Although the ultimate aim of the dominant heritage discourse and practice is to preserve culture in a way that contributes to peace and human prosperity, its paradoxical outcome has been to erase the ...variety of ways that people can relate to the past and to normalize ethnic and religious conflicts as well as globally deepening inequalities of class, race and gender. In this context, searching for civilization in the past has become an increasingly irrational activity, specifically in geopolitically important zones such as the Middle East and Turkey, where millions of immigrants, along with numerous minorities and economically impoverished populations, are currently denied access to the living standards of modern civilization. This paper aims to highlight these paradoxes inherent in the dominant heritage discourse and practice through the example of a recent heritage awareness-raising and capacity-building project, Safeguarding Archaeological Assets of Turkey (SARAT). Furthermore, based on two ethnographic case studies of treasure hunting from Turkey and Greece, it is also argued that the past is embodied in our questions of who we are and in our difficulties of belonging in today’s social landscape. Heritage, therefore, will continue to be in conflict and danger, unless people come to understand that they relate to the past in a variety of ways as regards the very core of the thick history of world politics.
The renewed Mesolithic research in the Greek mainland and the islands has been providing new insights into the lively maritime activity within the region; however, the southwest coast of Turkey has ...been virtually devoid of related investigations until the commencement of the Bozburun Prehistoric Survey project in 2017. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the prehistoric sites discovered at the Bozburun Peninsula during the 2017-2019 field seasons. Preliminary results indicate that the area is rich in prehistoric activity. While Middle Paleolithic chipped stone industries were identified at the sites of Kayabaşı Cave, Çakmak, and Sobalak, flake based microlithic chipped stone industries typical of the Aegean Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene were identified at the sites of Sarnıç, Hurma, Sobalak, Zeytinlik, and Çakmak. A variety of artifacts, suggestive of the Neolithic, were also recorded at the sites of Hurma, Zeytinlik, and possibly at Sobalak and Sarnıç. In specific, the presence of carinated end-scrapers, burins and polyhedric cores at Sarnıç, as well as some geometric microliths at Hurma, demonstrates that Bozburun was frequented during the Upper Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic. The presence of a few geometric microliths made on Melos obsidian at Hurma also demonstrates that the region was connected to the Aegean obsidian network routes at least by the beginning of the Holocene. If our relative dating is correct, this constitutes the earliest known use of Melos obsidian in the Anatolian mainland.
Recent excavations at the site of Bahçelievler (in modern Bilecik, northwest Anatolia) revealed a Neolithic settlement that was established during the late 8th/early 7th millennium BCE and ...continuously occupied until ca. 6000 BCE. One of the earliest Neolithic villages known in the region, its obsidian assemblage offers a good opportunity to investigate regional networks and obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the spread of farming to regions peripheral to the earliest Neolithic communities in southwest Asia. To this end, we present here the results of a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis conducted on obsidian artefacts representing the entire sequence in Bahçelievler. Results indicate that a wide variety of obsidian sources were utilised, ranging from outcrops in central and northwest Anatolia to the Aegean islands. Even though the majority of the obsidians originated in Nenezi Dağ in central Anatolia, some of the other obsidian artefacts in Bahçelievler are from sources known to be only rarely used in prehistory such as Acıgöl, Hasan Dağ, and Yağlar. Contextualisation of Bahçelievler results within analytically sourced obsidians from Neolithic sites in the region indicates that a coastal colonisation along the Mediterranean shore might not have played a major role in the Neolithisation of west Anatolia.
•Source attribution of the obsidians from the ca. 1000 years long occupation of Neolithic Bahçelievler in northwest Anatolia.•Six different sources of obsidian, ranging geographically from the Aegean to central and northwest Anatolia, were identified.•Inhabitants relied mainly on Nenezi Dağ for their procurement through the history of the settlement (ca. 7000-6000 BCE).•First known prehistoric use of Yağlar (Galatia) and Hasan Dağ (Cappadocia) obsidians from a stratified context.•Coastal colonisation might not have played a major role in the Neolithisation of west Anatolia.
