Author's reply
TIME TRAJECTORIES FOR THE NEOLITHIC OF CENTRAL ANATOLIA
Laurens THISSEN 
In addition to the paper and the ensuing debate, I would like to use the opportunity for responding to dwell a little bit on the main issue of my contribution, i.e. the division between the Konya Plain and Cappadocia during the early Holocene, and to venture some thoughts in the spirit of the CANeW project. As was duly recognised by the discussants, the opposition I drew was for a large part based upon the evidence of only two sites, Çatalhöyük East and Asikli Höyük. There are many differences between the two, time being perhaps the biggest. However, by laying stress as I did on conceiving their respective histories as part of much larger trajectories, and their individual occupations as fortuitous events only coincidentally stepped chronologically, I intended to neutralise the temporal argument in explanations of whatever variations there were at play.
As implied by more participants, the Asikli evidence suggests a homogeneous society, peacefully traditional. What did the inhabitants do with the people from the Levant or their middlemen coming to get their obsidian? What did they talk about, what kind of information did they exchange? Were the southerners received in the large buildings that were visible from afar? Were these non-domestic buildings open and accessible, or were they closed although located amidst the dwellings, very much like colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, as Roger Matthews aptly remarked during the CANeW email discussions? Were these HV–T buildings multi-purpose – used for feasting, reception, council, initiation rites, sports even? Was, finally, the very wide street (3–4 metres!) running along the buildings’ northern façade only there to demarcate them, or did it play rather a crucial part in the use of these buildings – was the street part of the buildings?
When you look at the plan of Asikli, its houses, in all their individual building palimpsests, seem to encircle the non-domestic building complex, orienting themselves towards it, and even today quite nicely following the contour lines. Given the tradition in building at Asikli it is not illogical to assume that, as the domestic structures were built upon each other, so was the non-domestic complex in the southwest part of the site. Why not indeed assume such a complex right from the beginning of settlement? Where it is further to be assumed that the rhythm of rebuilding differed for this complex and for the dwellings surrounding it (the rate being possibly much lower for the HV–T buildings, considering the differences in the present-day elevations of the site, which are lowest where HV–T are located).
As one of the solutions (simultaneously one of the explanations) for the abandonment of Asikli, I have spoken of a reversal to old practices, a falling back on memory, on what went on before people settled at the site, a thousand years ago. This may not have been an initially conscious process, but the accumulated stress, as suggested by Frédéric Gérard to have come to impinge on the lives of Asikli people over the centuries, eventually caused to bring into practice a dealing with the world as they remembered it, through legends and stories, from a ‘golden age’. But of course things were no longer the same. New knowledge and techniques, for instance concerning plants and animals, had been added on to the collective memory; they could not simply be done away with, as the people could with living in a village. Asikli people did not simply go back to hunting – it may indeed have been rather the pastoralism (or even nomadism) as Frédéric and Hijlke have suggested (Gérard, discussion). Were the structures excavated at nearby Musular of similar function as the HV–T complex at the old site? Was Musular perhaps a reference point, just as Göbekli Tepe was a reference point in a different time and space? Was Göbekli part of the memory too?
Possibly there were more sites like Asikli in Cappadocia (e.g. Aciyer, Hacibeyli, Ininönü, Sirçan Tepe, Toparin Pinar and Yellibelen). I don’t know in fact if they all ran through a history similar to Asikli, as I did, perhaps too rashly, suggest in my paper. We don’t know because they are not excavated. The next excavated sites in time all date earliest 6000 cal BC (Kösk Höyük, Pinarbasi-Bor and Tepecik-Çiftlik), and they are rich sites, showing their wealth in art and burial, the like of which was not known at Asikli.
Even if I balkanise, even if there are few sites presently known, Çatal is quite different. True, houses here were also built on top of each other, accessible from the roofs, and this undoubtedly caused similarities in daily life between Asikli and Çatal. But I doubt if the open spaces in both sites were used similarly also. One could interpret the evidence concerning the animals in the sense that open spaces at Çatal were used for animal penning, but not so or much less so at Asikli where the sheep may have been rather kept outside the settlement (cf., however, Wendy Matthews in Asouti and Fairbairn, discussion, for a contrary view).
At Asikli there is no ‘killing’ of the house by filling it with clean clay as done at Çatal. There are none of the elaborate interior features. Çatal houses, despite all the art inside them, seem much more ‘lived-in’ then the Asikli houses. Many Asikli houses do contain ovens/hearths, but there are no sleeping platforms or small annex rooms. Asikli people seem to have lived much more outside than inside, in contrast to Çatal. They seem to have been much less bound by the house than Çatal society. Asikli houses look like mud-brick ‘tents’ rather than ‘homes’.
Is this just a matter of time? Yes, from an evolutionist perspective. But given the fallacies of evolutionism when applied to human culture (given the absence of ‘progress’ in Asikli architecture and settlement layout), we might think of quite different explanations, certainly so if we accept the Asikli people eventually to have gone ‘in the field’ again.
If we may tentatively talk of a collective memory of the Asikli inhabitants, may we then speak, considering the mixed origins of Çatal, of an assemblage (or set) of memories? It would be an explanation of the dynamism apparent in the history of Çatal, in terms of building and material culture, in terms of external contacts and feed-back, in terms of the patterns of living themselves, with constant changing in wall decorations, constant elaborate ‘house killings’ that should have caused an enormous restlessness or agitation, I could imagine, to the inhabitants.
The different constitution of memories present in the two sites discussed here, directly link to origins, in my opinion. Heterogeneous memories stem from heterogeneous origins, and lead to a segmented society, even if outwardly (or to us, archaeologists) there appears to be consensus in ritual and daily practice. Heterogeneous memories cannot lead to a collective turn to the ‘old ways’ – as was done at Asikli. As people of heterogeneous constellation cannot decide in unison how to solve conflicts, they reach heterogeneous solutions, creating contacts with hunter-gatherers (in the north (Eskisehir, Marmara) or in the west [Beysehir–Sugla]), merely shifting the site (from Çatal East to Çatal West) instead of abandoning it, and continuing living as they did: in a village in a wetland environment, from the Neolithic through the Chalcolithic.