the Kizilirmak. During the conference there was little discussion of the reasons for this perceived pattern of settlement, although I was struck by the difference between the geomorphological processes in the Konya Plain and those in the northern areas that Catherine Kuzucuoglu pointed out. Perhaps these differences do go some way towards accounting for the invisibility of early settlement in the northerly regions. To return to my main point, if the known settlement pattern reflects the real settlement pattern, regardless of the level of visibility, why did Neolithic settlement not extend further north when climatic and environmental conditions would appear to have equally favourable for sedentary life? If, on the other hand, our picture is false, how are we to correct it?
It might be apposite to address two specific issues that were raised during the conference. I was struck by suggestions that Çatalhöyük was not, according to 21st century AD perceptions, situated at the most ideal position for growing cereals. The same may also perhaps be true of Asikli. Could it perhaps be that the lighter and more stony soils were, in fact, easier to farm and thus more attractive, and that the heavy red clay soils of the Kizilirmak basin were shunned until the development of a heavy plough that utilised animal traction? Similar arguments were raised, some time ago, with regard to the settlement pattern in Western Iran. If heavy soils were a factor it would have implications for the construction of any predictive model of settlement pattern that could be tested by survey in the field. The second issue is that of obsidian. It is clear, as Mehmet Özdogan has pointed out on several occasions, that obsidian was traded (by whatever mechanism), that the main routes of that trade (to the south-east) can be seen by plotting finds of Neolithic period obsidian on a map, and that obsidian becomes increasingly uncommon away from the trade routes. Given that there is no evidence for trade in obsidian northwards from the core of Cappadocia, and that such limited sources as there are seem to have been but little exploited (Keller et al. 1996), the very limited presence of obsidian from surveys may be misleading. That trade in obsidian can explain the flourishing nature and permanence of settlement at Asikli, was originally suggested by Todd (1980:117–121), and in a recent overview Todd (1998) again emphasised his ideas on the importance of trade in both obsidian and salt. In my view this emphasis on obsidian is misjudged since Asikli Höyük is a considerable walk from the mound to any of the major obsidian flows, nor are major Aceramic Neolithic sites known immediately adjacent to salt lakes or deposits.
Finally, my perspective comes from what some would term Landscape Archaeology. I am looking at the changing landscape in the northern part of Central Anatolia in relation to human exploitation and settlement throughout the course of the Holocene. We have not, up until now, been able to identify settlements earlier than the Middle Chalcolithic and we have not yet been able to document human impact on the landscape that appears as though it might have been earlier than the Early Bronze Age, according to very preliminary results obtained by Catherine Kuzucuoglu, our own intensive survey in the vicinity of Kerkenes Dag and the wide, more cursory, survey conducted by Ronald Gorny and his team (Branting 1996). If these tentative observations do not merely reflect our inability to locate or to recognise evidence we will need to seek explanations for the absence of Neolithic settlement.
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EARLY HOLOCENE SETTLEMENT IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA, PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS AS SEEN FROM THE KONYA PLAIN
from Douglas Baird
There are a number of points to be made in addition to the discussion in Istanbul.
1. Catherine Kuzucuoglu has indicated the ‘uneventful’ nature of the initial 1000–1500 years of the early Holocene in Central Anatolia. I took it that she was speaking from an environmental perspective in terms of geomorphological records but also perhaps human settlement. This is obviously a key period in terms of the development of sedentary and agricultural communities in Central Anatolia but one about which we know very little. However, the Konya Plain Survey has shown that sites are present that probably relate to this period, albeit that they are hard to detect. As we actually discussed in Istanbul the absence of clear geomorphological signatures does not mean an absence of significant environmental development. Neil Roberts’ work on the Ibrala fan suggests a slightly different picture in which alluvial deposition may be both a late Pleistocene and early Holocene phenomenon in some areas. The more detailed palynological record slowly emerging may provide a better picture here. Therefore I am not clear that there is a major change in settlement with the commencement of the building of alluvial fans on the Konya Plain.
2. It is probably useful to reiterate the point that in the period with which CANeW is concerned in the SW Konya basin there seems little correlation between geomorphological-environmental events and what are significant changes in settlement.
3. I can only reiterate Rainer Czichon’s perception that more excavation and survey relating to early Holocene settlement is required in north-Central Anatolia.
4. The evidence mentioned by Summers and Gülçur in the discussion for the widespread dispersal and varied locations of Chalcolithic sites is impressive. To my mind it emphasises the need to consider a range of adjacent landscape zones together in understanding settlement distributions and changes in settlement through time. Clearly one of the weaknesses of the perspective from the Konya Plain Survey is that it focuses on low lying settings and just the fringes of higher areas. To extend the point made in my conclusions we should imagine shifts and movement of population not just within and between individual settings in the Konya basin (e.g. alluvial fans) but also between plain and upland on seasonal and longer-term bases. In terms of population distributions we should imagine a relatively dynamic picture despite the very prominent stability of a number of settlements.
References
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