Within the Near Eastern research canon, the transition to more sedentary lifestyles during the Neolithic is often framed as an economic necessity, linked to plant and animal domestication, climatic ...change and population stress. In such a framework, an increasingly complex social structure, arising in response to the increasingly complex relations of agricultural production, is presumed. For example, some researchers would argue that feasting-based rituals became an arena of social control and an increasingly complex society began to emerge around ritual leadership and monumental ritual architecture. Yet the research projects conducted at many Near Eastern sites indicate neither that sedentism can be directly linked to the requirements of agriculture, nor that the presence of monumental architecture can be successfully associated with social control based on unequal redistribution of agricultural surplus. While ritual activity appears to be central during the Neolithic, two important questions remain to be explored: (1) what exactly did the rituals control, given that the societies under consideration are commonly perceived to have an 'egalitarian' ethos?; and (2) what happened to the ritual control in the second half of the PPNB, when ritual architecture completely disappears from the archaeological record at a time of increased reliance on agriculture? Through a critical review of the use of terms like 'sedentism', 'egalitarianism' and 'ritual', I argue that the architecture of the Early Neolithic is related to the management of social relationships through symbolic place-making activities. Based on a comparative review of burial activity, building continuity and the use of symbolic imagery, I examine the symbolic construction of some of the earliest examples of long-term occupational focus in southeast Anatolia, such as Hallan Çemi, Demirköy, Körtik Tepe, Hasankeyf Höyük, Gusir Höyük, Göbekli Tepe, Çayônii and Nevali Çori, in an attempt to understand the social factors behind the emergence and demise of Early Neolithic monumental architecture. The evidence from the above-mentioned sites suggests that Early Neolithic place-making reflects community formation at a variety of scales, at the center of which lay the continuous reinvention of kinship concepts. While some sites, with concentrations of burials, may have become the locus for construction of more intimate local place-based networks, other sites, such as Göbekli Tepe, may have integrated the extended networks. Arguably, the formation of large scale networks during the PPNA posed a threat to local groups. Thus, a focus on local group formation and close control of social exchanges may have begun during the early PPNB, and the places such as Göbekli Tepe may have fallen out of use during this process. In the context of the symbolism and figurine evidence, I further argue that sex and gender may have become important issues, both in the formation of place-communities during the late PPNA—early PPNB, and in the emergence of autonomous households during the later PPNB.
Summary
The site of Uğurlu on the island of Gökçeada (Imbros) is the earliest known Neolithic settlement within the Aegean Islands (c.6800–4500 cal. BC). In total, 37 pits, associated with a rich ...variety of artefacts as well as human and animal bones were excavated in the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic levels of the site (c.5900–4500 BC). The pits belonging to the early sixth millennium BC levels of Uğurlu were small and located within the houses that seem to have gone through multiple episodes of house destruction and renovation rituals. During the late sixth millennium BC, this area became the focus of extensive pit‐digging activity, when large pits involving rich variety of artefacts were set within the courtyard of a special building (Building 4). Among the pits, a collective human burial pit (P188) incorporating the remains of 11 individuals and another pit (P52) involving a partial human skeleton were also found. From a comparative point of view, the construction techniques of these pits, their spatio‐temporal relations as well as their associated archaeological artefacts resemble the Anatolian and Near Eastern Neolithic practices of house destruction and renovation cycles, which are activities related to the ancestor cults of the region. We argue that all of these practices reflect public events during which social relations were negotiated through the agency of place. The differences observed during the sixth millennium BC at Uğurlu reflect the changing concepts of place and society in the immediate aftermath of the Neolithic Process, when interactions with the Balkans as well as the Aegean intensified in this region.
Through analysis of a figurine assemblage from the site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, this study aims to re-evaluate the origins, meanings and functions of the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC) ...anthropomorphic figurines of Anatolia. Conventional typological approaches to figurines are often focused on their origins and sex; however, such approaches hinder an understanding of the context of the norms of production, display and discard within which the figurines become more meaningful. Following an examination of breakage patterns and the decorative aspects of the Koçumbeli assemblage, a comparative review of figurine find contexts, raw materials and abstraction scales in Anatolia is provided, so that the social concerns underlying the use of these figurines can be explored. It is concluded that the origins of the figurines are difficult to pinpoint, due to the presence of similar items across a variety of regions of the Near East from the later Neolithic onwards. The sex of the figurines is equally ambiguous; while some human sexual features can be discerned, it is difficult to decide whether these features are ‘male’, ‘female’, both or beyond classification. Alternatively, the decoration, breakage and find contexts of the figurines suggest that the imagery was embedded in more complex perceptions of social status, death and social regeneration. The need for materialisation of these concerns in the form of the figurines could be related to the development of a new social landscape of interaction leading to political centralisation by the second millennium BC. Furthermore, the figurines were produced through a meaningful linking of particular raw materials and particular abstraction scales to particular use contexts, which seems to have shifted during the centralisation process.
Through the agency of animals, we think about our identity, landscape and society, and therefore animal imagery holds a special place in approaches to human thought. Through a study of the zoomorphic ...figurine assemblage recorded at the Early Bronze Age site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, we argue that the zoomorphic figurines of this time period were produced through a meaningful linking of particular images and raw materials to particular use contexts. For example, the ambiguously sexed zoomorphic figurines of clay are usually found within the settlement contexts, whereas the rest of the zoomorphic imagery, in the form of elaborately decorated and often male-sexed metal statues and standards, are found in ‘elite’ burials located in cemeteries. This occurs on the background of an emergent form of ritual control, which was negotiated through the separation of cemetery and settlement. In these contexts, the authority of the past was invoked via ancestral imagery through the careful employment of new raw materials, such as metals, that equally became agential in the separation of age, gender and class-based differences within society, at the eve of the centralization process in Anatolia.
•pXRF analysis was conducted on 649 obsidian artefacts from the Bozburun Peninsula.•Aegean (Melos and Giali) and Anatolian (Göllüdağ) sources were revealed to be present.•Possibly the earliest use of ...Melos obsidian in Anatolia, prior to its widespread use in the Neolithic.
Bozburun Peninsula, at the easternmost intersection of the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas, yielded evidence from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Neolithic/Chalcolithic periods as a result of recent archaeological surveys. A significant number of the chipped stone artefacts discovered here are of obsidian, a raw material not native to the peninsula and one that ultimately must have been brought in from outside. All of the obsidian artefacts recovered from the Bozburun Peninsula were analysed using a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer to identify their geological provenance. Our results indicate the presence of four distinct obsidian sources in Bozburun: Melos (Cyclades) with its two separate outcrops, Giali A (Dodecanese), and Göllüdağ East (Cappadocia). The variety of sources represented in the peninsula and the long distances involved attest to the prehistoric connectivity in a region well suited to the movement of people and materials between the Aegean archipelago and the Anatolian mainland. Some of the geometric microliths, which were previously assigned to the final part of the Pleistocene and the earlier stages of the Holocene based on typological criteria, were determined to be coming from the island of Melos. If the typological assessment holds, this occurrence in the Bozburun Peninsula may mark the earliest occurrence of Melos obsidian in Anatolia, long before it was widely distributed in the Neolithic period.
Through the agency of animals, we think about our identity, landscape and society, and therefore animal imagery holds a special place in approaches to human thought. Through a study of the zoomorphic ...figurine assemblage recorded at the Early Bronze Age site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, we argue that the zoomorphic figurines of this time period were produced through a meaningful linking of particular images and raw materials to particular use contexts. For example, the ambiguously sexed zoomorphic figurines of clay are usually found within the settlement contexts, whereas the rest of the zoomorphic imagery, in the form of elaborately decorated and often male-sexed metal statues and standards, are found in ‘elite’ burials located in cemeteries. This occurs on the background of an emergent form of ritual control, which was negotiated through the separation of cemetery and settlement. In these contexts, the authority of the past was invoked via ancestral imagery through the careful employment of new raw materials, such as metals, that equally became agential in the separation of age, gender and class-based differences within society, at the eve of the centralization process in Anatolia.
Recent excavations at Sofular Höyük (Nevsehir, central Turkey) uncovered Aceramic Neolithic deposits dating to the late 9th and early 8th millennium cal BC and a lithic industry almost entirely made ...of obsidian. This study focuses on the techno-typology of this lithic assemblage and provides a first look at the material procurement strategies through geochemical characterization. Our results show that Sofular Höyük shares many general techno-typological features with contemporary sites in Central Anatolia, placing the settlement within the locally rooted traditions of the region, while the pXRF analysis of a selection of obsidian artefacts indicates the presence of two Cappadocian sources, namely Göllüdağ and Acıgöl.
